Well said. I would like to declare an interest in that I am a recently left home from (graduated?) from a Single (mother) parent family, and was raised in inner city social housing. Actually its within the ‘gun triangle’ in south Manchester if your interested. Despite this, and although I do say so myself, I have turned out alright – much thanks to the heroic perneting of my most brilliant mother. Indeed, all the looting ive ever done has involved a second hand goods magazine.
however what does make me want to riot is the open prejudice people think it is legitimate to exhibit about single parents, esepcially when events such as the recent troubles open the floodgates. Let me (I do this from memory so apologies if i miss-) quote Andrew Neil on twitter the other day: ‘May now calling on parents to take control: but wont most/many be single parents and she will have already lost control?’. Rightly, noone would dream of inferring such prejudice about the racial roots of the rioters. Nobody in public life anyway would openly infer many/most of the rioters were from *insert racial category* homes.

Hence, I often ask myself, why, as a segment of society is it so premitted for people to exhibit prejudice against me/ my mother? Why is it taken as a fact that a single parent upbringing would produce worse outcomes than a ‘nuclear’ unit? Well now that would be an essay, here I simply attempt a counter.

it is clear that on the contrary, in many single parents (and their childrens) experience, it is obvious that one good parent and one bad parent is WORSE than one good parent. Indeed, also, one bad parent is better than two bad parents. I accept that to follow this argument through, I must also note that yes, two good parents are better than one good perent, too. I would however add that in this case then they are a) less likely to split in the first place and b) more likely to share parental responsibily after that anyway meaning no ‘absent’ father/motherism.

Happily, despite my lack of a male role model, presumably therefore emotionally stunted upbringing, ‘underclass’ surrounds and other financial contraints that I was brought up under, I am now happily climbing the social stucture and am now well on my way to middleclassness!!! Hoorah for me!!!! and three for my mother.

‘Arguably the strong father figure has a lot to answer for. Emotionally out of touch, traditional (white) upper/middle class fathers and families may be a significant contributor to an absence of empathy. Empathy would be a deterrent to acting — and reacting — the way the leading white, upper-middle-class, mostly male (and, yes, fathers) political and business class has reacted to the riots.’

So we should ditch one crass, racist stereotype in favour of another?

‘Implicitly to blame riots on poor dads only perpetuates the neo-colonial infanitilsation of subordinated peoples. Like “they” have to be taught to rule their animal lusts (for example, rioting) before they can rule themselves? Poverty is not the fault of the poor.’

Jesus wept, what the hell do you lecture in? Does it involve evidence or logic of any kind, or is it just an exercise in pomo posturing?

I would like to have edited the above somewhat – but cant see an option to. 1st pg Parenting not perneting + capitals etc etc. Typeing fast im rubbish. Its not cos im from a single parent family wot means I cant spell. Honest….

Hey, maybe the absent father – or negation of the phallic signifier – represents post-colonial castration anxiety?

So the answer to the riots can be found somewhere in the world of unempathic, paternalistic and patriarchal Dads – this is starting to sound like a number of commentators are using the riots as a vehicle to trot their favourite hobby horse?

Looking at the Staggers interview it seems Tariq Jahan became a better man when he quit hanging out with extreme Islamic groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and got on with the more meaningful and fulfilling role of looking after his family.

Yet as a previous sympathiser with an especially paternalistic and patriarchal brand of islam does this mean Mr Jahan, or men like him are somehow part of the problem – or is just it just white, upper middle males who need to be brought to book?

Rioters rioted because everyone is a big meanie, QED.

‘Implicitly to blame riots on poor dads only perpetuates the neo-colonial infanitilsation of subordinated peoples.’

Let’s hope you grow up sometime.

No nuclear families + no village/kibbutz + skunk = Lord of the Flies

Your ethno-methodo-socio-jargonological discourse suggests that you have been educated way beyond your intelligence.

‘So the answer to the riots can be found somewhere in the world of unempathic, paternalistic and patriarchal Dads – this is starting to sound like a number of commentators are using the riots as a vehicle to trot their favourite hobby horse?’

Starting? I’m beginning to suspect people with theories to sell actually sparked the riots themselves as a PR exercise.

The time for articles questioning the *motivation* of those who think the riots are down to bad parenting is when, or if, this theory – which is neither more or less idiotic than any ‘single cause’ theory at the moment – is proven false.

It’s time for another fun instalment of “In general, generalisations aren’t true”. A person states a statistical likelihood or a peice of conjecture about statistical likelihood, and cue the rage from the people who assert that this simply isn’t true and that Not Every Example Turns Out This Way.

I don’t think the OP is actually trying to put down the idea that the riots are, instead of a myriad of socio-economic factors or Poor People Are Genetically Evil, all down to Stiff, emotionally and empathetically dead men and this is the formula for it all. The idea is his is an alternate consideration to the usual right wing narrative of the peasants being responsible for factors due to being scum, and actually relying on this archetype to solve problems may bring problem in itself.

I come from a fairly unusual single parent upbringing myself, and although anecdotal evidence is hardly useful for considered debate, I can comment on the difficulty in creating any kind of empathy if a parent has little or no obvious empathy themself.

