David Cameron was the most prominent figure who suggested that fatherlessness and general moral breakdown were behind last week’s riots, but he wasn’t on his own.

David Lammy (pictured), The Labour MP for the Tottenham area, where the riots started said that the lack of male role models in young men’s lives was one of the long term reasons behind the trouble.

Mr Lammy MP warned that in areas like his there are “none of the basic starting presumptions of two adults who want to start a family, raise children together, love them, nourish them and lead them to full independence”.

He continued: “The parents are not married and the child has come, frankly, out of casual sex; the father isn’t present, and isn’t expected to be.

“There aren’t the networks of extended families to make up for it.” He warned that children, without male role models, turn to “hip-hop”, “gang culture” and peer groups for their masculinity.

And one of Britain’s most influential religious leaders, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, writing in The Times newspaper, said: “Too much of contemporary society has been a vacation from responsibility.”

He commented: “Children have been the victims of our self-serving beliefs that you can have partnerships without the responsibility of marriage, children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality, and self-esteem without the responsibility of hard work and achievement.”

The Church of England bishop of Manchester, Nigel McCullogh, suggested that there had been a “relentless erosion of Christian values in this country that has taken place during the lifetime of successive governments.”

And he said that sidelining “religion in nurture and education is foolhardy”.

“Theological insights about justice and respect, exercising discipline with mercy, and the knowledge that everyone is redeemable, are of proven worth and pertinent to any intelligent exploration about how we can become a better society,” he added.

Meanwhile, he said, too many children missed adequate guidance from parents.

Bishop McCullogh said: “I grew up as an only child without a father, so I know how important it is to find a good male role model and have quality relationships. The absence of that is why gang leaders can have such a beguiling influence. For many youngsters, the gang provides the best sense of family and community.”

The Bishop of London, Rt Reverend Richard Chartres also noted the “background to the riots is family breakdown and the absence of strong and positive role models”.

Max Hastings, a commentator in the Daily Mail, cautioned: “The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.

“The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.”

Mr Hastings continued: “This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one”.

He added: “If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.” 

Londoners have also spoken of their concern about the breakdown of the family. One mum, Chris, who was speaking to The Guardian, said: “It’s all very well trying to be liberal, but parents need to be given back their right to parent.”

She also commented: “Responsibility has been taken away from parents. People here will call social services if they hear you disciplining your children.” 

Meanwhile, in the US, the African-American mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, said that the black community in his city had a problem with fatherlessness.

Speaking in the aftermath of sporadic violence in his city earlier this month, Mr Nutter, a Democrat, told an African-American church that fathers had a particularly important role to play in raising their children. 

Mr Nutter said: “You know you’re not a father just because you have a kid, or two, or three. That doesn’t make you a father.

“A father is a person who’s around, participating in a child’s life. He’s a teacher who helps to guide and shape and mold that young person, someone for that young person to talk to, to share with, their ups and their downs, their fears and their concerns. 

“A father has to provide a structure to a young boy, on how to become a good man. A good man. A father also has to be a good role model, and help a young girl be a strong woman.

“Now let me just say this, if you’re not doing those things, if you’re just hanging out out there, maybe you’re sending a check or bringing some cash by, that’s not being a father. You’re just a human ATM.

“And if you’re not providing the guidance, and you’re not sending any money, you’re just a sperm donor. You’re just a sperm donor. 

“That’s not good enough. Don’t be that. Don’t be that. You can do better than that.

“That’s part of the problem in the black community. And many other communities. But a particular problem in the black communities, we have too many men making too many babies that they don’t want to take care of and then we end up dealing with your children.”

His words echoed comments by Barack Obama on Father’s Day in 2008 when he was running for President.

Then Senator Obama said that the high number of African-American children being raised by single parents was harming that community.

He said: “But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”

He acknowledged just how tough a job being a single mother is. Society needed “to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do,” he said.

“So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong”.