Institute of Ideas

Dave Clements - 'The state of parenting'

The recent publication of the Care Matters Green Paper has drawn attention to the state’s poor record with regards children in the care system. For all its denunciations of problem parents and anti-social families, say critics, this government like those before it has evidently failed to look after the children for which it has parental responsibility. The Paper has also brought renewed emphasis to its ‘corporate parenting’ role. But, contrary to popular opinion, this is about much more than just working with families where children are ‘on the edge of care’. In 1998 for instance, the Secretary of State for Health wrote to local councillors reminding them that as corporate parents, “you took on important responsibilities for the health and well-being of all children in your area”. And yet this wider definition has been largely ignored.

This extension of the reach of the state into the lives of all families is very much in keeping with the other Green Paper, Every Child Matters, published in 2003. Both are premised on the notion that children are increasingly vulnerable, and that parents are unable to play the kind of ‘safeguarding’ role that the government expects of them in their children’s lives. More than this, by failing their children parents also risk failing in their responsibilities to society as a whole. The state must step in more often, or so goes the argument, to protect society from badly reared children.

The significance of parenting for society aside, parents themselves are typically described in passive or instrumental terms. They only feature in as far as they are a potential threat to their children’s well-being, or as passive recipients of ‘support’. At best they are just another ‘partner’ alongside all the other agencies involved in the business of rearing their children. The implication is that parenting is too important, and too difficult, a job to be left to parents alone. It is for this reason that the rise of the corporate parent threatens to undermine the confidence, authority and autonomy of all parents to bring up their own children.

Jane Sandeman - 'You can't have it all'

A new report came out this week that says that nurseries are massively undersubscribed. This has been attributed to the fact that women are embracing the opportunity for flexible working and have turned their back on the notion that “you can have it all”. The trend is that women have decided to put their careers on hold to look after their babes in arms.

This is an area that is a minefield of issues but the one I want to explore is the constant attack on the idea that women can have children and a career. There is a book published last month:” The Feminine Mistake: Are we giving up too much? " by Leslie Bennetts which is a timely reminder of the fight that women undertook to have economic independence. From Engels to Simone de Beauvoir it was understood that when women are proscribed to the domestic sphere, with no resource other than dependency on a partner it is a ball and chain for both man and woman.

Bennetts effectively tackles the fact that working moms are able to put a dinner on the table for their children and ensure that they are clothed and bathed. She also raises the fact that this can be done when you accept you can be good enough-if you are striving for perfection at work or at home then you won’t be able to have it all. The book is also honest that women probably will have to make compromises with the career path they choose if they want to spend time with their children.

The point Bennetts powerfully makes is that for many of the full time moms she interviewed they chose full time motherhood as a result of finding work tough or boring or the politics difficult. As she says, men also come across this but have to work out strategies for dealing with this-for women one of the options is opting out into the domestic sphere.

She also makes the point that it is only a short time in a woman’s lifespan that children have that complete dependency on her, if she chooses to stay at home.

All the research shows that babies at home with a parent in the first year develop more quickly than those put into nursery care, but that is it. By the time they get to school age the reverse is true.

In the howl of articles that are declaring that a woman’s place is in the home as a sainted mother of her one or two children, it is good to have some voices that remind us of the danger of dependency and the limits of that role.

Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert - 'You can't have it all?'

I take issue with the idea that we should aspire only to be ‘good enough’ either as mothers or as workers. I thought it was through striving for perfection (no matter how impossible to achieve) that progress was made. However, to agree with Bennett’s substantive point…

Yes women can and should aim to make their mark on the world in more than the domestic sphere. But I think we need to understand why there may be more women reluctant to do this (hence the under-subscribed nurseries cited in Jane Sandeman’s commentary). I also think it would be useful to re-cap on why women should aim for this.

