Modern Families

Breda O'Brien

Issue 385, vol.97, Spring 2008

As regards couples in marriage, if this institution were to be defined exclusively as an intimate, committed loving relationship between a man and a women – there would be no State interest : children would no longer be a primary function of marriage; and a marriage need last only as long as the loving feelings lasted. But the State does see its way to privileging married couples because marriage entails a lot more : it bonds a man and a woman together in a way which maximises the chances of any children being raised by both parents. Marriage attracts State benefit because (as is still the normal case) one parent, usually the mother, takes time out from the paid workforce, or works full-time in the home – at considerable financial sacrifice – in order to raise the children. Children do best when they receive stable, loving parenting – but the optimum circumstances for achieving this are when the interests and resources of two biological parents, committed for a lifetime, are invested in a child.

Proposals have been tabled for the legalizing of civil unions other than traditional marriage, e.g., of co-habiting couples. Looking at one study of such Irish opposite-sex couples, we are given to understand that only a quarter of them will still be together after seven years – the others will either have married or broken up. Cohabitation, then, should perhaps be seen more as a developing adaptation of marriage, rather than as a real alternative.

Also proposed is the legalizing of the union of homosexual persons who are committed to a one-to-one relationship. But by the same token, it can be argued that legalisation should be extended also to that more fluid model of family relationships called “chosen families” – spanning sexual and non-sexual partnerships and several households. This, however, would be to ignore the reality that children are innately conservative, and are quite happy with the stability of being ‘limited’ to one father and one mother.

Same-sex marriage has been legalised in Spain, and the language of the birth certificate changed from “mother” and “father” to Progenitor A and Progenitor B. Yet, in reality, to declare gay parenting the equivalent of heterosexual parenting is to say that the role of either a father or a mother is disposable – it is to say that gender difference has nothing to bring to children.

There are some studies purporting to show that children do equally well in same-sex marriages. An analysis (by Stephen Nock), on the other hand, of hundreds of these studies has shown them to have fundamental design-flaws.

Civil unions of homosexual persons that are marriage in all but name, would lead inevitably to gay adoption. Proposing to change at one fell swoop both the man-woman paradigm and the fundamentally child-centred nature of marriage, is an extremely radical experiment. Children’s right – to know and be loved by their own fathers and mothers – is too basic to be trumped by adults’ needs. Children are not an incidental of marriage.

Breda O’Brien is a spouse, parent, teacher and Irish Times columnist.