Sir – The recently published report on the damage done to children by selfish parents in particular, and society in general, paints a bleak – albeit predictable picture – of British social habits today.
British society has, quite simply, lost the plot, with its increasing rejection of marriage, the church, and traditional family life, as evidenced by the lemming-like pursuit of material possessions and superficial 'success'. We have become a society where the title 'housewife and mother' is now regarded almost as an insult, and where two million tots and pre-school age children, spend far more of their waking hours, Monday to Friday, with paid strangers rather than their parent(s).
Isn't one of the joys of becoming a parent that you get to bring your children up in those crucially important first five years when their life values, which will remain with them to their grave, are indelibly ingrained in their pysche. Is that a task to be delegated to paid help, rather than parents?
The fatuous phrase 'quality time', is an adult concept which has come into popular usage in order to assuage the troubled consciences of those who spend little time with their offspring. To children, all time spent with loving, caring parents, is quality time and, in terms of their emotional development, worth infinitely more than a shed-load of Playstations, X Boxes, i-pods and cutting-edge technology mobile phones.
The proliferation of one parent families, modern society's equivalent of a two-legged stool, has done much to cripple the secure and balanced traditional family upbringing of children, which has served our society so well for centuries, and can lead to immeasurable emotional stress in young children, which invariably manifests itself in a variety of serious social problems, later in their lives.
Unless we return to the basics of the nuclear family, in which the happiness of children comes first and foremost, our society will continue to deteriorate at warp speed, as today's youngsters replicate their upbringing with their own children. It's a prospect which should frighten us all.
Tony Thorn, Blackthorne Close, Bordon