The most momentous changes spring up and transform our lives before we have had a chance to consider their effects. Consider the spread of television or the motor car.
Something even more momentous is now springing up on us which politicians are aware of, indeed constantly condemn, but seem incapable of preventing-the collapse of the family. Over the past 30 years marriage rates have fallen sharply, while the number of divorces and children born out of wedlock has risen exponentially.
The litany of decline is depressingly familiar-about 30 per cent of children are currently born to unmarried mothers (245,700 in 1995) and nearly 20 per cent live in a single parent household. Those who dismiss anxiety about such trends as moral panic say that many illegitimate children are born to people cohabiting in stable relationships. That is only partly true and ignores the fact that a significant minority of these relationships are either unstable or non-existent. It also ignores the broader fact that a growing proportion of children will experience some disruption to their family life during their most vulnerable years. Research has established that children brought up in a stable two parent family do better on average on all indicators of development than children in other types of family, yet these other types are increasing much faster.
We are having to live with the consequences of a collapse of commitment. Born into a fly by night society many children have no chance of emotional stability. No wonder so many lack self-esteem and drift into bad habits. But the growth of single parent families and divorce is not only bad news for children. It is creating millions of people without close family ties of any kind. As Paul Ormerod and Bob Rowthorn wrote recently: "Stable families create a network of reciprocal obligation between generations, siblings and partners. This is the primary source of care in old age. According to official figures 93 per cent of informal care for the old is provided by family members, especially spouses and children. On present family trends there will be millions of old people without anyone to care for them. This will impose a huge burden on the state."
Crime is another side effect of the collapse of commitment. While social scientists argue about the precise connections, it seems evident to most people that family breakdown has played a central role in the onward march of violent crime.
I remember when I was a member of parliament opening a new housing estate in my Birmingham constituency. The estate had been built for people who had been living in inner city slums. About two years later I revisited the estate and I was appalled. What had been a beacon of inner city development had turned into a midden. There was shit on the walls and pee running down the staircases of the communal areas. Graffiti were everywhere and young children, some of them as young as six or eight, had started to break up the pavements. Many of these flats were inhabited by single mothers who could not cope.
That was back in the 1970s. Now, instead of vandalising the buildings, people living on troubled estates seem to vandalise each other. Paul Ormerod again: "In pre-war days, the poor were said to make a living by taking in each other's washing. On some estates today, it is almost as if they exist by committing crimes against each other."
The absence of responsible adult men in many poor neighbourhoods is one of the great social disasters of our times. Until recently a young working class man would evolve from tearaway teenager to decent citizen as a result of starting a family. He would also then help to police his community. The flight from fatherhood has arisen because the link between sex and commitment has been broken.
The state is trying to do something about that through the Child Support Agency, with mixed results. Making people behave better is a difficult thing to do in a liberal society, but it is not impossible. We can reward commitment by using the tax system to make it financially worthwhile to get married and stay married. In recent years the trend has been in the opposite direction-obliterating the distinction between cohabitation and marriage, and even rewarding single motherhood.
The sheer size of the problem of children born without love or commitment-many of whom are now filling our prisons-is probably beyond the reach of any government. But our political parties should at least dare to place these issues before the public in an honest way. They must also dare to challenge the silent revolution which has taken place on our television screens. Programme makers have created a world in which ratings are the only deity. Television has thus come to be dominated by individualistic and hedonistic values, either explicitly or implicitly anti-family and anti-commitment.
Can a liberal society protect itself against the erosion of decency without resorting to censorship? Yes, through leadership, through politicians and public opinion combining to create a new common sense. Now that-thankfully-economics appears to have been taken out of politics, this is the new terrain.
