Mummy’s boys, Daddy’s girls
by Harry Benson, The Marriage Foundation:
Our growing mental health crisis is often presented as a recent problem. Too much social media . Too much exam pressure.
Casting blame on factors over which we have little control makes us all feel better. Blame social media. Blame the Department for Education. In other words blame anyone but us.
However it should be fairly self-evident that the main way we cope with life depends in large part on the security we get from what is going on at home.
Even here blame is deflected. The Early Intervention Foundation review for Department of Work and Pensions concluded that high levels of parental conflict are the main driver of family instability and teenage mental health.
Alas this claim is easily disproved. Noone doubts that it’s extremely unpleasant in a home where the parents fight. However it’s – thankfully – very much rarer than might be assumed.
Just 2 per cent of parents quarrel regularly and are also unhappy in their relationship at any one time.
Last year, we published a study showing that 27 per cent of both boys and girls exhibit high or very high levels of mental health problems, whether conduct, emotional, hyperactive or peer problems.
The biggest single factor was family breakdown.
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