Family Flat-Earthers

• Two-thirds of people (66%) think there is little difference socially between being married and living together.
• Only one in four people (28%) think married couples make better parents than unmarried ones.

Reading parts of the British Social Attitudes 24th Report, published today by the National Centre for Social Research, reminds me of those in the past who insisted the world was flat, despite any evidence to the contrary.

People may like to think there is little difference socially between marriage and cohabitation or that unmarried couples provide parenting as good as married ones, but the facts do not support such misplaced impressions. As I have noted previously, children born to married parents have significantly better chances in life than those born to unmarried parents: just 8% of married couples split up within five years of the birth of a child compared to 25% of those who marry after birth and 52% of cohabitees. The evidence increasingly shows that children born to married parents tend to be physically and mentally healthier than other children, less accident-prone, and less likely to self-harm. They perform better in school, become sexually active at a later age, are less likely to have behavioural problems, suffer depression, or turn to drugs, smoking or heavy drinking, or to become involved in criminal activities. Furthermore, children from cohabiting households are 33 times more likely to suffer serious abuse than where the child lives with married parents and children under two have a 100 times greater risk of being killed by step-parents than by genetic parents.

Perhaps this is why other surveys indicate that 94% of teenage girls want to get married by the time they are 25, 89% want to get married before they have children, and half of sexually active teenage girls say they regret the experience.

Sofa Surfing

A shortage of affordable housing has left 130,000 children homeless in England this Christmas – an increase of 128 per cent in the past decade, according to research by the shadow housing minister Grant Shapps...

The "social failure" of child homelessness is often followed by mental, physical and educational disadvantage. A homeless child is twice as likely to be admitted to an Accident & Emergency department, four times as likely to have respiratory infections and six times as likely to suffer speech impediments, as a child with a fixed address.

While this plight, as reported in today's Independent, is of course very real, lack of stable family life can be just as devastating as (and, indeed, a cause of) lack of permanent accommodation on a child's health and development. What these children need is more than just bricks and mortar.

Legitimising Illegitimacy

Commenting on today's news that more than one in five births in Britain last year was to a woman from overseas (a fact that goes some way to explaining how Mohammed has now become the most popular boy's name in Britain), the Spectator's CoffeeHouse interestingly observes that, if you strip out immigrants, then 2007 will prove to be the first year in recorded British history that a majority of children have been born outside marriage — a fact that is only masked by mass migration. Quite what this apparent absence of commitment and responsibility reveals about the health of society I suppose will only truly become evident in another couple of decades...

21st-Century Family Dilemmas

Five years ago a lesbian couple in a civil partnership persuaded a friend to donate sperm so that they could achieve their ambition of possessing children of their own, without having to pay for the costs of using a licensed clinic. At the time, the friend was not planning to have children and was in a relationship with a woman who had been sterilised, so he agreed. Five years on and he has married someone else but the lesbians have since separated. As a result, despite having no legal rights over the boy and girl conceived (now aged two and four), the man is reportedly being forced by the Child Support Agency to pay thousands of pounds in child maintenance.

Confused? Not half as much as the children are likely to be! Such is the tale of Sharon and Terri Arnold and their friend Andy Bathie, a fireman from Enfield.

The moral of the story, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, is that if men donate sperm, they should do so through an HFEA-licensed clinic even though this will prove more costly for the couple hoping to conceive, or else they may find themselves taking on all the responsibilities that comes with parenthood... And to think, until just two years ago, donors were guaranteed the right to remain anonymous throughout the lifetime of any conceived children.

Another moral could be that we ought to give more thought to the long-term and social consequences of our short-term decisions and desires. Before we exercise our "rights", it would behove us to consider from what corresponding duty those rights are derived. For, as Gandhi once noted, "I learned from my illiterate but wise mother that all rights have to be deserved and preserved from duty well done. Thus the very right to live accrues to us only when we do the duty of citizenship to the world. From this one fundamental statement, perhaps it is easy enough to define the duties of Man and Women and correlate every right to some corresponding duty to be first performed. Every other right can be shown to be a usurpation hardly worth fighting for."

