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Steve Doughty
Daily
Mail
19th December 2008
(My emphasis in bold; my comments in italics):
Labour has finally admitted that married parents are
better for children than parents in live-in partnerships,
and that they stick together more than twice as long.
Broken families and missing parents are bad for
children and for the country, ministers said, in
a Government paper on the state of family life that
marks a U-turn on previous party thinking.
The document accepts that 'some family forms face
greater challenges than others'.
This is because the only natural family is, er,
a natural one, not any old arrangement, defined as family,
by any pressure group that demands recognition and preferential
treatment.
Seven out of ten young criminals come from single
parent homes that make up only a quarter of all
families, it says, adding that stepfamilies can also
be difficult for children. But the report still falls
short of declaring that marriage is a good thing.
I guess there would be far too many self-appointed
'experts' jumping up and down if the Government were
to admit the realisation, finally, that, political correctness
really has "gone mad".
The 'evidence paper' – produced by Children's Secretary
Ed Balls and Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne – rejects
the idea of any state support for marriage and married
couples.
What, support the majority? Do the right thing?
Use their own evidence of the problems caused by marriage
breakdown and change policies to improve society?
Instead it says the answer to family crisis at the
heart of what critics call 'broken Britain' is more
money for the poor and more counselling to encourage
'quality relationships'.
I thought they just rejected supporting married
couples, so what is this supposed to mean? What is a
"quality relationship" in Ed Balls' world?
What does this mean in plain English? It means they
will keep on promoting all types of relationship and
stuff marriage as a special and very valuable way of
life.
I wonder what form the 'counselling' will take,
when schoolchildren are increasingly being led to believe
that any relationship is acceptable.
Don't governments just love to break things and
then offer 'solutions'?
The admission that stepfamilies are often troubled
and that two parents are good for children reverses
the official thinking that all kinds of families
are equally good. The paper was published as Mr
Balls met a group of media agony aunts at a 'relationship
summit' to discuss help for families that are breaking
up.
He said: 'We know how important stable family relationships
are to the well-being of both adults and children.'
The Families in Britain paper was the first major Government
statement on family life since 1998.
It accepted a mountain of evidence that single parent
families and step-families are not as good for children
and the rest of society as families headed by married
parents.
It said that seven out of ten young criminals come
from single parent families, that children of single
parents do worse at school, that two thirds of such
families are poor, and a third of single mothers are
depressed.
'An absent parent can be associated with adverse
material and emotional outcomes,' the paper found.
Step-families, it found, produce outcomes for children
'similar to those growing up in lone parent families'.
Their children 'show more psychological and behavioural
problems than children in biological two-parent families'.
Married couples are happier and richer, and their
children are better behaved and do better at school,
the paper said.
Marriages last on average more than 11 years, it admitted,
while only a fifth of cohabitations last as long as
five.
The paper conceded that all studies have shown
that the beneficial effects of marriage are greater
than can be explained by the greater wealth or better
education of married couples. But nevertheless it
found the evidence 'ambiguous'.
Ambiguous? Does the evidence look ambiguous to you?
The social engineers really have a problem accepting
reality, don't they?
It concluded: 'The quality of relationships matters
most regardless of the legal form.'
This is a cracker! So after all that, they still
ignore their own evidence and will continue to betray
children, the country and common sense and decency.
Tory families spokesman Maria Miller called for state
support for marriage and said the tax and benefits system
is biased against two-parent families.
P.S. I have respect and admiration for single people
who do the best they can for their children, but a society
that promotes any other form of relationship than marriage
between a man and woman does the children a great disservice.
It is that simple. It is also very important for
the whole of society, as is evidenced by the prison
figures and the massive numbers of other dysfunctions
exacerbated by the dumbing down and general re-engineering
of civilisation as we used to know it.
Labour - do the RIGHT thing for once and promote
and support marriage!
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