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From promoting harm to preventing good
Family Education Trust director, Norman Wells, highlights an alarming trend in public policy and legislation.
Over the past 40 years, we have witnessed wave after wave of permissive legislation. It has never been easier to obtain an abortion or a divorce, young people under the age of consent have no difficulty in accessing contraception in complete confidence, homosexual couples can adopt and foster children and, through the Civil Partnership Act, legal recognition has been given to same-sex relationships.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill represents a further example of permissive lawmaking with its removal of the requirement to consider the need of a child for a father before granting IVF treatment and provisions allowing for the construction of animal-human hybrids, the creation of ‘saviour-siblings’, and the increased use of embryos in stem cell research.
A new phenomenon
But now we are beginning to see a new phenomenon. No longer content with permissive legislation and standards, our social engineers are becoming increasingly prescriptive as they seek to impose their permissive attitudes and standards on those who have so far resisted them.
At the British Medical Association’s annual conference in July, Liberal Democrat MP and honorary associate of the National Secular Society, Evan Harris, sought support for a motion aimed at placing limits on the statutory right of doctors and other healthcare professionals to conscientiously object to having anything to do with abortion or IVF services.
Thankfully the motion failed, but the issue is not going to go away. This autumn Dr Harris is proposing an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill aimed at requiring all doctors and pharmacists to prescribe or provide the full range of contraception and emergency hormonal birth control. It is the intention of the amendment that those who are unable in good conscience to facilitate the provision of treatment that has the potential to operate after conception has occurred should be presented with a stark choice: act against your conscience or seek alternative employment elsewhere.
Tony Calland, chairman of the British Medical Association’s medical ethics committee, treats conscientious objectors to abortion with similar contempt. In a recent issue of the British Medical Journal, he asserted: ‘It would be a bit stupid of someone who is a devout Catholic to become a gynaecologist, because they would be expected to carry out abortions.’ Presumably Dr Calland’s strictures would apply equally to an evangelical, a Muslim, an orthodox Jew, or anyone else with strong moral or religious convictions.
Conform or perish
Only last year, after initially denying that the sexual orientation regulations would have any adverse effect on the businesses of people who had a moral or religious objection to homosexual practice, the then Equalities Minister, Meg Munn, finally admitted that the regulations could have a major impact. In a letter to the Family Education Trust, she revealed that wedding photographers not wishing to be involved with civil partnerships would have to go into a different branch of photography, and suggested that a wedding chauffeur could always specialise in corporate travel. As for hotel proprietors, if they were not prepared to allow same-sex couples to share a double room, the only option open to them under the law would be to do away with double rooms altogether and only offer single rooms. The message could hardly have been clearer: you have got to conform or face going out of business.
New orthodoxies
There is now a danger that certain professions – including healthcare – will become no-go areas for people who refuse to submit to the new orthodoxies. But the situation we are facing is even more serious than that, because people of moral and religious principle are also being excluded from areas of public service and from vital caring roles.
The Sheffield magistrate, Andrew McClintock, was effectively forced to resign from the Bench because he could not in good conscience be involved in placing children for adoption with same-sex couples. And David and Heather Bowen, a couple from Somerset, have recently had their application to foster turned down because they occasionally use a smack to discipline their own daughter. There is no suggestion that they have ever used excessive force on their own child and they have willingly given an undertaking that they would not smack a fostered child, yet solely because of their views on smacking they were deemed unsuitable to foster.
Imposing a new morality
To put it at its simplest, for four decades, we have tolerated, permitted and even promoted policies that cause harm, but until recently no one has been forced to do anything against his or her conscience. In the past we have been content to call good what centuries of Judaeo-Christian influence has regarded as evil; but now we are beginning to call evil what historically has been recognised as good. Not only are we embracing a new morality, but increasingly we are seeking to impose it by force of law.
And what are the consequences of this? Is our permissive-turned-prescriptive approach contributing to a more caring and compassionate society? Not at all. We desperately need more public-spirited people to care for the most needy and vulnerable, yet these are the very people we are currently in danger of turning away when we place unacceptable limits on the exercise of freedom of conscience.
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Licensed to Hug
How child protection policies are poisoning the relationship between the generations and damaging the voluntary sector
Frank Furedi and Jennie Bristow, Civitas 2008
xv + 64pp; £5.00; ISBN 978 1 903386 70 5
There is a growing consensus that, in the name of child protection, something has gone desperately wrong in the relationship between adults and children. Esther Rantzen, the founder of ChildLine has written of the ‘most idiotic rules…being invented and ruthlessly applied’, with ‘common sense and common decency [flying] out of every window’. She describes it as a ‘politically correct monster roaming Britain, stamping on innocent, lovely moments between adults and children’ and contends that ‘there is a difference between alertness and paranoia’ (Daily Mail, 17 July 2008).
