Life & Style

The changing Irish family

We have fewer children than we did two decades ago, and more separation and divorce

Conor Goodman's face
Conor Goodman
Sat Mar 21 2015 - 01:00

The family – like it or not, we all have one – remains a potent influence on Irish people. In an Irish attitudes and values survey in 2012, 62 per cent of people identified family and home as the biggest influences on their thinking and opinions, almost double the number influenced by the media (33 per cent).

More than 80 per cent of Irish people in that survey rated the support of their family as very important, prizing it more highly than having friends, being healthy or having a job.

But the Irish family has changed in recent years, and continues to do so. Family sizes have declined significantly in a quarter century. In 1991 the average family had two children. In 1996 this had fallen to 1.8 children; in the 2011 census the average number per family was 1.4.

The average in rural areas is higher, at 1.5 children. Cos Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan have the largest families, with 2.2 children per family.

READ MORE

Single people are more likely to live in cities. Cos Leitrim, Mayo and Roscommon have the lowest proportions of single people.

Family Values, a major survey by ‘The Irish Times’, explores the changing Irish family.

In couples, men are on average 2.2 years older than their partners.

Separation and divorce have grown significantly since the legalisation of divorce, in 1996. The number of separated couples rose from 78,000 in 1996 to 116,000 in 2011. In the same period the number of divorcees rose almost tenfold, to 88,000.

The remarried population increased by 550 per cent in the same period. Men are more likely than women to remarry. The peak age for separation and divorce is 48.

Almost 8 per cent of non-Irish-national adults are separated or divorced, versus 5.3 per cent of Irish nationals.

In the 2011 census 440,000 Irish adults were living with their parents. Three in five of them were men. A third were unemployed.

That census also recorded 4,042 same-sex cohabiting couples, 83 per cent of them in urban areas. Civil partnership was legalised in April 2011. In the first four years of the law almost 3,000 people entered civil partnerships.

On May 22nd, 2015, in the referendum on marriage equality, Ireland will vote for or against a constitutional amendment that would allow same-sex marriage.