These are my slides from a presentation at the Battle of Ideas Festival, London, on 22 October 2016.

I prefaced my talk with the observation that in a little over 20 years, mainstream politics has moved from the idea that ‘the family’ as an institution is under attack from the outside by the few who challenge the family form (single mums, homosexuals), to the idea that no family can be relied upon to raise children, even at the most basic level of daily love and care. Since ‘parenting’ has replaced ‘the family’ as an object of concern, it has been inextricably connected to the idea of a parenting deficit. It is difficult to exaggerate the scale and depth of the entrenchment of this view in policy circles.