First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.
The ideas in this old skipping rhyme are apparently as outdated as, well, carefree children skipping on our footpaths and streets.
The All-Party Oireachtas Committee has been derided for producing a timid document on the family, and for calling for further discussion. For once, timidity might be in order, and further discussion is essential.
Rather than looking directly at the committee's recommendations, it might be useful to look at the competing and incompatible visions of marriage underlying the current debate. Much of my own thinking has been shaped by a perceptive analysis conducted by Dan Cere for the US Council of Family Law, called The Future of Family Law, and what follows draws heavily on that study.
Marriage as an institution might never have been invented if we conveniently reproduced like amoeba, by simply splitting in two. It might never have been invented if we did not produce particularly helpless offspring requiring sustained care for an average of 18 years.
It might never have been invented if there were not a payoff for society in regulating sexual impulses and channelling them into relationships where there is some protection and commitment for the partners, and where the chances of being reared by one's biological parents are maximised.
As an institution, marriage predates the Judaeo-Christian religion that has shaped so much of western values and far predates Islam.
The essential nature of marriage comes from recognising that sexual attraction between men and women, if left entirely unregulated, results in too many children being born without a father present to play an ongoing part in the children's lives. Some men will shirk their responsibilities, but many fathers who would wish to play such a role will be excluded from doing so.
It results in too many children who suffer disadvantage, because the stark reality is that, even with massive societal supports, it is very hard to match the energy and commitment invested in a child by two parents. Lone parents are not to be condemned for this, but commended for the fact that so many do such a good job, given the inherent difficulties in raising a child alone.
But, you might object, all of this has broken down. One-third of children in Ireland are now born outside marriage. The idea of reserving sex for marriage is now considered a joke. There are all kinds of relationships, gay, straight, and polygamous, and society needs to recognise and provide support for them all.
Yet human beings remain stubbornly attached to marriage, illustrated by the fact that many advocates of gay rights believe that it is akin to racism to deny them the right to marry. They see talk of civil unions as akin to the "separate but equal" arguments of segregationist America before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus.
Even in divorce-ridden America, 87 per cent of citizens believe in the concept of lifelong marriage, preferring to believe that their own attempts at marriage were flawed rather than the institution itself.
The legal term for the kind of marriage described in the opening paragraphs is unattractive: conjugal marriage. An unappealing phrase it may be, but it is profoundly child-centred, and at the heart of it is the desire to provide children with the rights enumerated in the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child:
"The child shall have the right from birth to a name and as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents."
Ironically, the more society deviates from the norm of marriage, the more the state has to intervene. In marriage, when it works, parents conduct their family life without too much intervention, except when there is domestic violence or other criminal activity.
In contrast, the state routinely directs unmarried, separated and divorced parents as to how much child support they may pay, when they may see their children and for how long, and even sometimes where they may live. Fewer marriages that work means more time in the family law courts, often described bitterly as "killing fields" by those unfortunate enough to end up in them.
There are two basic models seeking to supplant the conjugal model of marriage. The first tries to make marriage and all committed relationships equivalent to each other. In an odd way, this reduces choice for people who wish to live together without long-term commitment.
One of the hallmarks of marriage is that one must give free consent. If one can be judged to have entered a de facto marriage simply by cohabiting for a specific length of time, people no longer have the option of rejecting the constraints of marriage. It also treats marriage and cohabitation as exactly the same, whereas social science research shows that, on average, children appear to do better in stable marriages.
According to US statistics, three-quarters of children born to cohabiting parents will see their parents split up before they reach age 16, whereas only a third of children born to married couples face that fate.
The second model seeking to supplant marriage involves the denial of one of its major elements, which is the protection of children and ensuring as far as possible that they be reared by biological parents, or adopted by opposite-sex parents.
Marriage is reduced to just one kind of "close relationship". The intergenerational and biological element of marriage is stripped from the picture, leaving only a couple-centred vision. It redefines marriage as a gender-neutral union of two persons. It neutralises the state's ability to say that children need their mothers and fathers.
Certainly marriages are close relationships, but they are given the protection of the state primarily because the majority of marriages produce children.
Simply because there are changes in society does not mean we need to enshrine them in law. Laws are more than rules: they also set standards that influence behaviour.
Perhaps the time is ripe for change. Let us not enter into change in some kind of blind, woolly belief that altering the definition of marriage is about being nice and inclusive, and that it does not have profound consequences for society, and most especially, our children.
bobrien@irish-times.ie