Samantha Callan advises the Centre for Social Justice on family policy.
In his recent book on John F Kennedy, Boston professor Robert Dallek relates a conversation that took place between two political greats just before the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon election. Henry Kissinger said to Arthur Schlesinger, ‘We need someone who will take a big jump - not just improve on existing trends but produce a new frame of mind, a new national atmosphere. If Kennedy debates Nixon on who can best manage the status quo, he is lost. The issue is not one technical program or another, the issue is a new epoch.’ Drawing close to the election, it was clear that ‘much more than liberal enthusiasm was essential if Jack was going to beat Nixon’.
From my semi-detached viewpoint as the independent chair of both the family breakdown work in Breakthrough Britain, and ongoing family policy development at the Centre for Social Justice, I would say those two sentiments pretty much sum things up today. Nearly three years ago, long before the opinion polls had reached that longed for tipping point towards a potential Tory victory, I defied the usual categories by being a serious academic who was willing to work with the centre right on family issues. I grew used to the incredulity with which many, ostensibly non-aligned, colleagues met the news that I was researching family breakdown for IDS. ‘No matter how ineffectual current policy might be I could never help the Tories’ crystallizes the sentiment well. Only one senior family studies academic presciently bucked the trend. Her exact words were ‘You’ve got to do it, the Conservatives are the great white hope for family policy.’
Her reason for saying that? Current government has substituted vision with initiative overload. What might a visionary family policy look like? Its touchstone would be the aspiration of children, young people and adults for reliable love. When David Cameron said at Relate this year ‘I’m a marriage-freak because I’m a commitment freak’ he verbalized grounds for consensus the like of which have perhaps never been seen in the field. Research indicates that regardless of socioeconomic or indeed marital status people ideally want somewhere there for life. The prominent psychologist, Dr Janet Reibstein says that those who suggest serial monogamy might just be the new norm, and we should just expect relationships to be temporary and unfaithful are ‘basically ignorant of the insatiable, ongoing, time-honoured and even animal need to be in a happy, secure, erotic and deepening union with one other person. We may not be skilled at getting there: we obviously lack the secret to having them. But the evidence of partnership breakdown does not convince me that we do not strive for or want desperately to have lasting and wonderful relationships.’
Recent Comments