Once upon a time it was entirely realistic to expect that one day you would marry and have children. I was born in the 1960s, for instance, and about 85% of my age group eventually married. Hitting this kind of milestone was completely normal and more or less taken for granted. But it can no longer be taken for granted and this is an absolutely enormous social shift.
A new paper from The Iona Institute (which I head) was published this week called: ‘On the Wrong Course: Birth, Marriage and Family Trends in Ireland’. It looks at trends in births, marriages, cohabitation, divorce, single parenthood, among other things. All are moving in the wrong direction if you think getting married and having children are extremely important on both a personal and societal level.
For example, while Ireland has a low divorce rate by European standards, the number of people who have experienced marital breakdown nevertheless keeps increasing. The country voted for divorce in 1995. In 1996, according to Census data, 103,774 people had seen their marriage break down. (At this point, there was only legal separation, not divorce. Divorce legislation only come into being in late 1996).
Disparity
But by Census 2022, the number who had been through a divorce or separation had more then trebled to over 317,000. Even taking into account population size, that is much lower than in the UK, but it is still a high figure.
Out-of-wedlock births have grown from around 5% of all births in the early 1980s to over 40% today, a truly staggering increase.
The number of couples who cohabit (they might or might not later go on to marry) has gone from 31,296 in 1996 to 174,683 in 2022, another huge increase.
Liberals tend to become extremely defensive when you point out figures like this. The first thing they say is that you are being ‘judgemental’, which of course shuts down all discussion of important issues immediately. This has been an extremely successful tactic because, in fact, we never do discuss these things.
In respect of divorce, for example, if you point to the figures, the regular rejoinder is that you don’t care about people in abusive relationships. But almost no-one says people should stay in such situations. However, the fact remains that the number of people going through divorce keeps increasing, causing a lot of pain along the way no matter what. This is without even considering the effect on children. Also, at least half of marriages that end in divorce are low-conflict, not high conflict, and most high-conflict marriage involve lots of verbal fighting and not abuse.
But even when liberals do not react defensively, they tend to shrug their shoulders as if to say, ‘what can we do about it?’ In other words, they sink into fatalism, or else see the high amount of divorce, or the high number of births outside marriage as a consequence of greater personal freedom, ands a price worth paying no matter how high the figures go. They have the same attitude towards abortion.
Liberals are very pro-choice, and if the choice of marrying and having children is somehow going out of reach, then we have a very big problem”
Christians take a very different view, as do social conservatives. Christians think the social bonds are extremely important, bonds like those of family, and if these fray too much, then society is in trouble and lots of people suffer. Social liberals have frayed the social bonds very badly indeed.
But if there is something both sides should be able to agree about, it is surely that a growing number of people no longer hitting the previous taken-for-granted milestones in life, like getting married and having children, is a bad thing.
Liberals ought to be able to agree that if people want to marry and have children, and something is preventing them doing so, then this needs to be addressed. Liberals are very pro-choice, and if the choice of marrying and having children is somehow going out of reach, then we have a very big problem.
The new Iona Institute, which draws on Central Statistics Office data throughout, highlights the fact that our marriage rate has now hit the lowest level on record (excluding when we were locked down) and so has our birth rate.
Delays
In 2004, there were 5.4 marriages in the country for every 1,000 people. This has now fallen to 3.8, which is lower than the EU average.
In the 1980s, the average man was about 27 getting married and the average woman about 24, now they were around 38 and 36 respectively. In other words, they are getting married ten years later than in the past.
Birth rates have seen a similar fall. (Strictly speaking I should be using the term ‘fertility rates’).
In 2009, the average woman of child-bearing years could be expected to have 2.1 children, the level needed for a population to replace itself.
This figure has now fallen well below replacement level to 1.5, meaning each generation will be a quarter smaller than the last. An awful lot of people in practice will have no children at all. There will be more and more unplanned childlessness.
But this stands to reason if people are putting off marriage for so long. If you are not married until you are in your mid-to-late 30s, unless you already have children, you have given yourself little time to do so.
Why are people delaying getting married and having children for so long? One answer is economics. Buying a house or renting an apartment has simply gone out of reach for most young people. This is obscene and has terrible social effects.
But it cannot be just economics. As mentioned, couples back in the 1980s, which is not that long ago, managed to get married in their 20s, despite the very poor economic conditions at the time. This was a period of very high unemployment, high emigration and high interest rates.
There is now also a new social norm that discourages people marrying in their 20s and encourages them to put it off no matter what. That social norm puts being free from all major ties in your 20s ahead of settling down, and then, when you do want to settle down, it might well be too late.
There isn’t a more important issue facing us today, not even climate change”
But either way, the figures around marriage and births are terrible, terrible at a personal level and a societal one. If we can’t agree, regardless of ideology, that record low rates of marriages and births are a bad thing – both are likely to fall even more – then we really are on the wrong course. There isn’t a more important issue facing us today, not even climate change.