Happy Families

Is the trend towards ever increasing family breakdown about to reverse? Are we on the edge of a cultural shift in which the family once again becomes central to our lives and society at large?

Earlier this year a UNICEF report revealed that, among the world's wealthiest nations, British children have the worst relationships with family and friends. Yet a new BBC poll claims that three-quarters of people in Britain (76%) are optimistic about the future for their families, a figure 24% higher than when the same question was asked in 1964.

To a certain extent, the apparent discrepancy is probably explained by our expectations of family life being much lower than they used to be. However, when we consider the recent fascination with exploring family trees, is it possible that our present optimism reflects the increasing importance we place upon the family?

That said, there is obviously still a long way to go before any change in perception is born out by reality — 17% no longer speak to one or more members of their family, this proportion being significantly influenced by marital status (23% for singles compared with 13% for married or cohabiting adults), social class (24% for DEs compared with 9% for ABs), and home ownership (34% for those who rent from their local council compared with 11% for those who own their own house).

Click on the above graphics for more modern "happy families" from the Daily Mail.

Making British Poverty History

Citing evidence from former leader Iain Duncan Smith's landmark reports Breakdown Britain and Breakthrough Britain, David Cameron has pledged that the next Conservative Government will "make British poverty history." However, he warns that "we need to make twentieth century welfare dependency history first."

He suggests that, despite good intentions, Gordon Brown has failed the country by focusing on top-down, mechanical state interventions instead of developing policies that focus on people — a flawed, one-dimensional approach that has resulted in almost five million people out of work and on benefits, almost four million people in problem debt, and over eight million people with alcohol and drug disorders.

He described a Conservative, holistic approach as one that would take into account the importance of families, communities and incentives to work:

"In place of Gordon Brown's misguided couple penalty, we will increase the Working Tax Credit that couples receive - bringing tax credits fully into line with the rest of the benefits system."

"Instead of the revolving door of people flitting in and out of benefits and work, we will draw on successful examples of welfare reform from all over the world to overhaul our welfare system. These are tailored to the individual, and they harness the private and voluntary sectors, rather than government bureaucracies, to help people get back into work."

Unfortunately, we really cannot afford to put off the radical welfare reform and the social changes that everyone knows we need for yet another two or three years until Mr Cameron becomes Prime Minister. So, let's hope that this new agenda will be the latest idea to be "stolen" by Gordon Brown...

Marriage Best For Kids

In the latest Government U-turn and adoption of Conservative Party policy, Andy Burnham, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has told the Daily Telegraph, "I think marriage is best for kids. It’s not wrong that the tax system should recognise commitment and marriage."

While on the one hand delighted that New NuLabour appears to be accepting the error of its ways, I can but refer you to my comments from earlier this week, on the need for a coherent vision for the country, and my follow-up post on the role of the extended family in society.

Extended Family Care

In Labour's first term, the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care called for all personal social care to be made free to the patient. Eight years on, the state only pays for the care of people with assets less than £12,000, with many elderly people having to sell their homes to pay for care.

Given the observations made by David Willetts a month ago about intergenerational solidarity and older people being reluctant to borrow against their accumulated wealth, perhaps it is a good thing that people should need to liquidise some of their assets in retirement. After all, we do not want the state merely to take on more financial responsibility for our care, unnecessarily increasing the burden placed on the tax-payer, do we?

And yet, if we continue to develop our political vision (or "big idea" as the BBC chose to call it this morning) that values the family, perhaps we should welcome government proposals to scrap means-testing for long term care of elderly and disabled people as long overdue. For, the present system is clearly unsustainable, overly-complex and unfair. However, once again, this is not simply a question of economics but also social capital. Figures published last month by the University of Leeds for Carers UK value the unpaid support provided by carers at £87 billion a year — more than the annual total spent on the NHS and more than four times the amount spent on social care services by local authorities each year. This sum represents a vast network of extended family relationships and other friendships that would be lost if the state made any attempt to assume the same responsibility for care.

