Marriage still the best place to rear children

I have come to the conclusion that there are two types of opinion columnists. There are those who are fired with a missionary spirit and the need to point out to the world on a regular basis where it is going wrong. Such controversy as this generates, except when it gets out of hand, is to be welcomed, and indeed is taken as evidence that the message is getting through.

Then there are the other columnists like me, a natural-born coward, who wakes regularly in the night wondering glumly how she ever got herself into the position of writing columns that are going to bring opprobrium on her head yet again.

Such wakeful moments become even more frequent when the genial Fianna Fáil-er with whom you have been chatting amiably, and with whom you are about to go on a programme, asks where the right-wing Catholic is, who will probably agree with everything Kevin Myers says about lone parents. He has been told that such a person has been booked for the programme, and he wants to know where she is.

I stare helplessly at him, wondering how to explain that, while I disagree with everything that Kevin Myers said about lone parents, I probably am the person about whom he has been warned. Luckily, at that moment another panellist arrives and saves me.

For the record, as an alleged right-winger, I believe in generous social welfare, redistribution of wealth and the notion of putting people before profit. That is one reason why I feel the issue of social welfare and lone parents is completely the wrong one to focus on.

There has been a nasty sub-text to the lone-parent debate, which is that I should not be required to fund someone else's decision to become pregnant or carry a child to term. What seems to be forgotten is that we are talking about children, and if we wish to cherish all the children of the nation equally, surely we want to ensure that children are not reared in even worse poverty than they are at the moment?

However, I know one reason for my right-wing reputation, and it is not from my use of the b-word, but the frequency with which I use the m-word. If some commentators have their way, the m-word will become as obsolete as the b-word, or at least will be confined to the privacy of people's homes, with no impact on public policy. I refer, of course, to marriage.

You will get politicians to assent cautiously to the notion of having two parents actively involved in a child's life. Ah, but mention the m-word, and it is then that you will smell the burning rubber as politicians skid away from the issue. Part of it is a kind of native decency that does not want to stand in judgment on other people. Part of it is sheer cowardice. However, when it comes to the welfare of children, running for cover is not very laudable.

Can someone explain to me why people who say that, on balance, marriage is the best place to rear children are said to be in denial of reality? Yet one is not permitted to describe ignoring mountains of research which back that assertion as any form of denial of reality at all?

Over the past week I have grown tired of hearing that there are no Irish longitudinal studies that show the beneficial effects of marriage as a family form for children. That is true, but there is a huge amount of easily accessed research from other countries showing that, all things considered, children do best in stable married families. Even when you control for poverty, there is evidence that family form matters.

The immediate riposte is that British, or American, or Australian research cannot be taken to indicate the same outcomes for Irish children. If that is true, why are the same people blue in the face citing the wonders of the Scandinavian model, as evidenced by research? Are people seriously trying to tell us we have more in common with the upright, cradle-to-the-grave welfare-providing Swedes than with the Brits or the Yanks?

Also, some Irish research is being used for purposes for which it was not intended. For instance, the Ceifin study which found that family form had little impact on happiness, and that it was the quality of relationships that mattered, is widely cited.

However, the Ceifin study is a snapshot and makes no attempt to predict outcomes for children in different family forms. In fact the author, Kieran McKeown, has said that, far from his research proving that marriage does not matter, it does now more than ever.

None of this should be used to stigmatise children of lone parents, or to draw the deeply offensive conclusion that all children of lone parents are automatically headed for delinquency.

But will anyone engage with the question I have been plaintively attempting to ask, which is: how do we encourage more people to have children within marriage, without stigmatising those whose lives do not conform to that pattern? My genial Fianna Fáiler was certain it could not be done.

If such defeatism were a characteristic of everyone in his party, we would still have plastic bags waving merrily from every whin bush and be inhaling smoke along with our alcohol. The welfare of children is surely more important than either of those issues, and deserving of more than instant dismissal.

Lone parents rightly ask for societal and State support because they face a difficult task. We should give such support with a heart and a half.

However, do we have to say that one person can do as easily what two can do, while at the same time offering support because it is hard on the person who has to do it alone?

Do we have to accept that poverty is the only problem, while ignoring the fact that part of the poverty may result from only having the resources of one person, both financial and emotional, rather than two? Does sensible recognition of diversity have to go so far as to deny all differences between family types?