Perhaps all politics is founded, ultimately, on how we think about the family.

That was the theory put forward by psychology professor George Lakoff to solve the mystery of where ideologies of left and right come from in the first place.

The right thinks of the state as a traditional ‘strict father’, whose disciplinary role is to prepare the ‘children’ – citizens – into adults, to develop self-reliance and moral responsibility. Once they can support themselves, the father/state should not interfere. This helps to explain the clustering of apparently contradictory beliefs within right-wing ideology, such as advocating a strong military and police while preferring a smaller state.

By contrast, the left’s ‘nurturing’ approach sees human nature as essentially good, but views the state as having an important parental role in fostering citizens’ development and protecting them from external pressures.

If the way we think about the family matters so much, the irony is that the left doesn’t seem able to talk about the family anymore. This is strange: Labour can credibly claim to have done most of the good things for the family – from creating the NHS and introducing maternity and paternity leave, to supporting family incomes through tax credits. The Conservatives meanwhile, in habitually opposing such measures, have arguably been one of the strongest anti-family forces in society.

Yet the left has no story of the family. The right is confident it ‘owns’ the politics of the family: the left tends to retreat when it is mentioned. This is a significant political mistake.

We need a new positive argument about the family. Labour’s problem is not lack of a policy agenda, but the broader public narrative that will be needed if it is to make deeper progress in supporting families.

There are three key steps here. Firstly, we need to get over our fear of the language of the family. We should talk about ‘the family’, as well as about ‘children and families’, not because it signifies a particular structure but because it reflects the importance we attach to the intimate bonds and duties of care that underpin family ties. In any case, the way to reclaim the term is to use it, not avoid it.

Secondly, the left needs a deeper equality agenda which understands the family not simply as a means (the ‘transmission belt’), but values it as an end in itself too. This means supporting all parents to promote their children’s well-being and development, and giving most support to those who are struggling. This shift to a focus on family relationships suddenly makes the promotion of ‘family values’ integral to a politics of equality and redistribution, rather than dissonant with it.

And, thirdly, this is where the new progressive politics of the family can take on the right’s agenda. For the policy agenda that follows from this – more investment in children’s centres, paid parental leave, etc. – rarely involves the state getting out of the way. Those who believe the smallest state is always best will fail to offer sufficient practical support

The right often says supporting families is more than just about income. True, but income matters tremendously too. Research shows material hardship damages parent-child relationships through factors like increased stress and the longer working hours that result. So we should make a ‘family values’ case to end child poverty, and indeed to raise lone parent benefits too. It should probably mean dropping moves to introduce work requirements for lone parents of children under seven too.

So this should be the left’s pro-family argument. It puts the focus where it belongs: the quality of relationships in the family – of whatever kind – not the nuclear structure. It grounds progressive welfare policy in strengthening family relationships. And it takes head on the misguided idea that the state is always the enemy of the family and never its ally: the family needs the state.

This article was originally published in Fabian Review