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WE are familiar with media stories of bullying at school or about youth violence and crime. Teachers talk about being ground down by the indiscipline in classrooms. Politicians look at ways to reduce truancy. Police resources are stretched in dealing with town centres choked by drunken youths spilling from pubs and clubs.
We are also familiar with people spilling out their innermost feelings on television chat shows. Not least in this category are those which reunite an adult with the parent they haven't seen since childhood.
The emotion is real, the hurt undeniable, but the yearning of so many to know who their parents are, or to be put in touch with the mum or dad they lacked in childhood is testified to in such programmes.
I was moved by a recent story I read of someone stating in his late-middle age that he never got over his dad leaving when he had been a young child. His father had popped his head in to the young boy's bedroom to say he was going out. It was the last time he ever saw his father and the briefness of that last encounter haunted his life.
The story is vague to me now but there had been no happy re-union and as I remember it the mother had ensured that the father played no further part in the boy's life.
The observations above are, I believe, connected. In the cases where turmoil and turbulence seem to be the dominant part of some people's lives, often we can trace it to turmoil and turbulence in the family circumstances.
We are looking at various manifestations linked to one thing - family life. The quality of family life is the crucial factor in how life turns out for most people. Ask a policeman, a teacher or a social worker, what lies behind the troubles of the individuals they encounter and they will inevitably get on to the family situation.
The government in Scotland has recently released proposals to change the law in relation to family life. They are touching on the area which is of fundamental importance in the lives of every person. We perhaps do not hear often enough a fact that most people know, namely that coming from a broken home or being deprived of the presence of a mum and dad has a tremendous impact for the bad.
At the same time it has become fashionable to look at some of the characteristics of married life and make the assumption that if these characteristics can be found in other relationships then those other relationships must be on a par with marriage. Love and stability are frequently cited as the magic ingredient in a child's life and indeed they are crucial, but ironically this is often the introductory statement of those who then wish to go on and weaken marriage. They support, for example, the Government's wish to extend some of the legal recognition of married couples to encompass cohabiting couples.
This, it is also argued, supports the right of individuals to decide on what's best for themselves. The argument leads to support of the Scottish Executive's other intention, which is to make no-fault divorce considerably easier.
I do not doubt the good intentions of people who argue so. They are, I believe, overlooking the general good of society and focusing on particular hard cases.
It is necessary to look at what is happening in general, address that and then look at how we support the hard cases.
We know that in general children who live with married parents do better in terms of educational achievement, health, avoiding crime and drugs, forming families of their own.
Those who cohabit before they marry are more likely to divorce. If it is love and stability we want to encourage then marriage wins hands down over cohabitation.
Crucial to the success of marriage is the fact that couples publicly commit themselves for life. In the past politicians would have thought it insane to think anything other than of helping those who are willing to make such a commitment because of the great benefit that society receives.
They would have also thought it insane to introduce the concept that people can just walk away from such a serious commitment and marry again one year later. But this is what the Executive proposes in its Family Law Bill. It is hardly a signal that it really takes seriously the term "for better or worse". Perhaps registry offices will have to change the wording of their ceremonies to mark the triviality of the wedding day vows.
Laws do make a difference to how people behave. They have an educational role. The Scottish Parliament can choose to shore up marriage, to re-assert and protect its importance in the lives of our children and society in general or it can move further towards making marriage a socially irrelevant institution. It's a choice that will inevitably affect not just the lives of the children still unborn but also the lives of each of us.
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