Another recent newspaper article reported that local authorities around the country are setting up databases to hold records of accusations made about anyone from teachers and doctors to scout leaders, priests and private tutors. The article went onto say that, ‘Details of the allegation will be kept on the accused’s personnel file until they retire so they can be seen by potential employers, and in a reversal of the basic tenet of English law they will only be deemed innocent if they can prove it’ (Daily Telegraph, 13 September 2008).
Climate of suspicion
In such a climate of suspicion, it is hardly surprising that adults, particularly men, are thinking twice before volunteering to work with children. The consequences of an innocent action being misinterpreted or of a malicious allegation being made are considerable. As Baroness Neuberger noted in a recent paper published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation:
‘It is harder to help others than it used to be, and doing so in any structured way has become fraught with bureaucracy and barriers, so that where altruism still exists it is harder to express.’
It is concerns such as these that prompted Frank Furedi and Jennie Bristow to write a critique of what they call the ‘vetting culture’. They argue that the introduction of Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks for adults working with children has contributed to the fuelling of mistrust and that attitudes of suspicion reinforced by official vetting have made adults afraid to interact with any child not their own.
In the space of just six years, more than one in three adults in the UK has been required to undergo a CRB check. Quite apart from the fact that all record-keeping systems are fallible (with 2,700 people wrongly being labelled as criminals by the CRB in 2006), vetting can only ever take into account what somebody has done in the past; it cannot anticipate people’s behaviour in the future. Furedi and Bristow rightly note that it is highly unlikely that a CRB check would have prevented Ian Huntley from coming into contact with his victims, and they express concern that a reliance on technical measures is taking the place of professional judgment.
Prescriptive policies
Child protection policies are becoming increasingly prescriptive. Not content with scrutinising who is fit to work with children in order to weed out the minority of adults who might pose a threat, they are now legislating for how adults should interact with children in their care. The hysteria surrounding child protection has led to people thinking that certain rules are enshrined in law which are not, and adults are becoming more concerned with covering their backs than meeting children’s needs.
Licensed to Hug calls for a more common-sense approach to adult/child relations, based on the assumption that the vast majority of adults can be relied on to help and support children, and that healhy interaction between the generations enriches children’s lives.
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How child protection becomes perverse and counterproductive
“[T]he fact that we have become so stringent in our requirements about checks on those who work or have any relationship with children has perverse consequences. First, children themselves are encouraged to be suspicious of adults in a way that may be quite unhealthy, both for themselves and for society as a whole. Second, those who are inclined to look after a child or young person who is distressed – who is, for instance, lost or being attacked by older children – will be very nervous of getting involved...
“When pictures of children at nursery school cannot be taken without parental consent, for fear of pornographic use, we have a problem. When we are so suspicious of adults’ motives in wanting to help a child that one cannot help in a school without a thorough and lengthy police check, including one’s own children’s school, we will deter all but the most determined, however legitimate our concern may be…
“It is as if we are trying to create a risk-free society, which we know in our heads and our hearts is impossible. The result is that we restrict and regulate, hoping to make abuse impossible, while knowing we cannot. And, that way, we deter the willing and the kind.”
Baroness Neuberger, Unkind, risk averse and untrusting – if this is today’s society, can we change it? Joseph Rowntree Foundation, September 2008.
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Birth outside marriage: does it really matter?
In 2006, 44 per cent of births in Britain were outside marriage, compared with just nine per cent in 1975. To those who view marriage as just a piece of paper, this increase is of no consequence, but a recent examination of the evidence led John Ermisch, Professor of Economics at the Institute for Social and Economic Research to conclude that the rise in births outside marriage is a real cause for concern.
Drawing on statistics from the British Household Panel Survey, Professor Ermish found that the time couples spend living together in cohabiting unions before either marrying each other or separating is usually very short, with a median duration of about two years. Cohabiting couples who have children are less likely to marry and more likely to break up than childless ones. The statistics reveal that about 65 per cent of cohabiting unions which produce children subsequently dissolve, compared with 40 per cent of childless unions.
While 70 per cent of children born to a married couple will still be with both their birth parents at the age of 16, only 35 per cent of children born into a cohabiting union will live with both their parents throughout their childhood.
Due to the fragility of cohabiting relationships and the length of time that typically elapses before a mother enters a subsequent partnership after cohabitation breakdown, children born into a cohabiting union will spend an average of 4.7 years of their childhood without a second parent in the home. Professor Ermisch notes that children who experience a period in a one-parent family tend to suffer a number of long-term negative consequences in terms of health, education and future prospects.
