In this issue:
The Baroness Young, DL
Experiments in Living
News in Brief
The Challenge Team
Population control and family planning
A report from Scotland
Review: There is such a thing as society
Some recent publications available from Family Education Trust
The Baroness Young, DL
The death of the Baroness Young, a sponsor of the Family Education Trust, is a great loss to us all, especially those who had the privilege to know and work with her.
Janet Young’s long and distinguished political career has received much space in the national press. I would like to add something about the woman herself, and of her courage, wisdom and personal goodness.
I first met Janet Young in 1980 when she was Minister of State for Education, having been asked to provide her with information about the nature of sex education in schools and the concerns of parents. She listened attentively and immediately recognised the attack on the married family which such education embodied. Without hesitation she took action to correct the situation. From this encounter she was to become a valued advisor and friend in years to come. Her advice was always wise and straightforward, born from the accumulation of her wide experience and the fruits of a brilliant mind.
She was fearless in defending Christian family values and standards in an increasingly secular and rudderless society. I sent her a brief on the Family Law Bill which proposed no-fault divorce and stressed that such a measure would bring about more divorces and distress to children. She immediately phoned, promising that she would fight any measure which might damage children, whose welfare was always her first consideration. No doubt she would have preferred to be remembered for her involvement with these issues, but she became widely known for her successful fight against the repeal of Section 28, which would have permitted the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities, with implications for sex education in schools. In this she was greatly encouraged by the flood of support which she received from members of the public.
She was greatly admired for her graciousness to all, regardless of social and religious background, and even by those who opposed her. She was a woman for all people. She once asked her cleaning ladies what they thought about policies being advocated which might affect the family, views which later found their way into Hansard. She was humorous and warm-hearted and always available to those in need, so unlike the strident figure sometimes depicted by the media. I remember once preparing for a daunting debate and being encouraged by her forthright advice: ‘Sock it to them, Valerie!’
Shortly before her death she made a supreme effort to travel from Oxford to attend the Lords’ debate on the Adoption and Children Bill. It was her last public speech, and it was her most powerful. She concluded: ‘Children, who have no vote, should be able to look to adults to protect them and see that in all circumstances their needs are paramount in any decisions about their future.’
In her life, and as she approached death, she set an example to us all in faith, courage and acceptance. A Memorial Service is to be held at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, on 3 December at 12 noon.
Valerie Riches
Experiments in Living
A new factsheet, Experiments in Living: The Fatherless Family, reviews the research findings into the effects of family breakdown, and finds that the decline of the two-parent, married-couple family has resulted in poverty, ill-health, educational failure, unhappiness, anti-social behaviour, isolation and social exclusion for thousands of women, men and children.
Lone mothers are poorer, more depressed and more unhealthy than mothers in two-parent families. Non-resident fathers have higher death rates, drink more heavily, and risk losing contact with their children.
But the heaviest costs of these ‘experiments in living’ fall on children. They are more likely to suffer deprivation and ill heath; to be unpopular with other children and to be in trouble at school, to get excluded and leave school early; to suffer physical and sexual abuse, and to run away from home; to drink, smoke, take drugs, become young offenders, engage in early and unprotected sexual intercourse, contract sexually transmitted infections and become teenage parents.
As young adults, they are more likely to be unqualified, unemployed and poor; to be homeless, offending and to go to jail; to suffer from poor physical and psychological health; to form unstable relationships and to have children outside any partnership.
Nor are the costs of family breakdown confined to the mothers, fathers and children of these families. They are passed on to the rest of society through their association with increased crime and violence, a weakening of community ties and an increased dependence on state welfare.
Experiments in Living can be downloaded free from www.civitas.org.uk
News in brief
- Congratulations to Mrs Eileen Wojciechowska, winner of this year’s Family Life Award, on being cited by Iain Duncan Smith in his speech at Toynbee Hall as an example of the way in which citizens can improve the quality of life in their communities.
- The demand for services in clinics dealing with sexually transmitted infections is becoming unmanageable, with waiting times of several hours at some inner-city clinics. Colm O’Mahony, chairman of the Association of Genito-Urinary Medicine, has asked the government to delay its £2 million sexual health campaign until sufficient funding can be made available to the clinics to enable them to cope. Press Association, 19 September 2002.
- A study of under-16s attending a genito-urinary clinic in South-East London found high levels of infection in young women. The under-16s were three times as likely to have a STI as women of all ages. One-fifth were pregnant, and the majority of the girls had been pregnant before. One had been pregnant ten times, having had two births, three abortions and five miscarriages by the age of 16. Nearly half failed to attend for follow-up visits, and, of those who did return, a fifth had failed to adhere to their treatment regimes. The study was carried out in March and October of 1998. There was a 70% increase in the number of under-16s seen over the period. Sexually Transmitted Infections, Vol 78, 2002, pp.349-51.
- An important new study of lone parenthood in Britain by John Haskey of the Office of National Statistics has been published in Population Trends 109. It reveals that the number of dependent children living in one-parent families is 2.9 million, representing 23% of the child population. Nearly one-in-four of all families with dependent children is headed by a lone parent, up from one-in-twelve in the early 1970s. See www.statistics.gov.uk
The Challenge Team
During the autumn, Family Education Trust will be assisting with a visit to the UK by the Challenge Team, a group of young Canadians from a range of different backgrounds who have volunteered their time to tour schools with a lively presentation advocating chastity as a positive, realistic and healthy lifestyle. The team will be visiting British schools from 18 November to 6 December, and the Trust is arranging their itinerary in the London area from 18-22 November.
