The swing against "free love"

Married couples in future can expect adultery to be a normal part of their lives. Commitment should be based on mutual needs rather than romantic love. Those are the views of Professor Carol Smart of Leeds University. (Archive material - published feature Daily Telepgraph).

Divorced herself and unfaithful since, the 46 year old sociologist said this week "if my partner had an affair tomorrow it would certainly not be the end to everything". She is right that the pendulum is swinging back for a number of reasons, but not as she describes.

The truth is that despite our demand for sex-obsessed media, the British have always been rather conservative in practice, and are becoming more so. Surveys show that most people are monogamous and most say that adultery is wrong. But romantic love is still very much alive, and so is conventional marriage . Half of all wedding vows last a lifetime and divorce rates fell last year.

These are no freak statistics. It was obvious that the steep rise in divorce rates would end - or we would all be divorced before we even got married. The graph has been flattening out for years.

There is now a growing reaction against the excesses of freedom, and against the cruel nonsense that more sex must mean more happiness. Just read the agony columns. You can see the changing mood in many parents of teenagers who themselves were products of the 1960s and 70s. They are against old sixties values, and lie awake at night worrying about their children's behaviour.

They are the reason why the Care Trust pro-abstinence video "True Love Waits" was bought by 60% of all secondary schools last year while explicit Health Education Authority materials were boycotted or banned. The same revolution created overwhelming demand for 700,000 "HIV - Facts for Life" schools booklets from a leading AIDS agency, listing virginity and faithfulness as positive options alongside clear factual information.

The Thought Police, self-appointed experts on sex education for young teenagers, have been crushed, wiped out as arrogant and irrelevant, with their fixed ideas about rolling condoms on bananas and pre-orgasmic lessons in the classroom "because everyone is doing it".

The surprising thing is how few young people ARE  active. The national sex survey Lady Thatcher tried to ban was finally published last year after 19,000 people were interviewed in the largest ever study of its kind.

It showed that three out of four students arriving at University were still virgins on their first day. You should see the wave of relief across hundreds of sixth formers when they discover that most of their friends are also celibate. They have been sold a terrible lie.

It is true that pregnancy rates are far higher in those leaving school at sixteen, and lifestyles vary dramatically between cultural and ethnic groups. sex education is vital but we need to teach about marriage too.

Divorce has had a bad press over the last twelve months as expert after expert has given apocalyptic warnings of damage for life. It takes a generation to judge a generational shift, so it is hardly surprising that it is only now that we have been able to see the real cost.

In cash terms the bill is alarming: £1 billion just for children in care, of which more than half is related to family breakup, a part of the £9 billion we pay as individuals or through taxes to help society cope with chaos. That would pay for a quarter of the health service or for 10,000 primary schools.

AIDS is also bringing change from across the Atlantic, where it caused more deaths last year than the entire Vietnam war. Even if the spread of HIV were halted, the American death toll from AIDS will exceed fifteen more Vietnam wars over the next decade.

In addition, every fifteen seconds someone else in the world is infected, twenty million so far, mostly hetero s, one in two hundred and fifty of all adults alive today - and the epidemic has hardly begun.

Then there is a broken generation of young people who are casualties of divorce. They have lived through the feuds, the battles, the bitterness. They have friends who have never fully recovered from the isolating numbness, depression and despair.

Divorce often means poor exam results, damaged health and stress, four times the risk of needing psychiatric help as a child and a greater risk of breakdown in middle age. You can never divorce your own parents and when parents split it is like being torn in two and access often breaks down because of family tensions.

Remarriage is no answer. It carries six times the risk to the emotional health and welfare of the children, and ly abused children are ten times more likely to come from step-parenting households.

Yet despite all the risks, we remain optimistic when it comes to love. Every day almost 500 people in Britain plan a wedding, intending their marriages should last. That is why eight out of ten polled said "Quickie Divorce" should end. It reduced marriage to a mere twelve week rolling contract to be together.

Then there is another factor: a restlessness, a deep unease in society, and a hunger for lasting values. That is why "Back to Basics" took root as a slogan that refused to die. The collapse of communism, the death of materialistic dreams, the extinction of idealism, the stench of corruption and sleaze and the ticking of the clock towards a new millennium.

Twelve year-olds today will be waiting to vote as we turn the century. They will reject twentieth century values as surely as every age has rejected the one before. They will create new architecture, new fashions, new music, new culture, new values, new politics, to fit with a new vision for a new century and a new millennium.

There are signs of a spiritual renaissance: a grass roots phenomenon, often bypassing traditional sources of spirituality to find meaning, purpose and identity. Bookshops are full of new titles on New Age, tarot cards, horoscopes, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.

Next week over 40,000 are expected to take to the streets in the latest "March for Jesus" - walking in small groups from every denomination, delivering prayer request cards to two and a half million homes. Last June over ten million people took part in a "global march" across every time zone, 100,000 in the UK.

This is a just a part of a larger awakening. More people are converting to Christianity worldwide than has ever happened in the whole of recorded history, much faster than the population is growing. Islam is also seeing a revival.

The Evangelical Alliance in Britain claims to represent 1.3 million people, increasing daily at the expense of liberals who are drifting away in huge numbers, leaving empty churches which are being filled by new congregations at the rate of one a week. Many of these churches are characterised by noisy, exuberant, life-changing faith.

The new Christians are an energetic breed committed to family life, social action, justice, political reform and media influence. Next month sees the launch of Premier Radio with broad church backing and a potential audience of eleven million from three transmitters in London, and Christian television in their sights.

The lesson of history is that the pendulum is always moving, but it twists each time to go somewhere new. It is now swinging so fast when it comes to "family values" that politicians are struggling to alter policies fast enough to follow the public mood.

This will be no going back to "Victorian values", but instead a rediscovery that relationships are more important than careers, possessions or free love. Professor Smart may be right about a rethink on sex, but adultery will always be the enemy of family.

* Dr Patrick Dixon is author of The Rising Price of Love (1995 Hodder Full text available FREE on the web. It covers many of the following issues.

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