I have seen a large number of fairy large families, where the father is only interested in the monetary wealth of the child and otherwise considers any other development to be irrelevant or a cause for punishment. In my experience, this tends to lead to a situation where the kid just does their best to hide their misdemeanour’s. Quite often I’d see the children being more scared of being caught than seeing anything wrong or even caring about what they were doing. I was the same myself, and unfortunately it was only through the empathy and thoughtfulness of others that I had a moral grounding on which to base my behaviour. I’d love to say a good hiding would have sorted me out, but frankly I’d have just tried harder to make sure no-one noticed, just like these other children.

There’s a lot of pressure, especially in older generations of men to have no emotions other than amusement and anger, and empathy seems to be on the lower order of things. A child with no empathy is the beginnings of a recipe for disaster and I think it’s a valid point to make (if only a part in a vastly complex series of factors).

I will however always dismiss the idea that these problems are easy to deal with. They are not, and the apparent propensity of the right to suggest simple answers to complex problems is wrong. There is never, ever a simple answer, and to try and argue otherwise is to argue in favour of laziness and sloppy thinking.

“Poverty is not the fault of the poor.”

Sometimes it is; and sometimes it isn’t.

Poverty is a lifestyle choice for most of the underclass. We live in a society so rich in opportunity that most people can improve their lives if they try. This is why the third world poor want to come here if they can. They know that within a couple of generations their stable families will foster diligent children who will probably thrive and prosper in the UK.

There are other people who through mental or physical illness or disability will always be at a disadvantage, however hard they try. There are others who will labour under immense disadvantages, which will be compounded by sheer bad luck. Accordingly, a civilised society, having due regard to (dis)incentives, makes provision for the least well-off by some judicious redistribution.The principle to be applied here is not egalitarianism, but ‘maximin’ or ‘maximise the minimum, not minimise the maximum’, as in John Rawls’ magisterial ‘A Theory of Justice’.

However, no-one is poor because the rich are rich. Every society that has attempted to abolish the rich has created mass poverty – and tyranny.

I don’t suppose the fact that the word ‘Nuclear’ is used in the phrase ‘Nuclear families’, might indicate that the concept of the nuclear family is fairly recent and indeed might very well be shit.

Here’s another idiot of a similar stamp:

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/people/alexander.vasudevan

He’s a one-man argument for privatising the universities.

****************

Cylux @ 12: A thing can precede its label.

Perhaps the issue is that we shouldn’t blame only the Dads?

At the risk of sounding like a Tory twat (which I’m not), I do feel that the way that parenting has changed over the last few decades, with extended families becoming a thing of the past, has impacted. Family units are islands, relying on their immediate community for support in raising children. The days of having Granny and Grandad and Uncle Bob and Aunty Maggie down the road are way behind us. Our generation is faced with parenting in isolation, and it follows that when things go wrong, the parents are blamed in isolation.

I strongly believe that society as a whole should take responsibility for the behaviour of the children and young people. If they’ve fucked up, then WE’VE fucked up somewhere. Pointing and yelling at parents who were doing the best they could with the resources available to them is wrong. There is an opportunity for everyone to be a positive influence in a young person’s life – perhaps if more people took the chance then there wouldn’t be as much of an issue?

I do feel that the way that parenting has changed over the last few decades, with extended families becoming a thing of the past, has impacted. Family units are islands, relying on their immediate community for support in raising children. The days of having Granny and Grandad and Uncle Bob and Aunty Maggie down the road are way behind us. Our generation is faced with parenting in isolation, and it follows that when things go wrong, the parents are blamed in isolation.

Aye, that’s why I called the concept of the Nuclear family recent and a bit shit.

I’m afraid I didn’t understand a word of that. So I’m going to assume it was a load of bollocks and call for the author to be sacked instead.

“I don’t suppose the fact that the word ‘Nuclear’ is used in the phrase ‘Nuclear families’, might indicate that the concept of the nuclear family is fairly recent and indeed might very well be shit.”

Let’s make the unstated assumption in your enthymeme explicit:

P(1), Everything recent is shit;
P(2), The term “nuclear family” is recent;
Thus,
C(1), The term “nuclear family” is shit.

Interesting argument, at any rate. And how do you feel about the actual institution of the “nuclear family”, as opposed to the phrase? Is it, since it is rather less recent, also less shit?

@11 theophrastus

“Poverty is a lifestyle choice for most of the underclass. We live in a society so rich in opportunity that most people can improve their lives if they try.”

Um, no, at least not if by “improve their lives” you mean “can stop being poor”. Your circumstances at birth are a massive indicator of how likely you are to be financially successful in life. This because, while this is indeed a society rich in opportunity, many of the good opportunities are not available to all.

A kid from a council estate with poor parents is not going to get that unpaid internship that will change their life, for example. A kid who got a shit education due to their local school not being fit for purpose is unlikely to a degree that really opens up opportunities. And so on. Many people try hard all their life to become affluent and never succeed.

“This is why the third world poor want to come here if they can. They know that within a couple of generations their stable families will foster diligent children who will probably thrive and prosper in the UK.”

They don’t know that, they THINK that. Different thing. Many immigrants do not prosper, and the least successful ones (i.e. those who fail to get jobs) are more likely to end up leaving the country, skewing the statistics in favour of the more skilled and lucky. You’re right that the UK has better opportunities than most, but it doesn’t follow that most unsuccessful people in the UK only have themselves to blame.

