The family is the best agent of welfare
Eamonn Butler 6:00pm
Conservatives have long been strong on family. They believe that families are the glue
that sticks us together, and that traditional nuclear families therefore plays an important role in sticking the whole nation together.
As a libertarian, I believe that people should live as they choose. Too many young people of my parents' and grandparents' generations were forced into marriages that were or became deeply unhappy – but divorce was thought scandalous. So people – particularly women, who rarely had independent means or income enough to escape – endured that misery. Many, too, were humiliated, or prosecuted, for conducting relationships that we would happily accept today.
But even as a libertarian I see the importance of having strong and durable families – whether any of their members are married or not. The statistics are clear: children from broken families, particularly ones where the parents have serial brief relationships, are more likely to get into trouble with the law, less likely to get good jobs, and more likely to end up on social benefits. And that's trouble we could do without.
But it will take more than giving married couples a few tax breaks to restore traditional family relationships. Certainly, incentives are important and at the moment we are taxing the things that we want more of (like work) and subsidising the things that we want less of (like single parenthood and worklessness). The present system unquestionably adds to the break-up of families, and the social evils that stem from that.
State programmes also cause more subtle problems. For a start, the state pension system and the National Health Service make families less dependent on one another, and so weaken the bonds between them. In my youth, few people spent years in old age because they didn't live that long, but it was perfectly normal and routine for families to look after their elderly relatives, finding space for them in their own homes. True, our society is more mobile and parents now live farther from their children, and there are other changes which might make in-home care harder to arrange than it was in the past. But I have no doubt that the main reason is that the financial and health care of the elderly has become a function of the state, and this has weakened the family bonds between us.
What, then, is the solution? The NHS and the state pension system were introduced for good reason: to ensure that people did not have to endure poverty or ill health when they did not have families to look after them. But there is something attractive about a system where an individual can rely on their family, rather than the state, when they are in need. This is routine in emerging economies that have not yet developed an extensive welfare state. The care and support given by families, being more personal, is probably better than that given through anonymous state institutions. But there are wider social benefits too. Perhaps it is time we thought about asking families to pick up more of the strain.
Eamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute
Previous
Anne Wotana Kaye 1
August 24th, 2010 6:22pm Report this commentFirst the people have to shake of thirteen years of NuLabour anti-family brainwashing. The Children of Israel had to spend forty years in the wilderness to remove the mentality of slavery, I only hope the shackles of socialism will take less time to vanish.
Jenny
August 24th, 2010 6:26pm Report this commentTry telling my parents that the state does not expect families to provide care in illness or old age. My mum has MS and my dad is main carer. Getting any state assistance is like drawing blood from a stone. I'm sure this is case for most families containing someone with a disability or long term illness. The author's comments bare no reflection on real life.
George Laird
August 24th, 2010 6:55pm Report this commentDear All
Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith, his article has irked me.
“Conservatives have long been strong on family”.
Does that apply to Alan Clarke and Cecil Parkinson?
He then trots out:
“As a libertarian, I believe that people should live as they choose”.
Tripe, sheer self indulgent tripe which he doesn’t believe!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith_Institute
Read this bunny and you will see he that his ‘crew’ don’t believe that for a second.
“But even as a libertarian I see the importance of having strong and durable families – whether any of their members are married or not. The statistics are clear: children from broken families, particularly ones where the parents have serial brief relationships, are more likely to get into trouble with the law, less likely to get good jobs, and more likely to end up on social benefits. And that's trouble we could do without”.
What about the other ‘trouble’?
The trouble of a corrupt society, poor Butler is strangely quiet on that.
Meritocracy doesn’t exist, neither does social justice nor equality and a weak or strong family unit is irrelevant dealing with that.
So, let us take his view that the family need to take more of the strain, although that might work on a menial level, is he seriously trying to get the poor to believe that somehow clubbing together is going to help them?
How does a poor family member are already discriminated by others out with the family unit get social justice?
Does it just happen?
Who knows and Butler isn’t telling.
His small state good and big state bad is too simplistic and is very much like dumping responsibility that the state should have to the individual.
