The Family is Britain's Most Important Institution

Politicians devote enormous attention to schools, hospitals, welfare and policing. Yet there is relatively little discussion about the family and its importance to a healthy society. We spend much of our time debating what has gone wrong and how the state should remedy it, but rather less of our time asking what prevents things from going wrong in the first place.

The Family as the Foundational Institution

Rather than seeing society as merely a collection of individuals, we should understand the importance of institutions, which provide individuals with the security from which aspiration and opportunity become possible. For most of us, the primary and most important of these institutions is the family.

Now no family is perfect, of course, and there are few Christmas dinners across the UK where someone around the table doesn't get a bit hot under the collar. Yet in the vast majority of cases, families provide love, stability, support and assurance, even if they are manifested in different ways at different times. Family is not about uniformity of practice, but it is about laying the foundations for a healthy, functioning, purposeful and flourishing society.

The Value of the Family

The family is not simply a private institution with public consequences; it is an enormous generator of social and economic value. It is almost impossible to quantify the value of the family, but by almost any metric, it has a very substantial worth: the parents who help their children to learn their alphabet and numbers prior to starting school, the parent who listens to their child read, who supports them with their maths homework, the grandparent who picks them up from school on Mondays and Wednesdays and the older sibling who teaches them the value of competition and the importance of experiencing defeat as well as victory. Schools often measure progress through the value that they add to academic outcomes but one of the biggest accelerators of attainment is a strong, stable and supportive family. The knock-on effects of this are greater economic participation and contribution to the workforce.

Few could fail to recognise that the financial value that families provide is far greater than simply producing future workers. Modern grandparents often shoulder a huge part of the childcare and upbringing, enabling parents to return to work and earn a living. Yet it's not just unpaid care for the youngest which takes place. Adult children look after elderly parents, nursing them in old age. Similarly, many families may have disabled or vulnerable relatives who require additional support and help. Families do this out of love, but their personal sacrifices significantly reduce the reliance on formal social care and other public services.

Alongside these benefits, families may also provide financial services. At a basic level, the management of pocket money and the setting up of children with a simple savings account, provides a form of financial literacy and an understanding of the value of money. If this is directly linked to chores within the house, then children quickly understand a sense of responsibility, contributing to order, and that the value of money has a direct correlation with time. Embedding the principles of fiscal responsibility help the next generation to make wise and prudent choices.

At a larger scale, parents may support their children's education, help them with a deposit for a first home or, later in life, provide capital for an extension, a business or another major investment. Families are often the first source of capital that allows younger generations to establish themselves and take economic risks.

The most important thing that a family can do is to provide a loving, caring home in which to grow up. This is the greatest gift that parents and guardians can provide. When children and young people have a deep-rooted sense of belonging and stability, then the challenges of growing up in a complex world are somewhat mitigated. There will always be ups and downs in adolescence, but parents can be the support network, the counsellor, the shoulder to cry on or just the listening ear along the way.

Taken together, these contributions represent an enormous, largely unrecorded transfer of time, money, care and responsibility. Families educate children before they enter school, care for them when formal provision is unavailable, support working parents, look after elderly relatives and provide capital across generations. If these responsibilities were transferred wholesale to the state, the financial cost would be immense.

The State Cannot Replace the Family

Over recent years, the expanding size of the state has taken on responsibilities which have traditionally belonged to the family. Much of this shift has fallen onto schools many of which are now expected to feed children, care for children, toilet-train children and teach them how to eat with a knife and fork. A society that continually transfers responsibility from families to the state should not be surprised if, over time, expectations of personal and parental responsibility weaken.

Exceptionally, of course, families fail in their duty - they are unable to provide the support, the behavioural modelling or the moral leadership which children and young people require. In such instances, the state should provide support. Yet that should be the exception rather than the rule and no institution - however committed it might be, can substitute for what families and the home can and should be providing.

The Government Needs to Support Families - not Usurp Them

Politicians need to be clear in demonstrating their support for the family. This means the restoration of cultural trust in parental responsibility, rather than seeing the state as the universal provider. It means pushing back at mission creep and an overbearing state. Parents, grandparents and the wider family all need to be supported by being given the economic freedom of a tax system which rewards work and responsibility.

It's time for the family to be put back at the front and centre of what makes a flourishing society. Growth, stability and prosperity cannot be secured by public spending alone. They depend upon the institutions that form character, transmit responsibility, provide care and give individuals the security from which they can flourish. Above all, they depend upon strong families.