Cameron speech at Demos on creating a responsible society

Cameron speech at Demos on creating a responsible society; If we’re over indulged we’re less likely to be able to stick at things. If we regularly observe anger or rage in others from an early age we might find it more difficult to respond positively when times are tough. If we’re treated without care we might find it hard to relate to other people. So what happens in the home really matters. And let us be clear about something. When I talk about the importance of the home to character I don’t mean the material architecture of the place. I mean the emotional architecture of what happens within it – the parenting that children receive. We all know what good parenting looks like. It means setting boundaries as well as providing love and offering security. These are things that help foster commitment, resilience, empathy – and everything else we associate with responsibility. Even if you don’t buy the idea that good parenting is the key to creating responsible individuals, the evidence shows that it is the single most important determinant of our future success or failure. And I believe that this research produced recently by Demos is truly ground-breaking. It shows that the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by “confident and able” parents. For those who care about fairness and inequality, this is one of the most important findings in a generation. It would be over the top to say that it is to social science what E=MC2 was to physics, but I think it is a real 'sit up and think' moment. That discovery defined the laws of relativity; this one is the new law for social mobility: What matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting. As Stephen Scott of the National Academy of Parenting Practitioners has said: “Poverty is a factor, but not a central one...It seem...