Daily Mail
July 15, 2014
Teenagers are more likely to own a smartphone than live with their fathers, according to a study.
It predicted that almost half of the children sitting their GCSE exams in 2020 will come from a broken home.
In a startling portrait of ‘broken Britain’, the Centre for Social Justice warned that a culture of ‘disposable dads’ had developed in poorer parts of the UK.
Dr Samantha Callan, David Cameron’s former family policy adviser, who co-wrote the report, said that young people should be encouraged to aspire to have children in wedlock.
Referring to a popular hit single, she added: ‘As Beyonce Knowles says in her song, “If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it”.
’The CSJ, an independent think-tank founded by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, warned that the Government was ‘sleepwalking into a family breakdown crisis’.
It claimed broken families were costing the taxpayer nearly £50billion a year, through welfare payments for single mothers and the additional strain on the criminal justice system, because the children of lone parents are more likely to end up in court and jail.
The report said fathers who did not live with their children should be given financial incentives to return to the family home.
They should also have the legal right to be named on their child’s birth certificate, it added. Currently, an unmarried father cannot register his name unless the mother of his child agrees.
Dr Callan called for the Prime Minister to ‘back marriage with money’ and double the transferable tax allowance for married couples to £2,000.