Are the NatCon mob right about modern parenting?

On an early morning school trip, unconstrained individualist Will Gore tries to remember his children aren’t a burden

- Will Gore

Last week’s National Conservatism conference grabbed plenty of headlines, as Tory politicians including Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg vied for influence, and activists and commentators such as Douglas Murray and David Starkey tried to outdo each other’s stoking of their confected culture war.

Anxiety about the apparent breakdown of traditional family models is particularly acute, and is evident too in a statement of principles for the NatCon movement – drafted by various American conservative thinkers for the Edmund Burke Foundation, the institute which lies behind the broader National Conservatism project. “The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilisation,” goes the thinking, which seems a tad exaggerated.