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News Digests:
A summary of the day's main family and education news.
If you would like these sent to you each morning, email zenobe.reade@civitas.org.uk
27 August
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FAMILY: The Pre-Election Briefing
Family lives today and the parties' promises
Employment: The Position Today
The state of Employment in the run up to the General Election
For our latest factsheet on the UK family today, please click here. This overview contains statistical data on family structure, marriage and parenting participation.
Publication:  Second Thoughts on the Family
- Anastasia de Waal, May 2008
Normal price £9.00 +£2.75p&p, pp.239
ISBN: 978-1-903386-651
The premise of both New Labour and Conservative policy is that people not living in married two-parent families are choosing not to. This signifies positive diversity to Labour and a decline in family values to the Conservatives. Both miss a critical reality: Read more...
...that high marriage rates are characteristic of the middle and upper classes, whereas family instability is concentrated amongst those on low incomes. The true divide on the family is about poverty not politics.
New research evidence collected for this book shows that most people want the same things, regardless of their politics, class or sexuality. Committed couple-parenting is seen to be the ideal. Therefore, in a liberal, secular society, marriage is a majority aspiration because it is seen to signify commitment. Focusing on the New Labour government, Second Thoughts on the Family demonstrates the way in which Labour’s nominally inclusive position is actually harming those it seeks to support.
Drawing on a specially commissioned opinion poll and 27 interviews with opinion-formers, Second Thoughts on the Family presents a new way of thinking about family policy that transcends all divides. Hide text
Publication:  Family Policy, Family Changes: Sweden, Italy and Britain Compared
- Patricia Morgan, March 2006
Normal price £14.50, pp.£1.48
ISBN: 10 1-903386-43-8
A comparison of family policy and its implications for human happiness and the raising of children in Britain, Italy and Sweden.
Cutting teen pregnancy the Dutch way
- Anastasia de Waal, The Guardian (February 2010)
An educational focus on the link between sex and reproduction - and being able to say no - has had success in the Netherlands.
Back to back to basics
- Anastasia de Waal, The Guardian (November 2008)
Tory plans to promote marriage as a stabilising influence ignore one key fact: it doesn't work that way.
Family Guys
- Anastasia de Waal, The Guardian (October 2008)
Backing marriage has become a fetish for Cameron Tories, but the nuclear family is a symptom, not a cause of social stability.
Money as the perfect partner: Marriage is a pointer to economic stability
- Anastasia de Waal, The Guardian (May 2008)
Whilst high rates of cohabitation have not heralded the end of the desire for marriage as once predicted, marriage is increasingly becoming the preserve of the more affluent areas of Britain.
An up-to-date selection of useful websites which relate to issues around the family: from sources of help and advice, to sources of research and statistics. Show links...
- Action for Children: Explains the work and aims of the charity - supporting and speaking out for the most vulnerable children in the UK - and provides information about what visitors to the site can do - from fostering to fundraising to campaigning and reading about policy.
- Care for the Family: Website offering support and practical advice for families, including Support Net help-sheets, covering topics such as bereavement, eating disorders, divorce and adoption.
- Children's Links: Children's charity website informing parents and carers about current and past projects, the charity's services, their childcare providers, and products such as a 'traditional playground games pack'.
- The Children's Society: Committed to 'making childhood better', this charity's website provides information about how people can help them achieve this aim: via campaigns, fundraising events, volunteering, social events etc. There is a 'Kids Zone' to give children a voice and inspire them to get involved in family activities.
- The Family and Parenting Institute: Provides information about the Family and Parenting Institute: their events and campaigns, their research, and their news. Also offers visitors a chance to express their opinions of issues currently facing families, via the Family Voice venture.
- Looking at Life: A colourful and easily accessible website, which seeks to provide a platform for those in their twenties and thirties to 'ask questions, to share stories and to offer practical advice' in areas of life such as parenting and relationships.
- Family Action: Provides non-judgemental information and statistics on issues such as 'families and mental health', 'families and domestic abuse', 'families and young carers', and 'families and poverty'. Connects visitors to support networks in these areas.
- One Parent Families: Aimed at single parents, provides financial advice, holiday advice, fire safety advice…all sorts of helpful information for single parents.
- Gingerbread: Website with sections for single parents and for professionals in the field, providing factsheets about single parenting, press releases on topical matters, links to useful organisations, policy information, and work experience.
- One Plus One: Aims to strengthen family and couple relationships by providing information from research. Provides links to other supportive websites, access to the Information Centre on Relationships, and advertises events such as parenting workshops.
- The Couple Connection: An interactive website seeking to 'provide you with resources and practical tools that will enable you to improve your relationship', covering a wide range of areas from affairs to conflict to children to romance.
- DadTalk: Designed as a social network for fathers, offers legal, financial, and practical advice, and invites fathers to sign up to 'the Dad pledge', encouraging them to be responsible fathers. Also offers a 'Dad's Toolbox', with suggestions for games to play with children, health and fathering tips, and 'why dads matter'.
- Parentline Plus: Parenting advice, guidance and support via a 24hr helpline, as well as through locally provided services.
- Working Families: Seeks to unite families and employment in the most positive way possible, by offering advice and solutions to the problem of a good work-life balance. Provides access to their policy and research and the Balance at Work consultancy, and has different sections for families and employers.
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Do you have a question/would like advice on an issue related to education or family?
If so, send an email to our Director of Family and Education, Anastasia de Waal at education@civitas.org.uk
Anastasia de Waal is Director of Family and Education at Civitas, and a qualified primary school teacher.
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