Archbishop of Sydney

Family Life Today

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
22 July 2001

Parents of small children usually take great delight in telling others about the funny things they say and do, teenagers often enjoy complaining about how little their parents know or understand, and once we have grown up there is always someone somewhere in the family doing something worth gossiping about.

Family life is never easy. Looking after children at whatever age is a serious commitment and can never be done without sacrifice. Doing this successfully usually requires parents to be serious about looking after each other as well.

The demands of work and paying off the house are often a source or pressure, and those families which have the additional burden of someone with chronic illness or disability to care for often suffer real hardship in keeping things together.

It is not always easy and sticking to the commitment of marriage and children regularly requires real heroism. But like all good things, the more you put into family life the greater the rewards. It is surprising just how great these rewards are.

Married-couple families have the lowest poverty rates among all family types, while divorce and single-parenthood is one of the greatest causes of child poverty. Many single parents do a great job, but it is obviously difficult for one parent to do everything that two parents can do.

American studies also suggest that being married is more important to a person's health than factors such as age, education or income. Rates of mortality and illness are lower among married people, and although they report experiencing more stressful events than the unmarried, married people also have less depression and anxiety.

The social support of family networks obviously plays a role in this, but the quality of the marriage is also important. A troubled marriage can reduce or even reverse the positive impact of marriage on individual well-being.

46 percent of marriages in Australia end in divorce. The health impact on both parents and children is significant, with rates of mortality and illness much higher than in families which stick together. Single mothers are four times as likely as married mothers to be the victims of violence. The rate of suicide among the divorced or never-married is higher in Australia than among the married, following a similar pattern overseas. Children of divorced families are more prone to poor results at school and to depression and low self-esteem. American psychologists report that children of broken homes are over-represented among patients at mental health centres.

One of the most important recent studies of the effects of divorce on children reported that 90 percent of children react to divorce with strong feelings of fear, anxiety and abandonment. The children seemed to conclude that if their parents could walk away from each other, they could walk away from them too.

Increasingly people are re-examining the old claim that divorce is better for both parents and children than staying in an unhappy marriage. The evidence of 30 years of studies and reports now makes it clear that separation is only a benefit in cases of actual physical violence. In most other cases it is better for the well-being of mother, father and children to stick at it.