Children do need two parents. The latest research on the consequences of marital or partnership breakdown on the children of divorced or separated parents indicates they are neither temporary nor short term and in some cases can manifest themselves in terms of health and behaviour 30 years later.
The Second Millennium Lecture on "The Marginalised Child", co-sponsored by The Irish Times and the Bank of Ireland, was held in London last night to discuss the psychological significance of the family on children's health and education and the role of the state as substitute parent.
In his lecture, "The Psychological Significance of the Family", psychiatrist Prof Anthony Clare said that in Britain one in four children under five experienced parental divorce by the age of 16, and 13 per cent of children would live in a step-family formed by remarriage or cohabitation.
It would seem sensible, he said, that given the detrimental effects on health and education experienced by the children of divorced couples, parents should be better prepared for having children.
Highlighting the effect of divorce on children's health, he said males aged between 16 and 26 at the time of their parents' divorce were five times as likely to suffer psychiatric illness as those from intact families, while women were twice as likely to suffer from psychiatric illness.
To counter these problems, Prof Clare called for legislation emphasising the importance of children in divorce proceedings to ensure that children continued to be cared for, where possible, by their natural parents. Couples about to divorce or separate should receive mandatory counselling to consider the future of their children.
None of these suggestions would radically alter the "crisis" in family life, but they would serve to encourage governments to devote less time to the financial cost of supporting the children of divorced parents and more to developing a "comprehensive . . . long-term" strategy to respond to the psychological effects of divorce on children.
Highlighting a report on the effect of partnership breakdown by the Irish-based body, the Commission on the Family, Prof Clare said its recommendations, namely the promotion of marriage counselling, support for low-income married families and joint parenting, deserved "careful consideration."
Even if only a few of these suggestions worked, he said, "we would take a leap forward in the prevention of many forms of individual and social pathology."
While Prof Clare told the conference the state must create policies to promote family formation and responsible parenting, Prof Dorota Iwaniec, head of the social work department at Queen's University Belfast, argued that central and local government must share the responsibility for failing children in care. Discussing "The State as Parent: Duties and Responsibilities", Prof Iwaniec said the state as parent has failed thousands of children.
A week after the British government issued an extensive action plan to improve the quality of care for children provided by local authorities, figures showed that up to one in four young girls leaving care were pregnant and one-third were sleeping on the streets.
Prof Iwaniec said the co-operation needed between government departments such as health, education and social services often led to "ideological problems" for policy-makers. In establishing child-care plans, she said, local authorities often failed to involve children in decisions about their future and disrupted familiar attachments by moving them from one foster home to another.
It is estimated 51,000 children in Britain are in the care of local authorities. Some 6,000 remain in residential care, and despite the fact two-thirds are placed in foster homes, there is a high level of placement breakdowns.
She said one of the most difficult problems facing state careproviders was the children's unpreparedness when leaving care.