It is of course true that poverty can be the choice of the impoverished individual – whether directly, or indirectly due to laziness etc. But you’re not making any kind of case for that being true of most of “the underclass” – unless you’re defining that term to mean only the feckless, in which case the whole point is redundant..

@17 I never said it was shit because it was recent, I said it might well be shit, like say the Sinclair C5, which we only found out was toss after it was tried out a bit. Seemed like a good idea at the time though. @14 Sums up the problems now seen with the Nuclear family when compared to the old fashioned forms of family.
If someone you’d never met claimed to be a cousin in dire straights and indeed could prove the link, would you feel any familial obligation to help them? And if not, would you venture that this was a good thing or a bad thing?

d +

must try harder

I’m amused by those on the left calling for bolstering of “traditional values”, even though that is clearly not possible in modern society. Didn’t they read Marx: “All that is sold melts into air…”

Your circumstances at birth are a massive indicator of how likely you are to be financially successful in life.

Really? So fathers buggering off leaving mum to hold the baby, being a considerably blow to a family’s financial circumstances, would indeed therefore be largely to blame for a ensuing lifetime of poverty.

You’ve just debunked the original posting, well done.

It’s better that a father that beats his wife, kicks the kids and then drinks and uses drugs stays with the family.

It’s better if a dad who fights in the army refuses to go since he would be away from his family and we all know absent parents are of course bad for the child.

Waht crap.

Short Robert the Crip: J.K. Rowling provided a better home environment than Fred West.

Thanks for posting, bye!

@ 22 Scooby

“Really? So fathers buggering off leaving mum to hold the baby, being a considerably blow to a family’s financial circumstances, would indeed therefore be largely to blame for a ensuing lifetime of poverty.”

It could certainly be a major factor, especially if the mother hasn’t got the resources to support the family on her own.

“You’ve just debunked the original posting, well done.”

I could be wrong, but you’re giving the impression that this is supposed to be some kind of victory statement. Why you assume I’m trying to support the OP is beyond me.

There are many examples of kids brought up in single-parent families who have done well – like David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham. Besides, nowadays, about half of all babies in Britain are born to couples out of wedlock.

A more productive line of research is to inquire why the (documented) educational attainment of poor black students at school is lower than that of poor students from other ethnic minorities, who have also qualified for free school meals. Another is as to why recent immigrants to Britain, mainly from Eastern Europe, have been getting most of the new jobs.

Another line is as to why young black men are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. According to a report in today’s Guardian (18 August): Teenager found stabbed to death in park in Enfield, north London – Death of 14-year-old Leroy James is 10th fatal stabbing of a teenager in London so far this year.

Another is this research study from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies: Gun Crime, A review of evidence and policy:

“Generally speaking both ‘gun crime’ offenders and their victims are likely to be male, are disproportionately likely to be black (African Caribbean and Black British) and mainly come from economically deprived communities.”

The OP’s level of debating is so weak:

I know feckless dads, and mums. Many from wealthy nuclear families. And I know great single dads and mums from all kinds of backgrounds. Parents of all colours, persuasions, wealth and social class make good and bad role models.

Just because not all families of type X have good parents, doesn’t mean that __on average__ kids of type X families don’t have better outcomes than kids from type Y.

Logic fail.

@ 26:

“There are many examples of kids brought up in single-parent families who have done well”

And there are many examples of people who’ve smoked and lived long, healthy lives. So what?

@28: “And there are many examples of people who’ve smoked and lived long, healthy lives. So what?”

Try reading the rest of @26 for some suggested answers to your question. In times of war, many children have to grow up without the presence of fathers. Some fathers have to work mainly abroad or on oil rigs or at sea to maintain family living standards. There are, I think, more fruitful lines of research than attributing the supposed current “social crisis” to absent fathers.

Besides, the riots turned up at least one case of an employed father looting with his son, who is an A-level student. And we have this reported research in the Independent in February 1996:

Crime really does run in the family, according to the findings of a 35-year-long study.

Researchers at Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology found that if children had a convicted parent by the time they were 10 that was the “best predictor” of them becoming criminal and anti- social themselves.

Half of all convictions notched up by those in the study were accounted for by 6 per cent of the families while 10 per cent of the families involved accounted for nearly two-thirds of all convictions.

More to the point, if absent fathers are a big society-undermining problem, what the fuck do you want done about it?
Please suggest specific solutions.

No, I can’t see what the mass rioting of disaffected teenagers has to do with a lack of parental authority either.

Look, the Goodyear Blimp!

&c.

More to the point, if absent fathers are a big society-undermining problem, what the fuck do you want done about it?

>Un-absent them; un-vanish them; return them from the void to the families from whence they came. It’s not complicated or mysterious.

“Un-absent them; un-vanish them; return them from the void to the families from whence they came. It’s not complicated or mysterious.”

Presumably, the absent fathers will all need to be electronically tagged to stop them going AWOL again.

The omens are not good. The Child Support Agency created by New Labour was a manifest failure. At one stage it was costing taxpayers more to run than the contributions from fathers it was bringing in.

This report from the ONS in May looks potentially more fruitful territory for policy initiatives – except that we need to fathom why employers prefer to employ Non-UK Born workers:

In the first quarter of 2011, around 1 in 5 workers, or 20.6 per cent, in low-skill occupations were born outside the UK. This figure has increased from around 1 in 11 workers, or 9.0 per cent, in the first quarter of 2002.

