ABSTRACT
Politicians who preach about traditional family values are just as likely to lapse from time to time as anyone else - perhaps more likely given the link between sex and power. Politicians need to be realistic about the limits of policy and they need to be clear about attainable objectives. The variety and complexity of family life is too great for simplistic legislation or prescriptive moralising. If family policy were to be restricted to helping and preparing couples for marriage people would be failing to address the problems that beset families except at the margin. The failure of the moralistic approach and of the prescriptive roles approach is that it fails to recognise the complexity of the real world of relationships. Many men are facing a crisis of identity because the roles that were ascribed to them in the industrial revolution began to fade away with the collapse of heavy industry and left them uncertain.