John Ermisch, ‘Births outside marriage: the real story’, Institute for Social & Economic Research, September 2008.
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The Next Generation: Facing up to the challenge of relational and emotional poverty
An opinion poll undertaken by YouGov for the Centre for Social Justice Early Years Commission suggests that the Prime Minister may have misjudged the public mood when he recently announced his plan to extend state-funded nursery care to two-year-olds. The poll of 2,827 parents found that they want to spend more time with their children during the early years, not less. A separate poll of 2,337 adults, not all of whom were parents, also showed strong support for young children spending time at home with their parents rather than being placed in daycare.
- 77 per cent of parents agreed that a lack of parental support when children are under the age of three contributes to children getting involved in anti-social behaviour later on as teenagers;
- 92 per cent of adults and parents agreed or strongly agreed that the early relationships babies and toddlers build with their parents can strongly influence future aspects of their lives;
- 97 per cent of adults thought the relationship between a mother and baby is very or fairly important to the child’s later development and 96 per cent of adults thought the relationship between a child’s mother and father when they are under 3 is also very or fairly important;
- 88 per cent of parents and 82 per cent of adults thought that more should be done to help parents who wish to stay at home and bring up their children in the early years (this was consistent across socioeconomic groups ABC1 and C2DE), and 97 per cent agreed that the government should do more in this area;
- 81 per cent of parents cited finance as the main factor in pressurising them or their partner to return to work;
- 67 per cent of parents and nearly 70 per cent of adults agreed that parents are encouraged to put their children into daycare and return to work too early;
- A third of adults felt that non-familial daycare (e.g. day nurseries or childminders) was not very well or not at all able to meet all the needs of zero-to- three-year-old children while they were there.
On the basis of research evidence, the Commission concluded that where infants enjoy consistently positive relationships and their attachment needs are adequately met, they are much less likely to experience behavioural problems and distress in later life. Since longitudinal studies following infants from birth to adulthood had found that economic poverty is only one of many factors that can adversely affect emotional, cognitive and social development long term, the Commission was at pains to address what it termed ‘relational and emotional poverty’ as well as economic poverty.1
The report calls for transferrable tax allowances between spouses to provide genuine choice for parents who want to spend more time with their children. It also proposes a change in the rules to allow the use of childcare tax credit to pay unregistered close relatives, and recommends front-loading child benefit, so that a larger proportion of the child’s total entitlement would be available during the first three years. Centre for Social Justice chairman, Iain Duncan Smith commented:
The first few years of a child’s life are the most important…Yet too many parents who wish to nurture their children at home are being forced back to work by financial pressures when their children are still babies. We need to level the financial playing field for parents. The current system pressurises mothers - and it is mostly mothers - into going back to work soon after their children are born. Yet the research shows that the seeds of later unhappiness and antisocial behaviour by young people are often sown by the failure of parents to form a close and loving relationship with their babies. Society is paying a high price for the quick fix of getting mothers back to work so soon after birth… We need a fairer system in which the financial sacrifice of giving up work to look after a baby is offset by extra help from the tax and benefit system.2
Notes:
1. Centre for Social Justice, The Next Generation: A policy report from the Early Years Commission, September 2008.
2. Sunday Times 7 September 2008.
Cartoon: James Haram
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HPV Vaccine – Reasons for caution
This autumn sees the introduction of the government’s human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) programme. Each primary care trust is required to make arrangements to ensure that every girl who will reach the age of 13 by the 31 August 2009 is offered the opportunity to be vaccinated against HPV types 16 and 18, which are responsible for 70 per cent of cases of cervical cancer.1 The scheme has been surrounded by controversy since it was first mooted, and further doubts have been raised in two articles published this summer in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
While the Department of Health confidently asserts that the vaccine will save the lives of an estimated 400 women each year in the UK2, Drs Jane Kim and Sue Goldie from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston suggest that ‘the impact of HPV vaccination on the rate of cervical cancer will not be observable for decades’.3
Uncertainties
It is currently unknown over what period the vaccine will provide protection against HPV types 16 and 18. The NHS factsheet refers to ‘long-term effectiveness’ rather than ‘lifelong effectiveness’ and reasons that since the vaccine has been used in follow-up studies for around six years, it can be relied on to offer protection for at least that long.4 A Question and Answer booklet advises parents that: ‘Studies are in place to measure the long-term protection. If a booster dose of the vaccine is necessary later in life your daughter will be informed about this.’5
In view of the uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of the vaccine over the longer-term, it is impossible to accurately estimate either its impact or its cost-effectiveness. Kim and Goldie calculate that if the vaccine provides immunity from HPV types 16 and 18 for 10 years, the vaccination of pre-adolescent girls will reduce the risk of cervical cancer by only two per cent compared with screening alone. They also highlight other important uncertainties in their article:
- there is a possibility that the HPV types targeted by the vaccine could be replaced with other high-risk types for which the vaccine offers no protection;
- the vaccination programme may have the effect of altering the sexual behaviour of young people or lead to the misconception that screening is no longer necessary.6
Lack of evidence
These concerns are echoed by Dr Charlotte Haug in an editorial in the same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Given that most HPV infections are cleared by the immune system, she questions how the vaccination will affect natural immunity against HPV and with what implications. She also points out that since only limited trials have been conducted on pre-adolescent girls, the impact of the vaccine upon them is currently unknown. Dr Haug further notes that published reports of trials give rise to fears that the suppression of HPV types 16 and 18 by the vaccine might lead to an increase in other HPV types leading to cervical cancer.