This represents an increase of 367,000 non-UK born workers in low-skill jobs, with 666,000 in the first quarter of 2011, up from 298,000 at the start of 2002.

Over the same period there was little change in the number of workers in low-skill jobs in the UK, which stood at around 3.2 million. However, the number of UK-born people in low-skill jobs fell from 3.04 million to 2.56 million.

There were also increases in the percentage of non-UK born workers in each of the three higher-skill groups, although the increases there were not as large as that in low-skill jobs.

Low-skill jobs are those that need a basic level of education and a short period of training, while high-skill occupations normally require a university level of education or extensive work experience.

@ 32 vimothy

“Un-absent them; un-vanish them; return them from the void to the families from whence they came. It’s not complicated or mysterious.”

Maybe not, but it’s lacking a hell of a lot of detail. How exactly do you intend to do that? Pay fathers to live with their children? Jail them if they don’t? Get Cameron to start a policy called the Big Family where he declares that all parents will now happily together because he says so?

CG @ 18:
By “improve their lives” I mean just that – that they live in better circumstances than their family of origin.

Few people will get from poverty to affluence in their own lifetime; and even fewer will get from rags to riches beyond the dreams of avarice.

Most social mobility – upward or downward – is gradual, occurring over a number of generations. Immigrants seem to see this more clearly than most.

“A kid from a council estate with poor parents is not going to get that unpaid internship that will change their life”. Probably not, but that kid can make and be encouraged to make incremental improvements in his life…

Could it possibly be that families without some of those absent fathers are better off without them – except, perhaps, financially?

How exactly do you intend to do that?

Using legislation and normative social influence–the same tools that got us where we are today.

@ 35 Paul

Incremental improvement is all very well and to be encouraged, but the person I was replying to claimed that poverty was a lifestyle choice for most of “the underclass” (whoever that may be, and I suspect the definition will change to suit the argument).

Yes, people can improve themselves, and good for them if they do. I’m certainly not saying we should shower sympathy upon healthy long-term unemployed people who have never tried to get a job yet complain about their poverty. But the ability of people to make incremental improvements does not give us licence to pretend that the responsibility of improving the unfair playing field lies with those on the bottom of the pile. Apologies for the mixed metaphor.

@ 37 vimothy

“Using legislation and normative social influence–the same tools that got us where we are today.”

Yes, yes. I’d like to point out that your last post was in reply to Cylux, who asked for specific solutions. I too asked you to be specific. Despite that, you’re still being very vague.

So I’ll ask again: how EXACTLY would you ensure that fathers stayed with their families? Would you pay them to do so? Would you jail them if they didn’t? The same general question applies to “normative social influence”: how would you bring this influence into being, as a matter of national policy?

Paying fathers to live with their children sounds like it wouldn’t be particularly popular. Jailing them for moving out would be horribly illiberal. Both policies would open up a Pandora’s Box of problems. Saying “let’s all make sure fathers act responsibly!” would be about as effective as saying “let’s all be lovely to each other from now on!” – saying it doesn’t make it so.

All of the above could be straw men, of course, but it’s kinda hard to know what you’re suggesting when you won’t actually tell me.

Why not wait until all of those arrested for rioting / looting have been convicted – then look at their records to see how many came from single parent families as opposed to homes with a dad ……… then write the article based upon the specifics of what happened?

@40: Kojak

An excellent suggestion – real empirical research.

But the proposed reasearch could take a long time to complete because of the likely length of pending trials for the murders and the major arson attacks.

Also, I can predict that the findings will likely be disputed if they come to unpalatable conclusions because it will be claimed that the arrests and/or the convictions are manifestations of “institutional racism”.

It could be more fruitful – and more robust – to look at who the victims were – the murdered in Birmingham, Croydon and Ealing, those made homeless by the arson attacks, and those who ran the wrecked and looted small shops and businesses in Tottenham and Croydon.

The process by which the family qua social institution was transformed into its current state has been occurring for decades. I can’t tell you exactly how it can be reversed any more than I can tell you exactly how it came about.

Obviously, there are a great many things that should be done, and even more that could be done. But the most important is to come to a general consensus amongst the intellectual class about the desirability and correctness of the two-parent married family, and then transmit this consensus to the rest of the population. Behold: a brand new social norm is brought into existence.

@42: “But the most important is to come to a general consensus amongst the intellectual class about the desirability and correctness of the two-parent married family, and then transmit this consensus to the rest of the population.”

About half the babies born nowadays are to parents who are not married.

The commitment to family values and enduring personal relationships of the aristocracy, the plutocracy, celebrities, sports personalities and the intelligensia and academia – think Bloomsbury Group, HG Wells, Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackvill-West – has been and is famously fickle or experimental. Try the obituary of Patrick Nowell-Smith (author of a best-selling text on Ethics) in the Guardian, February 2006:

“A colleague of Patrick’s joked that he was the only man he had ever met who felt that he had a positive moral duty to sleep with other men’s wives. On hearing this, Patrick, who believed that wives were under no less an obligation, joked back that, as a utilitarian, he believed that he should add to the sum of human happiness – and had striven to do so. ”

Some tabloid papers make a special feature of reporting the social lives of celebrities – and that is hardly likely to promote populist notions of enduring family fidelity.

