Marriage and the Family

Only one in five people want children placed in day-care says new poll

Press Release from The Iona Institute Only one in five people want children placed in day-care says new poll Poll also finds vast majority want two or three children     August 10, 2022  – A new Amarach Research poll commissioned by The Iona Institute shows that only one in five people want children under...

Government should help all childcare choices

David Quinn was on Newstalk Breakfast discussing whether the Government’s should make daycare free. “There seems to be an assumption in this debate that every parent wants to put their young child in daycare. If this is not true, the Government cannot put all the money into daycare sector at the expenses of the other...

The poor state of marriage across the EU

Ireland had one of the lowest marriage rates in Europe in 2020, according to new data from Eurostat. This was the year Covid emerged, so marriage rates dropped everywhere, but Ireland was particularly bad, and the rate was already low. Figures from Eurostat show that Ireland had a marriage rate of 1.9 per 1,000 people...

Marriage in Ireland continues its decline

New figures from the CSO throw light on the changing nature of marriage in Ireland. To cut a long story short, the institution is in continuing decline. In all, there were 16,717 opposite-sex marriages last year; 15 percent less than in 2019. There were 500 same-sex marriages. The marriage rate per 1,000 population was just...

The ESRI’s blind spot on marriage

New research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) confirms that when fathers play an active role in the lives of their children, it has beneficial effects on the child. Unfortunately, the research fails to take into consideration the role marriage has in encouraging more father involvement with children. It is a big blind...

Missing marriage and the baby carriage

All around the Western world, people are marrying later or not at all. The average Irish couple is now well into their 30s by the time they tie the knot, and marriage rates in Ireland have plunged since the 1970s. A similar pattern exists in Canada, where a new study from pro-family think tank, Cardus...

How lockdown has broken some marriages and improved others

There are indications that Covid-19 will increase rates of divorce and separation because of so many couples being forced to live at close quarters for weeks or even months at a time, without the safety valve of being able to leave the house to go out socialising. But a study based on the UK Household...

Marriage in Ireland continues its decline

Marriage continues to change and decline in Ireland as the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office show. Fewer marriages are taking place, fewer are taking place in churches, more are taking place between people who were married before and are now divorced, and couples are older when they marry. Same-sex marriage is now permitted....

Citizens’ Assembly moves to strip marriage of special status

The Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality met again last weekend. Regrettably, the sessions on “The family in the constitution and law”, amounted to a prolonged attack on the special status of marriage in the Constitution. Prof. Siobhan Mullaly from NUI Galway explained how the special status of marriage appears to impinge on the rights of...

Relationships and Sexuality Education

Our new paper is a critique of the liberal philosophy of sex education and how consent is treated as the only necessary condition a couple has to fulfil before having sex with each other. It is a response to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment which is currently conducting a review of Relationships and...