State, Class and Family

Abstract

In word at least, Irish State policy has been least ambiguous in the area of the family. The content of that policy until the 1970s, however, was mainly defined by the Catholic Church, not the State. A series of constitutional and legislative provisions ignored, by and large, the viewpoints of minority religions and meticulously implemented the values of conservative Catholic social thinking, within which the family is the basic unit of society (Whyte, 1980, pp. 26–66). Church and State harmony on the role of the family provided the foundation for the extraordinarily stable and conservative society that prevailed from 1922 until the 1960s. It legitimised and supported both the distinctive kinship and demographic patterns characteristic of a class structure based on the ownership of family property and the substantial class inequalities present in that society.