The family is the best agent of welfare

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.