Coercive adverts often create false belief of achieving ‘idealistic’ lives

REGULAR letter writer Mr P Collins has a tenuous point when he claimed (‘Building societies to blame for being prepared to lend too much money,’ Post, January 15) that building society policy to lend buyers more than they can afford could be responsible for causing the breakdown of many families.

Indeed, he commented on the problems of working mothers and the financial instability of some families who have to depend on two incomes to survive. He referred to comments in which I attempted to identify why this was so. He wrote: “So who is to blame for the loss of the traditional family values that R L Smith comments on in his letter on Boxing Day?”

The building societies might share some blame. However, I would cite my own late mum/dad who raised their four children without my mother working and they could not afford to borrow from a building society. Although mum stayed at home, my father considered himself to be the sole breadwinner responsible for providing the family income.

Moreover, this meant that we were blessedly not ‘orphaned’ out to childminders so that mum could have perhaps doubled the family income to chase the materialistic dragon.

Thankfully there must be many mothers [and to their credit some fathers] who still see their maternal nurturing as being of greater importance than gilding the lily of motherhood.

However, families are being exposed to coercive advertising often in the false belief that they can achieve ‘idealistic’ lives, which in reality are merely media-created illusions!

I consider myself privileged that my boyhood was not subjected to lowest common denominator television such as Love Island and the other drivel/dross which keeps sections of society glued to their iPhones and other electronic gadgetry!

Devotees of keeping up with the ‘Joneses’ might like to note that my father did not buy a house until he was 40 and the family transport was a motorbike/sidecar.

So those were the traditional family values that my letter referred to, and it is my opinion that addictive social media continues to destroy the traditional norms of yesteryear R L Smith Knowle