Strong words over single mothers

FOLLOWING the publicity surrounding an article in Newsweek magazine which touched on single mothers in Ireland, I welcome this opportunity to make a few serious points on the rights and responsibilities of men and women in relation to each other and to their children, whether jointly or separately.

Since the comments I made to Newsweek were so severely edited, this is a summary of what I said. Yes, the incidence of lone parents is rising in Ireland for a combination of reasons. Yes, some women are choosing to stay on their own and they can clearly explain why they do not want to live with a man, married to him or otherwise. Yes, Ireland is changing and becoming more pluralist, embracing greater diversity in many different ways, including families. And yes, President Robinson is seen as someone who accepts diversity - and, for many women that has been very important in restoring self esteem which is not well supported by many institutions of the State.

The increase in lone parents reflects major change in this society. Our sexual morals, once rooted in ignorance and fear, have been replaced by a more open attitude to sexuality, in part influenced by the availability of contraception.

As someone who fought hard for access to family planning advice and contraceptive choices, I deeply regret that this has not been, accompanied by the necessary levels of education. We have to prepare young people to be more responsible, to say no to sex until they are ready and to understand the consequences of their actions.

Is this solely the responsibility of parents? We do not believe so, because more of us who are parents understand that young people learn and develop their own standards from a range of influences. In this, as in many areas, those of us who are parents need a great deal of support.

But the realists among us know that even the most comprehensive programme will not eliminate pregnancies among young single women, will not make every young man and woman as responsible as we would like. And of course in the past, even with the prevailing fear and ignorance, there were babies born outside marriage and a high price was paid by many. Let us assume we do not want to return to a time when young women who became pregnant were hidden away, forced to give their babies away.

The additional, reality is separation, and now divorce. Much of the tolerance of previous generations of abuse, violence, meanness and mental cruelty to women, is going. The commitment of "for better or worse" is being interpreted to mean a shared commitment to each other in the good times and the bad - not to having to accept a life where one is treated like a door mat, maid or punchball. And undoubtedly that change is going to increase the numbers of families headed, in practice, by one parent.

Many single women are choosing to, keep their babies and many other women are finding themselves, or choosing to be, the resident parent. And in many instances the circumstances and experience which have brought women into that situation have coloured their views of men. And please, we all know that is not a reaction against those men reading this column who are good, caring, responsible and loyal and who engage in relationships with women as equal partners and coparents. This is about men who women observe and experience as at best irresponsible, at worst abusive.

Women are making a critical assessment and opting for what is indeed in many ways the lesser of two evils of a life on a low income over both of which they have complete control. For men, this change is complicated by a lack of preparation for greater equality within relationships - and made exceedingly, complicated when their traditional role as breadwinner has all but disappeared.

What have successive governments done of any significance to prepare young men, particularly working class men, for the changed world and to equip them with the skills they need for the jobs that are there? How has the world of work changed, not simply to facilitate women to participate, but to recognise that men too have homes and families? The answer to both questions is far too little.

And the consequences are not simply more women parenting alone but perhaps more women and young couples opting to put off having children until much later or choosing to have fewer children or even none. Society is paying an exceedingly high price for failing to deal with complex issues through complex responses in policies across the board. Our education system has to change and be supported to change to equip young people for lives which are more complex and in many ways more dangerous.

We have to work with women and men parenting alone to make it possible for them to become economically independent - because we certainly can't make them disappear. And we have to develop family support, mediation and counselling services so that families get every assistance to stay together and, where separation occurs, provide supports which will increase the possibilities for joint parenting in practice.

THE current issue of Newsweek had hardly hit the streets when the row began, with a Fine Gael TD calling on the chairwoman of the National Women's Council to apologise to the women of Ireland for the slur she'd allegedly cast on them.

Fine Gael's Theresa Ahearn was referring to comments by Noreen Byrne in a Newsweek cover story entitled "The Death Of Marriage: More European Women Are Having Children Out Of Wedlock, And No One Seems To Mind".

In a paragraph dealing with the broad acceptance of single motherhood in Europe, Ms Byrne says: "The feeling is, why bother to live with (men) and wash their socks? Just go out and play with them... a lot of women are deciding they don't need men in order to survive."

The article added that Mary Robinson represented a kind of symbolic encouragement of this independence and then quoted Byrne as follows: "Finally, we have someone in authority who's like us."

Ms Ahearn said she was appalled "by the degrading and insulting tone" of the remarks. "I find it absolutely incredible that a person representing a powerful women's lobby group could make such disparaging comments about men and, worse still, seek to identify the President of Ireland with these comments," she said, claiming Ms Byrne was trying to tell young Irish women that a casual sexual relationship was the new norm, replacing marriage as the best option for those seeking to assert their independence.

Ms Ahearn accused Ms Byrne of focusing on independence to the exclusion of responsibility. "It is particularly demeaning of the traditional marital relationship for her to reduce it to laundry chores," she said. What, she asked, would Ms Byrne's response be if a similar comment was made about women by a man speaking on behalf of the men in Ireland? Ms Byrne had, she added, "managed to do a major disservice to all Irish women by implying that we now see men as nothing more than sex objects".