If a mother seeks welfare support from the state, but does not receive support from the father of her children, the state demands that the father pay. We believe that that family bond creates a material obligation. In the same way, I believe that we have a material obligation to honour our father and mother so that, as Exodus 20 puts it, our days may be long in the land that the Lord our God has given us. This form of obligation is recognised around the world, across many cultures, and indeed in some parts of South East Asia (such as Singapore) has legal effect - children are, for example, expected (or required) to provide accommodation for their aged parents or to fund such accommodation.
In our society, by contrast, there are those that seek to nationalise these familial obligations, creating systems of rights not between family members but between us all and the state. Conservatives should resist this on principle. The state and our relationships with it have elbowed out traditional moral interpersonal relationships across vast areas of communitarian life, whilst withdrawing from those in which the state had a traditional role (such as marriage). The state should not replace these moral relationships. Instead, it should stand behind and enforce them. It is not that the state has no role in how we deal with our aged parents, but that role should involve educating and reminding us of our moral obligations and, in the last resort, enforcing those obligations upon us in some limited form in some limited cases.
