Two major reports on the family have been
issued in the last few days, one on attitudes to the family in Ireland, one on
family structure in Ireland.

The first shows that there is a lot of
wishful thinking going on about the changes to family life that are taking
place, the other confirms that the traditional family is in decline in
Ireland.

The report on attitudes to the family is
called ‘Attitudes to Family Formation in Ireland’ and is by Margret Fine-Davis
of Trinity College Dublin. It is based on a survey of 1,400 people aged
20-49.

As an example of wishful thinking we
discover that the vast majority of people in this age group believe it’s better
to live with someone before you marry them.

As I explain in my column in today’s Irish
Independent, this implies cohabitation is somehow good for marriage. But if that
is so, then why is it that in those societies where cohabitation has been
widespread for a long time rates of marriage are low and rates of divorce are
high?

The second report has been issued by the
ESRI and is called ‘Households and Family Structure in Ireland’. It is based on
data from Census 2006 and its broad findings are similar to our own report on
Census 2006 which we released in 2007, only it goes into the data in great
detail and drills much deeper.

The headline finding, although already
known, is that one third of families now fall outside the traditional model of a
man and woman in their first marriage and a quarter of children under the age of
21 are no longer raised by two married parents.

In drilling deeper it finds, for example,
that of the 126,000 or so cohabiting couples there were in 2006, in 23.3 pc of
cases, at least one partner had been previously married.

It also shows that out of 189,000 single
parents in the country, 112,000 had previously been
married.

According to the authors, Peter Lunn and
Tony Fahey, the number of women in Ireland who are lone parents from the day
their child is born is unusually high by international standards.

They point out that in countries like
Sweden, where the lone parenthood rate is also high, a bigger percentage
of lone parents began in a relationship but then split up.

They wonder if the structure of our welfare
system has something to do with this.

Meanwhile, in The Irish Times on Tuesday,
Carl O’Brien acknowledged that the family based on marriage is the “gold
standard family unit” but then advised us all to relax because ‘only’ a third of
families do not conform to this model.

On this basis we should we even more relaxed
about an unemployment rate of 14.5 pc and a poverty rate of 15.8
pc.

Again, I go into this in more detail in my
column in today’s Irish Independent.

Meanwhile, John Waters has his own take on
the reports.