Given all the uncertainties about the HPV vaccine, Dr Haug questions the wisdom of policymakers in different parts of the world who have succumbed to pressure to introduce mass vaccination programmes. She asks:
‘How can policymakers make rational choices about the introduction of medical interventions that might do good in the future, but for which evidence is insufficient, especially since we will not know for many years whether the intervention will work or — in the worst case — do harm?…
‘With so many essential questions still unanswered, there is good reason to be cautious about introducing large-scale vaccination programs. Instead, we should concentrate on finding more solid answers through research rather than base consequential and costly decisions on yet unproven assumptions.’7
A good use of public money?
In the UK, questions are being raised about whether the HPV vaccination programme is a good use of public money. The government has not disclosed the cost of the programme on the basis that it is commercially sensitive information, but it is thought to be well in excess of £100 million. Dr Angela Raffle, a public health consultant, attempted to put the issue in perspective when she observed that for every million people, 14 women a year will die from cervical cancer, while 200 people will die of lung cancer and 1,500 will die of heart disease. Since the HPV vaccine is an expensive vaccine that, at very best, will make a small extra inroad into a disease that is already very uncommon, Dr Raffle considered that it is probably not the best use of NHS resources.8
Notes
1. National Health Service, England, The Human Papillomavirus Immunisation Programme Directions 2008.
2. Department of Health memo from the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Nursing Officer and the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, 2 May 2008.
3. Kim JJ, Goldie SJ, Health and economic implications of HPV vaccination in the United States. N Engl J Med 2008;359:821-32.
4. NHS, the human papillomavirus vaccine: The virus, the diseases and the new HPV vaccine, May 2008.
5. NHS, The New HPV Vaccine: A Q&A sheet for 12- to 13-year-old girls and their parents on the new HPV Vaccination.
6. Kim, Goldie, op. cit.
7. Haug CJ, Human Papillomavirus Vaccination – Reasons for Caution, N Engl J Med 2008;359:861-62.
8. Sunday Times, 20 July 2008.
The Family Education Trust leaflet,
HPV and You, gives accurate and
up-to-date information about HPV.
Sample copies are available on
request. Prices for multiple copies
are: £2.25 for 10, £4.00 for 25,
£6.50 for 50, and £12.50 for 100
(inc p&p).
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The HPV vaccine: Questions and Answers for parents
When will my daughter be offered the HPV vaccine?
The vaccine will be offered to all girls who celebrate their 13th birthday in the academic year ending 31 August (school year 8). As part of its ‘catch-up’ programme, young women born between 1 September 1990 and 31 August 1991 will also be offered the vaccination during the 2008/09 academic year.
Is it compulsory?
No. You will be asked to sign a consent form, but you are free to withhold consent. The NHS consent form template, which primary care trusts may choose to use or adapt, suggests ‘it would be helpful’ if you gave your reasons for declining the vaccine. However, you are under no obligation to state any reason for withholding consent.
Is there any way my daughter could have the vaccine without my knowledge?
Girls aged over 16 are legally able to consent for themselves, but if your child is under 16 and you withhold consent, it is quite possible that your daughter could be given the vaccine against your wishes. The Department of Health states that parental consent is not required for girls under 16 who demonstrate ‘Gillick competence’ (i.e. they show sufficient understanding and intelligence to enable them to understand fully what is involved). However, the guidance goes onto say: ‘For girls who are Gillick competent, it is still good practice to involve the girl’s family in the decision-making process, taking into account her right to confidentiality.’a
The Question and Answer sheet for parents of 12-13 year-old girls states: ‘The decision is legally hers as long as she understands the issues in giving consent but it is unlikely the injection will be given without your consent.’b However, the leaflet for 12-13 year-olds is more ominous:
‘If your parents are not sure that you should have the vaccination you should still return the form and speak to your nurse, doctor or other healthcare professional. Having the vaccination now will help protect you against the most common causes of cervical cancer for many years.’c
Does my child’s school have to take part in the scheme?
