Children at Risk

In Britain, in today's Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, and Mail, there's an account of yesterday's report of the Children's Commissioner for England. And it makes devastating reading. 

More than 800,000 children suffering from mental health problems. 

580,000 young people receiving some kind of intervention from the State. 

670,000 children living in, in inverted commas, “vulnerable families.” Among them, 15,500 children in families where parents are suffering from alcohol addiction, 11,500 where one or other parent is suffering from drug addiction. 

119,000 children either homeless or in unstable housing. 

370,000 children at risk as a result of their own actions, whether that's misbehaving in school or a life of crime.

160,000 children excluded temporarily or permanently from school. 

And 46,000 children in Britain between the ages of 10 to 18 in street gangs, already engaged in a life of violence and crime.

Now, these are shocking figures, and doubtless, there are many causes, but there's one above all that cuts to the very heart of the problem of contemporary politics and why we so often find ourselves faced with problems that seem to have no solution. The single biggest factor - and this has emerged from every major piece of research over the last 50 years - is the collapse of marriage as an institution. Take, for instance, David Goodhart in his recent book, “The Road to Somewhere,” subtitled “The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics.”

He records in this book that in 1970, only 8% of families were headed by a lone parent. Today in England and Wales, almost 30%. In 16 years alone, between 1985 and 2001, the percentage of births outside marriage moved from less than 20% to over 40%. They're now pretty close to 50%. 

Fewer people are getting married, more marriages are ending in divorce, but many more are simply cohabiting. And the average length of a cohabitation is two and three-quarter years, whereas the average length of a marriage in Britain today is 14 years.

In other words, cohabitation simply is not a substitute for marriage when it comes to parenthood. 

In short, more and more children are growing up in single-parent families, 90% of which are headed by women. In other words, women are bearing this double burden of trying to earn a living while bringing up children or even a single child.

Research shows - and on this we've had overwhelming research - that children who grow up without their biological father do worse at school. They stay at school for fewer years regardless of age or class. They're more likely to suffer behavioural problems, among them shyness, anxiety, aggression, and depression.

And as Robert Putnam puts it in his very, very important book, “Our Kids” - Robert Putnam of Harvard in America - says, quoting the results of recent research, that generalisations are difficult and many parents are doing a superb job in difficult circumstances, but on average, children from single-parent families do worse in school and in life. 

The breakdown of marriage is the biggest single cause of child poverty in otherwise affluent societies, of child depression and depressive-related syndromes, of child drug and alcohol abuse, of violence and crime among young people, and of reduced life expectations across the scale among those who've been deprived of an ongoing healthy relationship with both biological parents. 

Again, quoting Goodhart, the cost of family breakdown to the State is today estimated at at least 48 billion pounds a year. 

And yet, in Goodhart's own words, “Britain has evolved into one of the most family-unfriendly tax and benefit regimes in the developed world.” Put simply, the State does not privilege marriage at all, and in certain instances penalises it. 

And yet, and this is the single most important point I want to make. In 2013, a High Court Judge, Sir Paul Coleridge, was forced to resign as a judge simply because in his private life, and not in his capacity as a judge, he established a think tank called The Marriage Foundation. I know it well, I helped him launch it. And that was a think tank simply to champion marriage and to promote healthy, stable relationships.

Now, Sir Paul kept this activity completely separate from his work as a judge. He didn't speak about it in any single court case. He didn't let it influence any of his judicial decisions. It was merely that having day after day seen the effects of broken and non-marriages on the children, he simply decided, as a private citizen, he wanted to lower and reduce this misery. And that's why he started the think tank. And yet, it led him to be deemed guilty of judicial misconduct.

I found this shocking at the time, and even more shocking in retrospect. David Goodhart in Britain and Robert Putnam in America are on the left in politics, but they are absolutely clear that the breakdown of marriage is damaging, even destroying the life chances of a significant proportion of young people. 

And yet, no one is allowed to say so.

If you're a judge and you say so, you will be deemed incapable of acting as a judge. 

We have reached the point that the Roman historian, Livy, wrote about when he witnessed the decline and fall of his own civilisation, ancient Rome. He said, “We have reached the point where we can stand neither our vices nor their cure.”

That is precisely where we have reached in Britain at this point. When we can record the devastating conditions of the lives of at least half - and perhaps a million - young people in Britain, but we can do nothing and say nothing to bring about the kind of change that might make things better for children in the future, then we too have reached the point at which we can stand neither our vices nor their cure. 

One man would be horrified at this development, and it is the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who set in motion the entire liberal revolution that we have lived through in our lifetime.

His book, “On Liberty,” was the book in which he set out this whole principle of liberalism, of freedom to decide how to live our lives. But listen to what he says in the book itself. Let me quote: “To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.”

And here he is on the next page: “The fact itself of causing the existence of a human being is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility, to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being.”

To have a child and to refuse the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood is, according to John Stuart Mill, a moral crime. And it is a crime being committed by millions upon millions of us right now and nobody is allowed to say so. 

The fact is that we face a simple choice.

Either we start educating our children about how to make and sustain relationships, about the responsibilities of parenthood and the commitments that it involves, and about moral commitment in general, about duty and obligation, and loyalty, and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. 

Or we leave governments to pick up the pieces of broken lives, especially the lives of the youngest and most vulnerable, namely our children. 

And then to find that this is something governments do at great expense, and with very limited success, because by the time they get involved, the damage has already been done. 

This is part of a much wider issue, of how over time we have outsourced every element of moral responsibility to external agencies, the end result of which will be the decline and fall of the liberal democratic West. It doesn't have to happen this way, but as long as we remain in systematic denial of the fact that a free society depends on the collective moral responsibility of its citizens, we will stumble blindly into the future, having forgotten all the collective moral wisdom of the past. 

And our children will be the victims of our irresponsibility.