This is an issue that constantly amazes me. Certainly in this country, the UK, there is a completely contradictory set of ideas in public policy. On the one hand we spend literally billions of pounds on trying to reproduce the family through, fostering, adoption, mentoring(Male mentors for female led "families) and have policy built around the child's need to form "secure attachment". Simultaneously our policies in welfare, family courts, taxation and public pronouncements actively contribute to this fair land being one of Europe's great leaders in family breakdown and single parents and children in the care of the state. It's not that there isn't decades of evidence on the importance of secure families, and these underpin the immense effort to place children in the closest to a traditional family as can be managed in such a fragmented society. Yet at the same time the practically world leading proportion of children needing all this appears to be treated as if it happens completely randomly like a weather front. So absolutely nothing is done to even advise on what would be the best situation to nurture and bring up the next generation and certainly nothing practical is done to that end. So year after year, decade after decade our children's services are "swamped" by ever increasing demand to bring children into care and try to place them with as near as they can get to a traditional family. Bizarre. And evidence that actual evidences play very little part in the political sphere.