No. The governors of St Monica’s High School in Prestwich, Manchester have declined to take part in the scheme. They considered that a school is not an appropriate setting for addressing matters of public health and suggested that parents should decide for themselves whether to give their daughters the vaccination in consultation with their family doctor.d
Why is my daughter being offered this vaccine at the age of 12 or 13 when the age of consent is 16?
The government’s answer is that since the virus that causes cervical cancer is spread by being sexually intimate with someone who has the virus, the vaccine needs to be given to girls before they become sexually active.e However, the majority of girls are not sexually active before the age of 16 and are therefore not at risk of being infected with the HPV types that can lead to cervical cancer.
Is it true that the HPV vaccine provides my daughter with ‘the best protection’ against the HPV types that can lead to cervical cancer?
No. The vaccine offers protection against HPV types 16 and 18 that give rise to 70 per cent of cases of cervical cancer. There are other HPV types that can lead to cervical cancer that are not covered by the vaccine. The best protection is found in abstaining from sexual intimacy or keeping sex within a lifelong mutually faithful union between a husband and wife.
Notes
a. Department of Health, Introduction of human papillomavirus vaccine into the national immunisation programme: guidance on programme implementation.
b. NHS, The New HPV Vaccine: A Q&A sheet for 12- to 13-year-old girls and their parents on the new HPV Vaccination.
c. NHS, Leaflet for 12-13 year-olds – All you need to know about the new HPV vaccine that protects against the commonest causes of cervical cancer.
d. Times, 25 September 2008.
e. NHS, The New HPV Vaccine, op. cit.
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Hooked: New science on how casual sex is affecting our children
Joe S McIlhaney and Freda McKissic Bush, Northfield Publishing, 2008, 163pp
ISBN 978-0-8024-5060-9, US$17.99
While the focus of governments and health experts has tended to be limited to two ‘risks’ associated with sexual activity among young people: pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, this book highlights a third risk. The emotional and psychological impact of casual sex cannot be guarded against by any contraceptive and has not received the attention that it merits.
The authors, both obstetrician-gynaecologists, contend that our make-up is not limited to satisfying appetites and that we cannot dissociate sexual activity from the rest of what we are as human beings. They point to some striking research findings:
- sexually active adolescents are more likely to suffer from depression than those who abstain;
- sexually active teenage girls are three times and sexually active teenage boys seven times more likely to have attempted suicide;
- those who are sexually active prior to marriage are more likely to divorce than those who abstain before marriage;
- married couples report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than unmarried individuals with multiple sexual partners.
A major section of the book is devoted to a review of neuro-scientific research suggesting that sex is more than a momentary physical act and produces powerful changes in the brain. Research shows that the part of the brain that controls the ability to make fully mature judgments and decisions is not fully mature until the mid-20s. Since, left to themselves, young people will often make poor decisions, the authors argue that caring parents and other adults must provide structure, guidance and discipline so that young people are not left at the mercy of the media, pop culture and their peers.
Providing young people with information so that they can make ‘informed choices’ has become something of a mantra among sex education lobbyists. In the view of the authors of this book, however, such a position is totally inadequate. Young people need guidance as well as facts if they are to make wise decisions, and adult guidance is needed for far longer than modern societies have appreciated.
It has become customary to play down the feelings of shame and regret, and the physical repercussions of casual sex. The authors refer to evidence that when the ‘sex/bonding/breaking-up’ cycle is repeated a few or many times – even when the bonding was short-lived – damage is done to the important, built-in ability to develop significant and meaningful connection to other human beings’.
One of the refreshing emphases of this book is its refusal to absolve people of personal responsibility for their behaviour. We cannot blame our conduct on our brains, since neuroscience contradicts the ‘evolutionary theory of sexuality’ that human beings are conditioned to be promiscuous. As the authors put it:
‘The human brain is not just a cold mechanical computer, processing information, but a living organ shaped by love, emotion and kindness, as well as by trauma, hurt and insult.’
We are indebted to them for presenting in accessible format the scientific evidence to demonstrate that keeping sex within a lifelong union between a husband and wife is the healthiest way to live – both physically and emotionally.
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Sex education lobby fights to remove parents from the driving seat and put the state in their place
Since the government launched its review of sex and relationship (SRE) delivery in February (see Bulletin 131) we have witnessed a concerted campaign from the sex education lobby. Over the summer months, scarcely a week went by without renewed calls from one group or another demanding compulsory sex education for all children from the very beginning of primary school.