He adds:
“In my youth, few people spent years in old age because they didn't live that long, but it was perfectly normal and routine for families to look after their elderly relatives, finding space for them in their own homes. True, our society is more mobile and parents now live farther from their children, and there are other changes which might make in-home care harder to arrange than it was in the past. But I have no doubt that the main reason is that the financial and health care of the elderly has become a function of the state, and this has weakened the family bonds between us”.
So, is he advocating that people should give up their careers and be poorer?
Isn’t this much like Blair and his rubbish of we should all accept less, he spoke this claptrap when on holiday sunning himself on the yacht of a billionaire.
“What, then, is the solution?”
And here Butler trots it out:
“Perhaps it is time we thought about asking families to pick up more of the strain”.
That isn’t a solution and the solution to a problem isn’t to create another problem.
Eamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute, is he giving up his career to be poor?
I would like Butler to reply to me on that question!
This looks like an extension of Cameron’s big society but without the finesse of packaging labour on the cheap.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
mart
August 24th, 2010 7:38pm Report this commentStrong and durable families?
Yes.
Not necessarily married?
Sir, it appears you will the end, but not the means.
Val Duncan
August 24th, 2010 8:53pm Report this commentFamilies should take more of the strain?
The old should live with family and be looked after?
What happens if a parent-in-law is beyond living with?
I have known a few old people I would run a mile at having in my home... moaning and demanding attention every minute of the day!
Get real... the ones who suffer are the wives who are used as servant in some cases.
I am in my sixties and NEVER want to impose myself on my sons and their wives... they have a life of their own to live. I love that they come and see us and help around with heavier jobs... the grandkids are brilliant and great grandkids a perfect dream.... but I would HATE to impose on them.
normanc
August 24th, 2010 10:52pm Report this commentHow about if we care for a family member we get a tax rebate as we'd be imposing less of a burden on the state? Give another £5k tax free earnings.
It will never happen but we can dream!
Fergus Pickering
August 25th, 2010 3:17am Report this commentThe old should live with the family and be looked after? Are you mad? Live WHERE exactly? A granny flat at the end of a bloody long garden perhaps. I've always had some sympathy with Goneril and Regan. And you believe that people should live as they wish? No you don't. Of course you don't. How are you on mormons and muslims with four wives?
Tarka the Rotter
August 25th, 2010 8:44am Report this commentMy wife and I currently support my wife's mother (in a nearby nursing home with advanced dementia costing £890 per week) and my mother (living with us with early dementia). Our lives are not our own. Please get real - I wouldn't wish our existence on anybody...
Dan Grover
August 25th, 2010 10:34am Report this commentMart: Indeed. Nothing says durability like the government signing a piece of paper saying two people love each other. And a family that stays together because of the contricting legal hoops that need to be undone is certainly a healthy one in which to raise children.
The only security marriage offers over other kinds of relationships is that they're harder to escape from. I am forced to question the childhood experiences of those that deem it to be a healthier environment for children to grow up in than two much happier, albeit separated, parents. My (married) parents split up whilst I was a child, and I've turned out fine - but I've known all along that I had two parents who loved me and cared about me - THAT'S the important thing. Not whether they have a piece of paper signed by the General Registry Office.
Cyril V Hudak
August 25th, 2010 12:03pm Report this commentDear Mr. G Laird, you seams to be reasonable man campaigning for human rights. Yet, you refused to see the point where Adam Smith Institute is campaigning for good causes too. I am libertarian my self but only when it comes to human rights and socio-economic freedom. I don't like oppression of any kind, and the economic oppression in various forms of taxation is the worst one. Let me for example point your attention to The Income Tax Act 1842, a temporary measure, that somehow become permanent, further more it was changed to welfare state, which is in fact contra productive and works against those who are forced to contribute to it directly or indirectly.
