Why the Left Hates Families by Melanie Phillips: British Lefty Turned Truth-Seeker
Read this entire MUST READ Article: Why the Left Hates Families
A former progressive says…
From Zelda West-Meads of the marriage guidance counsellors Relate, I learned that, though many single mothers did a heroic job, it was the absence of the father that did such terrible damage to their children. So I described how fathers were vital to the emotional health of children.
Fatherless families were also at least partly responsible for a national breakdown in authority and rising levels of crime.
My view was backed in 1992 when three influential social scientists with impeccable Left-wing pedigrees produced a damning report.
From their research, they concluded that children in fractured families tend to suffer more ill-health, do less well at school, are more likely to be unemployed, more prone to criminal behaviour and to repeat as adults the same cycle of unstable parenting.
But instead of welcoming this analysis as identifying a real problem, the Left turned on the authors, branding them as evil Right-wingers for being ‘against single mothers’…
Having experienced how the absence of proper fathering could screw up a child for life, I believed I was doing no more than stating the obvious when I deplored the explosion of lone parenting, female-headed households and mass fatherlessness.
But, to my amazement, at The Guardian, I found that over this and many other issues, I was branded as reactionary, authoritarian and, of course, Right-wing.
The result was social ostracism. One of the mentors I had looked up to — a thoughtful person, independent-minded and intellectually curious, or so I had thought — simply walked off rather than talk to me about these issues.
All this was very painful. I was accosted angrily by someone I had previously thought of as a friend.
‘How can you possibly say that family breakdown hurts children?’ he spat out at me.
‘The worst damage to a child is always done by the traditional nuclear family!’
I could only gaze at him, defeated by the stupendous shallowness of such an attitude.
The ones who were the most aggressive and offended, I noticed, were those who had walked out on their families or were cheating on their spouses.[Emphasis added. –rhl] This revealed another sad truth about the Left. What matters to them above all is that they are seen to be virtuous and compassionate. They simply cannot deal with the possibility that they might not be. [Emphasis added. –rhl]
They deal with any such suggestion not by facing up to any harm they may be doing, but by shutting down the argument altogether.
That’s because the banner behind which they march is not altruism, as they kid themselves. It is narcissism. [Emphasis added. –rhl]
It was increasingly clear that the Left, the movement whose goal was to create a better society, had lost the moral plot — and not just over the family. It embraced the doctrine that all lifestyles were equal and none could be deemed to be better than any other.
Read this entire MUST READ Article: Why the Left Hates Families
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