In undermining the two-parent family, we have attacked the very foundation of society, writes DAVID ADAMS
BEFORE ATTITUDES began to change in the late 1960s, we were unhealthily deferential to authority of every kind. We treated parents, teachers, the police, ministers of religion, doctors, politicians and, in fact, just about anyone who had influence or position as though they always knew best – to question their authority was well-nigh unthinkable.
In those far-off days, as well, duty was everything: to family, church, community, country, and so on. Personal freedoms and individual rights, insofar as they were an issue at all, came a distant second to our obligations to wider society. The overriding cultural norm was one of unquestioning conformity, personal responsibility and self-sacrifice.
For so long as it lasted, this allowed the abuse of power and position by institutions and well-placed individuals to go virtually unchecked. How things have changed since those times.
Nowadays, we’re all sceptics; no one is deferential or unquestioning any more. Power and position are automatically held to be suspect, we do not take anyone’s word for anything, regardless of his or her standing.
Driving everything is our obsession with promoting and protecting individuality, personal freedom and human rights. To this end, we are forever adding to an existing myriad of legislation.
Yet, despite all of the positive changes over the past four decades or so – and there have been many – and however stiflingly oppressive things undoubtedly were previously, you do sometimes wonder if we have actually managed to create a better society. That, after all, was our intention.
Although things are markedly different from how they were, are we any happier or safer?
Sometimes you wonder if in fact we have just moved from one unhealthy extreme to another, replacing a culture of blind subservience with one that has among its most defining features an unrelenting sense of entitlement, a never-ending quest for self-fulfilment, and the almost complete absence of obligation to anything or anyone apart from oneself.
Surely, that isn’t the sort of society we had in mind when we began to challenge the old one all those years ago.
Even to raise questions about our obsession with rights and freedoms is considered in this modern age to be tantamount to heresy.
For all of that, 40 years down the line another defining feature of society today is the level of drug abuse, crime and violence.
Is there still a village, town or city centre in the entire country where it is safe to walk alone after dark? Probably not, and yet before we had as much freedom as we do today, we could safely stroll almost anywhere, at any time of night or day.
Then, unlike now, there were no out-of-control gangs of semi-feral youngsters and anti-socials haunting every town and city centre for prey, and plaguing the lives of decent people in housing estates up and down the country.
There is no mystery to how this particular problem developed.
During the past 40 years, we neglected to mention to parents that, whatever responsibilities they decided to forgo in pursuit of personal happiness and freedom, they should at least look to the welfare and proper upbringing of their children.
If anything, we encouraged the opposite approach, continually undermining the traditional two-parent family by promoting single parenting as an expression of freedom and self-reliance.
It is unclear whether being raised in a one-parent family has had any long-term negative impact on youngsters from the affluent suburbs. I suspect that it has. There is no doubting, however, that it has been disastrous for some working class children and, as a direct result, for wider society.
The violent young people nowadays roaming the streets and causing mayhem are often the product of three or four generations of children reared in the absence of a positive male role model in the home.
Often during their most formative years, young men have learned how to treat other people and disregard personal responsibilities from the example set by a succession of fly-by-night “uncles”.
Young girls in the same situation, having known nothing else, believe all men behave in this way and often go on to repeat the mistakes of their mothers.
So it continues.
Youngsters deprived of positive relationships at home are often drawn to the familial bond of a gang. Single and bad parenting is not the cause of all our problems, but it undoubtedly goes to the heart of many of them.
In undermining the two-parent family, we were attacking the very foundation of society; it is hardly any wonder it began to crumble.
More generally, until we move to redress the stark imbalance between individual rights and social responsibilities, society will continue to crumble.
This will require still another massive attitudinal change on the part of the public.