Ireland Tries and Fails to Erase Mothers

The people of Ireland have voted resoundingly not to remove the word “mother” from the Irish Constitution.

This week, the results of a double referendum were announced. The first item on the ballot was a proposal to change the constitution's declaration that the family is founded on marriage to instead read that the family could also be founded on “other durable relationships.” Sixty-eight percent of voters said “No” to this suggested change. The second item was a proposal to remove portions of the constitution regarding mothers, including a line declaring that “by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved,” and that the State should “endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.” Seventy-four percent—the highest “No” vote in the history of Irish constitutional referendums—rejected this proposal. Only one constituency in the whole country, located in affluent south Dublin, supported it. 

The reasons for these results will take time to unpack. But it seems clear that this is a kind of popular uprising, which appeared to take politicians, pollsters, and pundits completely by surprise. All the main Irish political parties, both in government and opposition, were in favor of making the changes. Yet a group called Lawyers for No, led by Senator Michael McDowell, a former attorney general, exposed a hornet’s nest of ambiguities, sloppy thinking, and unpredictable consequences contained within the phrase “durable relationships.” Campaigners also questioned whether the proposed “inclusive” wording on woman’s “life within the home” would surreptitiously reduce the state’s responsibilities to the disabled and their carers.  

As people paid careful attention to the actual wording, and not just to the government’s vibing about a more caring, modern Ireland, ministers began to contradict themselves, one another, their own agencies, and the constitution itself. This spectacle may have shaken further the confidence of a public wondering why the political class had chosen to embark on this €23 million exercise when there are plenty of other pressing issues to deal with: a severe housing crisis; an immigration policy that even its advocates accept has descended into disrepute; and disturbing revelations about children being abused within the state care system.  

Journalist Sarah Carey appeared on television to argue that most of those inside the media and political bubble had no clue how badly the proposal to scrub “mothers” from the constitution had landed. Three-quarters of women voters rejected it. Carey dismissed suspicions about nefarious right-wing influences: “We’re not members of the far right. We’re not confused. We’re not misinformed. And if every single Cabinet Minister had walked up to my door, I wasn’t going to vote for it, because I was not deleting mothers from the Constitution.”  

Goaded somewhat by a disbelieving presenter, Carey read out a text message she had received from a cousin: “My whole circle of friends—work colleagues, Facebook friends—who are all mothers and who are all ends of the social structure in society were most annoyed at the mother component.” Carey reported on a business networking meeting for women she attended: “Professional women were saying to me there, ‘Of course, I voted no.’” One woman, referring to the wording on women’s life within the home, told Carey “If it wasn’t in the constitution, I’d be fighting to put it in.”  

Then came a kind of cri de coeur: “Mothers are exhausted. They’re exhausted working, they’re exhausted looking after their children, they’re exhausted keeping up to a standard that they can’t meet.” And, Carey added, “the National Women’s Council of Ireland does not represent them.” NWCI was one of a phalanx of non-governmental organizations, which receive substantial state funding, that had supported the government. It had even formed part of the “advocacy panels” of the Citizen’s Assembly that originally recommended the deletion of the article referring to mothers. At the outset of the campaign, one minister said that “progressive” organizations would have to explain any decision not to support the referendums.

What does all of this turmoil mean? In some respects, it seems that after its successes in the referendums on abortion and same-sex marriage, New Ireland has finally reached some connective tissue with Old Ireland that it cannot saw through. It may be that a settlement is emerging between the two: Perhaps now Ireland will be a society in which great latitude is given to individual choice, but also one where (with a citizenry now on higher alert) barriers will occasionally fly up when liberalization encroaches. The referendum results will also surely create a firewall, for a time at least, around the remaining articles in the constitution that are redolent of Old Ireland—not least the Preamble, which opens, “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred”—and which progressive campaigners would next have had in their sights.

But it will be interesting to see whether the government, having drawn attention so spectacularly to the articles that it then failed to remove, now comes under pressure to live up to the obligations these articles place on the state. A recent poll showed that two-thirds of Irish mothers with children under the age of eighteen would prefer to stay at home with their children rather than go out to work, if they could afford it. Three-quarters said that women who work in the home are less valued by society than women who work outside the home. In a televised pre-vote debate, Catholic barrister Maria Steen challenged the Tánaiste (deputy prime minister), Micheál Martin, about his record in politics stretching back to the 1980s: “He has never done anything to make it easier for mothers to stay at home with their babies and children. On the contrary, he was part of the government that brought in tax individualization, which forced many mothers back into the workplace and made it all but impossible for parents to raise their children on one income.” Has a window opened for rethinking things as fundamental as the tax system? Will the victors in this referendum turn this moment into more than simply a halted advance? Or, when the current fuss dies down, will the status quo glide back into place? 

We shall see. In the meantime, you can’t help but feel that Ireland remains one of the most interesting countries in the Western world, where all kinds of social tides continue to eddy and crash.

John Duggan is a freelance writer based in England.

First Things depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.

Click here to make a donation.

Click here to subscribe to First Things.

Image by Zairon via Creative Commons. Image cropped.