First parenting lesson: they are OUR children

HAD I known then what I know now about the challenges of the teen years, I would surely have signed up for parenting classes when my offspring came of age. They might have prepared me for the overnight change in attitude or saved me no end of anguish, not to mention futile stand-offs, temper tantrums and valleys of tears. And that’s just from me.

A parenting course might have prepared me for the infuriating tweenage habit of manic eye-rolling at the least manifestation of parental authority, which I mistakenly interpreted as the height of rudeness but know now is nothing more than a sign of the normal psychological process of separation.

There must be countless other pitfalls I could have avoided had I known what to expect. Like rushing in to solve a crisis with unasked-for advice when all the adolescent wanted was to let off steam. My only consolation is that I’m far from alone in making a mess of this ‘parenting’ malarkey. According to research, school-leavers are entering college with no clue about how to manage for themselves, let alone behave appropriately on the dating game.

A DCU study shows students claiming a lack of research and critical skills. It’s the inevitable result of a secondary education straitjacketed by the points race at the expense of basic educational tools, including, alarmingly, technological know-how.

BUT away from the study halls and lecture theatres and into the social clubs and college bars, the levels of sexual hostility and crude sexual harassment being reported by students has prompted Junior Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor to consider making classes on sexual consent compulsory in all Irish colleges.

Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea, leading divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton has called for schoolchildren to be taught how to make marriage work in order to stem the tide of marital breakdown.

Shackleton says schools make time to teach children about alcohol and drug abuse, sex and ‘goodness knows what else’ but fail to address ‘what is the most important decision they make, which is, basically, who they breed with’.

Now while it might certainly suit parents to pass the buck for our responsibilities onto schools and universities, it’s reckless in the extreme. Even leaving aside the question of how our underfunded education system is to afford an extra role as moral guardians of our youth, it’s entirely unacceptable for instance that the majority of young people should remain naive about the lethal effects of alcohol right up until their late teens and early twenties.

Research from NUI Galway shows the majority of undergraduates believe that consent is still possible after 12 pints. Such ignorance is a massive parenting fail.

As is Shackleton’s contention that youngsters are too tied up with romantic ideals of marriage to see the profound implications of their decision, not just for themselves but their potential children. Contrary though to her conviction that schools should put pupils to rights on the subject of marriage, is it not the job of parents to teach by example, the practical and less glamorous side of married life? Similarly the complaints of college students about the paucity and irrelevance of their school sex education. Perhaps schools need to move with the times with their sex education but is there not an even more urgent need for parents to step up to the plate?

AS THE pressures facing young people multiply with every new generation, it’s tempting to demand that schools and universities address them. But that ignores the fact that while our institutions of learning have certainly a crucial role in shaping young hearts and minds, their first duty is to teach.

The primary duty of parents is to teach their offspring to be capable and stand on their own two feet in the modern world.

We may not need parenting classes to teach us that but they might remind us that while the world our children inherit is rather different – and perhaps not even to our taste – from the one where we came of age, it is no excuse for sticking our heads in the proverbial sand and failing to equip our children for it.