Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

While we can remember the past, we cannot write the future. Only our children, the future of our community, can do that.

Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.

If we are to negotiate the coming years safely, we may need a new kind of leadership. To put it more precisely, we need the rediscovery of an ancient kind of leadership that has rarely been given the prominence it deserves. I mean the leader as teacher.

It's not your responsibility to comment on parenting for others. I would hate if someone did that to me.

My family is from a tiny town in Alabama. So all I wanted to do was get out of this town.

I'm not a practice religion freak. I didn't grow up in a religious family, but I have a faith.

Like everyone else, there are days when I don't want to go to work. However, writing is a job like anything else.