ABSTRACT
The perceived breakdown of the family has provoked a good deal of moral panic on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United Kingdom in particular, the widely publicized doctrine of communitarianism has recently provided both a new impetus for this panic and a new hope of resolution. Communitarianism has been seized on by politicians of all parties as a welcome antidote to the selfish individualism of the 1980s. It has been widely noticed that the so-called traditional family structure has changed dramatically, not least because of biotechnological techniques. There was perhaps some common sense behind Aristotle's recommendation that a man should marry and begin to produce children at the age of thirty-seven while a woman should do so at eighteen. Making children a luxury item, a status symbol, is a strange way to think about children and no way at all to help to restore community spirit and mutual support.
