Community: The Alternative

When a family fails, society often pays the penalty. The children are likely to end up poorly educated, with mental health issues, low self-esteem, and behavioural difficulties. They frequently become unemployable and prison fodder. Society pays out vast amounts on benefits to single parent families. Those children from disadvantaged homes who end up in state care usually have negative life outcomes.

The usual 'solution' proposed by politicians (especially Conservatives), is to promote 'family values', and to try to provide incentives to prop up the family via special treatment, including tax breaks. A ludicrous attempt to defend a failing institution, of course.

The age of the family is coming to an end. Family life is incompatible with the modern age. With so many choices available, with religious and social prohibitions regarding 'alternative' lifestyles no longer taken seriously, with women increasingly financially independent, all the main pillars that supported the nuclear family are collapsing. Nothing can be done to rebuild them. The way forward is to find a replacement for the family. The obvious choice is the community: groups of  10 000  to 100 000 like-minded people with mutual respect for each other, a lot in common, a desire to help each other - to provide friendship, companionship, and a secure, loving, nurturing, supportive environment for every member of the community.

The Israeli Kibbutz provides a plausible starting point for the UK communal family model. Social isolation, millions living on their own, millions of struggling one-parent families, millions of conventional families doing their utmost to protect their own selfish interests is the shape of modern Britain. The community model would revolutionise the country and help solve many of our most glaring social ills.