I remember when my parents moved a few years ago to be closer to my sister and her family, they attempted to arrange for my great-aunt to be moved to a care home nearer to their new home. However, they were told they would be required to pay the difference in the residential care funding provided by the two counties' social services as the county where my aunt had previously paid council tax would be responsible for funding her care but that their level of provision was lower than where my parents wished to move her. As a consequence, rather than living close to her extended family, with all the benefits that would bring such as more frequent visits from her family, my aunt lives two hours from the rest of us.

Given the rising challenge posed by our changing demographics and ageing population, surely government should be encouraging families, even through tax breaks or tax credits, to stay together and should be looking to maximise independence and choice for people being cared for and their carers.

Policy Blizzard's First Flurry

Talk of a "blizzard of conference policy announcements" has begun the "Cameron fight back" with what must surely rank as highly attractive, family-friendly changes to the tax and welfare system: the abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes worth up to £250,000 and an increase in working tax credit paid to two-parent families (worth up to £2,000 a year for 1.8 million families with children), funded by a crackdown on "work-shy" benefits claimants, including "aggressive" penalties for those who turn down jobs.

Whether it and the flurry of other manifesto suggestions to be rolled out this week are seen to bring together and build upon the many recent policy group reports and whether they will prove sufficiently appealing to close the double-figure poll lead that Gordon Brown now enjoys remains to be seen...

If you want a reminder of the policies that you, The Difference readers, said you would most like to see the Party put forward, when David Cameron first suggested a blizzard of policy ideas, visit Your Policy Ideas Results.

Time For Change

Just days after Michael Ancram gave us his "simple political creed," suggesting there are three core Conservative values — integrity, national pride and humanity — David Cameron has now summarised the beliefs that drive him: family, responsibility, and opportunity.

He asserts that the political agenda flowing from a belief in those three values "means that the most important driving force of everything you do, the principle and purpose of your politics, is to give people more freedom and control over their lives":

Because freedom is the real benefit of a strong family - it's the security it gives you to get on and get out and get up, with a strong family behind you if you fall.

It's because if you believe in responsibility, you have to give people freedom. You literally cannot be responsible for something unless you have power and control over it.

And it's because opportunity means the freedom to be a doer not a done-for, taking down the barriers so that everybody can make the most of their life.

So that will be the central test for the decisions I make: will it give people more freedom and control over their lives?

That is the overriding aim of the government I will lead...

This will be the choice at the election.

State control from Labour. Freedom with the Conservatives. And we will say to the British people - choose freedom."

Thus, for all the talking up of differences by the media, it is perhaps unsurprising that "the essence of the modern compassionate Conservatism" David believes in is not all that different from that described by Michael in his pamphlet Still a Conservative: "Freedom of the individual lies at the historic heart of Conservatism and sets us apart from those who believe the state knows best." As David maintains, this key principle of freedom applies to every issue and we should not make the mistake of accepting the false choice presented by those on the left who say he shouldn't talk about Europe, crime or lower taxes and by those on the right who say he shouldn't talk about the NHS, the environment or well-being.

N.B. If you are looking for the Ofsted report Time for change?, click here.

First Impressions

Fresh back from a wonderful time in Venice and the best part of a week completely without listening to or reading any news, my first thoughts are "We're becoming as bad as America" — Police shot at in an M5 pursuit, just days after biker Gerry Tobin was murdered on the M40, and Liverpool's 11-year-old Rhys Jones the country's latest victim of gun crime.

Commenting on a past post about gun crime, Jeremy from Liverpool suggested using dog training to help reform disruptive teenagers. Has anybody else got any suggestions about how the worsening trend towards a gun culture might be reversed, besides the Government's usual more legislation?

UPDATE #1: I have now seen Iain Duncan Smith's excellent piece in the Daily Mail:

This social decline has come about because of the breakdown of the family, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, and the collapse of any political will to uphold the law.

Britain is now truly the sick man of Europe, with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, divorce, alcoholism among the young, drug misuse and educational failure.

