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Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): I thank my hon. Friend for giving way during his excellent speech. Does he agree that the whole point of education about parenthood is not to consider the rights and needs just of children in a classroom but to train them to be parents for the generation of children they will bring up in the future?
Mr. Leigh: I am very glad that I gave way to my hon. Friend, because his point leads directly to the one made by Norman Dennis, a Labour party member and
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sociologist, who has argued that all studies show that, on average, children from married families do better than children from broken homes or lone-parent households.
I of course accept that many children from broken homes do better in terms of their health, education, employment, and so on, than some from married homes, but the point is that, on average, that is not so. Dennis argues that men are no longer tied to the responsibilities that they once had for the family. The social constraints on them to act responsibly have been substantially relaxed. My amendment calls for schools to prepare boys and girls to face up to and prepare for the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood.
Dr. Nick Tate, chief executive of SCAA, has argued that official documents cannot promote marriage, because, in some classes, 60 per cent. of pupils come from broken homes--precisely the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Mrs. Peacock). I do not doubt that such classes exist, but Tate's argument is a recipe for despair.
Are schools to affirm, against the evidence, that any kind of family is just as good as any other--no matter whether children have a male and a female carer or what the adults' commitment is to the children? Not all families are equally effective. It is nonsense to pretend that they are. There is a danger that Dr. Tate is promoting the very relativism that he claims to be against.
I strongly believe that we should reject the "stand idly by" approach to breakdown of families, for two good reasons. First, instead of promoting responsibility and family stability, that approach panders to the lowest common denominator of instability and irresponsibility to which I have referred. [Interruption.] There is no point in the Whip constantly trying to make me sit down. I have prepared my speech, and I shall make it.
There are, of course, children whose mothers or fathers have deserted the family home. Many realise that life is not what it should be. My amendment calls for schools to point them to a better way--not to become the absent fathers, the deadbeat dads of the future. Yes, there needs to be respect and sensitivity for all children, from whatever background. Children do not choose their parents, but they grow up to be the parents of the future.
The second reason why we should reject the fatalism of Dr. Tate is that the analysis is factually wrong. Yes, there are serious problems with the breakdown of the family, but they are not as serious as some would have us believe. Reports of the death of marriage and the nuclear family have been greatly exaggerated. If one accepts that children need a mother and a father, marriage is still the norm. Only 3 per cent. of children live with a cohabiting mother and father, whereas 71 per cent. live with their married mother and father. Those figures surprised me and I had to double-check them, but they are true.
Dr. Tate is wrong in arguing that we should not promote the family type in which 71 per cent. of children live. Of the remaining family types, 7 per cent. of children live in a step-family--of which 4 per cent. are married step-families and 3 per cent. cohabiting; 2 per cent. live in a lone father household; and 17 per cent. live in a lone mother household. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of children come from married households.
Most adults will marry, and most marriages will be for life. According to the general household survey, only9 per cent. of men and women aged 15 to 59 are
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Yes, there are irresponsible fathers and mothers. In moving this new clause, I ask only that schools promote responsibility and the concept of a permanent relationship between a man and a woman. It is in the interests of our nation's future children that they do so; it is therefore in our national interest.
Lady Olga Maitland:
I warmly welcome new clause 7, which has been moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh). It is not enough to prepare children for adulthood without advocating positively and without any equivocation the importance of a stable and committed marriage and parenthood. There is plenty of evidence to suggest and support the belief that families and children flourish if they develop within the context of a traditional marriage, and that the life chances of a child reared outside that context are very much reduced.
Britain's rates of divorce and of children born outside marriage are the highest in Europe, and our marriage rates are far lower. The cost to society is so high that we cannot skimp on action or prevaricate on the issue. The nation spends more than £9 billion to support unstructured parenting--the "never-marrieds", the lone parents and the divorced--and the cost in children's development is cripplingly high. Parenting chaos plunges many children into the poorest percentile of society, and 90 per cent. of single parents aged 16 to 24 are on income support.
Children's life chances suffer because of constantly changing homes and an unorthodox type of parenting--whether it is a mother alone or with a succession of partners and stepfathers. Instability means that children suffer from poor performance in school and lack of concentration. They are anxious, clinging and attention-seeking, especially when they are young. As they grow older, they have a greater tendency to fall prey to solvent, drug and alcohol abuse, and to commit vandalism and other juvenile crime. They are rootless youngsters, whose life chances can be affected to the point that they lose the spirit to carry on with further education. Teenage girls become pregnant without stable relationships and marriage.
That vicious circle cannot be allowed to continue. We are being unfair to children if we do not give them a positive model to which they can aspire. They may have been denied a stable home themselves, but they should be encouraged to hold an ideal and aspiration, to stop the vicious circle.
One difficulty is that schools have fought shy of discussing traditional marriage, partly because some teachers have chaotic lives of their own and do not share such a commitment, and partly because schools believe that such discussion would embarrass children who do not come from stable homes. Children are being sold short if there is any equivocation on the virtues of marriage. The National Forum for Values in Education and the Community fails on
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We should be bold in our support of marriage, and the theme of marriage should permeate all aspects of education. Children should be taught that walking out of a marriage, divorcing or never marrying are not easy alternatives, and that such actions can wreck lives and destroy the life chances of others.
Mr. Forth:
My hon. Friends who have spoken in support of the new clause are knocking on an open door. Few would take issue with the substance of what they say. I ask them to reconsider pressing the clause at this stage, for pragmatic and practical reasons.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) generously acknowledged that there are already elements in the curriculum that point us in the right direction, even if they do not go as far as he wishes. He referred to one such measure, and there are others--under the provisions for sex education, for example.
I ask my hon. Friends to bear in mind two points. There are always pressures on the curriculum and on schools to include many subjects that have wide support from different areas. Of course, the issue that my hon. Friends have raised has enormously wide support, as they have pointed out, and as we know from the many hon. Members who have given their support. Other subjects also have widespread support--citizenship is often mentioned in this context, as is giving young people an awareness of financial responsibilities.
Those issues may not be in the same category as those raised by my hon. Friends, but the point is that there is always pressure to include ever more in the curriculum. We are trying desperately to hold on to core skills and to use the curriculum to best effect to teach young people the basic skills--literacy, numeracy and so on. We have to be careful about allowing other subjects, even though they are important, to be brought into the curriculum.
I could also say--although it would be risky to do so--that to assume that putting something into the curriculum means that it is automatically carried forward into the consciousness of young people is interesting, but sometimes rather dangerous. I shall not press that point, because it would take me down a road that I do not want to go too far down.
I understand the views of my hon. Friends about the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority and the forum, but I ask them to be patient. Much good work has already been done. A real effort is being made to find as much common ground as possible and to bring as many people as possible behind the values that my hon. Friends have supported. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is well aware of their concerns.
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"the love and commitment required for a happy childhood can be found in families of different kinds."
That gives legitimacy to single parenthood and to the "never-marrieds", and it undermines the traditional family.
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