Feral Families
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
“I don’t believe in ownership over children,” announces Gemma Rawnsley, mother of seven, early on in this interesting documentary about three families who have opted for “feral” or, to put it less sensationally, “free-range” parenting.
While the other two families featured have had some experience of formal education, Gemma and her husband Lewis believe that their children can only flourish away from the repressive strictures of school. In theory, their methods are all about freedom, choice and the creation of independent children.
In practice, it means that there are absolutely no rules: the children decide what to eat, when to go to bed, how to spend their days. Some of it – such as a family picnic in the Yorkshire countryside looks idyllic – and there’s no doubting that the Rawnsleys are articulate, likeable and admirably close but much of it looks like absolute chaos with children running around hopped up on ice cream at 11pm. And, for all Gemma and Lewis’s passion about their parenting choices, the documentary’s real star is organised second child Fin, who quietly admits that actually he quite fancies going to school and attending classes “at the same time every day”. Sarah Hughes