The Iona Institute, a think tank for marriage and the family, is running its first conference on the ‘The Fragmenting Family’ which will be held on Friday September 14th.Speakers at the half day gathering, which will include inputs from Professor Patricia Casey, Psychiatrist, Anastasia de Waal, Analyst with Civitas and author Brenda Almond, will present data from Census 2006 as it relates to family breakdown and family structure in Ireland and will give a clear statistical overview of family life in Ireland today.
According to social affairs commentator and Director of Iona, David Quinn, the topic for the conference was chosen because of the wide ranging family law proposals currently under consideration.
“The government is considering making sweeping changes in family law, and if these changes are implemented, they will extend a significant number of marriage like rights to non married couples. This has obvious implications for marriage, and for the family – the extent to which it, for example, will be favoured under tax law etc.,” he told ciNews.
Mr Quinn, who will also be addressing the conference, said the conference will focus in particular on cohabiting relationships, which are the single fastest growing family form in Ireland today.
The Iona Institute would like to see marriage preserved as the form of family most favoured by the state and society.
“I am not saying that we should not help the poor, and other forms of family, but marriage is the most pro-child social institution there is, and it needs to be preserved. It is irresponsible for the state to pretend that all family forms have the same effect on children, because they don’t. Marriage, on average, serves children best.”
In support of this statement, Mr Quinn cited figures released recently in the UK, which show that last year 125,000 children aged 16 and under, saw their married parents divorce.
Roughly the same number of children, were affected by the split up of their cohabiting parents, but statistically there are a far greater number of married families in the UK, so a smaller percentage of children of marriages were affected by the breakups, he said.
In the US, President Bush has given financial support to pro family projects under his "healthy marriage iniative." According to Bradford Wilcox, Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute & professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, the initiative "has shown a welcome spotlight on marriage in government, the academy, and the social services."
While it is too soon yet to see whether the programs designed at strengthening marriage, "especially among the poor and working classes, will work," he told ciNews, he felt the initiative had gotten "a lot of people thinking about the ways in which marriage benefits children and adults and how public policy might be used to strengthen marriages.”
Mr Wilcox said that a number of programs are currently being evaluated and they should have the results from those programs in a year or two.
The Fragmenting Family will be held in the Davenport Hotel in Dublin on Friday 14th September from 9.30am to 1.00pm. Admission is free.
David Quinn will introduce the conference. Dr Patricia Quinn, Professor of Psychiatry at UCD will speak about what Census 2006 tells us about family trends.
Anastasia de Waal, an analyst with Civitas, a social affairs think tank based in London, will speak about Cohabitation: what social sciences tell us, and Professor Brenda Almond , Professor of Moral and Social Philosophy at the University of Hull, and author, will speak about the fragmenting family, which is also the title of her book.
Admission is free.
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