The new paper from The Iona Institute can be found on the home page of its website www.ionainstitute.ie
Record low birth and marriage rates show we are on the wrong course
Once upon a time it was entirely realistic to expect that one day you would marry and have children. I was born in the 1960s, for instance, and about 85% of my age group eventually married. Hitting this kind of milestone was completely normal and more or less taken for granted. But it can no longer be taken for granted and this is an absolutely enormous social shift.
A new paper from The Iona Institute (which I head) was published this week called: ‘On the Wrong Course: Birth, Marriage and Family Trends in Ireland’. It looks at trends in births, marriages, cohabitation, divorce, single parenthood, among other things. All are moving in the wrong direction if you think getting married and having children are extremely important on both a personal and societal level.
For example, while Ireland has a low divorce rate by European standards, the number of people who have experienced marital breakdown nevertheless keeps increasing. The country voted for divorce in 1995. In 1996, according to Census data, 103,774 people had seen their marriage break down. (At this point, there was only legal separation, not divorce. Divorce legislation only come into being in late 1996).
Disparity
But by Census 2022, the number who had been through a divorce or separation had more then trebled to over 317,000. Even taking into account population size, that is much lower than in the UK, but it is still a high figure.
Out-of-wedlock births have grown from around 5% of all births in the early 1980s to over 40% today, a truly staggering increase.
The number of couples who cohabit (they might or might not later go on to marry) has gone from 31,296 in 1996 to 174,683 in 2022, another huge increase.
Liberals tend to become extremely defensive when you point out figures like this. The first thing they say is that you are being ‘judgemental’, which of course shuts down all discussion of important issues immediately. This has been an extremely successful tactic because, in fact, we never do discuss these things.
In respect of divorce, for example, if you point to the figures, the regular rejoinder is that you don’t care about people in abusive relationships. But almost no-one says people should stay in such situations. However, the fact remains that the number of people going through divorce keeps increasing, causing a lot of pain along the way no matter what. This is without even considering the effect on children. Also, at least half of marriages that end in divorce are low-conflict, not high conflict, and most high-conflict marriage involve lots of verbal fighting and not abuse.
But even when liberals do not react defensively, they tend to shrug their shoulders as if to say, ‘what can we do about it?’ In other words, they sink into fatalism, or else see the high amount of divorce, or the high number of births outside marriage as a consequence of greater personal freedom, ands a price worth paying no matter how high the figures go. They have the same attitude towards abortion.
Christians take a very different view, as do social conservatives. Christians think the social bonds are extremely important, bonds like those of family, and if these fray too much, then society is in trouble and lots of people suffer. Social liberals have frayed the social bonds very badly indeed.
But if there is something both sides should be able to agree about, it is surely that a growing number of people no longer hitting the previous taken-for-granted milestones in life, like getting married and having children, is a bad thing.
Liberals ought to be able to agree that if people want to marry and have children, and something is preventing them doing so, then this needs to be addressed. Liberals are very pro-choice, and if the choice of marrying and having children is somehow going out of reach, then we have a very big problem.
The new Iona Institute, which draws on Central Statistics Office data throughout, highlights the fact that our marriage rate has now hit the lowest level on record (excluding when we were locked down) and so has our birth rate.
Delays
In 2004, there were 5.4 marriages in the country for every 1,000 people. This has now fallen to 3.8, which is lower than the EU average.
In the 1980s, the average man was about 27 getting married and the average woman about 24, now they were around 38 and 36 respectively. In other words, they are getting married ten years later than in the past.
Birth rates have seen a similar fall. (Strictly speaking I should be using the term ‘fertility rates’).
In 2009, the average woman of child-bearing years could be expected to have 2.1 children, the level needed for a population to replace itself.
This figure has now fallen well below replacement level to 1.5, meaning each generation will be a quarter smaller than the last. An awful lot of people in practice will have no children at all. There will be more and more unplanned childlessness.
But this stands to reason if people are putting off marriage for so long. If you are not married until you are in your mid-to-late 30s, unless you already have children, you have given yourself little time to do so.
Why are people delaying getting married and having children for so long? One answer is economics. Buying a house or renting an apartment has simply gone out of reach for most young people. This is obscene and has terrible social effects.
But it cannot be just economics. As mentioned, couples back in the 1980s, which is not that long ago, managed to get married in their 20s, despite the very poor economic conditions at the time. This was a period of very high unemployment, high emigration and high interest rates.
There is now also a new social norm that discourages people marrying in their 20s and encourages them to put it off no matter what. That social norm puts being free from all major ties in your 20s ahead of settling down, and then, when you do want to settle down, it might well be too late.
But either way, the figures around marriage and births are terrible, terrible at a personal level and a societal one. If we can’t agree, regardless of ideology, that record low rates of marriages and births are a bad thing – both are likely to fall even more – then we really are on the wrong course. There isn’t a more important issue facing us today, not even climate change.
The new paper from The Iona Institute can be found on the home page of its website www.ionainstitute.ie
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