Therefore, I happened to agree with Mr. Butler and his article because I believe that UK was once successful and strong not because it was a welfare state but because its strength was based on traditional values and wealth generated by families regardless their social ranking religious views or origins. Perhaps you have heard term “family silver” for something valuable to store family wealth over time. In the past people where able to save some money and acquire wealth and pass it from one generation to another. In the old days people where not deprived of their ability to accumulate wealth for family and support their young ones trough life so the young ones would support the old ones later. But what we have today in our societies, not only in UK, it is common misconception of welfare state. Where ability to accumulate wealth has been take away from working people and replaced by system supporting and creating active nihilism. I agree with Mr Butler, current welfare state is penalizing responsible young working people and their families, when supporting growing number of irresponsible people with no intention to make attempt to change their social status. I am under no illusion, and I understand very well the concept of social trap created in past, but those days are over, UK is no longer rich country with strong mass production and high employment. UK economy is definitely in no position to support active nihilism on the backs of working people who can't afford to have families, who have to live to their mid thirties in shared accommodation unless they chose to be single parent family to milk the social system. I also understand that it is individual choice to live independently from parents, but the moral responsibility to look after parents is other issue.
Few days ago, I have posted some comment where I have compared social welfare state to a shepherd who shaved wool form his sheep and then demands more and more wool, eventually he skins down his flock and is surprised when none of his sheep is able to stand on their own feet without skin.
mart
August 25th, 2010 12:12pm Report this commentDan, I'm not sure but you might have misunderstood me.
My point was that to wish for strong families, and then to say that marriage is unimportant (as the writer of this article appeared to do), is to will the end but not the means.
I'll say it a different way. Marriage is important. The statistics (as if we needed them) prove the point.
However, I appreciate the points you made about your own personal experience.
(I wonder if the article's author will respond to any of these points in the comments.)
Kindest regards
Dan Grover
August 25th, 2010 1:21pm Report this commentI disagree, Mart. I don't think marriage is a pre-requisite of a strong family at all. Marriage isn't a means to a strong family - marriage is perhaps a bi-product of one, but not even that really. Unless you genuinely believe that you can not have a strong family without a marriage, I'm not sure how you can suggest that marriage is a means to any end (other than when the end is "a marriage" itself).
A marriage is a public ceremony and then subsequently a tick on a government database. The things that typically come before a wedding - love, a sense of loyalty and belonging etc - these are what make a family strong. That wouldn't cease to be the case if people stopped getting married. The love and stability causes the marriage, not the other way around.
mart
August 25th, 2010 2:23pm Report this commentHi Dan, you said:
"A marriage is a public ceremony and then subsequently a tick on a government database."
I deduce from this that we don't agree on what the term marriage means. It is therefore to be expected that we don't then agree on other statements made concerning marriage.
(Thank you for replying so civilly, by the way.)
Kindest regards
Dan Grover
August 25th, 2010 2:34pm Report this commentThere's no point turning it into a slanging match!
Victorian Medea
August 25th, 2010 6:22pm Report this commentWhen you relinquish the natural bonds of kinship and mutual self-reliance to the impersonal chains of the State, do not be surprised if the next logical step will be state-sponsored euthanasia of those who are no longer economically viable.
The paradox of inter-generational care is - If you value your freedom, do not ask the State to take away the responsibilities which ensure it. You did not ask to be born but your parents took care of you because it was their familial duty. When it is their turn to be cared for, it seems only right that you should return the duty.
I cared for my mentally-impaired mother until she died just before my 21st birthday. I had no help or benefits of any kind from the State and did not feel that I was a 'carer' who merited special attention from the authorities. I juggled university and caring and, yes, it was a great relief when she died and I could get on with my own life. But I know I did my duty. So what if your plans of cruising round the world in your 60s are now scuppered because you've got your Aged P to think about! That's life - when the wheel's up, make the most of it.And when it's down, that's just part of the natural cycle. Hopefully, if you've set the right example your children will do the same by you when your hour of need comes.
Andrew Duffina
August 26th, 2010 9:37am Report this commentWhat Victorian Medea said.
Of course it's tough doing your duty by your relatives; life is tough - nobody said it would be easy. But to hand your most basic human responsibilities over to the dead hand of the State seems to me a surrender too far.
Of course, it would help if the State did not take half our money away, and promise the moon in return, while actually delivering little or nothing, grudgingly and with mighty complications. This, I think, will be the sticking-point in getting any real change in these matters.
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