Unmarried cohabitation and its fertility in Ireland: Towards post-Catholic family dynamics?

Abstract

Ireland was known for being conservative in family matters. The 2015 referendum that allowed same-sex marriage and the 2018 one that allowed abortion showed this is no longer true. This article aims at better understanding recent family change in Ireland by looking at changes in values on topics related with family behaviour and change in behaviour related with family formation–the rise of unmarried cohabitation, and childbearing within unmarried cohabitation–with a focus on the Catholic dogma and its role in the Irish society. We use data from the 2008 European Value Survey and from the five censuses conducted between 1991 and 2011. We find that the young have been moving away from the teachings of the Church on unmarried cohabitation, but that a few years before the 2018 referendum, they were still close to it on abortion. There is no clear negative relationship between cohabitation or fertility within cohabitation and education, but the use of cohabitation seems to vary according to education. The most enduring legacy of the Church doctrine seems to be the late development of family policies that make motherhood hard to reconcile with work and might explain why cohabiting women have few children.