In the public discourse of our time the question of the place of the family in society is often ignored and overlooked. Progressive agendas which are currently flooding our legislative bodies have no time for the family. Indeed, there seems to be a kind of war between the State and the family. In many instances, the State wants to limit the role of families in nurturing children. Current efforts through so called “Conversion Therapy” legislation ensure that parents are excluded from the process of children seeking hormones and surgery to change their birth sex.

The English public intellectual, Roger Scruton, commented, “It is only since becoming part of a family that I have fully gauged the depth and seriousness of the opposition between the family and the State. The family has become a subversive institution—almost an underground conspiracy—at war with the state and the State-sponsored culture. Hence, the family has been rigorously excluded from the official curriculum. Mothers appear from time to time in schoolbooks, but they are conspicuously single. Fathers have become unmentionable, as trousers were to our Victorian ancestors. The state-imposed lessons in sex education seem to be designed precisely to sever the link between sex and the family, by showing the family to be an “option” rather than a norm. These lessons will ensure that the next generation will not form families, since it will have destroyed in itself everything that leads one sex to idealize the other and so to channel erotic feelings into marriage”.

Yet, the family is the core institution whereby societies reproduce themselves and pass on a moral framework for human life.

The family is the place into which children are born, socialised and protected.

One of the great advocates of the family in our time was Pope St John Paul II. In his Letter to Families he clearly articulates the fact that it is in and through the family that a person learns how to love, to make of his life a ‘sincere gift of self’. “This is why”, he says, “it remains a social institution which neither can or should be replaced: it is the sanctuary of life”.

The Catholic Catechism says, “The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honour God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society”.

When one considers the family, it is natural to recognise the importance of fatherhood and motherhood. The depth of the call to fatherhood and motherhood is no more evident that when a married couple have their first child. It brings out something wonderful and beautiful from the depths of two people whose identity is now changed. A husband is now a father. A wife is now a mother. The whole orientation of their life is changed. And they rise to be the best they can be for the sake of a child given to them to love and nurture.

Family testifies to the role of parents in handing on moral and spiritual guidance to their children.

They want the best for their children. Their decisions about schooling, activities, groups all revolve around the question: what is the best for our children?

Politicians and the intellectual elites have lost sight of the importance of family in the ordinary life of ordinary citizens. Yet, family is what people want. Little is done to recognise and support family life. People are seen as independent economic units rather than situated with the sphere of the family.

What people want is healthy family life. What parents want is a sound moral education for their children. What people want from politicians is support for their family and for their roles of being fathers and mothers.

What people don’t want is the sexualisation of their children. They don’t want the imposition of radical views on gender. They don’t want their children to lose their innocence too early. They don’t want them to be fed anti-family attitudes. They don’t want their children to be led away from the bosom of the family.

Parents need to be protected from the unnecessary intervention of the State, especially where it seeks to override the right of parents to raise their children in accord with their beliefs and values.

The family needs to be protected and family life encouraged.

It is true and proven in many studies that the traditional family provides the best assurance that children will flourish and avoid the worst of the social ills when they grow up in an intact family. Society benefits immensely from children having the opportunity to be raised by a stable couple in the family home. The family, in the end, is the “school of love”, providing the ground for growth in a healthy and stable emotional life. The family is the place where children develop those virtues so important for the development of sound relationships and the ability to make a positive contribution to human society.