Never let the facts get in the way of a good rant.
In light of some ludicrous claims being made after the Myers article, it might interest some to read the following article. It might even make some people think.
[size=3]Looking to establish the 'true' picture of the lone-parent families[/size]
Separating fact from fiction on lone parents, Anthony McCashin looks at what social research in Ireland actually tells us about lone parent numbers, their lives and attitudes
Kevin Myers's controversial article in The Irish Times (February 8th) generated a flurry of claim and counter-claim about the size of the lone-parent population, their social and financial circumstances, and the effects on Irish society of a growing number of lone-parent families.
Against this background it is necessary to record some of the relevant facts, and to note the findings of what little research we have on the subject in Ireland.
How many lone parents?
This question is easily answered. The accompanying table summarises the relevant figures from the official Quarterly National Household Survey (and its predecessor, the Labour Force Survey).
In 2002 there were about 98,000 lone-parent families. They comprised over 20 per cent of all family units. These figures exclude those families where all of the children are aged over 15, but they include all forms of lone-parent families - unmarried, widowed, divorced, and separated.
It is important to stress that the estimated size of the lone-parent population, and its composition ,varies according to the definition chosen.
In particular, if lone parents whose children aged over 15 are included the figure is over 167,000, and, of this, a substantial number are widows.
It is not possible with these data to give a definitive figure for the social category that Myers and others highlighted - young, unmarried mothers - but the official figures on births provide some information.
In 2003, the total number of births was 61,517, and of these, 19, 313 (31.4 per cent) were to unmarried women.
There were 2,580 births to unmarried women aged under 20. To put the latter figure in perspective, it represents an annual birth rate of approximately 16.9 per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-19.
As the ESRI commented in its study, Family Formation in Ireland, "The level of teenage childbearing in Ireland cannot therefore be regarded as high, either by the standards of other countries, or of Ireland's own recent past".
The figures for "non-marital" births (the official statistical term) are not a good guide to the trend in the number of unmarried lone parents for obvious reasons: some unmarried parents will marry after the birth of a child, a few will have the child adopted, and many are likely to be cohabiting in a long-term relationship.
In fact, Census 2002 records a figure of 29,709 cohabiting couples with children, and 47,907 cohabiting couples without children.
Details aside, the outline facts are that the lone parent population is growing slowly in absolute terms and as a share of the population. However, not only is Ireland not unique, it is at the lower end of the international spectrum.
Eurostat's figures for the share of lone-parent families in the population show Ireland at the lower end of the European range and significantly below the UK.
Social welfare
A central argument in Kevin Myers's article is that social welfare provisions may have caused the growth in the number of lone-parent families: here he focused specifically on unmarried mothers.
The first point to note from the international research is that the growth in the lone-parent population has been taking place over an extended period in many countries, and the trend does not seem to be related to the generosity or structure of countries' social welfare systems.
Second, from 1961 to 1971 the number (and the rate) of non-marital births almost doubled - the figure rose from 975 to 1,842: the increase in the rate of non-marital births commenced long before the introduction of the Unmarried Mother's Allowance and other lone-parent payments in the early 1970s.
The background to the social welfare provisions is well known. In the late 1960s there were campaigns on a number of fronts to allow some element of choice to unmarried pregnant women and married women abandoned, or financially neglected by their husbands.
Michael Viney's ground-breaking book, No Birthright, published in 1964, had a significant influence in documenting the experience of unmarried pregnant women.
By and large, they either gave up the children for adoption (the figure for adoptions as a share of non-marital births was 70.8 per cent in 1971) or went to the UK.
In fact, the numbers of Irish women seeking assistance from the social services in London was so great that the authorities there constructed a special statistical category, PFI (Pregnant from Ireland) to enumerate them, and also undertook initiatives, along with the protection and rescue societies, to facilitate the repatriation of some women.
One implication of this historical background is that the observed rise in non-marital births in Ireland significantly overstates the real trend, as the historic "low" figure took no account of the very large number of births to unmarried Irish women in the UK.
The concern about unmarried mothers in the UK grew in intensity when abortion was legalised in the UK in 1967: this was publicly described by the Catholic Protection and Rescue Societies as a "temptation of a very serious nature before the distraught unmarried mother".
A campaign to improve the services for unmarried mothers culminated in a famous conference in Kilkenny in 1972 and the introduction of the allowance in 1973.
The introduction of the allowance for unmarried mothers (and the corresponding payments for deserted wives) was a conscious policy choice to provide options to women in crisis, a choice that responded to, but did not create the social trends of rising non-marital births and marital breakdown.
In subsequent decades increasing numbers of women took up the options made available through the new social welfare schemes. As the graph shows, the number of lone parent social welfare recipients has grown rapidly.
In 2003, there were just over 79,000 recipients of the One Parent Family Payment (the payment that now incorporates the earlier schemes for unmarried mothers and deserted wives).
Total expenditure on all the lone parent-related schemes was €760 million, about 7 per cent of the total social welfare budget, and approximately 2 per cent of gross current Government expenditure.
Are the social welfare provisions a problem?
History provides one answer to this question. Irish society made a clear choice that social welfare for lone parents was preferable to the alternatives - destitution for the deserted wife, institutionalisation or emigration, or abortion for the unmarried mother.
Critics of the social welfare system must ponder the fact that there is no evidence of a desire to return to the scenarios encountered by Michael Viney and the campaigners of the 1960s. From an altogether different stance the social welfare provisions can be criticised - their inadequacy relative to average incomes.
During the decade commencing in 1994, the level of the One Parent Family Payment fell relative to the national poverty line (based on average disposable income) from 94 per cent of the poverty line to about 72 per cent.
It is no surprise then that the official poverty figures in the Survey of Income and Living Conditions show that, of all household types, female lone-parent families have the highest at-risk-of-poverty rate, 49.3 per cent.
These figures show that the One Parent Family Payment, (currently €168.10 per week for one adult and one child) is insufficient, on its own, to keep lone parents above the poverty line.
The structure of social welfare provisions was problematic in one respect until the early 1990s. Recipients were deterred by the means test from taking up employment and hence many lone parents would have relied for a long period on social welfare as their only source of income, effectively excluding them from the labour market.
In the mid-1990s the schemes were reformed so that the recipients could combine receipt of a partial payment with earnings from employment.
These changes - along with other initiatives facilitating welfare recipients to return to employment - allowed lone mothers to participate in the booming labour market. From 1995 to 2001, lone mothers' labour market participation doubled, and now almost 60 per cent of them are economically active - not "benefits-addicted" as Kevin Myers suggested. The changes to social welfare to make the system more compatible with work and financial independence were supported, and indeed advocated, by lone-parent organisations.
© The Irish Times
continued in next post...............