Those who have seen the movie of The Duchess – or read the book – will probably recall the de facto nuptial rule of the aristocracy: the husband was free to take mistresses but the wife could only have lovers after producing a male heir to the line. The problem of the Duchess of Devonshire is that she broke the rule and had an affair with Earl Grey, who eventually became PM.

Consider the famous mistresses of those heroes of the Napoleonic Wars – the Duke of Wellington and the Lord Nelson. The supposed family values of Victorian England were belied by the scale of casual prostitution in London – as well as by Palmerston, the source of much high-profile, flag-waving foreign policy and then by the notorious affairs of Edward as Prince of Wales.

Thanks to the media, most folks know that the family values stuff is more myth than reality.

@42: “But the most important is to come to a general consensus amongst the intellectual class about the desirability and correctness of the two-parent married family, and then transmit this consensus to the rest of the population.”

About half the babies born nowadays are to parents who are not married.

The commitment to family values and enduring personal relationships of the aristocracy, the plutocracy, celebrities, sports personalities and the intelligensia – think Bloomsbury Group, HG Wells, Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackvill-West – has been and is famously fickle. Some tabloid papers make a special feature of reporting the social lives of celebrities – and that is hardly likely to promote populist notions of enduring family fidelity.

Those who have seen the movie of The Duchess – or read the book – will probably recall the de facto nuptial rule of the aristocracy: the husband was free to take mistresses but the wife could only have lovers after producing a male heir to the line. The problem of the Duchess of Devonshire is that she broke the rule and had an affair with Earl Grey, who eventually became PM.

Consider the famous mistresses of those heroes of the Napoleonic Wars – the Duke of Wellington and the Lord Nelson. The supposed family values of Victorian England were belied by the scale of casual prostitution in London – as well as by Palmerston, the source of much high-profile, flag-waving foreign policy and then by the notorious affairs of Edward as Prince of Wales.

Bob,

There’s some interesting details in there, but the problem for your theory is that it is at odds with reality. You can take these anecdotes and infer from them that there is no connection between Victorian morality and behaviour, but we actually ran that experiment, and it turns out that there is–with what results, etc, etc.

Nothing can be done about the fact that some marriages wont work or that some fathers for whatever reason don’t care enough about their kids to be a part of their lives, the best that can be done is minimise it as much as possible.

Some suggestions: Make sure women can’t legally punish men by witholding contact with their kids, create enough jobs so everyone who wants one can have one and pay people a decent enough wage so there isn’t all the problems lack of money causes.

@45: “You can take these anecdotes and infer from them that there is no connection between Victorian morality and behaviour, but we actually ran that experiment, and it turns out that there is–with what results, etc, etc.”

I don’t agree. The anecdotes relate to reality, the family values stuff was and is just propaganda. May be it was and is well-intentioned propaganda, but it is propaganda.

The social life of Edward, Prince of Wales, wasn’t kept secret. And try this piece in the Mail on 22 June: Why is Princess Anne spending so much time with her ex?

The facts are that about half of all babies are now being born to unmarried couple and about half of all marriages end in divorce. That’s the documented reality shown in government statistics.

Have you checked out the celebrity gossip columns in the tabloids? The millions who read those columns quickly learn that the celebs mostly don’t actually live according to family values. The exciting news, which millions of readers avidly follow, is about how often the celebs bed-hop.

“I know a single parent family where the kids didn’t riot, yeah, and wasn’t there that girl who did who was a millionaire’s daughter? That proves that everyone rioted and to claim otherwise is just post-neo-imperialist endogenous growth theory.”

The plural of anecdote is not data. I guess the author of the OP is not a sciences lecturer.

Bob B @ 29:

“Try reading the rest of @26 for some suggested answers to your question.”

I did read it. It seemed to me to consist largely of whataboutery (“Yeah, but what about black people, why don’t you look at them?”).

“In times of war, many children have to grow up without the presence of fathers. Some fathers have to work mainly abroad or on oil rigs or at sea to maintain family living standards.”

If you have any evidence that children of such people do just as well as children of two-parent couples, that point might be relevant. As it is, I’m struggling to see what you’re trying to prove here.

“Besides, the riots turned up at least one case of an employed father looting with his son, who is an A-level student.”

So? Nobody said that every rioter was from a single-parent family, just that the rioters were more likely to be from single-parent families. Perhaps you ought to go and read up on statistics, then think about why that sentence of yours is complete rubbish.

“Crime really does run in the family, according to the findings of a 35-year-long study.”

Again, so what?

Bob B in passim:

“The facts are that about half of all babies are now being born to unmarried couple and about half of all marriages end in divorce. That’s the documented reality shown in government statistics.”

Again, so what? Do single-parent families cease to be a problem when there are enough of them, or something?

I went to university and all I got was verbal diarrhoea (and lots of debt)…

How much is Oxford Brookes charging students next year, out of interest?

[50] http://www.brookes.ac.uk/studying/finance/tuition/home

[50] the sort of numbers likely to favour “emotionally out of touch, traditional (white) upper/middle class fathers and families”?

The rising cost of higher education (top-up fees, inadequate support for subsistence) is likely to prevent students of low socio-economic backgrounds from going to university or encourage them to switch to more vocational subjects. This may have a significant impact on recruitment in many social sciences subjects which are more academically oriented.

