It is time to stop hiding behind the marriage debate, and to articulate a vision that families can respond to, not one where there are strong and weak families.
In January, the Government published Support for All: the Families and Relationships Green Paper, the Conservatives published Making Britain more Family-Friendly as part of their draft manifesto and the Centre for Social Justice also published a Green Paper on the family. Reading through these documents, you lose count of the number of times ‘strong’ families are referred to; either that strong families are important or we need to do everything we can to strengthen families. But what is it about strength that we are trying to promote; and does it mean that if you are not a ‘strong’ family, you are ‘weak’? The raft of policy proposals across these documents present a range of proposals – some of which are useful – but they don’t connect to the reality and issues that many families face.
In other countries, family policy has both direct and indirect aims that include promoting children’s development and well-being; supporting parents in work and gender equality. The political spat around marriage is monopolising the discussion about family policy and distracting political parties from outlining a vision of how to better support families.
Dalia Ben-Galim, senior research fellow, ippr
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