- In early July, the fpa (formerly the Family Planning Association) and Brook attracted prominent press and media coverage without even so much as a press release;
- Delegates at the British Medical Association conference supported a motion calling for mandatory sex education for all school children, delivered by specialist teachers ‘to a nationally standardised curriculum’, incorporating contraception and ‘how it may be accessed’, beginning ‘at primary school entry’;
- The Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group published a report recommending compulsory sex education in all schools and the removal of any restriction on advertising condoms on television before the watershed;
- This was followed by a call from the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV to make Personal, Social Health and Economic Education (PSHE) and all elements of SRE a statutory subject at all key stages;
- The House of Lords debated an amendment to the Education and Skills Bill aimed at making PSHE, incorporating sex education, a statutory part of the curriculum, though it did not proceed to a vote;
- In August, a cross-party group of MPs, together with leading sex education advocate Gill Frances and the chief executive of the UK Youth Parliament wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph calling for compulsory sex education for all children;
- BBC Radio 5 Live launched an online sex education questionnaire which was loaded with so many presuppositions that it was almost impossible to respond to;
- Channel 4 launched a six-part Sex Education Show containing explicit sexual content, shown before the watershed;
- The fpa ensured that primary school sex education remained in the news by releasing a comic for six year-olds designed to teach them the names of intimate body parts.
In our submission to the government’s review group and in speaking to the press and media, Family Education Trust has stressed that schools should be encouraged to ensure that:
- parents are fully involved in developing the school’s policy;
- the subject is taught within a clear moral context;
- the consequences of sexual activity are honestly faced; and
- the positive benefits of saving sexual intimacy for marriage are clearly presented.
In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph, the Trust’s director, Norman Wells, observed that schools are currently required to develop their SRE policies in close consultation with parents, and to be sensitive to parental concerns. He argued:
‘Making SRE statutory would have the effect of removing discretion from governing bodies and imposing government-approved sex education on every child in every school without reference to parents at all. In short, the aim is to take parents out of the driving seat and to put the state in their place.
‘In view of the considerable controversy that surrounds the teaching of such a sensitive area, it is vital that schools should remain accountable to parents in the development and review of SRE policies in order to ensure that policies reflect parents' wishes and the culture of the community the school serves.’
At the time of writing, the review group’s report is still awaited, but Jim Knight, the Minister overseeing the government’s review, has given assurances that there will be ‘a full public consultation on any substantive recommendations made by the steering group…before decisions about implementation of the group’s recommendations are taken’.
Family Education Trust’s submission to the sex and relationship education review is available online at http://www.famyouth.org.uk/pdfs/SREreview.pdf
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Teenage Pregnancy Unit admits statistical error
The Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) has removed an article from its website after Family Education Trust questioned the accuracy of its claims about teenage pregnancy rates in the UK compared with other parts of Europe. The oft-cited article had claimed that:
‘In the 1970s, Britain had similar teenage pregnancy rates to the rest of Europe. But while other countries got theirs down in the 1980s and 1990s, Britain’s rate stayed high.’
It is a striking claim and has frequently been quoted by the sex education lobby, journalists, MPs and even ministers, yet it has no foundation in fact. When we asked the Teenage Pregnancy Unit (TPU) for the figures to substantiate the claim, we were initially referred to a graph in the July 2006 guidance to local authorities and primary care trusts. However, the graph did not answer our question for three reasons:
(i) it showed birth rates, not conception (teenage pregnancy) rates;
(ii) it began with 1980 and so did not offer a comparison of rates in the 1970s; and
(iii) it did not show Britain with ‘similar’ rates to the ‘rest of Europe’, but with markedly higher rates than the other European countries shown.
We put this to the TPU and, almost seven weeks later, they finally conceded that the claim made on the DCSF website was in fact inaccurate and the article was subsequently removed.
In a Channel 4 programme last year, Davina McCall alleged:
‘Twenty years ago, Holland had a very bad teenage pregnancy rate and they decided to take the matter very seriously. Their government showed great leadership and made [SRE] compulsory… And they have seen, as statistics show, fantastic results.’
However, the reality has nothing in common with the rhetoric. There is no evidence at all that the difference between teenage conception rates in the Netherlands and the UK has anything to do with sex education. The Netherlands has historically had much lower teenage conception rates than the UK and, as Joost van Loon has shown in Deconstructing the Dutch Utopia, sex education in the Netherlands is no more consistent than it is in the UK. There is no standardised curriculum for sex education, and schools have a considerable degree of autonomy, with the result that there is a very wide divergence of approaches being adopted.
