Families

Read Anne Marie’s views in her weekly column; an advertisement sponsored by Conservative supporters.

The whole family matters
Families provide the stability, warmth and love we all need, and the relationships they foster are the backbone of our society. But there’s more to the family than parents and their children – the wider family circle matters as well. All of these relationships shape the family and add to its security.

The warmth of their parenting is as important to a child’s upbringing as the financial security of their families. While we need to help families with their finances we also need to address the other pressures facing families – lack of time, the impact of work, worries about schools and crime and poor housing. It’s a big agenda!

The work life balance
We talk about the work life balance but getting it right isn’t so easy. One in five women struggle to find affordable childcare, and yet just a quarter of those eligible for the working tax credit claimed the childcare element.

We need to find a better way of delivering free nursery care for all pre-school children. The current system excludes many child minders and private, voluntary and independent nurseries from offering this service– that has to change.

And families need to be able to spend more time together. If we extend the right to request flexible working to every parent with a child under the age of eighteen, mums and dads will have the chance to be the role models their children need.

Helping those in greatest need
Looking after young children is hugely demanding – it feels like there is never a minute’s peace! If you have a close knit family living close by that can be a real help, but the reality of modern life is that many young parents don’t.

Increasing the number of health visitors so that every parent gets good support before and after birth and until their child goes to school would provide that underpinning which used to be given by the close knit community of grandparents, aunts and uncles.

The Sure Start programme needs to achieve more and be focused on those most in need. Disadvantaged families and those challenged with social problems like debt, addiction and worklessness need help to develop into strong and secure families. We need confident and able parents with an ethic of responsibility. We cannot see generation after generation continuing to get stuck in one of life’s ruts like their parents did – we just can’t go on like that.

The couple penalty
One young couple with a new baby, who came to me for advice, told me that they had been advised they would be better off financially if they lived apart. I was horrified. Children not brought up by two-parent families are 75 per cent more likely to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to use drugs and 35 per cent more likely to be dependent on welfare. We can’t go on penalizing couples who stay together – the tax system has to change to support parents – not undermine them.