Vicky Biccy's Blog

Family breakdown in the UK

I read this speech last week on Family breakdown in the UK. It was given by Mr Justice Coleridge to the Resolution National Conference on 5th April. I read the following line, and my attention was sufficiently grabbed to entice me to read through the whole speech.

“[The breakdown of families] is, I suggest, as big a threat to the future of our society as terrorism, street crime or drugs.”

So here’s a few highlights – if you’re interested, you can read the full speech here.  

“In some of the more heavily populated urban areas of the country Family life is, quite frankly, in meltdown or completely unrecognizable.”

“…family life in the old sense no longer exists. I am not talking about some halcyon picture of Husband, wife and 2.4 children once recognised as the national paradigm for families. I am talking about simple, ordinary family life where children are brought up with a normal daily routine of getting up, eating, going to school and returning to reasonably ordered home, presided over by a reasonably secure relationship.”

“What is certain is that almost all of society’s social ills can be traced directly to the

collapse of the family life. We all know it. Examines the background of almost every child involved in the public law Care system or the youth justice system and you will discover a broken family. Ditto the drug addict. Ditto the binge drinker. Ditto those children who are truanting or cannot behave at school. Or indeed any of the other ills which are so regularly trumpeted by the media as the examples of national collapse. It always comes back to a broken family or the complete lack of any stability within the family.”

Created on Mon 21st April 2008 15:54