The State of Parenting

Taking back control and taking it seriously

Be there for your child, and create a safe but interesting home environment. Don’t tell them ‘I’m busy’. Have realistic expectations and be quick, calm, clear and consistent when you want them to do (or not do) something. Avoid parent traps. Don’t ignore good behaviour while attending to the bad. Don’t let things escalate - with you or them. And get your timing right i.e. don’t expect them to tidy their room when they’re playing a crucial FIFA match on their Nintendo Switch.

I tend to agree with sociologist Frank Furedi (author of the excellent Paranoid Parenting) that parenting can’t be taught. It is, as he says, a relationship. Not a set of skills. I’m sometimes suspicious of initiatives that claim to ‘support’ parents, especially when they’re run by a State whose own parenting is at best sub-standard and often neglectful. And yet, there is a problem in society too.

As former Minister for Levelling Up Communities, Kemi Badenoch, put it: ‘Stable and secure families are the bedrock of society’. But, as one of Furedi’s other books ('Authority: A Sociological History’) suggests, the standing of parents, and adults in general, is increasingly compromised. While parenting can’t be taught, we still have a lot to learn. Your average parenting course, in this sense, is an attempt to address a very real deficit.

That doesn’t mean we all should go on one. Far from it. Parents themselves are the only real experts in how to raise their children. But we should all take ourselves more seriously. (For the kind of advice parenting ‘experts’ give, see my boiled down version at the top of the page. This advice, in my view, is not in itself objectionable. It might even be welcome, especially if you’re struggling to cope. But there is no right or wrong way to bring up a child.)

The problem of authority is society-wide. Parents - like teachers - just happen to be on the frontline and seriously lacking effective backup and logistical support. Meanwhile, the March of the Mummies that took place on Halloween weekend in Trafalgar Square, drew attention to the UK’s eye-watering childcare costs, and the horrific practical difficulties that many families face from the economic impacts of the cost-of-living crisis.

In response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the government has promised to ‘support families to care for their children, so that they can have safe, loving and happy childhoods which set them up for fulfilling lives’. But what does ‘support’ mean? Is it helping those mummies with their childcare costs, or ensuring parents in work are able to hold on to secure jobs that pay well enough to support their families?

Well, no. There is, rather, a series of initiatives aimed at ‘supporting’ an ever growing number of families to do the basics.

The Troubled Families Programme ‘supported’ 120,000 families between 2012 and 2015; and another 470,000 since then. The government’s Supporting Families programme, backed up by a budget of over £1 billion, stretches ‘across its flagship family programmes’. It aims, for instance, to help 300,000 ‘vulnerable families’ to ‘provide the safe and loving homes their children need to thrive’; employ key-workers to provide ‘hands-on’ parenting support; put social workers in schools and set up a network of ‘family hubs’.

These hubs are being piloted across 75 local authorities. According to the Department for Education, they will assist ‘parents who may not have an immediate support network’ of their own, and ‘offer localised early help and intervention, from early years support to parenting classes’. The State could have a role to play in making parents lives easier or ensuring they are not impoverished, but it can’t - except in the most extreme circumstances - be an effective substitute for parents.

The problems that exist in our society - and in our families and communities - cannot be solved from without. Parents need to take control.