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For Kid’s Sake
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n 1998, the House of Representatives Legal
and Constitutional Committee issued a
report entitled To Have and To Hold about
marriage and family in Australia.
Writing the preface to the bipartisan report, I
commented: “This report is about strengthening
marital relationships. It is about preventing
marital distress and the consequent breakdown
of relationships. It arises from our concern
for children; for their future, their happiness,
and their ability to form their own loving and
fulfilling relationships.”
While the family continues as a human
aspiration, there have been a series of changes
in family patterns throughout the industrialised
world that point to a decline in marriage and a
weakening of family life. To Have and To Hold
summarised these patterns:
• people are marrying less,
• those couples who marry do so at an older
age,
• there has been a dramatic increase in
divorce,
• the number of children involved in
divorce has continued to grow since the
early 1970s,
• the rates of remarriage have fallen over
the past twenty years,
• families are having fewer children,
• the proportion of children born out of
wedlock has increased dramatically,
• there has been a marked increase in the
proportion of single parent families,
• families increasingly have both parents
in the paid workforce, and
• in most nations, the population is
ageing.
A decade later, it is timely to review these
trends. Generally birth rates and marriage rates
have continued to fall, pre-marital cohabitation
has become the norm in most countries, the
median age of first marriage has risen, divorce
rates have increased, out-of-wedlock births have
grown, as has the proportion of sole-parent
families, and the population continues to age.
The rates of change vary from country to
country, including some welcome reversals in
various places. However, the deinstitutionalisation
of marriage and the consequent trends for less
stable families remains significant.
These trends are graphically illustrated in a
new report by Professor Patrick Parkinson, For
Kid’s Sake.
Subtitled ‘Repairing the social environment
for Australian children and young people’, it is
a wake-up call about significant trends in the
social ecology of the nation.
Based on social science evidence, Professor
Parkinson, a professor of law at the University
of Sydney, observes trends in the wellbeing of
our children that should concern all Australians.
Describing the dramatic increase in the number of
children who have been reported to the various
State and Territory child protection systems
as the “Canary in the coal mine”, the author
documents the rise in adolescent mental health
and risky behaviours in Australia.
While noting that there may be a number of
explanations, he observes: “if there is one major
demographic change in western societies that can
be linked to a large range of adverse consequences
for many children and young people, it is the
growth in the numbers of children who experience
life in a family other than living with their two
biological parents, at some point before the age
of 15.” Indeed, the number if children who do
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For Kid’s Sake
not reach the age of fifteen in an intact family
with both of their biological parents have almost
doubled within a generation.
An increasing number of scholars and
policy makers have recognised this as a major
challenge facing many nations. Few people in
western nations would dispute that life is more
uncertain for our children then a generation
ago. The renowned scholar of family studies,
Urie Bronfenbrenner commented two decades
ago: “There has been a progressive disarray at
an accelerating rate since World War II of the
disorganisation of the family in the western
world.”
His remarks reflected the conclusion of
the sociologist, David Popenoe, that there has
been a significant decline in ‘familism’ by which
he means the family is becoming weaker as an
institution. For Popenoe and others an interesting
question was why so many sociologists “think of
family decline as a myth and seek to dismiss the
idea with such vigour and seeming uncertainty.”
Part of the reason lies with the cultural ideals
of individualism, sexual freedom, and social
tolerance, as well as the obvious gains in health
and wealth for many people, he suggested.
What the latest data reveal, however, are
the trends affecting families which require an
effective social response to avoid the further
fragmentation of families and communities, and
the alienation of individuals. The chaos created
when day to day stability and predictability are
lost in family life, particularly for children, is
illustrated in the new report.
Social scientists increasingly worry about
the current trends. The family scholar, Paul
Amato describes the different approaches as a
conflict between the institutional and individual
view of marriage. Amato concludes that policies
should support marriage and family: “One
widely replicated finding tilts the argument in
favour of pro-marriage policies. That is, studies
consistently indicate that children raised by two
happily and continuously married parents have
the best chance of developing into competent
and successful adults. . . Because we all have
an interest in the well-being of children, it is
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reasonable for social institutions (such as the
state) to attempt to increase the proportion of
children raised by married parents with satisfying
and stable marriages.”
Merely decreasing the rate of divorce is
insufficient, he adds.
How we support marriage then, as the
protective institution of family, particularly the
welfare of children, is of profound importance.
The parental relationship is unique in human
affairs. Parents committed to each other
are by far the most willing to make massive,
unbalanced investments in children. Who else
is capable and willing to make this investment?
The State? Peer groups? Public or private child
rearing organisations? The answer, as any parent
will tell you, is no-one. No amount of public
investment in children can possibly offset the
private disinvestment that has accompanied the
decline of marriage and the weakening of family
ties.
Professor Parkinson makes a series of
recommendations to address these issues. The
substance of one of them, namely, the focus on
prevention and the government support for better
and more widespread marriage, relationship
and parenting education was a policy that the
Coalition took to the last election and has
recommitted to since then.
The Coalition will examine the other
proposals, including Community Trusts and a
Families Commission as we continue our policy
development.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed: “The
central conservative truth is that it is culture, not
politics, that determines the success of a society.
The central liberal truth is that politics can change
a culture and save it from itself.” This is an area
where Government should respect other spheres
of society by enabling them to fulfil their unique
opportunities and obligations.
If our desire is for healthy, well-adjusted
children and young people, who have every
opportunity for the best education, who can
obtain employment and live fulfilling lives, and
who have a reasonable prospect of forming their
own sustainable relationships—in short, if we
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desire a stable and healthy society—then healthy,
functional family life remains the greatest hope
for humanity.
As Martin Luther-King said: “The institution
of the family is decisive in determining not only
if a person has the capacity to love another
individual but in the larger sense whether he is
capable of loving. . . The whole of society rests
on this foundation for stability, understanding
and social peace.” It is in family that obligations
and values are learnt.
The For Kid’s Sake report makes the task of
responding to the trends documented in it even
more critical.
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