Today is the ‘Global Day of Parents’. The United Nations has affirmed that, in celebrating this day, nations around the world should recognise that the family has the primary responsibility for nurturing and protecting children. This day appreciates parents for their ‘selfless commitment to children and their lifelong sacrifice towards nurturing this relationship’.

The UK has been keen to pay lip service to numerous resolutions and reports which honour the role of parents. Mothers and fathers have clear parental duties, responsibilities and rights under English law. Yet, as concepts of child welfare and rights have come more to the foreground, parental primacy in core areas of a child’s best interests has gradually, but conspicuously, been eroded in practice. After a series of legal challenges and policy shifts by government in recent years, the guardianship of parents is now almost obliterated in some key policy areas.

Continue reading “Family Lives Matter” by Elizabeth Francis here (Conservative Woman UK).