‘No-one will ever be a perfect parent and campaigns alone won’t help’
CAN the government fix bad parenting – and is offering tips on how to raise children the job of government anyway?
No-one sensible can argue with most of the common sense advice in the Welsh Government’s Parenting, Give It Time campaign launched on October 24 on social media, on a website and leaflets.
The question is whether it will have any effect at all. Government campaigns like this don’t have a great track record, after all.
The UK Government’s five a day campaign to get kids and grown-ups eating five pieces of fruit or veg each day has coincided with a seemingly unstoppable rise in child obesity, not to mention adult obesity.
It’s all about the money, stupid. Packets of biscuits are cheaper and last longer than fruit.
Forget whether or not your child prefers one to the other.
For a low income family of three or four eating five pieces of fruit a day may simply be beyond the budget.
It’s a sad fact but sugar and fat are cheaper than fresh fruit, meat and veg. Instead of lecturing those living on a tight budget, politicians might have got a faster result lecturing food producers on their pricing.
So it is, to an extent, with parenting. Is this latest Welsh Government campaign directed at the right people? It is obviously common sense to aim a good parenting campaign at parents themselves, but underneath that there are many people and organisations that contribute to how easy or hard it is to be the best parents we can. Pressure needs to be exerted elsewhere too.
It is not just money that affects how we run our lives so it would be trite to assume that while lack of cash clearly affects food buying choices it also affects how we behave and raise our kids.
Economics does have some impact on our behaviour but it’s not the sole driver of whether or not we are good parents – you only have to look at parental child abuse cases that go to court to see that. And most of us will know wealthier parents who don’t always do a good job and poorer parents who often do.
Loneliness, mental health, job and relationship stress can all affect parenting. Work can have a massive impact too. It’s easy to feel like a bad parent if you drop your baby or young child off at childcare while most people are eating breakfast and can’t pick them up until near their bedtime. Working parents need more support to work flexibly which will only come about with pressure from government.
History tells us no employer gave maternity leave of a year and guaranteed a woman’s job back after that until the government made that law.
It would help all parents to extend that to put more pressure on employers to make work more child friendly for both men and women. And, as the former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard pointed out on a recent visit to Wales, society needs more men in leadership roles taking up the new offer of paternity leave to demonstrate that it is OK and women are not slacking or disinterested in their careers when they take leave or go part time for the children.
Resentment isn’t a recipe for great parenting after all.
It is ironic that despite the world becoming more and more connected by the internet, meaning many jobs could be done from home in flexi hours, that it is not becoming more the norm. It seems a win-win situation for employers and parents.
Then there is the whole issue of stress and mental health which, like obesity, is a growing problem which no-one seems to have the answers to address.
It’s hard to parent well with depression, anxiety or even extreme PMT. We need to get better at talking about and seeking help for these issues. Men and women.
Anyone who has ever had a baby will tell you that almost the moment you conceive a plethora of advice and tips are thrust at you from all angles but there rarely seems to be a human being there to help when genuinely needed.
Social media, so often criticised, may be a godsend for lonely parents needing instant reassurance, advice, or just a place to sound off in.
But, like the parenting campaign, social media also risks stripping people’s confidence as they compare themselves to the ideal presented.
The Parenting Give It Time campaign has been launched ahead of the Welsh Government introducing legislation to ban physical punishment of children in Wales.
While a few voices have publicly criticised a change in the law, most appear to support it, according to a public consultation.
Ending the physical punishment of children will protect their rights, a narrow majority agreed. Just over half (50.3%) agreed and 48.1% disagreed with the statement that the proposal would achieve the aim of protecting children’s rights; 1.5% said they “don’t know”.
The results are interesting. Public perception of smacking and other physical forms of attack against children has seen a sea change in a few generations without a government campaign.
Where smacking was once the norm it is rare now to see a parent or carer use this form of punishment in public. Indeed, on the rare occasions I have seen a child hit in public in recent years people tend to look askance or even step in to prevent or question it.
The change in the law in Wales has coincided in a public shift away from smacking and physical punishment as a means of parenting.
Many things have contributed to that change, which has been a long time coming.
No-one will ever be a perfect parent and campaigns alone won’t help. A whole social shift is needed for that. But a one-stop shop for advice is a start, if only to cut through all the confusion of multiple advice offered to parents from varying sources.