Joanna Bogle: Fatherless youths run riot

From MercatorNet:

No structure to life, no moral values, no father, little or no ability to read and write, a passion for consumer goods fuelled by an upbringing focused on the fulfilment of immediate needs – all this plus physical strength, ferocious anger, and commitment to a strong gang – it all makes rioting a good way to spend a summer evening.

And the main things that have blighted the lives of the young thugs and thieves who have been burning shops and stealing goods in Britain’s towns and cities and suburbs have been strongly promoted by official policies in recent decades.

Promotion of fatherless families has become the politically-correct stance in social policy. Even to suggest that children flourish when they have a father and mother married to one another and committed to family life, has been to be the object of sneering and denigration. It has been impossible a social worker or teacher to promote marriage as beneficial: to do so would be to court reprimands and face a blocked career or even possible dismissal.

The facts on the collapse of family life are widely available, and they are frightening: Since the 1960s, the percentage of children born out of marriage has risen from 5 per cent to over 40 per cent.

[. . .]

It really won’t do to pretend that all of this is has nothing to do with the boys and girls who have been setting fire to shops and homes, and gleefully grabbing consumer goods from shelves and gloating over their thieving.

[. . .]

If we want to try to rebuild a sane society, where burning shops and attacking people in the street is not considered a fun way to spend a summer evening, we must start by a tacit acceptance that social policies have got to change.

One problem I have with this is that there is not enough said about the obvious- to me- influence of a dehumanizing consumerism on the thinking and values of the rioters. A second quibble is that many of the looters do come from comfortably middle-class homes, although I am unsure whether these are two-parent homes. Still, an engaging and thoughtful article, and there is much to agree with here.

Photo montage by The Daily Telegraph