I've just read one of the most encouraging articles I've come across for a long time. If it had been written by Janet Daley, Iain Duncan Smith, Martin Ivens or Fraser Nelson I wouldn't think it worth bringing to your attention but its author was The Guardian's Michael White.
Here is the key section of the article:
"We have carelessly connived in the creation of a vast army of single parents, struggling to raise kids alone.
Divorced, separated, never married, for many it is a fast-track to poverty as well as stress, misery and angry kids. Bad things happen to still-marrieds too, but the odds are better.
How do I know? Well, for the same reason as you do probably. I see it every day among friends and acquaintances, young people my children know, where trouble can all-too-often be traced to trouble at home. And when you read the newspapers, how wearily familiar are the details?"
Harriet Harman likes to dismiss David Cameron's pro-family agenda as back-to-basics in an open-necked shirt. Perhaps - at long last - that sort of crass politics will be overtaken by grown up observations of the kind articulated by Michael White. There is no reason why support for the family should be an exclusively right-of-centre concern. Just ask A H Halsey or Norman Dennis.