Acknowledging the kind of constraints we are working under – the cost of living in Oxford and the social class distribution in the South East of England – we can sensibly develop strategies in true widening access. The current admission system relies almost entirely on A-level results (with the exception of Access qualifications) or equivalent overseas qualifications. Research evidence has shown that there are huge gaps in GCSE and A-level achievements between middle and working class students. Until we have a set of fair admission criteria that can capture students’ potential, we will continue to penalise tens of thousands of talented students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/teachingnews/archive/autumn03/retention.html

A long winded and patronising way of saying there are obvious benefits to being upper middle class – “emotionally out of touch, traditional (white) upper/middle class fathers and families” must be rubbing their hands?

Instead of protesting loudly (presumably due to fears about mortgages, etc) lecturers are busy jockying for position in the new cash driven university environment – once ensconced they can then complain about unfair it all is for their preferred excluded groups?

@51 – 53,

“… lecturers are busy jockying for position in the new cash driven university environment…”

Absolutely.

I think there’s a major problem in that the social sciences departments of most ‘respectable’ universities appear to exist for the sole purpose of churning out utter wank about fuck all, and are now charging £9,000 a year for the privilege.

Of course, as you say, this isn’t a problem for lecturers.

Perhaps a few floaty upper middle class types from Hampshire will take their degree in being a pretentious arse and end up running the country (with generous assistance from Mummy and / or Daddy’s networking skillz).

And there is the obvious benefit that anyone with any radical ideas will have them crushed to pieces, and find themselves a debt slave for the rest of forever.

But, having suffered this torment myself, I strongly recommend that everyone avoid university (in the UK) like the plague.

The nuclear family is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the Industrial Revolution, we has something called an extended family and that worked just fine.

Newsflash: The extended family included the “nuclear family” and more besides. The extended family is not some kind of default option, so that if the nuclear family breaks down, we just immediately go back to extended family, and didn’t the extended family serve us well for much of human history so why worry. We are not taking about extended families replacing nuclear families, but abridged and further abridged families, or atomistic families doing so. Children, raise thyself. What could possibly go wrong?

@49: “Again, so what? Do single-parent families cease to be a problem when there are enough of them, or something?”

IMO it’s just patronising to claim that patriarchial families are essential without showing how and why alternative hypotheses are flawed.

If rioting and criminality correlate with factor X and absent fathers also correlate with factor X, we can observe a correlation between criminality and absent fathers when the real cause is, perhaps, factor X.

No one has commented on the question of what happens with those families where the father is absent for long periods through working abroad, on oil rigs or at sea to maintain family living standards. What happens when fathers are sick or die young?

Chase up the biogs of celebrated movie stars and you’ll many who had very unsettled childhoods.

With half of all babies being born to unmarried couples and half marriages ending in divorce, single parenting and step-parenting are likely to become embedded social factors, which are unlikely to be changed significantly by the government. May be it could prove more feasible to focus on low educational attainment – not least because average educational attainment has substantially improved on trend over the last decade and longer. By the news yesterday, boys have at last caught up with girls in attaining top grades in the A-level exams.

@53: “Research evidence has shown that there are huge gaps in GCSE and A-level achievements between middle and working class students.”

Documented research also shows that poor Asian and Chinese school students score higher in the GCSE exams than poor African and Carribean students.

What of this from the ONS report in May quoted @33:

“This represents an increase of 367,000 non-UK born workers in low-skill jobs, with 666,000 in the first quarter of 2011, up from 298,000 at the start of 2002. Over the same period there was little change in the number of workers in low-skill jobs in the UK, which stood at around 3.2 million. However, the number of UK-born people in low-skill jobs fell from 3.04 million to 2.56 million.”

Those numbers look hugely significant to me.

This is the Mayor of Philadelphia’s take on youths and riots. I reckon that he’s a lot closer to the public’s mood than you are!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPj3tqAN3SU&feature=player_embedded#!

The “public mood” – as explained by the Mayor of Philadelphia – still leaves open crucial questions about exactly what government policy initiatives will effectively address (understandable) popular concerns about youth and violent crime.

The enforcement of a permanent, official night-time youth curfew doesn’t look feasible to me.

Short Robert the Crip: J.K. Rowling provided a better home environment than Fred West.

Thanks for posting, bye

Hahahahahahahah bloody brillient

I didn’t go to university till I was 29. 25 should be the minimum age, and applicants should have had at least two careers before they apply. It didn’t harm me. My knowledge of Russian language and literature enriches society. Apart from that, I could have earned twice as much if I hadn’t gone.

@61: “I didn’t go to university till I was 29. 25 should be the minimum age, and applicants should have had at least two careers before they apply.”

Horses for courses IMO. Some subjects – especially maths degree courses – are better taken when young.

As Keynes famously wrote in the General Theory:

“the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or ill.”
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money; (1936), pp. 383-4

Going back to the point of the original article……

The problem with this article is that is right, but for the wrong reason.

The reasons behind the current social problems are complex, anyone that says or thinks otherwise is a fool. We have not seen people going on the rampage because of absent fathers or for any other single reason. For someone to take a single issue like this and say that it is the root cause is foolish but equally to take a single issue and argue that it has nothing at all to do with social problems is essentially creating a straw man to knock over.

