EPA: A bias-free family policy? The facts show children need both parents

Tuesday, 27, Feb 2007 12:00

Education Secretary Alan Johnson argues today that “family policy must be bias-free.” and suggests that single-parent families can be just as good as two-parent families. So, let's make it bias-free, and look at the facts.

70% of young offenders identified by Youth Offending Teams come from lone-parent families. Footnote 1.

Children aged 11 to 16 years are 25% more likely to have offended in the last year if they lived in lone-parent families. footnote 2

Children of lone parents are twice as likely to have mental health problems. footnote 3

Children of lone parents are twice as likely to smoke, drink heavily or take drugs. footnote 4

Adolescents from lone-parent families engage in greater and earlier sexual activity. footnote 5

Children of lone parents are five times more likely to suffer physical and emotional abuse. footnote 6

The litany could go on. There is relatively little state-funded UK research, and looking to US data as an alternative, the case for two parents becomes even more compelling, particularly the benefits to a child of closeness to its father:

Girls whose fathers play with them a lot tend to be more popular with peers and more assertive in their interpersonal relationships throughout their lives. footnote 7

Men and women who have had warm paternal relationships have better, longer marriages and engage in more recreation. footnote 8

Alan Johnson is to be applauded for acknowledging that fathers “are not optional extras in the family unit, and should not be regarded as such, not in the workplace, the home or the courts.” However, his belief that lone parent households are as good as two-parent households is just not born out by the facts. The truth is that on every conceivable indicator, children are happier, more law abiding, and fare better in life if they are brought up by two parents, compared to those brought up by one. If Labour's family policy is to be bias-free, as Alan Johnson argues, it must be based on facts such as these, not prejudice.

1/ Review 2001/2002: Building on Success, Youth Justice Board, London: The Stationery Office (July 2002).

2/ Youth Survey 2001: Research Study Conducted for the Youth Justice Board (January–March 2001), www.youth-justice-board.gov.uk/policy/YJBREP _published_report_2001.pdf, p. 9.

3/ Meltzer, H., et al., Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in Great Britain: The Stationery Office, 2000.

4/ Sweeting, H., West, P., and Richards, M., Teenage family life, lifestyles and life chances: Associations with family structure, conflict with parents and joint family activity, International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 1998.

5/ Carol W. Metzler, et al. The Social Context for Risky Sexual Behaviour Among Adolescents, Journal of Behavioural Medicine 17, 1994.

6/ Cawson, P., Child Maltreatment in the Family, London: NSPCC, 2002.

7/ Parke et al, Family-Peer Systems: In Search of the Linkages, Kreppner & Lerner, eds,. Family Systems and Life Span Development (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1989), pp. 65 - 92. As cited in Parke & Brott Throwaway Dads (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999).

8/ Franz, McClelland, & Weinberger, "Childhood Antecedents of Conventional Social Accomplishments in Midlife Adults: A 36-Year Prospective Study," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 60 (1991), pp. 586 - 595.

9/ child Development, March/April 2001.

10/ Precocious Puberty, research by Psychologist Dr Aric Sigman, commissioned by Clearasil.

NOTE TO EDITORS

1. The Equal Parenting Alliance is a new UK political party, formed in

February 2006. We aim to promote a system of family justice in the UK

that puts the needs and interests of children first.

2. We will be fighting at least two seats in the upcoming Scottish

parliamentary elections in May this year, and then several seats in

the general election in England & Wales.

3. We think the family justice system should respect the right of

children to normal parenting by their two parents above the rights or

wishes of either of their parents alone. The current system does not

do this. To give the most obvious illustration of this; it allows one

parent to easily eliminate the other parent from a child's life, if

they wish. We believe this is fundamentally wrong and bad for

children.