Firstly, work was traditionally part of a wider public sphere where transformation was possible; the arena where individuals could participate in a wider collective sphere to progress both their immediate, individual lives and in doing so, contribute to social development. This is no longer the case. The reduction (or collapse) of the public sphere, and the place of work within it, leaves horizons lowered. Focus automatically shifts to the terrain of the private and personal – areas of life where people feel they can make a difference. Hence the obsession with various aspects of our private lives –from what we eat to how we parent. Whilst this one-sided focus is not helpful to anyone (other than self-styled ‘experts’), I do think that there is more to being a parent than putting food on the table and getting children bathed and ready for bed and I don’t think it is helpful to berate those who do want to be better parents. The argument that in times past children did well enough without such concerted parenting efforts is weak because surely each generation wants better for their children.

The problem lies in locating where the more pressing dangers lie. Here I would argue that the effects of living in a society, where low horizons are dominant, are more detrimental to children than living in families where mum and dad are clearly not super-parents.

So this is one reason why a conscious effort to counteract this limiting tendency should be made – to be part of lifting horizons. We cannot do this by pretending that the domestic realm is equivalent, or superior, to the world of work, however diminished its scope at present.

The second reason is that, on an individual level, the domestic sphere is about intimate relationships between adults and children where the adults often subsume immediate interests for the sake of children. That comes with being a parent. It is not a relationship of equals. You cannot make demands of your children, nor they of you, in the same way adults can. A tired mother can, if pushed, ignore her child for a while (or put on a DVD); a tired teacher/doctor/shop assistant cannot ignore immediate responsibilities without consequences. The famous multi-tasking of motherhood is not comparable to multi-tasking in a public role. The pile of ironing can wait; the un-marked essays or un-written reports cannot.

It is through work one can meet, and interact with, a wider range of people – even if you can’t stand most of them you need to find ways of dealing with them. Through such pressures may come exhaustion but also the potential to overcome, develop and change, oneself and maybe even society itself.

Rich and rewarding as being a parent often is; and enjoyable as some of the plethora of lifestyle courses which purport to help one develop can be, they can never offer a comparable public (however diminished) forum; and arena where an individual, through his/her own efforts can forge an identity. The current ersatz status conferred upon parenthood is a poor substitute for being able to develop one’s faculties in a more rounded way through acting on a wider arena than just the domestic.

Mary Wollstonecraft, in 1792, wrote that only through developing mental faculties in an all-rounded way (which meant and still means today, going against prescribed notions of what women should do or be) that they could join in the world of rational humanity. She also noted that in doing so, they would be better able to bring up their children. She understood that a woman, whose mental capacities were stunted, would also be a less effective parent. I think this hold true today. There is no inherent conflict of interest between mothers wanting to develop themselves outside the domestic sphere, and their children. Tensions arise mainly because of the practical logistics of transport and childcare provision.

In a climate where rationality is widely held in disrepute, this is argument seems less compelling. Nonetheless it remains true.

Helen Reece - 'The degradation of parental responsibility'

The Children Act 1989 almost completely replaced the concept of parents’ rights with the more egalitarian concept of parental responsibility. The main reason for this change was that parents’ rights were criticised for treating children as though they were the property of their parents. This was a ridiculous reason to get rid of parents’ rights from the legal lexicon: parents’ rights existed for the benefit of children, as was made clear by the House of Lords in the celebrated case of Gillick in 1985.

In itself, a change in vocabulary would not have been too bad though: in the early days of the Children Act, parental responsibility was generally regarded as meaning much the same as parents’ rights: parental responsibility was originally interpreted as being about parental authority for decision-making.

What is more worrying is the degradation of the meaning of parental responsibility since the Children Act was passed. Parental responsibility is now less about parental independence from external agencies and more about adults seeking approval from those agencies. This is evident in three different legal developments.

First, recent years have witnessed the proliferation of parental responsibility, so that for example most step-parents can now have parental responsibility. While this is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, it is indicative of the fact that parental responsibility is less about authority these days – if parental responsibility were about decision-making, it would be important to have a very limited number of people who were clearly in charge.

