Increasing numbers of women over 40 in the UK are having recourse to IVF treatment, mainly due to couples delaying having children.

An attempt to get Northern Irish law to recognise unmarried couples as prospective adoptive parents has failed in the Court of Appeal. The case was brought by an unmarried couple, named X and Y in court and X's child, a 10 year old girl, named as P.

Schools should be prohibited from teaching the benefits of traditional marriages compared to alternative lifestyles, according to top UK academics. Members of the University and College Union (UCU) representing 120,000 lecturers are calling for new legislation to stop teachers telling children that marriage is superior to gay partnerships. This would apply to all teachers, including staff in faith schools.

New legislation is set to threaten the tax-exempt charity status of churches across Northern Ireland , it has been claimed.

Marriage helps improve the mental health of those suffering from depression, a new study has found. This remains true even though marriage quality is poorer for depressed individuals. The study compares two sets of people suffering from depression, those who remain single, and those who recently married. It found that after five years of marriage the second group exhibited fewer signs of depression than the first.

There has been a major increase in the number of Irish households without children, new figures from the Central Statistics Office show. A majority of households in the State (52 per cent) now have no children.

Men suffer more than women from divorce and marital breakdown, according to new Canadian research. Canadian government statistics showed that both men and women whose marriages have dissolved have a higher risk of being depressed than people who remained with their spouses.

Couples are putting off getting married for longer, according to new Census figures. Spouses are now getting married later into their 30s and more are having civil marriages, the latest data from the Central Statistics Office shows.

The number of children born to parents who are unmarried but cohabiting is at a record level, says a study released today by a nonprofit research group. More than half the children who were born outside marriage had both parents in the home, Child Trends researchers said in their new paper.

National Center for Education Statistics data on more than 10,000 children and their parents, showed that nearly one third of children born in the US are now born out of wedlick, the report by the US based research institute says.

The findings mark a significant change in childbearing patterns, the report says. In the early 1980s, only about 30 percent of unwed births were to cohabiting couples. In the early 1990s, this jumped to about 40 percent, and in 2001, it reached 52 percent.

Jennifer Manlove one of the authors of the Child Trends paper, believes there is a positive side to these figures. More than half of children born to unwed parents are starting their lives with both of their biological parents, which she says is good news. This means that, in general, these children are better off economically than children born into single-mother households, she noted.

However, on the down side, children born into cohabiting couples still face greater risks for poverty, poor health and problems in school than children in married-couple households. "Also, cohabiting relationships have high rates of dissolution, and if that happens, the children can be hurt, both emotionally and financially," Manlove added.

The Child Trends report also found that education and age were factors in cohabiting and childbearing.

More than half of unwed mothers who had a high-school diploma, some college or a college degree were likely to be cohabiting when they gave birth. However, the opposite was true for unwed mothers who didn't finish high school: Fifty-six percent of these mothers were not in live-in relationships when their children were born.

More than half of unwed mothers age 20 and older were cohabiting when they gave birth, compared with 44 percent of teenage mothers.

One Parent Exchange and Network (OPEN), a group representing single parents in Ireland, are to lobby the Government to establish May 15th as “Family Diversity Day” May 15th is currently the United Nations Designated Day of Families.

European women would like to have more babies, according to a survey by the European Commission.

The rate of divorce in the US, which climbed dramatically during and after the 1960s, has dropped to its lowest levels since 1970, according to figures released earlier this month by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Over 3000 delegates attended the World Congress of Families in Warsaw last weekend where they heard speakers highlight current legal and other threats to marriage.

The State is paying lip service to religious schools, according to the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Neill. Department of Education requests that denominational schools double in size almost overnight are endangering the Protestant ethos of his Church's schools.

Eleven countries have been designated by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) as engaging in “systematic violations of religious freedom”. The Commission has recommended that Burma, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam be designated by the US State Department as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs).

With the election just weeks away, here is a summary of the policies of some of the main parties on the questions of tax individualisation, civil partnership and family issues.

Nicolas Sarkozy, winner of Sunday's French Presidential elections, has signaled his intent to put morality at the heart of public debate. Last week, as he rallied his supporters in the final week of this bitterly contested election, he dared to criticise one of the most cherished memories of the French Left: the student demonstrations of 1968.

Research has confirmed what many have known for some time: the work done by housewives is worth a small fortune.

Clashes between Turkey's secularist bureaucratic and military elite and its Islamic ruling Justice and Development party, the AKP, are continuing to convulse the country.