Address by President Mary McAleese on the occasion of the opening of the ACCORD Annual Conference
Address by President Mary McAleese on the occasion of the opening of the ACCORD Annual Conference on Friday, 26 February 1999
It gives me great pleasure to be here with you this evening to officially open ACCORD's Annual Conference. I would like to thank Bishop William Walsh, the President of Accord, for his warm welcome and Fr. John Hannon, your Director, for his invitation to the Conference.
Every generation has fretted over the impact of social change on marriage – not least in this century when many convulsive changes have shaped and reshaped the map of Europe and, along with this, the lives and lifestyles of men and women. It is hardly surprising that the litany of pressures on peoples and places should outcrop in pressures on institutions which are relationship driven and always potentially vulnerable.
Yet we should not imagine that current stresses on marriage are in any way a new phenomenon. Historian Lawrence Stone, in his book “Road to Divorce” points out in relation to England, that “statistically speaking, marriage has in many ways simply reverted to a pattern which existed before the sharp decline in adult mortality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...[then] the driving force was a high death rate, today it is a high divorce rate.”
It can be argued that this comparison is not very useful given that death unlike divorce is, at least in most cases, an involuntary occurrence. Yet there are other parallels between past and present that disrupt cosy notions of the past as a haven of marital stability. At the end of the eighteenth century, as Stone tells us, 50% of all first births in England were conceived outside marriage. Divorce may have been virtually impossible, but the intricacy and contradictions in marriage laws, allied to surprisingly liberal customs and traditions that pertained in many areas, facilitated a plethora of irregular arrangements that seem surprisingly modern. While unhappy marriages were stoically endured by many in the face of social pressures, fear of poverty or disgrace and by a sense of duty, others resorted to contrived annulments, desertion, cohabitation or bigamy, as solutions of a sort. It is therefore hard not to come to the conclusion that marriage has faced and survived threats in the past that are at least as great as those it faces today.
Marriage in Ireland - despite concerns about the impact of the very considerable changes in the world around us - is alive and healthy and still a much valued and valuable institution in our society. Some 17,000 Irish couples tied the knot last year and despite the trend towards increasing secularism, the vast majority of marriages take place in Church. The spiritual dimension of the union is still part of the essential commitment for Irish people in entering marriage.
There is no doubt that there are pressures on modern marriages. The changing roles of men and women in family life and in the labour market, the demands of the workplace and the increased expectation for emotional and personal fulfilment in marriage makes high demands on the partners in marriage today. Changing attitudes to equality and an increasing concern about individuals’ rights have challenged traditional views about marriage and changed our expectations about this most personal of relationships which is, at the same time, such a lynchpin of our society.
Despite our booming economy, unemployment is still the experience of many families and brings its own difficulties to marriage and family life. In a world where there is a buoyant national self-confidence and measurable prosperity, those left behind can feel doubly alienated. Coping with these things as well as the everyday cruelties and caprices life is capable of, impacts directly on relationships with those closest to us.
Across Europe, changes in recent decades have had a profound impact on the stability of marriage and on its place as an institution in society. In Ireland, too, we have witnessed significant changes in society and in traditional family life. Marital breakdown, the fall in the rate of marriage, the continuous rise in the number of non-marital births and in the formation of families outside marriage – all these factors have had a sizeable influence on the nature of family life in Ireland. Even if Lawrence Stone’s research teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun, these trends give pause for thought. Each generation has to face anew, its own contradictions and complexity, each seeking to find a way to deal effectively with tides and trends.
These tides and trends have also given rise to considerable, but not always productive, discussion about the future of family life in Ireland. It often seems that public debate about marriage and family structures is stymied by extremists on both sides. On one side, the strident self-righteousness of many proponents of the “traditional” model, have done little for its image. In the process, they have offended the many single parents who struggle against the odds to raise their children decently, and who rightly resent being labelled as the cause of every social evil from juvenile delinquency to drug-addiction.
On the other side, are those who decry traditional marriage as a patriarchal prison, source of hypocrisy, inequality and unfulfilment. They ignore the fact that for the majority of people, commitment to a long-term loving relationship for themselves and their children is represented by marriage and that many marriages work well. Neither extreme helps the debate, each uses children as pawns in a fruitless argument.
The fact that a model in which two parents share the burdens and joys of childrearing is not always possible, should neither degenerate into the witchhunting of those whose lives have taken a different turn; nor should it undermine the value of this model as the primary, though not exclusive means, of providing the complex range of social, moral, emotional, physical, financial and psychological supports that children need.
These challenges are daunting, but we should not forget that most couples still bring to their marriage mutual love and affection, commitment to their relationship and determination to succeed. They create for themselves and their children a haven of warmth and love. It may not always be a safe haven. It may at times be severely knocked by the storms of internal and external pressures. But it is a haven that most couples judge to be worth the effort of protecting, even if the cost can sometimes be high.
Increasingly couples are looking for help to weather such storms, to develop their capacity to maintain an intimate relationship while meeting the needs of family members, their own personal needs and the demands of the workplace in today’s busy world.
Effective preparation for marriage and relationship, along with good communication skills, are important tools in resolving the inevitable difficulties and compromises which are part and parcel of all relationships. This holds true today, as much as it did in 1962 when the first Catholic marriage counselling centre opened in Belfast. The pressures and expectations of marriage may have changed since then, but ACCORD’s work in promoting a better understanding of marriage and helping couples to sustain and enrich their marriage is more vital than ever. It is clear that this view is shared by the 14,000 couples that availed of your marriage preparation courses last year.
While these marriage preparation and marriage counselling services are the best known aspects of ACCORD’s work, you have recognised the need to support marriage on a wide range of fronts. ACCORD now has a very extensive range of services, from school programmes, counselling for children and personal enrichment courses, to specialised services in natural Family Planning, Fertility counselling and Marital Sex Therapy.
These are important developments that show the professionalism of your response to the growing needs of our society.
This professionalism deserves particular praise given the voluntary nature of so much of your work. With over 1,000 trained counsellors, working in a voluntary capacity from over 50 centres throughout Ireland, ACCORD is a testimony to vital work of the voluntary movement in Ireland – a movement underpinned by the goodwill and dedication of so many people who are willing to give up their own time to help their neighbours and larger community. Your work helps to build a continuity and stability in society within which marriage and families may be strengthened and nurtured. If we were designing from first principles the best environment for the fulfilment of the human person, the raising of the child, the stabilising of society, the model of respect-based loving, life long marriage would still out-strip all competitors. Thank you for helping it and helping others to be fulfilled through it.
I commend you all on your work and wish you a successful Annual Conference.