Single parents can be part of the problem, but only in so far as they don’t give a monkey’s about their kids. Some relationships fail, we all know that. And where families split up and one parent leaves but still actually takes an interest in their child’s life that kid will most likely grow up well adjusted. Equally even when one parent buggers off and leaves the other holding the baby if that parent behaves like a decent parent and brings their child up to understand right and wrong, to be caring, to be hard working and all the other things that are good about human beings then again they will most likely grow up to be pretty well adjusted.

The problems really begin where that parent doesn’t really give dam, and those individuals will have a habbit of being single.

In short it’s not single parents that are more likely to be crap, it’s that crap parents have are more likely to be single.

And as I said at the start, crap parenting is just one ingredient of todays problems, what the rest of them are is for other threads.

@63: “In short it’s not single parents that are more likely to be crap, it’s that crap parents have are more likely to be single.”

With half of all babies born to unmarried couple and half of marriages ending in divorce, that diagnosis of our social predicament has truly fascinating implications about Britain’s population.

Perhaps we could also shine a light on other social dimensions, such as Britain’s reported leads in Europe in teen binge drinking and pregnancies.

Doubtless, some will claim those comments are irrelevant too..

pilc @ 36:

Agreed, largely. Thanks.

chaise @18:

“while this is indeed a society rich in opportunity, many of the good opportunities are not available to all.”

Yes, I agree – on an individual basis; No, I disagree – on a generational basis. What sort of society would it be that ensured that all the “good opportunities” were EQUALLY available to all? Cash this out in practical terms, and you will see that tyranny is the inevitable result.

In a liberal representative democracy, we all have the opportunity to improve ourselves – at least some small extent relative to our starting point, While all opportunities are not (and never could be) open equally to all, talent has a greater potentiality to rise here than in almost any society in human history – which is why immigrants flock to the UK.

“Many immigrants do not prosper, and the least successful ones (i.e. those who fail to get jobs) are more likely to end up leaving the country, skewing the statistics in favour of the more skilled and lucky”

Figures, please!? And how many immigrants move from a rich(er) country to a poor(er) country? Not many…far better to stay where you are…(and claim benefits.I ‘m afraid)

“poverty can be the choice of the impoverished individual – whether directly, or indirectly due to laziness etc. But you’re not making any kind of case for that being true of most of “the underclass” – unless you’re defining that term to mean only the feckless, in which case the whole point is redundant.”

Yes, the underclass are the feckless – the benefit-dependent who take little or no responsibility for themselves, and who supplement their state subsidies with crime.

“in which case the whole point is redundant.”

Err…how, please? The definition is not viciously circular. The point stands.

buddyhell at 55:

“The nuclear family is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the Industrial Revolution, we has something called an extended family and that worked just fine.”

The usual leftist anti-nuclear-family nonsense. Can I suggest you read a few novels and plays of pre-1800?

@66: “Can I suggest you read a few novels and plays of pre-1800?”

Right – pre-1800.

In the course of the 19th century, Britain’s population trebled from 10 ½ million to 31 million. Manchester’s population went from a bit under 330 thousand to 2.4 million. I wonder just how many extended families survived those massive changes.

@ 42 vimothy

“The process by which the family qua social institution was transformed into its current state has been occurring for decades. I can’t tell you exactly how it can be reversed any more than I can tell you exactly how it came about.”

Problem is, dude, you won’t even discuss it in broad strokes. The closest you’ve come is saying “legislation”. If you think legislation is a good idea, you logically should have at least a vague idea of what that legislation should be, or you wouldn’t have mentioned legislation in the first place. But you still won’t discuss it, even on the third time of asking. I have a feeling you don’t actually have any idea what it is you’re demanding.

“Obviously, there are a great many things that should be done, and even more that could be done. But the most important is to come to a general consensus amongst the intellectual class about the desirability and correctness of the two-parent married family, and then transmit this consensus to the rest of the population. ”

Good luck with that. Declaring that one kind of family is “correct”, and that others, by inference, are “incorrect”, smacks of embarrasing old-fashioned conservatism, and with very good reason. There’s nothing magical about two-parent families, and there’s certainly nothing about marriage that means it deserves to be put on a pedestal. The intellectual class, as you put it, are unlikely to accept the confines of your preferences.

“Behold: a brand new social norm is brought into existence.”

Even if everything before this in your post could be accepted without question, you’re still lacking a lot of necessary conditions to support your conclusion.

Step 1: make people worship the nuclear family!
Step 2: ????
Step 3: profit!

@ 65 theophrastus

“Yes, I agree – on an individual basis; No, I disagree – on a generational basis.”

You’re apportioning blame here. By saying “most” of a said group are responsible for their situation, you’re tarring a hell of a lot of individuals. And what do you mean by a “generational basis”? Please tell me that’s it’s not something along the lines of “kids these days are shit”.

“What sort of society would it be that ensured that all the “good opportunities” were EQUALLY available to all? Cash this out in practical terms, and you will see that tyranny is the inevitable result.”

If you turned equality into a religion, to be pursued regardless of all other costs, then yes, you’d have to have some kind of communist dictator to make that happen. I’m not advocating that, though. I’m just saying you should take something called “cause and effect” into account before you go blithely blaming poor people for being poor.

“[liberal democracies are awesome]”

Agreed.

“Figures, please!?”