The TPU has been unable to provide figures for teenage conceptions in 1970 for the simple reason that all available international comparisons relate to under-20 birth rates, and not conception rates. But since birth rates do not reveal anything about trends in abortion rates, they only tell half the story.
In view of the incomplete data available, we should be very cautious about the claims being made in relation to international comparisons of teenage pregnancy rates, especially when they are being used to advance a policy agenda that will have a direct impact on all children and young people in the population.
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Royal Mail honours leading eugenicist
The Royal Mail has insisted that it will go ahead with its controversial plan to include Marie Stopes in its ‘Women of Distinction’ new issue this autumn. The advance publicity states that: ‘Royal Mail proudly presents these stamps as a tribute to six women who defied discrimination’ and ‘paved the way to the more equal society we enjoy today’. However, Marie Stopes would be more accurately described as a champion of inequality who did not so much defy discrimination as promote it. She was a racist and eugenicist whose primary interest in birth control lay not in assisting couples to space their children, but in the prevention of births to groups in society considered to be undesirable. In her book, Radiant Motherhood, she wrote:
‘Society allows the diseased, the racially negligent, the thriftless, the careless, the feeble minded, the very lowest and worst members of the community to produce innumerable tens of thousands of stunted, warped, inferior infants . . . a large proportion of these are doomed from their very physical inheritance to be at best but partly self-supporting, and thus to drain the resources of those classes above them who have a sense of responsibility. The better classes, freed from the cost of institutions, hospitals, prisons and so on, principally filled by the inferior racial stock, would be able to afford to enlarge their own families.’
As an answer to this perceived problem she advocated: ‘The sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood to be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory.’1 In an article in the Independent, Dominic Lawson described Marie Stopes as:
‘the leading British eugenicist of her day – indeed, she left the great bulk of her fortune to the Eugenics Society, a body that had campaigned for “racial purity”. It is commonly said that many enlightened folk in the first part of the last century supported the compulsory sterilisation of “inferior types” and that we shouldn’t judge them by our own standards – having the historical record of the Nazis’ practical interpretation of these theories. Stopes, however, was regarded as anti-Semitic even by some other pioneers of the British birth-control movement: understandably so, since she attended the Nazis’ Berlin congress on “population science” in 1935, and subsequently sent a volume of love poems to the Fuhrer.
‘Marie Stopes applied her philosophy unflinchingly to her own family. She cut her son Harry out of her will for marrying a short-sighted woman called Mary Barnes Wallis… Stopes wrote: “She has an inherited disease of the eyes which not only makes her wear hideous glasses so that it is horrid to look at her, but the awful curse will carry on and I have the horror of our line being so contaminated and little children with the misery of glasses... Mary and Harry are quite callous about both the wrong to their children, the wrong to my family and the eugenic crime.”’2
However, Royal Mail has dismissed such concerns. In a letter to the Family Education Trust the Chairman’s office stated that:
‘The women selected were chosen on the basis that through their pioneering efforts they achieved significant changes to society as a whole, achieving both power and influence in the traditionally male areas of politics, medicine and social reform, laying the foundations for future generations to come…
‘Marie Stopes was chosen solely for her work on the family planning movement. Please be assured that Royal Mail does not share her personal views and no offence was intended by using her on our stamps… There are no plans to remove this stamp and the issue will run as planned.’3
Notes:
1. Marie Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, London, 1920, cited by Valerie Riches, Sex Education or Indoctrination? Family Education Trust, 2004.
2. Dominic Lawson, Independent, 17 September 2008.
3. Letter from the Chairman’s Office, Royal Mail to Family Education Trust, 23 September 2008.
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Governments and Marriage Education Policy
Perspectives from the UK, Australia and the US
Elizabeth van Acker, Palgrave MacMillan 2008, xii + 249pp,
ISBN 978-0-230-00337-8, £50.00
In this comparative study of marriage and relationship support in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, Elizabeth van Acker considers whether governments can or should intervene in the realm of marriage education and support. She pinpoints three reasons why governments have, to varying degrees and in different ways, sought to pursue policy measures in this area: economic (in view of the high financial, legal and social costs of divorce), health (it is in the public interest to keep couples together since a stable marriage contributes to good health outcomes for both adults and children), and moral (to uphold traditional family values).
The growth of a wedding industry devoted to planning the ‘perfect’ wedding day has had the effect of creating an over-romanticised view of marriage and deflected the attention of couples away from the true nature of the commitment involved. As Dr van Acker observes, popular culture does not encourage couples to give serious thought to how they will adapt to the daily realities of living together and negotiate domestic duties and the raising of children ‘til death us do part’. This is cited as one of the many challenges those involved in providing marriage education are seeking to address.
