ong young persons may be kept in check within
the existing processes of the law. It is the view of the Committee that
during the past few decades there have been changes in certain aspects
of family life throughout the English-speaking world leading to a
decline in morality as it has generally been understood. A remedy must
be found before this decline leads to the decay of the family itself as
the centre and core of our national life and culture.

=(2) The Place of the Family in the Legal System=

The emphasis which the Committee places upon this section of its report
calls for a statement of the place of the family in English law.

The family (meaning thereby the father, mother, and children) from time
immemorial has had a definite and recognized status in our national
life--a place which it has not always occupied or enjoyed in other
cultures and other systems of law. There is in our culture an air of
sanctity about the home where parents and children dwell. The rights of
a parent against any intrusion into his family affairs have been
expressed in such statements as "A man's house is his castle".

Our law of domestic relations centres upon the home. When the
Legislature or the law-courts have interfered in the conduct of a home
it has only been because one member of the family has failed to
discharge the duties which an individual is required to perform towards
other members of the family or towards society. Speaking generally, the
rights and duties of individual members of the family have been
preserved and enforced in our statute law. Illustrations are to be found
in the Infants Act, the Destitute Persons Act, the Child Welfare Act,
the Family Protection Act, and the Joint Family Homes Act.

The policy of English law is, and always has been, to keep the family
together and to uphold the rights of parents. Those rights have
correlative duties attaching to them. It is the failure of some parents
to perform those duties which has now become a matter of grave concern.

The irony of the situation is that this slipping of parental
responsibility has occurred contemporaneously with the granting of
financial and other help to parents. Family allowances and State homes
should be concomitants of an increased sense of responsibility. Despite
all that the State has done, and is doing, for families, the moral
standards of the community have somehow been undermined. Is this because
of a general lowering of the moral stan