Alive to the World helps children learn about family values, says Louise Kirk.

How do you teach marriage and family life to children? This is key to social renewal and was urged at the Synod of the Family in 2015. The bishops specifically asked schools to begin the preparation.

Matrimony is not unvalued in the Catholic Church: it is one of our seven Sacraments. From it flow the family life, children and vocations on which the Church depends. Civil marriage is also critical. Sir Paul Coleridge, president of the Marriage Foundation, is calling for intervention as the gap between those who marry and those who do not widens. Among the parents of newborns in 2021, 71 per cent of high-earners were married compared with only 34 per cent of low-earners, and no more than 18 per cent of the “not classified”. And yet nine in 10 young people aspire to marry, regardless of income.