The Left should love the traditional family unit. Instead it wants to destroy it - Paul Embery

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Fifty years of attacking the traditional family has caused untold damage and it's time the taboo was broken, writes the trade union activist and author

The Left really ought to love the traditional family unit. After all, it represents what one might call "socialism in action".

It is within the tabernacle of the family that humans first learn the virtues of solidarity, mutual obligation, loyalty, respect, trust, compassion and sacrifice – qualities that many on the Left would claim define their politics.

It is there, too, that the common good prevails over naked self-interest. Ancient trade union slogans such as "An injury to one is an injury to all" and "United we stand, divided we fall" could easily have been composed with the family in mind, for they go to the heart of the collective spirit and what it means to be part of something greater than oneself.

No family unit could thrive if "dog eat dog" and "survival of the fittest" were instead the guiding principles.

The Left once understood all this. There was never a conflict between socialism and the family. The early Labour tradition was, in fact, rooted in respect for the family structure.

But then along came the 1960s and the battalions of university-educated cultural revolutionaries with their hatred of existing social norms and anything that smacked of tradition or order.

Suddenly, the nuclear family became a "right-wing" concept. It was here that men were tyrants, and women were oppressed, and children were readied to become the next generation of wage slaves serving the capitalist beast. It was also here that conservative-minded people did tedious and petit bourgeois suburban things like washing their cars and tending their gardens.

These attitudes began to take hold across the Left. And as those young graduate rebels of the 1960s came of age, their ideas started to dominate within the upper echelons of our institutions and across the liberal media.

They still hold sway today. And even though our society has, in the past half century, experienced the devastating social effects that go with industrial-scale family breakdown, few who pushed the anti-family agenda appear willing to rethink their position.

In fact, the entire subject of family is largely taboo on the Left. As far as anyone is willing to enter into a debate about it, it is usually to trot out cliches about how the nuclear family is "obsolete", and modern families come in "all shapes and sizes", and it is "bigoted" to show preference for a particular model, and single-parent families should not be "stigmatised".

Thus, when Reform launched its recent policy prioritising married couples with children in the allocation of social housing, many on the Left were aghast. Not just because they disagreed with the finer details of the policy – I don't agree with every aspect of it myself – but in many cases because Reform had dared to devise a policy around the concept of the traditional family at all.

The Women and Equalities Minister [was: minister], Bridget Phillipson, quickly got stuck in. "I grew up in a single parent household," she posted on social media. "What matters is the love and care families provide, not their shape or size. Britain rejected these outdated views in the 1990s. We will do so again."

Plenty weighed in behind Phillipson. But her argument was a crude appeal to emotion. It is, of course, nonsense to claim that the "shape or size" of a family is irrelevant to a child's life chances. On the contrary, there exists a wide body of evidence showing that youngsters raised in a home with two parents – especially parents who are married – are likely to achieve better outcomes on a range of metrics, including educational attainment, mental wellbeing and future financial security.

What is wrong with recognising those facts and then using the levers of the state to give as many children as possible the best start in life? Why should anyone want to condemn young people to poorer outcomes? It's as though even to acknowledge the simple truth is an act of heresy.

Yes, there are many good lone parents, some of whom have been abandoned by the other parent. And their efforts should be recognised. But these parents will be acutely aware of the challenges involved in raising children single-handedly, and many would not recommend the same arrangement to others.

Just as a higher ratio of teachers to students leads to better outcomes in schools, so having double the number of parents in the home does the same. We shouldn't be afraid to say it, nor to seek to bring about, through [was: thorough] public policy, that set-up for the maximum possible number of children. Only misguided political ideology prevents us from doing so.

And it isn't only children who suffer from the collapse of family life. The consequences ripple out into wider society, too. There is, for example, an epidemic of loneliness among the older generation, often caused by separation and estrangement from their offspring. And the already-severe housing crisis is made worse by the extra demands placed on the market as a result of couples breaking up and going their separate ways.

Some years ago, I proposed that the Left launch a campaign for a "family wage" – the concept that families should be able to enjoy a decent standard of living on the salary of one earner. It seemed to be exactly the type of crusade that was in keeping with the historical mission of the Labour movement.

Yet I was attacked vociferously by my colleagues in the movement – including by a senior officer at the Trade Union Congress – for daring to even suggest it. They claimed that I wanted to send women back into the kitchen and keep them in financial servitude.

The reaction was a lesson in how the Left had lost sight of its purpose and allowed hyper-progressive ideology to corrupt its thinking.

Well, the subject of family should no longer be taboo or clouded in cliche, and the 1960s radicals and their political descendants should not be permitted to silence the voices of those who take a different view.

The results of the half-century experiment are in – and they make for grim reading. The decline of the traditional family has caused immense harm to our society. We owe it to our young people, now and in the future, to put things right.