Brenda Almond at the London Daily Mail
believes family matters -- a lot.
From almost the first moment of recorded history, one set of relationships has been at the heart of the human experience and the basis of civilisation itself: a mother and father who depend on each other; the children who rely on them both; a supportive network of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
And society isn't helping.
This week a report from Unicef, the UN's child welfare agency, warned that working mothers take a massive risk when they put their offspring into low quality childcare.
Experts at the world body said such toddlers could suffer psychological harm and fare poorly later at school. Aggressive behaviour learned by children at some nurseries might contribute later to classroom disruption.
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Until very recently, in fact, the importance of the family was taken for granted, not only as the basis of society, but as the foundation of our human identity.
Today? In western societies - and especially in the English-speaking world - we think we know better. Forget the wisdom of the ages. Forget our deep-rooted instincts.
Forget precepts that have governed every society in every era of history.
The importance of the 'traditional' family is being challenged as never before.
The idea has taken root that human families can be constructed in any way people want. The message is that biology counts for nothing.
Biological mothers don't matter to their children. Biological fathers don't matter either.
All that matters is what adults want - and children must adapt to it, whether they like it or not.
The sheer speed of what is happening is quite astonishing. In less than 50 years, the old values have been stood on their head.
Today, legislators don't hesitate to plunge into 'reforms' that tear up the rights, duties and obligations that have underpinned the family for millennia.
They rush into new ' postmodernist' concepts of family, partnering and parenthood. Indeed, they are even attempting to banish the word 'marriage' from the statute books.
Everywhere in the West, the liberal consensus is on the march. In Britain, for example, a Labour Government has discouraged the use of the 'm' word in official documents, while in the U.S., the American Law Institute recommends that marriage should be ' deprivileged' and not be given a status above any other relationship.
But we're no longer hunter-gatherers. Do we still need a life-support system suited for cave men?
Yet on any rational analysis, this reckless embrace of a brave new world is simply perverse, since there is no doubt whatever that the traditional family, underpinned by marriage, is the best way of bringing up secure, happy children and maintaining social stability.
You don't have to be a religious believer or a Victorian moralist to take this view. The evidence speaks for itself (despite the strenuous efforts of the liberal establishment to ignore it).
Fact: one in two unmarried couples splits up before their first child is five years old. The figure for married couples is just one in 12.
Fact: children from broken homes are 75 per cent more likely than their classmates to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to be involved with drugs and 50 per cent more likely to have alcohol problems.
They are also more likely to run away from home, find themselves in the care system and end up in jail.
At the very least, those bleak statistics should give us pause. The truth is that some of the most intractable problems facing Britain today - from our tragically high rate of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases to petty crime, gang membership and welfare dependency - have their roots in family breakdown.
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And yet the family in its traditional form is crucial to us all - not simply because it underpins social stability or because it connects us to the past and the future, but because it's also a bulwark of freedom itself.
Why? Because the invisible bonds it creates between its members generate loyalties and affections capable of resisting any tyranny.
That's what, in the end, makes the family not just a conserving institution, but also the engine of liberty and progress.
Yes, the family can sometimes fail. When it does, the consequences can be appalling. But at its best, it provides an anchor for individuals who would otherwise have no inspiration or support in an uncertain world.
For these reasons we should think long and hard about where we are being taken by some of the fashionable dogmas of our day: the belief that divorce or separation doesn't hurt; that what adults do can't seriously harm their children; that cohabiting is at least as good as marrying; that genetic relationships don't matter; and that 'family' can mean whatever we want it to mean.
All of these dogmas are false. All are deeply damaging. Every day we can see the consequences in broken families and broken lives.
In allowing matters to come to this, the liberal establishment has made arguably the most profound mistake of the past half-century. Dare we allow it to continue?
