Most people agree with the analysis, but relatively few are prepared to take it to its logical solution - the source of Jamaica's problem of crime and violence is poor family life (poor home training).

The reason why so many children do not get more out of the education system is poor family life (no one to help them with homework and to make sure they are regular in school).

The reason we have such poor work ethic is poor family life (when children are used to running free at home, it's hard for them to settle down to a steady job).

The reason males are marginalised is to be found in our denuded family structure (if men are absent from the home, where will young boys get their positive role models from?).

Poor family life?

The reason we have such profound poverty is because many families have more children than they can look after.

The reason we have a seemingly bottomless unemployment and housing problem is because many families have more children than the government can provide schools, jobs, health care and housing for.

The reason the Caribbean has the second highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the world is because of our sexual habits, which do not promote good family life. If only we could fix the family, you often hear on the verandahs, so many other problems would get fixed in the process.

Fixing the family

And there is much truth in this. And so public policy will be severely lacking if it doesn't contain a suite of strategies to improve and strengthen, and fix family life.

But what does fixing the 'family' involve? How do we engineer a society in which there are more stable family units, more responsible parents and better socialised children?

In Jamaica, we have shown ourselves to be poor at social engineering; our policy machines are chock-full of economists, but we are short on experts at social policy.

Part of the reason for this is that we can keep a certain distance from economic strategies. Social policy strikes too close to home! Ultimately and openly, it has to do with change in our own behaviour, and that may be just too much to give up.

Well-adjusted parents

Stable family life is grounded in children being brought up by two adults of different genders in a committed relationship. At one point, we had some pseudo-sociologists arguing that all family forms were equally valid; that families with only one parent were just as valid and just as functional as those with two.

Psychologists have debunked this; young boys and young girls need both a male parent and a female parent to promote a rounded and well-adjusted personality.

This is not a religious matter. The argument in favour of strong heterosexual unions is not specifically Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu.

It is grounded in solid human psychology. Social policy and the laws of the land must promote and support marriage, not seek to threaten it or undermine it.

Entering marriage is a serious matter; it requires two mature people choosing one life partner and being faithful. Maturity has to do with self-control, being able to defer self-gratification for a greater good.

Self-gratification

But, Jamaica is filled with immature people, who must scratch every time they itch. Much advertising and popular music advocate 'fulfilling yourself', which means gratifying every appetite and deferring gratification as little as possible.

I overheard a programme last week on Jamaican radio dedicated to helping men with their 'approach' to girls to get them into bed. Promoting sleeping around does not promote stable family life. Rather, it promotes pregnancies, and then we will hear that we need abortions to prevent unwanted children.

Without being reductionist, it seems to me that we must address sexual behaviour in this country if we are to improve family life and deal with social problems like poverty, crime, domestic violence, illiteracy, unemployment, HIV/STD transmission, and male marginalisation.

Our approach since Independence has been to promote 'safe sex' by the use of appropriate technology - condoms and other contraceptives, and abortions, if the truth be told, which have been widely available in our public hospitals for decades. Only recently have we half-heartedly been promoting abstinence.

Pro-family policy

Part of the problem is that while promoting these technologies, we have left the folk definitions of masculinity and femininity intact - a real man has plenty 'ooman an' plenty pickney, and a girl is not a woman until she proves she is not a mule by having a child.

And we laugh at and encourage precocious and force-ripe behaviour, and then wonder why the rate of teenage and pre-teen pregnancy in Jamaica is so high.

Which politician is going to promote pro-family public policy? It will make him sound like a prude or a fanatic churchman, and will cramp his style in his constituency and in the party when night falls.

Well, are we going to fix the family, or aren't we?

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon.