I was not expecting to cry. The May Bank Holiday weather was foul. We had two irritable toddlers in tow. And the Museum of London is not usually the most emotional of places.
Milling around the lobby, I noticed the 7/7 remembrance stand, with pictures of the attacks and a large book in which memories of the dead were recorded. I read some. Parents wrote movingly about how the victim used to play as a child, spouses about how their partner had always supported them, children about how their mother or father had been their inspiration.
Here, amidst the disappointment and weariness of a wet weekend, was the end of the world, our final good, the goal to which we all aspire. I was reminded of Philip Larkin’s poem, An Arundel Tomb, in which he writes about the statues of a medieval earl and countess, and concludes “What will survive of us is love.”
Instinctively we know this. We feel it in our bones. No-one ever said on their deathbed, “I wish I’d spent more time in the office.” But some whisper, “I wish I’d spent more time with my family.”
Time and again polls show that we value family life more than anything else. The authoritative British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey often asks about our attitudes to family life. In 2006, it reported that over three quarters of people agree that “watching children grow up is life's greatest joy.” The same study found that although 13% of people agreed that “it is important to move up the ladder at work, even if this gets in the way of family life”, 61% disagreed. A few years earlier, it showed that the British overwhelmingly thought that “people should keep in touch with close family members even if they don't have much in common.”
Friends are important to us – perhaps more important than ever before – but we still value family life more. When asked where they stood on the spectrum between friends and family, four times as many people thought it was “more important” to have “close ties” with their family than with friends. Our instincts are wholeheartedly for family life.
At least accordingly to social scientists, those instincts are absolutely right. One of the most consistent findings of social research is that a stable, loving family home is the best start in life. Conversely, those who experience family breakdown are 75% more likely to fail at school, 70% more likely to become addicted to drugs and 50% more likely to have alcohol problems.
And yet, in spite of our instincts, in spite of all the research, family life is under great strain.
It is important not to overstate the problem. According to BSA considerably more people are satisfied with their family life than are dissatisfied. The majority of young people and of cohabiting couples say they want to marry, and divorce rates seem to have topped out, after having risen six-fold in the 1960s and ‘70s.
If we do not want to overstate the problem, however, nor should we understate it. Divorce has “topped out” partly because more people are choosing to cohabit, and cohabitation is far less stable than marriage. Far too many relationships break down and an unprecedentedly high proportion of British children (the highest in
The cost to both adults and children is high. In spite of folk wisdom, adults who leave an unhappy relationship do not get happier but rather remain unhappy. Children living in broken families suffer physically, emotionally and mentally. Not only is there the short-term emotional trauma of the breakdown itself, but there are long term impacts. Lone parents are twice as likely to experience persistent low income as couples with children, and find giving their children the necessary time, attention and energy an almost impossible burden.
Not surprisingly, there is a traceable link between family breakdown and educational underachievement, emotional anxiety, anti-social behaviour, substance abuse, not to mention wider issues like low levels of community cohesion, care for the elderly, and housing availability.
Such problems are not limited to officially “broken” families, of course. An increasing number of “functional” families are “time-starved”, with both parents working long hours, often at weekends, and often commuting long distances. Children can be as damaged by time-starved parents, as wholly absent ones. In the words of the incomparable Homer Simpson, “Kids are great… they practically raise themselves now-a-days, you know, with the internet and all.”
It is, of course, no joke. The voices of those who experience or have to deal with these consequences remind us of that. “My dad cheated on my mum and now they are splitting up,” one 12-year-old boy told a research study. “Mum is always drinking alcohol and taking sleeping pills and I don't know what to do. I hate all the shouting and sometimes I feel like killing myself.”
The impact on those who work with children can be dire. “Young people here used to have single issues – either drug or alcohol or criminal justice problems,” a YMCA manager said in the same study. “Now they are more chaotic and are involved in multiple issues. Personally I think the reason is the breakdown of the family.”
Given how much we say we value family life, this seems like madness. Why are we undervaluing that which we claim to value so highly?
The message does at least seem to be getting through. Protecting and helping families appears to be one of the new consensual areas in politics. Thus, David Cameron said in his 2007 Conference speech, “The best welfare system of all [is] called the family…. the best organisation at bringing up children, at helping us with the right values, helping us get on with life, looking after us if we are sick of disabled, caring for the elderly.” And, at almost the same time, Gordon Brown said in his first Conference speech as party leader, “I stand for a
There is, of course, much disagreement about what constitutes a family, and how families should be protected. Such is the way with political debate. Gone, however, are the sentiments that the family is an obstacle to rather than a vehicle for human flourishing.
It is beyond the scope of this article to sketch out what needs to be done. We need to be realistic. Government cannot make happy families. But it can create the conditions in which families flourish or, at least, tackle those that stop them from flourishing. Tax and benefits that support rather than penalise marriage are an obvious candidate. But perhaps most important is time.
No matter how much we talk about “quality time”, there is no substitute for quantity time. That, if nothing else, screamed from the pages of the 7/7 remembrance book. Legislating for more generous maternity and paternity leave, more flexible working time, or making remote working more feasible can help carve out time for families to grow and develop together.
Jesus Christ once remarked that no-one truly knows how long they’ve got. If we are to live as we instinctively know we should, giving and receiving the love that makes us human, we need the time to do so.
This article first appeared in Families First, the magazine of the Mothers' Union.