He suggests introducing a policy of zero tolerance towards all anti-social behaviour, ensuring the courts act more efficiently in dealing with offenders, and that the police, who he says "are not only weighed down by bureaucracy but have been rendered almost powerless against offenders by the State's obsession with human rights" must reclaim the streets. Picking up on last month's Social Justice Policy Group report, he also discusses practical steps to tackling family breakdown, reforming the welfare state and dealing confidently with drug and alcohol abuse.

In case anyone had forgotten, this is but one very solid reason why we need a Conservative Government after the next general election.UPDATE #2: "Anarchy in the UK"

I see that Cameron has also been busy while I was away, calling for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped and replaced with a new Bill of Rights and for a strengthening of family and community bonds to help counter the rise of yob culture:

We need to make men realise that having children is an 18-year commitment - not a one-night stand. We need to make mothers realise that it's work, not welfare, that offers their family the best future. We need to help couples stay together, not drive them apart with the tax and benefits system. And we need to make society as a whole - that's you and me - realise that we all have duties to our neighbours.

Now I just need to check out Louise Bagshawe's Reasons to vote Conservative at ConservativeHome.

Dictating Respect

The Conservative's prospective parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith, Shaun Bailey, makes some good points in the Independent on Sunday about Thursday's Reach report, which proposed setting up a structured national role model programme for black boys:

The problems that affect our young people go way deeper than just providing positive role models, although this could be a helpful step. We need to relearn what the parental and family role should be, and not rely on an ever-growing state that has shown it cannot answer the problems affecting many families. If you know children who are doing well, I bet you see parents who are involved with them, set a good example and take a leading role in their lives.

I would hate it to be thought that these are problems facing the black community exclusively. They are rife in the white community, too. If you think I'm wrong, take a look at the rates of sexually transmitted infection among teenagers, or our growing teenage prison population, or the number of children leaving school unable to read. These things are a problem for us all, black or white.

Have a read and let us know what you think.

Telly-Addicts

Two new reports this week provide yet more damning insights into the lives of the most deprived children in British society. Firstly, yesterday, in a report that the media covered as showing no link between poor diet and low incomes, the Food Standards Agency found higher levels of smoking and alcohol consumption and lower levels of activity in low income families.

Then, today, the National Consumer Council, summarising research into the viewing habits of children in the "tween" years (aged 9-13), concludes: "Perhaps one of the most important findings of our study is the uncovering of a divided society, in which different communities display very different attitudes to media consumption and, concomitantly, display very different levels of materialism. In this study, commercial influence was shown to be exerted unevenly across the population, as children in deprived areas seemingly had a great deal more unrestricted TV and computer access."

Children in affluent areas were found to spend substantially less time in front of TV and computer screens. What they watch differed qualitatively as well as quantitatively: "Less than half of the children from disadvantaged areas list children's programmes in their top three favourite programmes; nearly three-quarters in affluent areas do. Almost 30 per cent more disadvantaged kids watch music TV; 25 per cent more watch horror; and 13 per cent more watch soaps. Twice as many of the children from the affluent areas, on the other hand, watch nature programmes and documentaries."

Perhaps most seriously for this under-privileged generation of "screen kids," the study suggests their television viewing habits leads to a devastating cycle of family friction, low self-esteem and materialism. Children who spend more time in front of the TV or computer screen were found to have a lower opinion of their parents and to argue with them more. Although the report does not say so, presumably they also have a lower opinion of and argue more with other authority figures, such as teachers. Little wonder headteachers, the police and society at large face such a struggle with antisocial behaviour.

Of course, we need to separate cause and effect: taking away children's televisions won't solve the underlying problems. However, giving serious consideration to the many proposals made by Iain Duncan Smith's Social Justice Policy Group last week just might.

Labour Wreaks Happy Families

"I cannot see how 'Dave' offering my £1000 a year to vote Conservative would influence me to get married if I wasn't already going to do it. All it is, in my view, is a cynical attempt to buy votes from those who are already married."

