The Referendums
There is a lot at stake on March 8th.
On March 8th the Irish electorate will be invited to remove the special status our Constitution gives to 'the family based on marriage' and the role of the 'woman in the home' that commits the state 'to endeavour to ensure' that a mother will not be forced to work outside her home because of economic necessity.
If the referendums are passed, 'family' will be updated to include any undefined unit 'based on durable relationships'. The role of the mother will be subsumed into the role of 'carer' which will, if the referendum is passed, enjoy the degree of constitutional protection previously afforded specifically to mothers.
The only clear consequence of the proposed change is the obliteration from the state's most important document of an acknowledgement of a special status for mothers and for 'the family based on marriage'. It also opens up, as former Justice Minister and barrister Michael McDowell has pointed out, a pandora's box of what is and is not a definition of 'family' and who is entitled to an array of welfare benefits from tax and pension entitlements to succession rights. It also has implications for foreign nationals seeking 'family' reunification in Ireland. We can expect each and every legal possibility to be exploited by an army of legal eagles. In the final analysis, it will all depend on the courtroom chemistry between them and the judges.
The agenda driving this trojan horse into our Constitution needs careful attention. It must first be noted that the constitutional definition of the family based on marriage includes gay and lesbian couples since 2015. Since then, the very same forces who propelled this change so determinedly in the name of inclusion now find, apparently, that it has actually produced a new form of exclusion against the non-married who for whatever reason decide against committing to the 'durable relationship' of marriage even though it is now open to them. The raison d'etre of such campaigners depends on finding ever new cohorts of disadvantage and exclusion to stay relevant and of course well funded. Liberal forces within the government coalition, in particular among Green TDs, have joined with external campaigners, who work closely with them in any case, to drive this project forward.
There is however a broader agenda which streams into the ongoing dismantlement of almost every social norm of western cultural patrimony. We can follow its course back to the first wave of feminism. Whether that is where we find its fount and source is definitely open to question but undoubtedly that is where the unravelling of the normative ordering of family life began. Its fundamental idea was that the individual is not defined by the expectations that any given culture may impose on her or him and is free to forge their own identity outside gender and social stereotypes.
There is of course a very positive aspect to the freeing of individuals from disempowering and restrictive social and cultural customs and norms. However, new freedoms and the lifestyles they enable can themselves harden into new norms that are just as inimical to individual authenticity and freedom as those they replaced.
The women’s movement was led by highly articulate, assertive and largely middle class women. The assumption of course was they were the leaders of a far greater mass of women less able to speak for themselves. The presumption was that all women would benefit more or less equally from feminist emancipation. This was true at the beginning in the early waves of feminism when universal voting and employment rights were won. However, as happens with every revolution there is a point when the interests of the leadership cohort separate from the interests of the masses they claim to represent. Success brings power and power as we know, in the first instance, serves those who wield it.
As new frontiers of limitation and perceived limitation were breached the divergence between the agenda of feminist leaders and 'ordinary' women widened. The writer, Mary Harrington, speaks of the denial of sexual 'asymmetry' between men and women and between mothers and fathers. There is an entrenched belief among feminist campaigners that if equal opportunities don't lead to equal outcomes the fight must go on. It never occurs to them, apparently, that enduring asymmetries in the workplace may reflect what suits many, perhaps most, women.
Despite the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion there are vast swathes of women who feel their sense of who they are at core and what they want from life are regarded as regressive and retrograde by those who claim to speak for them. The silent majority are really that and the only time we hear their voice is in the ballot box. There are so many polls of women across all social categories who express a preference for looking after their own children in their own homes and for part time over full time work that I don't need to give references. This underlines the difference between the 'career women' leading women's movements and the wide constituency they claim to speak for but never actually consult.
Occasionally, though rarely, it can happen that women of privilege come out in support of their less advantaged sisters. During a state visit to Ireland by President and Hillary Clinton in 1995, Finola Bruton, the wife of the then Taoiseach, John Bruton, caused some controversy at a women's event by criticising 'elite feminism' for 'ignoring married women who prefer to stay at home'. Today, another privileged woman, Catherine, Princess of Wales, has been criticised for not carrying her weight as a senior member of the royal family because she, with the support of her husband, has chosen to put her young family before public duty at this formative point in their lives. A journalist marvelled at how she exploits her privilege, as he sees it, in a way other mothers 'could only dream of'. Following such a dream is, for him, an indulgence. Examples such as this suggest that opportunities to shine in public life don't always eclipse the innate pull of a small child's emotional neediness for their mother where many women are concerned.
Inequality as we often hear is intersectional. Social disadvantage crosses every demarcation including gender. There is one sharp way of dividing working mothers from one another. At one end are the women who work in well paid, fulfilling jobs; at the other end are the women who either work for them or in an array of other jobs they take out of 'economic necessity', the very thing the Constitution says should not 'force a woman from her home'.
