There are, the government estimates, 120,000 ‘troubled families’ living on the edge of pauperism, crime & immorality who cost the taxpayer about £9 billion a year.
The dark underbelly of unemployment, truancy, family breakdown & poverty that threatens the rest of society, these problem families are characterised by their inability to improve their lot by their own ends, the parents often of subnormal, though not deficient, mentality & temperamental instability reflecting itself in indiscipline in the home.
Their fecklessness often results in early marriages & large families, many of whom exist in wretched conditions. Clearly, they will reproduce at an increasing rate unless the process is checked.
The underclass is where failings in education, health, welfare & crime policy meet. Parts of society are not cracked but smashed to bits.
In some quarters sterilisation has been suggested, but that is probably repugnant to the general sense of the country. Nor do these people always benefit from teaching them the ordinary methods of contraception.
Can the country afford to carry the burden of these families? On the other hand, can it afford to increase expenditure on social services? The cost of education & health is fantastic, but the existence of social problem families is a challenge to society. More nursery schools, better housing conditions, & family limitation are essential in meeting this challenge.
The prime minister must make this the defining mission of his time in power instead of leaving it to local councils to decide what to do. Something more than local action is required; better housing conditions are essential, & a big increase in the provision of nursery schools is an important long term policy.
With apologies to Rachel Sylvester, that is my mashup of her column in yesterday’s Times with a news report which was published in the same paper.
The two items are separated by almost 60 years – the first reporting an address to a conference of Educational Associations held in London in January 1953 given by Mr CG Tomlinson, recently organising secretary of the Problem Families Committee of the Eugenics Society.
A massive effort went into slum clearance & providing better housing conditions.
The pill, long-acting contraceptives, sterilisation & legal abortion have been added to the methods of ‘ordinary contraception’ which were available in 1953.
Much effort & resources have been put into affordable childcare & nursery provision.
But is the number of problem families now smaller than it was?
Today’s 120,000 families is, proportionately, not many out of a population which has grown to 27 million households, but would have presented a much larger proportion of the 16 million or so in 1953. And each family would of course have been much larger, since even with the recent flows of net inward migration the population has not grown nearly as fast as the number of households able to be accommodated in the improved stock.
The problem families have not all been magicked away, even though people don't marry young these days.
