The Family

The decline of the traditional family over the last forty years has been unmistakable. Lifelong loyalty of marriage partners is no longer the norm; each year tens of thousands of parents divorce before their children have grown up; and nearly one-third of births now take place outside marriage, with many of the fathers playing little or no further role after the initial biological participation. Is every moral value just another lifestyle option? Or is there a minimum stock of values which we ignore at out peril? The chattering classes tend to dismiss concern about family breakdown with over-used stock responses. The most popular accusation is of 'moral panic', followed by 'you can't put the clock back'. But it is not true that we can not learn from our mistakes. The Family: Is it just another lifestyle choice? examines the proper social value of the bourgeois family, and its role in the emergence of Western civilisation. Although varying in approach, all authors see the family as vital to the underpinning of our society and its weakening as the cause of the malaise that afflicts us.
Crime, violence and degradation are the result of the collapse, in sections of our society, of the tried and tested arrangements for rearing children. The authors of this book seek to understand what it is that we have lost. "The report says that society is paying a heavy price for the belief that the family is just another lifestyle choice." The Times