Mr Clegg’s comments will offend any parent struggling to keep the family together
Cristina Odone, writing in The Telegraph states :
Nick Clegg balks at the traditional family. He thinks it’s an outdated model and that the Tories, in introducing a marriage tax break next year, are trying to preserve “in aspic” a concept we’ve outgrown. Does the Deputy Prime Minister, as he sits in judgment, have any idea of how much children yearn for precisely this antiquated ideal? Can he see, when he drops off his sons at the school gates, the longing look that the children of single mothers, or divorced parents, cast in his direction? A dad! Father Christmas showing up on a sleigh couldn’t be more exotic.
Does he see the envy that his wife, Miriam, triggers in those mothers who have made the Faustian pact proposed by the Government: choose between living with the father of your children and a bit more money from the state? Mr Clegg’s comments will offend any parent struggling to keep the family together against a backdrop of what his boss calls “slow-motion moral collapse”. It’s a struggle to live with respect, loyalty and charity when those at the top openly mock as “old fashioned” the family — the place where these values are most indelibly taught.
Yet Mr Clegg has made it plain that he’s a huge fan of Europe; does he need reminding that countries he admires, such as Germany and France, have preserved the 1950s-style family unit in the quick-drying cement of legislation? Married couples enjoy tax breaks in both France and Germany; the result is that both countries have more two-parent families than Britain does.
Maybe that’s the bit of traditional family life that Mr Clegg takes exception to: promote the two-parent family and you belittle the valiant efforts of single parents. Yet to hold up one model as ideal need not mean punishing those who fail to conform. Maybe Mr Clegg feels uncomfortable with the notion of a stay-at-home mum, as his own wife is a career woman. Perhaps, yet most women are not like Miriam Clegg: they value child-rearing above careers and given the choice would opt for part-time work rather than a lawyer’s schedule.
The traditional family may be outdated in Clegg-land, but in the real world — and even in Europe – it’s still the best we can do.