Seriously, you have trouble with the idea that people who immigrate to Britain and fail to find employment will either a) give up and go home, b) give up and go somewhere else, or c) get kicked out for failing to meet the requirements for citizenship?

“And how many immigrants move from a rich(er) country to a poor(er) country? Not many…far better to stay where you are…(and claim benefits.I ‘m afraid)”

This doesn’t seem to be relevant to our conversation. Please explain if it is.

“Yes, the underclass are the feckless – the benefit-dependent who take little or no responsibility for themselves, and who supplement their state subsidies with crime.”

Ah, here’s the rub (and seriously, the above can go hang as this is the basis of your argument, and it’s horribly redundant). So when you said @11 that poverty was a lifestyle choice for “the underclass”, you were defining the underclass, in effect, as “people for who poverty is a lifestyle choice”. Gosh, what a surpise. It’s almost as if it was…

“viciously circular”.

Good luck with that. Declaring that one kind of family is “correct”, and that others, by inference, are “incorrect”, smacks of embarrassing old-fashioned conservatism, and with very good reason. There’s nothing magical about two-parent families, and there’s certainly nothing about marriage that means it deserves to be put on a pedestal. The intellectual class, as you put it, are unlikely to accept the confines of your preferences.

You’ve just explained both the trend and the reason why it is unlikely to change any time soon. Which is to say, you are the explanation—or at least, your views are. Quelle surprise—human beings have agency. If you tell them that it is wrong to have children out of wedlock, or to raise children in one-parent families, then they will cease to do so. If you tell them that it is not wrong, then they will adjust their behaviour accordingly. Thus, no one should be surprised growth of one-parent families or births outside wedlock.

You can pretend not to understand this if you like. Perhaps you really don’t, which inspires a further thought:

How should we regard the inability of modern man to connect his moral philosophy to any of the outcomes we see in the world: is it hilarious, or tragic, or both?

By the way, I like the idea that the reason we cannot do anything that is old-fashioned and conservative is because it would be too old-fashioned and conservative.

I demand that all social institutions justify their own existence! Those that cannot, are to be thrown in the bin! Having been developed by mankind over hundreds of years is not sufficient! Let’s destroy society, and then pretend to be surprised at all the mess! Yaahhhh!

Here is the true genius of modern liberalism: it makes the reasonable seem insane, and the insane, reasonable.

Bs.. bs bs bs… Tories just don’t “think”. It seems like the little cortex in the brain used for rational thinking does not function in conservatives from any country.

Cameron has never lived in poverty. I have. I got saved due to aspirations. And it didn’t come from my father – he was abusive, I wished I’d had a lone parent family. It came from a brilliant teacher, and excellent higher education.

Unfortuanately, this generation may not be able to afford higher education, and their quality of life will be even less due to staunch cuts to public services, so Cameron and his good old boys can enjoy even more of the good life.

I was reading Time magazine the other day, and do you know what the UK has more of than any other country in the developed world?

No, it’s not absent fathers or any other bs… it’s SOCIAL INEQUALITY.. lack of social mobility… the wealth in this country is concentrated in the hands of such a few, that many don’t even know what money or oppurtunity looks like.. and they sure as h*ll don’t teach you about money and oppurtunity in most schools.

If you live in a world where ambition doesn’t exist and crime is rampant… what else are you going to do except become a criminal?

It’s not rocket science. Yet for Cameron and his “ilk” it seems to be. Or rather, they prefer to seem so confused/confusing to cover up their smug awfulness.

@ 70 vimothy

“You’ve just explained both the trend and the reason why it is unlikely to change any time soon. Which is to say, you are the explanation—or at least, your views are.”

Believe it or not, I’m not offended by being associated with an attitude that says it’s wrong to condemn other people based on our own baseless prejudices.

“Quelle surprise—human beings have agency. If you tell them that it is wrong to have children out of wedlock, or to raise children in one-parent families, then they will cease to do so.”

Really? So there were no children born out of wedlock back when society condemned illegitamy, then? Or were you confusing “cease to do so” with “do so less often”?

“If you tell them that it is not wrong, then they will adjust their behaviour accordingly. Thus, no one should be surprised growth of one-parent families or births outside wedlock.”

THIS is true, at least. I just don’t think that we should go around saying “this is WRONG!” purely on the basis that it leads to a higher percentage chance of a particular bad thing happening. I don’t go around saying “drinking is WRONG!” because it increases your odds of committing random violence, or “gambling is WRONG!” because it increases your chances of beggering your family. Maybe you do, I dunno. But I personally don’t condemn people for not picking the path that offers the greatest chance of a net increase in human happiness every moment of their lives.

Now, I do think people should be encouraged not to do those things to excess, just as people should be encouraged not to have children if they cannot afford them, or are likely to lose the ability to afford them due to an unstable relationship (“afford” referring to both money and free time here). But I wouldn’t presume to condemn people on this basis. And I certainly wouldn’t bring marriage into it. Whether or not a couple chose to have a particular ceremony seems pretty irrelevant to their ability to raise a child.

“How should we regard the inability of modern man to connect his moral philosophy to any of the outcomes we see in the world: is it hilarious, or tragic, or both?”

Gosh, I don’t know. What about the inability of modern vimothy to connect his moral philosophy with any actual policy suggestions, despite being asked umpteen times?