Patrick Diamond, Sunder Katwala, Meg Munn

Children and families are now more central to public debate than for many generations. This is not always to the good. Fathers in Batman suits and ferocious media wars over working mothers often generate more heat than light. But children have also moved rapidly up the public policy agenda during Labour's first two terms in office. Since 1997, the Government has appointed the first ever Children's Minister, committed a larger share of public expenditure to children's services than any other post-war government, and made its famous pledge to eradicate child poverty by 2020. 'Education, education, education' has always been central to Labour's public service reform programme and it is now widely recognised that 'investing early' is essential to any meaningful anti-poverty strategy. It has reached the point where the Conservatives have been forced to take the agenda seriously and have begun to outline their own proposals—giving the public the opportunity to examine and choose from what will be on offer at the forthcoming General Election.

This pamphlet argues that Labour can make children and families central to its public and political narrative in the way that individualism was central to Thatcherism. A modern centre-left can stake its claim to govern for the future—setting out more clearly what a 'Labour Britain' looks like after an extended period in government. We can explain what it is we want to change, and how Britain can be transformed in ways that actually mean something to millions of our fellow citizens.

The animating claim of Thatcherism was that of the hard-pressed individual being liberated from the oppressive hand of big government, legitimizing a politics of 'rolling back the state'. This was encapsulated by specific policies during the 1980s—the 'right to buy', privatization of public utilities and the promise of lower taxes (though in practice the tax take as a share of GDP rose). Thatcherism adopted a political approach based on acquisitive material individualism that 'Thatcher's children' were seen to encapsulate.

The task for Labour is to bring its policies for children and families together coherently—from addressing child poverty to ensuring new rights for children, from SureStart to effective intervention against neglect or abuse—illuminating its social democratic vision while establishing the role of enabling government in achieving this. We can shift the boundaries of political argument decisively so as to embed a new progressive consensus about the priorities and scope of government, forging a new 'common sense' for our times. This could ensure an enduring institutional and ideological legacy for Labour based on the 'opportunity society' that no future government can sweep away.

This is a highly ambitious project for a progressive party. There are hurdles and risks in undertaking it. It will require greater confidence in our ability to reshape the terms of political argument and the deeper cultural debates underlying them. As the chapters in this collection show, this requires us to address tricky moral issues about the status of the public and private realms, including the legitimacy of the state as an instrument of moral authority in the lives of children and families. There are also contentious questions about where to draw the boundaries between the state and the market, and the correct priorities for public spending.

Life chances and the politics of inequality

The 'early years' agenda has risen to prominence because of the increasing weight of evidence about its positive impact in promoting more equal life-chances. Research from US programmes shows that for every dollar invested in early years provision, $7 is saved in lower crime, better jobs and higher educational outcomes. Gosta Esping-Andersen argues that social mobility in Scandinavia is higher and social inheritance lower than Britain because for decades these countries have enjoyed universal day-care for pre-school and school-age children.(1)

The centre-left must build a child-friendly politics on the basis of its egalitarian values—based not on crude equality of outcome, but on strong equality of opportunity. A contemporary social democratic ideology cannot have moral legitimacy unless in the background it has a commitment to the equal worth of every individual. Our moral claim is that all children deserve an equal chance in life.

Louise Bamfield, lead researcher on the Fabian Society's Life Chances and Child Poverty Commission, sets out why 'Life Chances' provides the left with a resonant appeal for tackling inequality. The progress made in the five years since the target of reducing child poverty was set in 1999 has been impressive—with over 700,000 children lifted out of poverty by 2003-04. But this is the first stage, and it will become more challenging as we get to the 'hardest to reach' groups. We need a coalition of public support to secure sustained investment to tackle child poverty. The old division between the 'deserving' and the 'undeserving' poor has to be left behind if we are to ensure that every child matters.

On the global stage, public campaigns to reduce international debt and end global poverty have been strikingly successful in mobilizing a broad and deep coalition. This is set to play a crucial role in putting concerted pressure on the G8 and other governments to commit the resources necessary to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Nowhere is this global civil society campaign stronger than in Britain. Yet by contrast, there has been no public campaign of equal scale or ambition capable of ending child poverty in this generation.

Public spending and the role of the state

To govern is to choose. Giving priority to children and families within existing fiscal limits involves trade-offs and prioritization. In a fast-changing 'knowledge economy', the socialization of children and young people as thriving workers and citizens demands far greater reserves of parental and institutional support than ever before. If there was ever an era when families needed strong social support, it is this. Yet achieving a consensus on the left about the priorities for public investment requires an open debate about the fundamental purpose of progressive politics.

Labour has to make an explicit case for public services, public investment and a more expansive public realm. We have to make clear how this is distinct from the caricature of the top-down corporatist state of the past. Just as the modern left recognises the limits of the market in the equitable distribution of goods and services, so we have to recognise the limits of the centralised, bureaucratic state.