The study examines each of the three countries in turn, offering an historical and political overview, before considering the varying perspectives of policy makers, research organisations and religious groups with regard to marriage and relationship support. In the chapter on the United Kingdom, Dr van Acker traces the move away from government support for marriage in favour of an entrenched focus on children irrespective of family structure. She contrasts the pro-marriage stance of the Bristol Community Family Trust and the Social Justice Policy Group with current government policy, backed by the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Family and Parenting Institute, which has little interest in marriage and whether children are brought up by two parents or one.
The Australian government is now devoting more resources to supporting couples at the point of separation rather than offering help at an earlier stage, while the United States is the most active of the three countries in seeking to promote and support stable marriages. For the past decade, its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programme has maintained that ‘marriage is the essential foundation of a successful society’. Dr van Acker provides a brief overview of the faith and community initiatives providing marriage education and support and considers the opposition to marriage promotion from progressives, feminists, libertarians and homosexuals.
It is not necessary to agree with all the author’s conclusions to profit from what is a stimulating and wide-ranging discussion of the issues surrounding government support for marriage education.
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UN children’s rights committee persists in seeking to impose radical social agenda on UK
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has consistently taken liberties with the text of the Convention and its latest report on the UK is no exception. The Committee, which has gained a reputation for adopting extreme interpretations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is once again seeking to impose its own view on the discipline of children by demanding that the UK government introduces legislation that would criminalise parents for the mildest of smacks.
In a 21-page report on the UK, issued on 3 October, the Committee recommends that the government ‘prohibit as a matter of priority all corporal punishment in the family, including through the repeal of all legal defences’.
However, in its determination to force all parents to conform to its own unproven philosophy of parenting, the Committee has strayed way beyond the bounds of any natural reading of the Convention. It never crossed the minds of the original framers of the Convention to make it a criminal offence for parents to employ a moderate disciplinary smack; and very few governments would have signed up to the Convention had it been put to them that they would subsequently be required to introduce such a draconian measure.
The truth is that present legislation throughout the UK is entirely compatible with the requirement of the Convention that states protect children ‘from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse’ (Article 19). All such treatment is already prohibited by law. As far as moderate parental discipline that causes no injury is concerned, the Convention is completely silent.
There is also a strange anomaly in the report in that at the same time as calling for an absolute ban on all physical correction of children, the UN Committee is pressing for a considerable rise in the minimum age for criminal responsibility. It seems that in one breath they want children to be treated exactly the same as adults, while in the next breath they want them to be treated differently. They want children to have adult rights but not adult responsibilities.
Extreme and inconsistent
The extreme and inconsistent views of the Committee give rise to serious concern about its proposal that the Convention should be incorporated into UK law. The Convention itself is framed in very broad terms, yet the Committee on the Rights of the Child presumes to give a definitive interpretation of its meaning and then reserves the right to change that interpretation at whim. It needs to be kept in mind that the members of this Committee are unrepresentative and unaccountable, and their interpretations are not binding.
Family relationships are very personal and individual matters, and each family is shaped and influenced by social, cultural, religious and philosophical factors which are not common to every other family. Values and standards will therefore differ from family to family and this will be reflected in the way children are brought up. To introduce the language of ‘rights’ into family relationships runs the risk of engendering a spirit of conflict and turning parents against their children and children against their parents which can be very damaging.
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GROWING UP …GROWING WISE @ HOME
£10.00 from Lovewise, 14 Portland Terrace, Jesmond, Tyne & Wear NE2 1QQ Tel: 0191 281 3636. Web: http://www.lovewise.org.uk
Primary schools are increasingly succumbing to pressure to introduce sex and relationship education of a type that fails to have regard to any moral principles. As a result, growing numbers of parents are withdrawing their children from school sex education classes and looking for resources that they can use with their children at home in the confidence that they will promote modesty and present marriage as the proper context for sexual intimacy. It is in part to meet this need that Lovewise have developed Growing Up …Growing Wise@ home.
Written by three medical doctors, it consists of a series of Powerpoint slides with accompanying notes for use by parents and is divided into four parts: (i) Introducing puberty; (ii) Puberty and girls; (iii) Puberty and boys; (iv) Love and marriage. The material is presented in a modest and restrained way in terms of both the language and images used, and everything is set within a Christian framework. The resource is intended to be used by parents with their child, and not unsupervised.
Sexual intimacy is presented in terms of self-giving rather than of self-gratification and placed firmly in the context of a lifelong marriage. The material is very clear that sex follows after leaving father and mother and being united in marriage. Young people are warned not to get carried away by their emotions: ‘Emotions change very quickly and it can be hard to think sensibly when your feelings run high.’ The sections on conception and birth are handled sensitively and convey a sense of awe and wonder.
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