Ever since he was first elected Tory leader in 2005, David Cameron has talked of his commitment to rebuilding the culture of family values in British society. Up until now this has seemed rather fanciful, perhaps at best a cynical attempt to appease the socially conservative wing of his party, however following the recent riots and the shocking scenes of youth after youth being paraded before the courts, his obsession for restoring the traditional family finally sounds relevant.

The fact of the matter is – the vast majority of the rioters committed such crimes because they have been badly brought up. I simply do not accept that circumstances and environment alone dictate the moral make-up of people, as the vast majority of hard-pressed inner-city kids have a strong sense of ethics despite having endured under-privileged beginnings. The problem arises from bad parenting, which can occur among any of the classes, but is particularly prevalent where a child is born, to use a crude term, as an accident (by a young mother who failed to have protected sex and declined the option of an abortion). In such circumstances the parents (or more commonly, the parent) are hideously unprepared for bringing up a child.

They may be able to provide love on the most basic level, but without a present father many of their children will lack a crucial paternal influence. Additionally, these parents, often as young as 14 or 15 will not have finished developing into adults themselves. It is worrying to even consider the fact that many of the rioters last week will have been young mothers and fathers themselves, however this has been proven to be the case. I simply do not accept that a teenager is socially developed enough to raise a child as well as somebody ten years older. On top of this, a young parent who is often still in education and may be some way off earning a stable wage is in no financial position to cover the cost of raising a child.

The solution to this is often over-complicated. Rather than address the absence of father figures by promoting community leaders to replace biological dads or tackle the problems of under-age sex by developing young peoples’ self esteem, the focus needs to be on driving down the number of teenage pregnancies. Now, I do not propose some radical injection of social conservatism in which teenage sex is discouraged, because the fact of the matter is kids will always have sex and as the years go by they’ll probably engage in even more of it. The challenge is making sure that they are properly protected so as to prevent impregnation in the first place. It is here that we need simple but radical solutions such as a far greater amount of sex education in our schools, a social encouragement of contraceptive use, and a far greater amount of abortions where a teenager does become pregnant.

Finally, we must stop glamourising single mothers to the extent that many young girls become fearless of the prospect of teenage impregnation. Of course society must support and sympathise with parents who become single mothers or fathers after the birth of their child, through a death, divorce or separation. However we must actively discourage the birth of any child (with a few notable exceptions) who may enter the world without both parents present.

David Cameron has a chance to implement real change, but he must use socially liberal means to achieve a socially conservative end.