Spanning religion, moral philosophy and scientific understanding of the human condition, this unique book draws together and adds to the latest thinking on morality, its causes, mutations, tensions and common features. Challenging misplaced concepts of 'moral progress' and the supremacy of empathy, it presents proposals to enhance the capacity of public policy to respond more effectively to morality and associated shifts in social mores in different cultural settings.

This book offers a radical rethink of family policy in the UK. Clem Henricson, the family policy expert, analyses in detail the major shift in the role of the state viz a viz personal relationships in recent years, with its aspirations to reduce child poverty, increase social mobility and deliver social cohesion. Brought in by New Labour and carried forward, albeit in diluted form, by the Coalition, Henricson asks whether this philosophy of social betterment through manipulating the parent-child relationship is appropriate for family policy. She challenges the thinking behind the expectation that you can change a highly unequal society through the family route. Instead the argument is made for a family policy with its own raison d'etre, free of other government agendas. A premium is set on the need to manage the multiple core tensions in families of affection, empathy and supportiveness on the one hand and aggression, deception and self interest on the other. A set of coherent support and control polices for family relations are developed which endorse this awareness and embrace a fundamental shift in perspective for future progressive governments.

With an increasingly bitter secular religious divide, there is a messy, defective relationship between the state and morality in the UK. In response, Morality and Public Policy puts forward proposals to enhance the capacity of public policy to respond more effectively to morality and associated shifts in social mores in different cultural settings. Spanning religion, moral philosophy and scientific understanding of the human condition, this unique book draws together and adds to the latest thinking on morality, its causes, mutations, tensions and common features. It challenges misplaced concepts of 'moral progress' and the supremacy of empathy, and puts forward the management of the full span of human impulses - some complementary, some conflicting - as the function of morality with major implications for the interface between morality and public policy.

This book offers a radical rethink of family policy in the UK. Clem Henricson, the family policy expert, analyses in detail the major shift in the role of the state viz a viz personal relationships in recent years, with its aspirations to reduce child poverty, increase social mobility and deliver social cohesion.Brought in by New Labour and carried forward, albeit in diluted form, by the Coalition, Henricson asks whether this philosophy of social betterment through manipulating the parent-child relationship is appropriate for family policy. She challenges the thinking behind the expectation that you can change a highly unequal society through the family route.Instead the argument is made for a family policy with its own raison d'etre, free of other government agendas. A premium is set on the need to manage the multiple core tensions in families of affection, empathy and supportiveness on the one hand and aggression, deception and self interest on the other. A set of coherent support and control polices for family relations are developed which endorse this awareness and embrace a fundamental shift in perspective for future progressive governments.