Ireland and our divorce debaters

Yeats once wrote that the Irish were blessed with a melancholic temperament that saw them through their occasional bouts of cheerfulness. Well, should the Irish ever learn about Malta’s discussion of their divorce statistics, they might be grateful for all that melancholy that their economic crisis has reinforced. Our discussion risks giving them a nasty bout of laughter.

For those of you who have missed it, earlier this year the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) of Dublin published some interesting numbers related to family structure in Ireland – interesting because counter-intuitive.

The numbers that made the rounds in Malta concerned divorce. For some years, Irish newspapers ran the occasional story saying the divorce in Ireland (legalised in 1997) was finally “taking off” into the stratosphere. ESRI says that, on the contrary, the rate of marital breakdowns of the 1980s and 1990s, which was increasing at a rapid rate, has tapered off and remains low by international standards.

And, no, although economic crises tend to see divorce rates go down, the Irish crisis has nothing to do with it. ESRI was basing itself on the 2006 census figures.

The rate of marriage has been falling, however, while the Irish are marrying later, into their 30s, which partly help explain the lower breakdown rate. However, ESRI suggests the salient factor is mainly historical.

The 1970s saw a high rate of early marriages. ESRI’s hypothesis is that the ballooning rates of marital breakdown of the 1980s and 1990s had to do with that particular cohort of marriages.

It is not an extraordinary explanation. Although the divorce rates for the US and the UK, say, remain high, they reached a peak in 1979 and have since also levelled off and even dipped slightly. The same is true of some other European countries. In these countries’ cases, it is the 1960s cohort’s marriages which is said to play the key role.

So why should the Irish (or anyone else, for that matter) have a giggle at our expense if Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando brings this report up on Xarabank (as he did last week) and if it is cited by other pro-divorce campaigners? The anti-divorce campaigners can keep harping on a statistical study of 18 European countries that shows that from 1950-2002 divorce laws (or rather, certain kinds of law) account for some 20 per cent of the rise in marital breakdowns. So what is wrong with the Irish case being mentioned to show a possible exception?

There is nothing wrong with discussing this study. It is certainly worth it. What’s amusing is how the details of this study are uncomfortable for both sides of our divorce debate.

Take the question of religion. The ESRI study suggests religiosity, together with ethnicity, is one of the most important factors affecting the marital breakdown rate. Why is that an uncomfortable truth for pro-divorce campaigners?

Because many, though not all, of them are saying two things at once. On the one hand, that introducing divorce legislation need not have calamitous consequences (look at Ireland!). On the other hand, they want the Church to keep its snout out of the debate or, in any case, severely curtail how it speaks so as not to “impose” itself.

However, it would seem that keeping the divorce rate non-calamitous depends on the Church remaining influential and how it can do that without speaking with every intention to persuade escapes me.

But the same religious factor is no great comfort for the Maltese Church, either. The ESRI figures show that divorce rates are lowest among Ireland’s Muslim minority. No one should need reminding that Islam has permitted divorce since its inception, some 1,400 years ago. Many of Ireland’s Muslims would have been coming from societies that saw their divorce rates soar at some period.

The discomforting news for the oversimple argument that the Maltese Church puts forward is that the availability of the divorce mechanism in itself is not enough to explain marital breakdown rates.

Nor is the ESRI report’s most striking fact – the tapering off of divorce rates – entirely comfortable for the pro-divorce side. Dr Pullicino Orlando and others have hailed Ireland as an extra-significant case for Malta since both countries are very similar. Why? Both are Catholic.

On those grounds, why not look at Italy, Portugal and Spain... among several others?

But even a closer look at ESRI’s figures suggests a pause is needed. Ireland has a rather higher birth rate than ours; most families have between two and three children. The Maltese average is below two, at the bottom of the European league table. Why is this relevant?

The ESRI figures suggest that families with only one child are more vulnerable to marital breakdown (up to 30 per cent more) than married couples with none or more than one. If we resemble Ireland, we should perhaps ask which Ireland.

Above all, however, what we should be asking is this: If we find other countries’ statistics so fascinating and relevant, how excited would we get if someone would give us some meaningful statistics about our own collective behaviour?

ranierfsadni@europe.com