Thus opined Norfolk Blogger about Iain Duncan Smith's Social Justice Policy Group proposals earlier this week. He clearly misses the point that for many who are struggling to makes ends meet, the Government's present perverse policies DO result in families breaking up around the country who would otherwise seek to provide their children with the stability they need and most benefit from. The News of the World carries the story of a married couple who have chosen to split up purely because Gordon Brown's tax and benefits system encourages them to do so:

A MARRIED couple revealed how they split up —because under Britain's crazy benefit system they are BETTER OFF living apart.

Sean Ash and wife Chloe agreed to break up after realising they would lose out even MORE when he takes a new job.

They spoke in the wake of a major political row this week, sparked by Tory leader David Cameron's tax-break pledge to give married couples an extra £20 a week.

Sean and Chloe, who have both been on benefits, explained why they decided to join what Mr Cameron called "our broken society".

As a couple, they had a joint net income of £1,702 a month. But after the split, Sean now gets £1,184 and Chloe £1,396—making a total of £2,580.

That means they are £878 a month in benefits better off leading separate lives.

Highlights From Breakthrough Britain

Writing in the overview to the Social Justice Policy Group's report, Breakthrough Britain, Iain Duncan Smith says, "Breakthrough Britain advocates a new approach to welfare in the 21st century. We believe that, in order to reverse social breakdown, we need to start reinforcing the Welfare Society. The Welfare Society is that which delivers welfare beyond the State." He identifies two specific areas why their approach is unique: "Firstly, we have recommended a range of policies which are designed to break the cycle of disadvantage in the early years of a child’s life. Secondly, we wish to strengthen families by removing the perverse disincentives in the fiscal system which are an obstacle to stable families."

It is understandable that media coverage has so far focused on the group's marriage and tax-related suggestions. After all, the Government has spent ten years creating a tax and benefits system that perversely penalises married couples, perpetuating poverty for the 76% of children who live in couple households. However, any attempt to heal our broken society will need to change more than just the tax system. Duncan Smith explains the significance of the five pathways to poverty identified by the Group:

"Our approach is based on the belief that people must take responsibility for their own choices but that government has a responsibility to help people make the right choices. Government must therefore value and support positive life choices. At the heart of this approach is support for the role of marriage and initiatives to help people to live free of debt and addiction. Government has to be committed to providing every child with the best possible education and giving the most vulnerable people the necessary support to enter active employment. The problems of family breakdown, drug and alcohol addiction, failed education, debt and worklessness and dependency affect us all, either directly or indirectly, as Breakdown Britain showed."

The Difference offers the following list of highlights from the report that it is hoped will receive due attention in the coming hours, days, and weeks:

Family Breakdown

• Relationship education in schools
• Creative ways for delivering more respite care
• Targeted assistance for parents who currently struggle to nurture their children, rather than steering them towards local authority childcare
• Removal of the bias towards state-provided childcare.
• A review of family law conducted by a dedicated independent commission
• Reinstatement of the use of ‘marital status’ in government forms and statements

Economic Dependency

• Clear work expectations must be attached to the receipt of benefits for people who can work
• Back-to-work services should be state determined but not state delivered
• A serious and thorough review of the Housing Benefit system is needed
• Parents should be given the opportunity to front-load child benefit

Educational Failure

• £500 p.a. educational credits for disadvantaged children to fund supplementary educational services such as a year’s extra maths tuition, six months intensive literacy support and a year’s group music lessons
• An end to bureaucratic overload
• ‘Booster classes’ for pupils falling behind
• More alternative provision to pupil referral units

Addiction

• An integrated addiction policy to replace the separate drugs and alcohol treatment
• A devolved responsibility to local Addiction Action Centres
• An expansion of third sector proven provision of ‘holistic’, value added, abstinence-based treatment

Serious Personal Debt

• UK credit unions should be strengthened, supported and expanded
• Local community based debt advice should be supported
• The benefits system and Social Fund should be reviewed in detail
• Education in personal finance should be improved

Third Sector

• Gift Aid should be made easier to claim
• Introduce Charitable Remainder Trusts as tax-efficient vehicles for planned giving
• Launch a 'V Card' reward scheme to boost volunteering
• Greater third sector delivery of public services
• Less bureaucratic and prescriptive Government funding
• Introduce voucher schemes to empower users of government-funded services
• Enhance the third sector's voice in Cabinet and Parliament
• Create a level playing field for faith based organisations

Yes, all this will come with a cost. But, as the report also notes, social breakdown presently costs the UK £102,000,000,000 per year, or around £3500 per taxpayer — that's a lot of money that could be better invested.

