Faith In The Family – BBC One celebrates Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year |
In the programme, which features the Chief Rabbi at home with his children and grandchildren, he celebrates Judaism's consecration of family time, which he argues, has helped the religion survive over the generations.
The Chief Rabbi says: "Family is the foundation of so much else: of faith and community and the future. It's about the place of loyalty and love in society – and how much we value the things that don't have a price."
Psychologist Oliver James argues that children's unhappiness stems, in part, from our tendency to value money and status too much, and from our increasingly long working hours – up from a household average of 42 hours worked in England in 1980, to 56 hours now.
He also claims that, for many and complicated reasons, people with a religious observance tend to be less materialistic and happier.
Broadcaster and children's rights campaigner Esther Rantzen, herself an agnostic, says that her Jewish identity remains and has been a great influence on her happy family life: at its centre, the kitchen table where Sabbath and New Year are celebrated.
Esther still regularly volunteers for the charity ChildLine (which she helped set up in 1986), and she recounts how children's needs are still overlooked at times of family stress, despite a growing awareness of the problems of child abuse and bullying.
In a conversation with the Chief Rabbi, Esther confesses to a reluctance to "cut the umbilical cord" with her children.
Professor Lord Robert Winston reflects on the changes in family life that he's observed during his eight-year long study into contemporary childhood with the BBC, Child Of Our Time, and on his work as a fertility specialist at Imperial College London.
He argues that "parents have to be more involved than they perhaps currently are" with their children's lives, and that as a society "we don't really respect the people who nurture the next generation.
"And that's a really valuable thing to remember, that caring for the next generation is the most significant thing that we can all do to improve human kind."
Lord Winston also agrees that the value given to parenting in Judaism "must be one of the major reasons why we have survived", and reflects on Abraham's desire to have his own genetic child: "perhaps that's the greatest gift of all is that we bring in our own children from our own background."
The Chief Rabbi also meets mothers who are struggling to cope with the demands of modern parenting – with its daily stresses of isolation and in some cases family breakdown – from the charity Home Start.
The national initiative provides playgroups, and a network of 15,000 volunteers who visit mothers at home once a week.
He finds that, despite the modern pressures, the volunteers and the families they work with are determined to help build new structures which provide support to one another, and help strengthen modern families.
Faith In The Family will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 28 September 2008 at 11.20pm (except Northern Ireland, 11.40pm).
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