In the quiet hours after another football match devolves into chaos in parts of France, a question lingers like tear gas in the streets: where are the parents?
Not metaphorically—truly. Where are they?
A generation of children and adolescents, many growing up in urban enclaves often labeled sensitive zones, are being left to navigate life by their own compass—or worse, by the magnetic pull of delinquency, street ideologies, or internet pseudo-prophets. What we’re witnessing is not merely the breakdown of public order, but the silent collapse of an invisible but essential institution: the family as a school of life.
The Crisis Behind the Riots
France has a storied tradition of protest, but the recurring urban violence—disproportionate and often directionless—reveals less a political statement and more a cultural void. Behind the smashed shop windows and burning scooters are boys untethered from authority, roaming the social terrain like orphans of a world that owes them everything but teaches them nothing.
Sociologically, we are observing a pattern where some parents—particularly in deprived urban settings—have not just struggled, but seemingly surrendered their educational role. It would be easy to blame poverty alone, but this would be incomplete. The crisis is deeper: a moral fatigue, a cultural shift where responsibility is outsourced to screens, schools, or the state—anyone but oneself.
When Children Become Currency
There is an unspoken truth in France’s urban policy landscape: the child as a fiscal asset. Social benefits, housing subsidies, and allowances intended to support vulnerable families have inadvertently created a perverse incentive for some to expand their households not out of love or readiness, but financial calculus. When a child is born into such a transaction, the risk is not just neglect—it is abandonment in slow motion.
In this model, the street becomes the teacher. The gang becomes the family. Authority figures are not trusted, and respect is earned not through virtue, but through dominance. Psychologically, these children grow up in unstable attachments, forming identities in opposition rather than in cohesion with society.
We are now witnessing, in France, a society in which taking the life of an innocent person—for a look, for a cigarette, for a phone—occurs with complete impunity, as justice no longer fulfills its role. Our beautiful constitution protects offenders more than their victims, and for good reason: in France, prison is not designed to punish or deliver justice, but to rehabilitate.
Unfortunately, it has become a place where petty criminals, inevitably, fail to confront their faults or weaknesses. Instead, they form toxic and criminal bonds, learning nothing from their incarceration, as evidenced by the high rate of reoffending shortly after release.
Fortunately, some French news channels have taken it upon themselves to shed light on this segment of the population that acts with impunity and has no desire to behave like law-abiding citizens. Without these channels, there would be total silence—an absolute omertà.
A Nation Tired of Pretending
There is a rising weariness in France—not of compassion, but of denial. The average citizen, who works, educates their children, pays taxes, and believes in civic order, watches with growing frustration as pockets of lawlessness erupt again and again with no real consequence for the root cause. It’s not that the French people are without empathy; it’s that they are tired of a system that demands it without accountability.
The response from successive governments has been more symptomatic than systemic. Where there should be bold reform, there is appeasement. Where there should be courageous policy, there are reports. One could say the French state has developed a remarkable talent for looking away—like a parent who pretends not to see their child misbehaving in the hope it will stop on its own.
A Proposal Rooted in Responsibility
No child deserves to suffer for the failures of adults. But neither can a society thrive when parental disengagement is subsidized. If the state must provide, it must also demand. One possible approach, controversial but perhaps necessary, is to condition certain social benefits on measurable parental involvement.
Not to punish poverty, but to awaken participation.
Mandatory parenting workshops, community service requirements, or even partial suspension of benefits for proven educational negligence might seem harsh. Yet, consider this: it is often in being forced to act that one rediscovers purpose. For many families adrift, the structure of responsibility could be the very thing that rescues them from apathy.
Final Thoughts: Children Are Not Accidents of Birth
The act of bringing a child into the world is not just a biological event; it is a philosophical declaration. It is a promise—silent, sacred—to shape a life with care. When that promise is broken, the damage ripples through generations, through schools, neighborhoods, and eventually, society itself.
Parenthood is the most demanding of all vocations, and also the least glamorized. But without it, no nation can stand. If we listen closely, perhaps we will hear not just anger, but a plea: to be seen, to be guided, to be raised.
Before we rebuild the streets, we must rebuild the homes. And for that, there is no substitute for parents.