This is where asymmetry arises among women of different socio-economic standing. The mothers who work in satisfying and often socially prestigious jobs depend almost invariably on other women to take care of their children and their homes. When these women are mothers themselves they go home to continue the day job of childcare and housework for their own families. That is taxing physically and psychologically. The evidence is there in abundance. Sweden, a country well ahead in the progressive stakes, offers very interesting studies and research that show the absentee rate of working mothers, particularly those who work in creches, is the highest across all categories of workers. What that does to women and what that does to children in the long term is of course an even more troubling question. The Swedish experience also underlines asymmetry between the sexes, showing that despite decades of equal opportunity, women and men still choose careers that have traditionally aligned with their gender. There are very few men working in childcare, catering or housekeeping and young children are taught mostly by women just as they are in Ireland.
The removal of formal recognition of the personally, socially and culturally enriching role of the 'woman in the home' does not in any way take from the freedoms of those who wish to work outside it. It signals of course that the world of work may not always be the most fulfilling life path for a woman when she has a young family. The constitutional provision validates her choice and also places a degree of obligation on the state to facilitate that choice. It does not preclude the state doing the same or something similar for designated 'carers' who are family members. If the state felt the home based parent was more likely than heretofore to be the father then it could have proposed changing the word 'mother' to 'parent'. The fundamental notion that children are best nurtured at home with a parent, who will most usually be the mother, in their early years is exactly what the state is trying to erase. A ' carer' is not necessarily a family member at all. Often a carer is professionally trained and entitled to remuneration and employment benefits like every other employee. A family member who wishes to be a dedicated carer to an aged, ill or special needs family member may not always be qualified to fill such a role. Often caring for a vulnerable family member is a shared task between family members, an arrangement which is unlikely to map onto whatever criteria the state is likely to devise for 'carers'.
Arguments about validating caring and diverse family structures, which continue to become more and more diverse, serve to advance the state's programme of breaking down the social order that evolved organically through civilisation from the natural order, mirroring patterns we see forming without intervention all around us in the natural world. None of this matters anymore in the age of the levelling 'Machine', as so many writers have now name it. The Machine is more than the collective technologies of the 21st century. It refers to the hubris of those who exploit it outside any ethical frame to advance their project of social and cultural engineering to a point where there is nothing, nothing at all, that is not relativised.
We have heard the most extraordinary new dogmas from leading politicians, health boards and even medical experts. A particularly standout example was the leader of Britain's Labour Party, Keir Starmer, saying, '99.9 % of women don't have penises'. Here in Ireland the HSE now offers cervical screening to 'people with cervixes' and have changed references to pregnant women to 'pregnant people'. The obliteration of mothers and their uniqueness follows logically from the obliteration of women. This cultural deconstruction walks hand in hand with a parallel deconstruction of language that extends to pronouns. Personal pronouns are no longer assumed to be binary and forms may carry multiple pronoun options including 'other'. It is hardly surprising in this mayhem that rules of consistency also flounder by the wayside. A rather peculiar instance of this is when 'non-binary' identifying people insist on being referred to by plural pronouns yet speak of themselves in the first person singular. Both Ireland's Eurovision singer, Bambi Thug and English actor, Emma Corrin cross and re-cross this particular grammatical aisle without anyone raising an eyebrow.
The light at the end of the tunnel is that a growing number of public intellectuals and the occasional celebrity are bravely challenging the new-forged orthodoxies. Writers such as Oxford academic and sociologist, Simon Baron Cohen, have written about the essential differences in orientation between male and female when engaged in the same activity. What it comes down to in essence is the difference between a linear and the horizontal approach. Men 'systematise' and women synthesise. Long before Cohen, Oxford philosopher Mary Midgely made the same observation in almost the same terms. In a more original, contemporary take, writer Mary Harrington says that even the activity of preparing a meal is either 'male-coded' or 'female-coded'. Men's cooking tends to be single-minded, quite often diligently following a recipe, while women cook and simultaneously give their attention to other tasks and are not bothered as much by interruptions. Baron Cohen noted the different ways in which small boys and girls play. What it shows from early on is the fundamental asymmetry between the male and female.
But science is only useful when it serves ideology. Otherwise, it is preposterously ignored just as much as the moral parameters, defined most of all by our shared understanding of what a family is and its importance as the optimal nurturing place for the next generation. We need to turn back the dial and the referendums of March 8th will give us a unique opportunity to signal to our woke government our intentions. It is an opportunity to pushback against the deranged zeitgeist that should not be missed by those who care about our children’s future and the society they will inhabit.