Yet there is a clear opportunity here for progressive politics. The 'laissez-faire right' will face a credibility gap. However much it likes to flaunt its 'pro-family' credentials, the New Right is ideologically incapable of offering concrete measures to support hard-pressed families in their daily lives.

The centre-left, however, faces hurdles of its own. Dealing with the stresses of work and family life is seen as a personal dilemma: the issues have been 'privatised' and the basic idea that we can make collective choices about the society we want is less fashionable. Sally Prentice examines what these issues mean for the provision of childcare. A universal childcare guarantee provides a 'new frontier' for the universal welfare state. It is as ambitious as the Attlee Government's commitment to universal secondary education. But with an anticipated cost of £13.5 billion, this will require both sustained public investment and a new consensus on a fair system for sharing the costs between the state, employers and citizens.

If parents want to work, the provision of childcare matters—but a child-friendly society will also need parent-friendly workplaces, which respect and cater to the twin priorities of working parents. The evidence shows that family-friendly companies are more productive and economically successful.

Finland has achieved the enviable goal of becoming one of the most productive economies in the EU, combining high levels of female participation in the workforce with the EU's highest birthrates, through an enduring consensus of support for families.

Richard Reeves, however, is surely right to argue against a view that it is always possible to have the best of all progressive worlds. The centre-left must sustain its hard-fought reputation for economic competence, while digging deeper into the issue of how we govern markets. A contrasting viewpoint is provided by Mary Riddell, who believes that the Labour Government has not gone far enough on children's rights. However, the campaigners she quotes in evidence failed to gain real resonance with the wider public or significant support from MPs during the progress of the Children Act.

Why the left needs a new politics of the family

Many families today experience huge strain. Relationships are breaking down at a rapid rate, and more children are growing up in disrupted families. There is a direct public policy interest here. Weakened families cost the state money both directly and indirectly and as such the state has a public interest in strengthening families, regardless of their structure. Families are the foundation of civil society, where we first learn moral values. Families generate social capital—the trust and relationship skills that enable individuals to co-operate.

The left finds it easy to talk about children but difficult to discuss families. Yet families have a greater impact on childhood development and life chances than any other factor. We must have the confidence to debate these issues openly and reshape the politics of the family. Ironically, it has been parties of the centre-left, not the centre-right, that have led the way in thinking about ways to stabilize family life. They have done so without taking the moral high-ground, while avoiding nostalgia for the past—no mean feat in the history of family policy.

While the left should respond sceptically to fantasies of a 'golden age' of the traditional family, we have shyed away from acknowledging the importance of two parents for children's life chances—despite the strength of the evidence. Supporting families to cope with the stresses of everyday lives is important in helping parents to put their children first and a new politics of the family should aim to strengthen families disrupted by divorce or breakdown, with children's well-being at the heart of policy.

Families matter and the state cannot simply compensate for their absence.

Public and media debate remains polarized around the question of what type of families we want. But as Kate Stanley argues in chapter one, it would be more productive to focus on how public policy should best respond to the empirical evidence—how we best support the families we've got. The social revolution in the position of women is permanent. Only an extreme fringe minority in our society want to turn back the clock.

A larger number may feel discomfited by the fact that more than four in ten births in Britain now occur outside wedlock. But policymakers need to deal with the world as it is. Despite some evidence of the renewed popularity of marriage it is difficult to envisage any credible strategy to reverse this trend that does not transgress the values of an open society. A progressive politics of the family can clearly see the inherent limitations of endorsing one single family type to the exclusion of others.

The family is, rightly, the most private and jealously guarded of social institutions. So a new progressive politics of the family must concern itself with autonomy and opportunity—how families and individuals can live their own lives to the full. We have to respect, and to be seen to respect, that deep-held sense of autonomy while also demonstrating that the state does have a legitimate, and essential, role in enabling people to exercise choice. Our passion is improving people's control over their own lives.

The centre-left must unstick itself once and for all from the quagmire of 'nanny state' rhetoric. The lesson for the future is a simple one. Governments should focus on valuing families, strengthening and stabilizing them in all shapes and sizes, but not moralizing about them. Phil Hope's chapter provides compelling evidence from a variety of programmes that encourage and foster effective fathering. Those who experience these programmes find them enriching and life-enhancing.

Attention will focus increasingly on the father's role in family life, forcing issues such as paid parental leave to the top of the public agenda. Effort might also be directed at low-income non-resident fathers through New Deal schemes that integrate personal and social skills training. Evidence to date from various innovative schemes in the USA suggests that such programmes have wide appeal both for their employment and educational component, provided that participation is not forced on fathers.

As Kate Stanley argues: 'the evidence shows that parenting is too important to ignore and intervention need not be intrusive.' Hope proposes that constructive interventions should focus on the key 'transition points' in the lives of children, young people and families. More 'carrots' would rebalance the debate in favour of positive incentives.

The challenge for governments in the twenty-first century is to find ways to stabilise families in an era of globalisation, and to enhance child-rearing capacity, without imposing unsustainable burdens on taxpayers and the state. The time is ripe for a progressive child-centred family policy that acknowledges new realities and affirms enduring values.