Substance With Style

Today's much anticipated report, Breakthrough Britain, from the Conservatives' Social Justice Policy Group, headed by Iain Duncan Smith, is the result of 18 months work of consultation with over 800 experts, organisations and charities, the policy proposals will propose a completely fresh approach to tackling poverty in the UK.

Having previously identified the five interlinked "pathways to poverty" — family breakdown, education failure, welfare dependency, debt, and addiction — today's proposals, if adopted by the Conservative Party will "reset the balance" that currently makes it advantageous for couples to break up, or to pretend to be "living apart together" — a term referring to the 200,000 more people claiming benefits for lone parents than there truly are lone parents in the country.

The Conservatives are not proposing a return to the married person's tax allowance, which Duncan Smith accepts had flaws. Neither are they suggesting that lone parents should have less money. Instead, married couples would qualify for a £20-a-week tax break and receive higher benefit payments of £32-a-week, bringing the benefits awarded to married couples into line with those currently awarded to single parents. This will be paid for through welfare reform targetted to encourage recipients off one of the five "paths to poverty".

Labour is already trying to claim that these proposals would be unfair on the children of single parents or those whose parents choose not to marry. However, there is nothing unfair about levelling the playing field. Indeed, one could argue that such an egalitarian approach achieves what socialism has always failed to deliver: social justice.

The Elderly - Who Cares?

The NHS Blog Doctor has a brilliant dissection of today's Times article, Who cares? Both the article and the good doctor's response are rather long, but here's his conclusion:

The NHS was set up and funded to deal with illness, not old age. The problem in the UK is that the Welfare State mentality has turned us into a nation of welfare payment scroungers. Why do families in this country not take responsibility for their own elderly? Why should the taxpayer pick up the bill for the social care of elderly, wealthy businessmen?

Why do we not care for our own elderly relatives? It can be done. Some British families do it. Families of Indian and Pakistani origin. I have never, in all the time I have been practising medicine, heard an Indian or Pakistani say “We cannot look after mother because we have jobs and families of our own” Somehow, they manage.

My practice looks after three large old people’s homes and an EMI [Elderly Mental Illness] unit.

There is not a single patient of Indian or Pakistani origin in any of the old peoples’ homes. There is one hopelessly demented elderly Pakistani lady in the EMI unit. She probably gets more visits than the rest of the patients put together.

There must be moral in this.

Prisons Need Inner Change

Earlier this week Lord Falconer announced that as many as 25,000 prisoners will be released early due to prison overcrowding in England and Wales, as though this will somehow help the Government to be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime."

The fact is Labour has failed when it comes to crime: Our prison population is now the highest in Western Europe (having doubled since 1993, approximately 147 people out of every 100,000 are now in prison in England and Wales) and two thirds of prisoners are reconvicted within two years of being released. Just last month the Lord Chancellor told the Probation Board Association, "The challenge we face is that of how to turn the offender into the citizen ... by giving people a future to follow, they can leave their past behind," yet it seems every month we hear about another prisoner released on licence who has gone on to rape or murder.

What a pity then that politically correct concerns about diversity last year forced the closure of a voluntary pilot project called "Inner Change" in Dartmoor Prison. The programme, discussed briefly on the Today programme just after eight-thirty this morning, originated in the States and is accredited with reducing reoffending from 55% to just 8%.

