Melanie Phillips: "Generations of family disintegration in turn are unravelling the fundamentals of civilised human behaviour."

Then this "unravelling" began prior to the 1960s and the Sexual Revolution, Feminism, etc?

Melanie Phillips: "Committed fathers are crucial to their children’s emotional development. As a result of the incalculable irresponsibility of our elites, however, fathers have been seen for the past three decades as expendable and disposable."

This statement is non-sensical. Who are these "elites" and how are they responsible for reversing a seemingly fundamental principle, namely the importance of fatherhood?

Melanie Phillips: "Lone parenthood stopped being a source of shame and turned instead into a woman’s inalienable right. The state has provided more and more inducements to women — through child benefit, council flats and other welfare provision — to have children without committed fathers."

So single motherhood is a benefit for women in welfare states? Since when is single motherhood a right: it has and remains an affliction, alleviated slightly by government programmes and policies that cannot equalize the mental, emotional, social and financial hardship imposed on single mothers by their lack of partners. "Lone parenthood" was only a "source of shame" for social reasons connected with the woman's relationship status more than her parenthood: she was either unmarried with child, divorced, widowed or had been abandoned by her husband. Furthermore, Ms. Phillips implies that single mothers deliberately choose men that will not commit themselves to their children, a ridiculous statement that she does not and in fact cannot qualify.

Melanie Phillips: "This has produced generations of women-only households, where emotionally needy girls so often become hopelessly inadequate mothers who abuse and neglect their own children — who, in turn, perpetuate the destructive pattern. This is culturally nothing less than suicidal. A society reproduces itself by nurturing and protecting its young. If it abuses and harms its children instead, it will end up abusing and harming itself."

More non-sensical and unqualified opinions. Nowhere do I see any statements pertaining to male responsibility for their children. The lack of committment to fatherhood on the part of many fathers has given rise to single motherhood throughout recorded history, which only relatively recently has been ameliorated by the welfare state. Rather, Ms. Phillips blames women and the government. Given this conclusion, I would find it interesting what Ms. Phillips thought of the following scenario: Ms. Phillips, aged 18 is airlifted to Somalia (present-day) and dropped naked from a helicopter into Mogadishu. Not only does Somalia have no functioning government, but it is a patriarchal society, so despite the brutality of her impregnating, Ms. Phillips is likely to have a "committed" male partner, husband and father for her child at the end of it, no?

"This has produced generations of women-only households, where emotionally needy girls so often become hopelessly inadequate mothers who abuse and neglect their own children — who, in turn, perpetuate the destructive pattern."

I would be very interested in the scientific study that underpins this “theory”. Does this apply only to self-chosen one-parent households, or also to the women and children left behind by the fallen in the Great Battle against Islam.

Of course, I know she is a creationist. That doesn’t mean I’ll accept “It’s written in the Bible” as scientific proof… The "perpetuation of the pattern has some evolutionist undertone in it, but that's probably totaly unintended.

And this article by Melanie Phillips from 26 April 2007 about how modern welfarism is destroying British society is also well worth a read.