The National Men's Council of Ireland Link: Centre for Policy Studies

At the risk of stating the obvious, may I start by saying what I mean by the family? I mean by a family a couple, consisting of a husband and wife, with or without children, living together throughout their lives. I include, too, the extended family, that is grandparents and other relatives. And throughout our history, this has been the accepted meaning of the word "family". It is a public commitment to marriage by both parties to a lasting relationship. That is what the marriage service, and indeed the civil ceremony in a Registry Office, is all about. It is not about anyone's rights. It is entirely about the duties and responsibilities of both parties. As the Prayer Book says, "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part"; an awesome promise. ………..

OUR SOCIETY IS IN THE grip of collective insecurity. There is a sense that social disintegration lies not far beneath the surface. The most disturbing aspect of rising levels of violent crime is the increased prevalence of youth crime, including attacks by children on their peers. If a child stands accused of a violent or murderous assault on another child, public reaction is confused. Our sympathies lie principally with the victim, but we also know that we have failed the perpetrator. Britain today is an outwardly prosperous nation, with unprecedented levels of spending. Yet it is also a nation of uncomfortable contrasts. In our towns and cities, the Georgian terraces are immaculately restored, but the council estates across the street remain bleak and neglected. They are blighted by poverty, drugs and crime, the yellow incident boards on every corner a warning not to venture out after dark. Raising children or growing old on these estates is a precarious and often unhappy business. We also see growing evidence of child homelessness, drug abuse among the young, the physical abuse and neglect of babies and children, high rates of teenage pregnancy and a continuing cycle of broken relationships. As the evidence continues to accumulate, there is one persistent factor that so often links all this unhappiness. It is the disintegration of the family.

Read Full Document

BRITAIN WILL SOON BE THE LONE-PARENT CAPITAL OF THE WESTERN WORLD. This is partly because the absolute number of children living in one parent families is so large and partly because the birth rate among intact couples has fallen. As a result of these twin developments, the percentage of children who are living in a one parent household is now much higher in Britain than elsewhere in Western Europe and we are about to overtake the United States. Many of the children currently living in such households will eventually end up in step-families, or as they are described in Newspeak, “blended” or “reconstituted” families

There has been a great deal of research in recent years on what these developments mean for children and society in general. The conclusions are clear. Although many lone parents and step families do an excellent job, children in such families are at much greater risk of abuse and neglect as well as worse social, educational and health outcomes when compared to children who live with both their natural parents. Ideologues may deny this, but the evidence is now overwhelming. The decline of the traditional family is harmful to children and also to the wider society. This was clearly documented by Jill Kirby in her previous report Broken Hearts. In this new report, Jill Kirby looks at the same issue from a different angle. Her main concern here is with the impact on families of the tax and benefit system. She documents the cost to the taxpayer of lone parenthood and shows how present policies penalise intact families and subsidise lone parenthood on a scale that is not widely appreciated. She argues that this system is unfair to intact families which are often struggling to make ends meet. By encouraging lone parenthood, it is also corroding the social fabric. I believe she is correct on both counts. Some of the information contained in this report is astonishing…………

That the traditional family structure is breaking up is an accepted truth; also accepted is the hardship involved in single parenthood, together with the disadvantages often experienced by the children of lone parents.

Less well known is the fact that it is two-parent families which tend to be the most disadvantaged – they are worse-off than lone parents: of all those in the bottom 10% of the population (by income), 46% are couples with families while only 12% are lone parents. Programmes which concentrate on improving the position of lone parents therefore fail to alleviate most family hardship.

A prominent reason for the relative financial decline of the family has been the changes in the structure of taxation, in both the long- and the short-term: since the 1950s the tax liabilities of families with children have increased at four times the rate of those of single people; since the late 1970s, the proportion of income paid in taxes (direct and indirect, including Child Benefit) has increased for a couple with children; for lone parents and those without children, it has decreased.

A significant change in the structure of taxation has been the abolition of tax allowances for children and their replacement by Child Benefit: the value of Child Benefit is now about one half of the combined child tax/family allowance of the 1950s. A married man with two children earning £300/week now receives £232.06/week after taxes and Child Benefit. A single person, also earning £300/week, has £212.86 – leaving a surplus of £20/week to cover the living costs of a wife and two children.

Taxation was previously set at levels on the basis of the ‘ability to pay’. The tax reforms of the 1990s abandoned this principle in favour of a ‘neutral’ system – one which is ‘reasonably fair to everyone, whatever choice they happen to make’. As far as the taxman is concerned, there is now no difference between parenting and golf.

As a result of the above change, the two-parent family has suffered from the budgets of the 1990s, while all other household groups have benefited.

Lone parents receive a wide range of means-tested benefits – benefits which are denied the wife of a working man who chooses to stay at home to look after her children; lone parent benefits are substantially more generous than those available for families.

The current tax and benefit system gives no incentive to parents to maintain the traditional two-parent family structure. Should the decision to be a responsible parent be treated as just another consumer choice?