Secondly, these days adults are often awarded a degraded type of parental responsibility that does not actually entitle them to do very much: a dramatic example is a case last year called Re D, in which an unmarried father was awarded parental responsibility with conditions set down by the court that he was not allowed to visit or contact the child’s school or any of the child’s health professionals for any purpose, without the written consent of the child’s primary carers. These conditions seem inconsistent with the award of parental authority, as they prevented him from making a whole range of important decisions.

Finally, the courts are now giving different reasons for granting parental responsibility. Instead of referring to the adult’s need to make, or at least be involved in making, decisions about the child, they are on occasions talking about the adult’s need for a ‘stamp of approval’ from the court. This was taken furthest in Re D, in which the court gave the father parental responsibility because he needed to be ‘recognised’. The law has moved a long way from parents’ rights indeed, if the grant of parental responsibility no longer necessarily means that the adult has any authority over a child, and can simply mean that the adult has been ‘recognised’ by the court.

Beverley Marshall - 'Let them eat cake'

In November my two girls aged 2 and 3 came back from their crèche in East London with a note that told me that as a result of the Jamie Oliver experience in schools that the crèche would no longer be allowing the children to have party food. It went on to say that all birthday cakes would also be banned. From now on, the note informed me, if it was a child’s birthday at the crèche, they would get a birthday card and would be able to make pear mice and fruit kebabs with the other children in their room to celebrate the occasion.

Firstly, I think it is outrageous that my kids are not able to enjoy cakes and sweets with their friends. I don’t have a problem with them eating those things so why prohibit them from my children? I want my girls to have a fun childhood where they can enjoy being children. This means not problematising treats or normal social occasions like birthdays, where cakes have always formed a part of the celebration.

Also I think it is sad that that parents of children are no longer able to bring food into the crèche to celebrate their child’s birthday. In the past parents would send in cake and little party bags with treats, which my girls would bring home with excitement. I’ve always viewed the crèche as an extension of home and don’t think it should be hijacked to dictate the latest health panics. If I want my kids to follow a Jamie Oliver diet surely I should be able to opt in rather than have to have it forced onto me.

My girls had their third and fourth birthday in February and March and I kept them off the crèche so that they could have a proper celebration. We had a tea party complete with a Barbie Pegasus cake and a chocolate caterpillar cake.

Sally Millard - Good Sport

My son, who is six, loves climbing, kicking a ball, playing swing-ball, badminton and ‘bat and ball’ and generally enjoys anything that involves running around and using up his masses of energy. I am pleased about this because I love to see him enjoying himself, but I am increasingly concerned about the way that he has started to describe and understand these activities.

Whilst his enjoyment can be seen very clearly from the expression on his face when he is whacking the swing-ball so hard that it’s a challenge to hit it back to him, it is a shock when he tells us that he likes to play because it is ‘good exercise’, ‘makes me fit’, and ‘will help my bones grow big and strong’. Whilst I am sure that playing an active sport does help people keep fit, the way my son describes it, his personal health and fitness is the first, second and last reason for playing these games. This is an idea he has picked up from the way that sports, PE, playing and even walking to school is discussed with him at school, where personal health and fitness have become a major part of the curriculum.

I am concerned about what I consider an over-zealous promotion of exercise and fitness at school, and the impact this is having on children’s image of themselves. I think the emphasis on sport as a means of getting fit has led to other positive aspects of sport for children being diminished. Discipline and team play in order to compete and strive to be better than your opponents have been subsumed under the ‘get fit’ mantra, and instead of sport being a good way to challenge the self-obsession of young children, it actually encourages it. Sport as exercise is all about ‘me’; ‘my strong bones’, ‘my healthy body’. I think it would be better if we encouraged children to enjoy sport because it is fun and sociable, and we spent less time encouraging them to self-obsess about being fit.