The problem with the programme, for all its potential and promise of success, was it didn't satisfy this Government's liberal agenda. It was criticised by the Prison Service's Area Psychologist, who thought its belief that "the root of offending is in individual sin" "lacks basis in specific scientific research" and its promotion of the virtues of heterosexual marriage was "discriminatory."

In this Orwellian society in which we now find ourselves, I hadn't realised that NewLabour had introduced a form of NewSpeak, where "tough" means "reckless," "diversity" means "uniformity," "tolerance" means "intolerance," "inclusive" means "exclusive," and "multi-faith" means "anti-Christian." Once again, I find myself wondering whether our whole approach to justice is fundamentally wrong.

BBC Impartiality Failure

Anti-American; biased coverage of single-issue political causes such as climate change and poverty; and Muslims given preferential treatment over Christians.

That is the judgement of the BBC Trust about the broadcasting corporation, which it says "has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff." If that's what the BBC's own trustees believe, no wonder the BBC has been accused by others of being in danger of peddling government propaganda! Criticising programmes such as The Vicar Of Dibley, the Trust quotes BBC executives admitting they would broadcast images of the Bible being thrown away but not the Koran in case Muslims were offended. So, our media tsars believe that it's OK to offend Christians (presumably because they're supposed to be forgiving and are not expected to turn violent) whereas the sensitivities of the Muslim minority are to be uncritically pandered to.If the BBC is now "going to face the challenges of impartiality in the modern world," perhaps its soap operas and sitcoms could also offer a few more positive role models rather than glossing over the complexities of life in favour of an orgy of bitterness and gossip, conflict and infidelity. Some claim that the portrayal of real life would not be as entertaining, but the truth is reality needs no exaggerating to be challenging, uplifting, even eye-opening and mind-stretching. Others contend that people are not influenced by what they know to be fictional stories. However, that is not how the human mind works — hence the vast sums that are spent on advertising. Just consider the increase in people enrolling onto forensic science courses at university in recent years, attributed to the influence of TV crime dramas such as Waking the Dead and Crime Scene Investigation.

We all assimilate subliminal messages whether we wish to or not and affecting how and what people think is the business of mass media. Unlike all other media providers, the BBC is uniquely privileged in being funded by tax-payers through the television licence fee. Its responsibility to offer objective, impartial, and balanced output is therefore all the greater.

Captive Childhoods

At Easter, my wife and I took one of those bold steps of parenthood: we started allowing our 4½ and 6½-year-old children to play unsupervised in our quiet cul-de-sac; coincidentally, a neighbour up the other end of the street took the same decision at the same time, so our four children have been riding their bikes up and down the street and playing in each other's gardens ever since.

If today's Children's Society Good Childhood Inquiry truly represents society at large, then it seems that we are in the minority and rather old-fashioned in our views (but then, we probably knew that anyway!) as 43% of adults believe that children should not be allowed out with friends until they reach the age of 14. As the BBC's commentary notes: in 1970 the average nine-year-old girl would have been free to wander 840 metres from her front door; by 1977 it was 280 metres; now the limit appears to have come down to the front doorstep. Children are no longer allowed to spend time independently with friends—something that used to be thought fundamental to every child's well-being and social and emotional development.

The disappearance of four-year-old Madeleine McCann forces every parent to re-evaluate the freedoms that they permit their children. Yet, it was Inspector Gadget who recently observed that it is often the people who display 'Find Madeleine' posters in the window who don't know where their own young children are at 9.00 pm at night! We have reminded our children that they should stick together and are not to go into even a friend's house without first letting us know, but perhaps we should be keeping a tighter rein on them?

As we learnt back in February from the UNICEF Innocenti report Child Poverty in Perspective, the physical and emotional well-being of British children is now the worst among the world's wealthiest nations. Have we truly become a nation of paranoid isolationists raising a risk averse generation stifled by illusionary fears? Whatever happened to the adventures of The Famous Five and The Hardy Boys — is it in any way symbolic that their seemingly realistic tales have been replaced by the impossible dreamworld of Harry Potter?

No doubt you will let me know what you are doing or would do in my position as a parent who wants to do the best by his children.