Social policy should help kids flourish

For broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 26 Jan 2014.

“Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioural problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”

Not Senator Cory Bernardi, but President Obama in 2008.

As Paul Sheehan observed in The Sydney Morning Herald, quoting Senator Bernardi,

Social policy should continue to advocate for the best possible social environment for children. More often than not, as studies have shown, that environment is a family with a child’s married biological mother and father. Of course, there will always be exceptions … but it should not deter society as a whole from encouraging its citizens to pursue the traditional family model.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.