Vi hører det igen og igen fra venstrefløjens statsfeminister.

En enlig mor er mindst lige så god som en far og en mor.

Vi ved også godt, at selv de ikke helt tror på det.

The history of ambitious social policies aimed at diminishing crime is one of failure. That is not because we are unable to identify the groups who are likely to furnish us with the next generation of criminals: we are. It is possible to make some reasonably secure predictions, such as that being brought up in a single-parent family is more likely to lead to a child (the vast majority of the "danger kids" are boys) ending up in prison. Seventy per cent of young offenders are from single-parent families. Being raised by your mother on her own is not the strongest predictor of ending up as a criminal: having a father who is himself a criminal is the top of that list. But not far behind is being raised without a father at all.

As last week's survey on social trends demonstrates, single-parent families in Britain are increasing fast. There are now three times the number of children being brought up just by their mothers than there were 30 years ago. One in every four children is raised without a father. The proportion has reached one in every two in black families, who furnish a predictably greater number of child criminals.

This is not an issue about race or marriage: it is about the presence of fathers. Cohabiting parents do just as well as married ones, provided they stick together. The concern about single-parent families centres on the depressing association between being raised without a father and ending up as a criminal. That association is statistical, like the association between smoking and cancer: while not everyone who smokes will die of cancer, no one in their right mind would advocate smoking on the basis that some smokers don't die of a smoking-related disease.

The Government's policy of subsidising single-parenthood is the equivalent, in social policy terms, of subsiding tobacco consumption. The Government provides incentives to bring up children without both parents. So much so that, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, there are 200,000 more people claiming the benefits and tax credits that are due to lone parents than there are actually lone parents in the UK. The consequences of making single-parenthood ever-more economically viable are completely predictable. One of them is that there will be more teenage killings, and not just in the black community.

Perhaps those who advocate the policy believe it will be worth its heavy costs. The trouble is, there is no evidence that they have seriously considered them. And they certainly haven't asked the rest of us.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=SVLB0TK...

Alt ovenstående gælder i mindst lige så høj grad for Danmark og alle andre såkaldte velfærdsstater.