Formed in 1993, the Challenge Team estimates that it has spoken to over 600,000 young people over the past nine years. There are currently plans to train UK-based teams who will be able to take the message to a larger number of schools and youth clubs.
Population control and family planning
In Family Bulletin 107 we published a review of Ann Farmer’s book Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement, which is available from the society (see page 4). In order to avoid any possible confusion, it has been suggested that we should clarify the society’s position with regard to family planning.
The Family Education Trust has never opposed the concept of family planning, properly understood as the spacing and timing of the arrival of children in marriage, as a personal decision for the couple to make in accordance with their cultural and religious beliefs. However, many of the pioneering figures in the birth control movement, like Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger, were more interested in birth control as a tool for eugenics, or ‘racial hygiene’, which involved stopping members of certain groups of whom they disapproved, like members of ethnic minorities or people with mental or physical disabilities, from having children at all. Both of these ladies were enthusiastic about mass sterilisation programmes, on a compulsory basis if necessary, coupled with ‘segregation’ of the racially unfit into what would have been, to all intents and purposes, concentration camps.
It is this dark side of birth control that Ann Farmer exposes in her book, which would have nothing to do with most people’s idea of family planning. She also argues that knowledge of the historical roots of the movement is necessary to an understanding of why its proponents are now targeting the young, through such measures as the provision of the morning-after pill in schools.
A Report From Scotland
In Scotland family issues have been much to the fore of public policy in recent months. The Criminal Justice Bill has passed through its committee stages and, in the process, the proposed ban on the smacking of children under three was opposed by the Justice 2 committee. These proposals have been dropped. However the signs are that this may be a temporary respite and those MSPs influenced by children’s rights groups may try in future to resurrect that particular proposal.
The Family Law Bill is scheduled to be published soon. This contains proposals to reduce the waiting time for divorce and give more rights to cohabiting couples. There is an ongoing review of adoption which will consider in due course the issues of adoption by both cohabiting and homosexual couples.
Post the abolition of section 2A (section 28 in England), a sex education project called Healthy Respect was piloted in Lothian. No results of the strategy have been made public. It was based on increased access to information, contraceptive advice, homosexual counselling and had the intention of producing a reduction in teenage pregnancy. A sexual health strategy is currently being devised which is supposedly based on the outcomes of the Healthy Respect project. Meanwhile the executive has yielded to pressure from a vigorous campaign waged by those alarmed at the explicit nature of government-recommended school sex education materials, included after the abolition of Section 2A, and have promised that revised lists will exclude the offensive materials.
Interestingly the Scottish Council of Human Bioethics are considering launching a research pilot on sexual abstinence among young people. This would be unique in Scotland!
The appointment of a Commissioner for Children and Young People will be pursued by the Scottish Executive.
The Equal Opportunities Committee is still engaged in advocacy of gay rights. The next item on their agenda is the establishing of some form of civil partnership. The controversial nature of this legislation means it will probably lie dormant until after the election in May of next year.
Ann Allen
Review: There is such a thing as society
edited by Gary Streeter, published by Politico’s, 279 pp, £12.99, available through www.conservatives.com.
This book, though written from a Conservative Party perspective, should appeal to members of Family Education Trust (which has no political affiliations) since it has that blend of traditional philosophy and hard sociological facts that characterise our organisation. The essays are polemical but they are based upon research evidence. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Jill Kirby’s chapter ‘Successful social policy requires courage and honesty about family life – How will we respond to the evidence for marriage?’ Jill Kirby was a star speaker at our Annual General Meeting in June. Here, she is especially good at examining how words can be used to shape attitudes. Some politicians such as Paul Boateng had started to speak well of marriage, responding to the overwhelming evidence of how much it benefits society, especially children. But this year, having withdrawn funding for National Marriage Week, the Lord Chancellor’s Department issued a statement that ‘the adult couple is the cornerstone of the family’. Rightly does Jill Kirby call this a ‘curious rewriting of a familiar expression’.
Cameron Watt’s article ‘Character counts: educating for life, not just work’ is a common-sense plea for government to cease its bureaucratic control of schools and set them free to educate fully the children, through games and extra-curricular activities, for example, rather than through lessons in citizenship.
The book has several other thoughtful contributions, and it puts into perspective Mrs Thatcher’s famous quotation: ‘There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.’
Eric Hester
Some recent publications available from Family Education Trust
Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory, by Catherine Hakim, Oxford University Press, 356pp, £15.00 plus £3.00 p&p.
Broken Hearts: Family Decline and the Consequences for Society, by Jill Kirby, Centre for Policy Studies, 37pp, £5.00 plus £1.00 p&p.
HIV & Aids in Schools: The Political Economy of Pressure Groups and Miseducation, by Barrie Craven, Pauline Dixon, Gordon Stewart & James Tooley, IEA, 97pp, £5.00 plus £1.00 p&p.
Children as Trophies: Examining the Evidence on Same-Sex Parenting, by Patricia Morgan, Christian Institute, 159pp, £7.00 plus £1.00 p&p.
Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement, by Ann Farmer, St Austin Press, 188pp, £9.00 plus £1.00 p&p.