Marriage breakdown has increased fivefold

YOUR columnist Fergus Finlay (September 18) does his best to be fair to the recent report from the Iona Institute on marriage breakdown.

However, he accuses the report of scaremongering. I attended the conference at which the report was presented and it seems to me this accusation cannot be reasonably sustained.

No matter which way you look at the marriage breakdown figures in Census 2006, and on which the institute’s report is based, you arrive at a total of 198,593 adults who have suffered a broken marriage.

Also, no matter which way you look at the figures, this is up fivefold since 1986. This is not scaremongering. It is simply stating the facts. The report does not state that the ‘floodgates’ have opened, but obviously we need to take a good look at the state of marriage now in the hope that the they can be prevented ever from opening. On the more general debate around the future of family life in Ireland, the big question is in which type of family do children tend to fare best?

From the evidence, that family type is almost certainly based on marriage.

Family diversity means fewer and fewer children being raised by their two married parents. Often this is unavoidable.

Nonetheless, can we not have it as a general aim of social policy to try to ensure that the maximum possible number of children are raised by their two married parents?

Tracy Williams

Mount Merrion Ave

Blackrock

Co Dublin