The number of births outside marriage has been rising throughout the past three decades. Between 1994 and 1997, the early years of our recent boom, this increase accelerated to about 15 per cent a year, but it has tapered off during the past two years to about half that rate.
Nevertheless, by the first quarter of this year this upward trend had brought the proportion of such births up to the remarkable figure of one-third of the total, as against a mere 1.5 per cent 35 years ago, scarcely a generation.
This acceleration of the growth of non-marital births after 1994 has been wholly responsible for the recent recovery in our overall birth rate, which between 1980 and 1994 had fallen by over one-third, from 74,000 to just under 48,000. The increase since 1994 in the total number of births, to its current level of over 54,000 a year, owes nothing at all to marital births, which have fallen by 1,500 during the past five years.
This continuing decline in marital births is surprising in view of the fact that during the past 4 1/2 years Ireland has seen something of a marriage boom. The latest figures, for the first quarter of this year, show that since autumn 1995 the annual number of marriages has jumped by over 21 per cent.
A proportion of the young population have opted out of marriage completely. The increase from 300 a year to almost 3,000 in the number of non-marital births to women in their 30s suggests that, at least for a significant minority, marriage is simply not on the agenda.
But for the great majority of young people marriage has been postponed, rather than abandoned. Young marriages, very popular during the 1970s, are rare today. Thus, whereas in 1981 a third of women were married by 22, today this is true of only 3 per cent of this age group. And in 1981 half were married before reaching 25, but today this is true of only 8 per cent of those below that age.
The big rise in the marriage rate in the second half of the 1990s was almost certainly due to the delayed effect of this postponement factor. Women and men who in the 1980s and first half of the 1990s were quite happy to postpone marriage became prepared to take this step as they approached or passed the age of 30.
Unfortunately we do not have the data needed to trace this recent development in any detail. Birth and death data are submitted directly to the Central Statistics Office, enabling it to analyse promptly the ages of mothers at the birth of their first and later children, as well as the ages at which deaths occur.
But figures for marriages come through the Registrar-General, who lacks the staff to prepare these figures in a timely way. Consequently we have to wait for years to find out what changes are taking place in the ages at which women and men marry.
IT MIGHT have been thought that the recent mini-boom in marriages would have been accompanied by a recovery in the marital birth rate. Indeed, there has been speculation that the reason for the increased number of marriages might have been a concern by women to start families slightly before or around the age of 30.
Now, it is certainly the case that the number of first births to married women in their 30s rose during the 1990s, by as much as three-fifths. But since 1996 (that is, since just after the increase in the marriage rate started) the rate of increase in first marital births has actually slowed, and since 1997 there has also been an acceleration in the rate of decline of first births to younger married women.
In other words, it does not seem that the recent mini-boom in marriages has been associated with an increase in first births to women; quite the contrary. Whatever has led to the increase in the marriage rate it does not seem to have been a concern to start a family, although it is, of course, possible that a small proportion of the recent increase in marriages might have come about as a consequence of rather than as a preliminary to having a first child.
The Irish proportion of non-marital births is now in the upper half of the EU scale. Moreover, over half of all our first pregnancies are now non-marital, and at least three out of every eight of these non-marital first pregnancies are aborted in Britain; which is, however, the case with only 6 per cent of later non-marital pregnancies. About 5 per cent of marital first pregnancies are also aborted in Britain.
These non-marital birth figures are very disturbing, and I find it surprising that this situation has provoked no visible reaction from our policy-makers.
Although the abortion issue has certainly aroused debate and controversy, the closely associated issue of the scale of non-marital pregnancies has not been the subject of much public discussion. Indeed, there seems to be little or no public awareness of the remarkable fact that marital first pregnancies are now a minority phenomenon.
There is a huge weight of evidence that children born into and brought up in single-parent families, other than families headed by widowed single parents, have a much higher chance of being disadvantaged, not just in childhood but also thereafter. A significant part of our social problems derives from this source.
Against that background, it might have been expected that public policy would be directed towards tackling this social problem. Instead, there is virtual silence on the issue, and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that over-concern about the danger of appearing judgmental, and therefore "politically incorrect", has inhibited the public authorities from addressing this issue.
It is true that in the past over-judgmental attitudes created an unhealthy climate of fear in relation to these matters, a fact the Catholic Church itself now accepts. But there is an evident danger of becoming over-mesmerised by recollections of these unhappy features of our past.
While there is a strong case for caution in respect of interventions by the public authorities to influence social mores, it would be wrong on that account to rule out consideration of steps that might improve the working of our society.
In Britain, where the scale of these problems is similar, the government is seeking to address the problem of how to support and foster marriage. There should at least be serious public discussion here as to whether there are actions that could be taken to reduce promiscuity, to strengthen the stability of marriage, and to modify the pressures that are pushing the initiation of families later and later.
The collapse of the moral authority of the Catholic Church on issues of sexuality and marriage has left a dangerous vacuum in Ireland. It has left an onus on the State to provide the kind of leadership required to bring together those elements that share a concern for the future of our society.
By giving a blanket priority to economic growth over any other consideration, the Government has not merely contributed to inflation: it has also been failing to grasp the more fundamental challenge of securing social cohesion.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie