Irish families have changed — it’s a shame the constitution won’t be amended to reflect that

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Voters also rejected a second referendum on changing wording about a woman’s “duties in the home”.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

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Voters also rejected a second referendum on changing wording about a woman’s “duties in the home”.
The change would have reflected the diversity of families in contemporary Ireland, and granted equal constitutional rights to single parents.
By 2022, the last Irish census, 45% of all family units were defined as a married couple with children.
But my research shows that marriage itself isn’t, on its own, necessarily the most important factor for family or child wellbeing.

I’m a sociologist who studies family life, marriage and relationships.
My analysis of this data, with colleagues, shows that marriage isn’t the most important factor in determining whether children thrive.
One-parent families were largely lone mother families with 9% defined as “never married” lone mothers and 8% as “previously married”.

The children born to never married mothers tend on average to weigh less than those born to married mothers.
Families differ for many reasons besides marriage.
In other words, we estimated that most of the difference was due to the socioeconomic resources available to families, rather than to marriage itself.

Carmel Hannan receives funding from the Family Support Agency administered
through the Irish Research Council