Employers should recognise the importance of family life, Cardinal Basil Hume told an audience in Dublin last night. The claims of the workplace often militate against life together in the family, he said.
Cardinal Hume was delivering a lecture on "The Marginalised Child" at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre. The Lillie Road Centre, a group of boys' homes in London managed by an Irish priest, Father Ken McCabe, organised the lecture. Cardinal Hume is patron of the homes.
"In the fast-moving world of today, many parents are unable to spend as much time as they would wish with their children," he said. "In many families both parents have to work full-time to make ends meet. Tensions can be particularly acute for single parents who have to work to provide for their children. The advent of Sunday trading, and the ever-increasing demands of employers in terms of part-time work and irregular working hours, mean that many families are unable to have meals together, even at weekends."
It is the family environment which has the greatest influence on children, he said. "Whether children become violent or not, for example, depends largely on parental example. On the surface, many families may seem stable, but in reality some may be failing to cope with the acute problems they face with their children. Such difficulties can arise in varied social situations. It is not something to do exclusively with material poverty or inadequate education or family type.
"Rather, such dysfunction stems from spiritual impoverishment, which may lead to the inability to parent."
In the UK a growing proportion of children - at least one in four - are likely to experience their parents' separation and divorce before the age of 16, he said.
"I was struck recently by a true story of two children talking in the playground. One proudly announced the name of his `new dad', to which the other replied: `Oh, you'll like him, he was our dad last year.'"
Cardinal Hume said that sadly, the church was not always, as it should be, the advocate and defender of abused children. It would be remiss of me now not to recognise and express deep sorrow for the harm done to children by priests and religious in various countries in recent times. Hard lessons have also to be learned by many families, and those professions and institutions where abuse has taken place."
Greater esteem should be shown to those who have most to do with children, namely parents, teachers and other carers, he said.