The latest newsletter from the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship:
A future where families can thrive
This week in our ARC Vision Series, we bring you a better story for families and communities – a story that restores children and families to the centre of society so that each of us can thrive in community.
Too often, we overlook the value of the family. Family is our first connection in life and often our last. At the family dinner table, our shared stories and fundamental values are passed to the next generation. In the rough and tumble of being brother and sister, we learn how to forgive. It is as we look on a newborn baby that we learn the true meaning of gratitude.
The evidence is overwhelming that there is no better model than the family for our core human relationships. The family is the primary crucible for character formation. Strong families, deeply embedded in wider communities, create a thick, resilient, and interconnected social fabric.
The fragmentation of our social fabric
Yet, over the last 50 years, Western societies have been progressively abandoning this original model for human relationships, and public policy makers and the media have failed to promote a positive vision of the family. This has had profound consequences.
Today, we are witnessing a teenage mental health crisis, an epidemic of loneliness, sky-high separation rates, instability about identity, widespread fatherlessness, and falling birth rates. One-third of young adults aged 18 to 25 in the US have some form of mental health problem.
The fraying of our social fabric is not only damaging the wellbeing of children and adults, but it also it leaves people poorer, more at risk of social injustice, and with fewer opportunities.
We cannot go on like this.
A better story for families and communities
At ARC, we believe that decline is not inevitable. These trends can be reversed.
Drawing on wisdom from our roots, we will renew a vision of society that puts children and families at its heart. We will promote and celebrate the central role of family unity in providing identity, stability, and responsibility. We will seek to develop policy solutions which provide a genuinely viable alternative pathway forward.
Each person’s life fundamentally matters, and we all have something to contribute. The trust and confidence that a strong social fabric brings releases each of us to contribute and thrive in community. For our own sakes, and for the sake of the next generation, children and families must be restored to the centre of our societies.
There is a better story.
ARC Research - Coming Soon
We are pleased to announce that next week we will begin releasing research papers commissioned by ARC. These papers, written by leading thinkers and researchers across the world, will provide deep analysis and offer solutions across the following topic areas:
Culture, story, and history
Family and community
Business and free enterprise
Energy and the environment
We will also be releasing short videos with each research paper which we will include in our newsletters and on our social channels.
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