Cameron speech at Demos on creating a responsible society

Cameron speech at Demos on creating a responsible society; Shortly, we will be publishing our family green paper - a drawing together of all our policies aimed at making Britain more family-friendly. And I have asked my colleagues to consider all options in pursuit of our aim of stopping the premature sexualisation and excessive commercialisation of our children.Government also has an active role to play in getting all of us in society to assume our proper role as the guardians of other people’s children. All adults have an awesome responsibility for children in our society – whether we have them or not; whether we like it or not. We’re the ones they look up to, the ones they hope to turn to for guidance, the ones they believe can offer them the safety and security they need to learn, play and grow. So, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, “if we want to give children a chance of experiencing childhood as they should ... we have to face the demands of being adults ourselves”.Today, the opposite is happening. Commercialisation and the culture of children's rights means that children are treated like adults while a great knot of rules and regulations and over-the-top bureaucratic nonsense means that increasingly adults are treated like children. With a culture of suspicion and paranoia that is increasingly preventing adults from even interacting with young people. We can’t go on like this. It’s time we gave children back their childhood and got adults to behave like adults.Some people will always think politics should stay out of so-called softer issues like parenting and relationships, and stick to more gritty subjects. But if parenting is the coal-face of creating character, and responsible characters are the building blocks of a strong society, then government must not just have a view on this – it must act on it too.Strengthening families and providing parenting support through a new strategy for Early Years Support, because respons...