Is there really a problem?

It was once said that a Victorian who fell asleep in 1848 would not have recognised his country if he awoke in 1851. So it is not unreasonable to assume that Victorians waking up in early 21st-century Britain would not only find their country unrecognisable, but also be profoundly shocked by it. They would no doubt be astonished by the technical wizardry and stunned by social changes such as the universal franchise (even of young un-propertied women!), the demise of the peerage and the multiracial society. But changes in values would surely perturb them the most. Among the most striking would be:

• • the demise of marriage between heterosexual couples;

• • the existence of marriage between homosexual and mixed-race couples;

• • the quarter of dependent children living with only one parent;

• • the millions of non-disabled people paid by the state to be idle;

• • the disappearance of deference (even to the monarch); and

• • the empty pews on Sundays (and the full mosques on Fridays).

Everything the Victorians held most dear – the Christian, God-fearing ethos, the family, marriage, the monarch and the value of hard work – would appear to them to have been decimated.

Values change dramatically over a century, but also over decades. This is highlighted by the fact that when 10 mainly Eastern European countries joined the European Union (EU) in 2004, European Commission officials said that admission would have been unacceptable on human rights grounds if they had not legalised homosexuality. Yet when Ireland joined the EU in 1971, homosexuality was illegal in that country, and remained so until 1993. What changed in the intervening years were shared values, the prism through which we interpret our laws. Our values have, indeed, altered beyond recognition within the course of a single lifespan. Attitudes to sexuality, lone parenthood, marriage, race, welfare benefits, alcohol, drugs and violent crime have all been transformed.

People are bound to be confused if the fundamental values they grew up with have been ditched by society by the time they hit middle age. They invariably tend to see any change as threatening. It is part of the psychology of problem-solving humans to quickly take for granted any positive changes, but to dwell angrily and at length over negative ones. An inevitable consequence is that quickly changing values – unless the changes are overwhelmingly positive – lead to a widespread sense of decline.