Every now and then you hear an idea that makes you sit up straight and think,
that's it! It's so bleeding obvious - why didn't I think of it? It happened
to me yesterday morning at 7.32am. And this was the idea: that
schoolchildren as young as ten be given compulsory parenting lessons.
It was the Conservative Parliamentary candidate Shaun Bailey, a youth worker
on the rough inner-city council estates of West London, speaking on the
Today programme. John Humphrys's voice was full of moral bristle: “Teach a
ten-year-old girl how to bring up kids?” he asked. Love that assumption that
it's just for the girls, John.
Absolutely, replied Mr Bailey - being a parent is a privilege and not just a
right; we should point out that it's going to be hard work. “We need to
instruct our children in the realities of families. Lots of people have
children believing it's going to be like a Barbie doll.”
Now, I know that this area is fraught with accusation and counter-accusation:
you are unfairly branding youngsters, or their mothers, or even the foetus.
Or you are nannying, or over-reacting, or being a middle-class snob.
But when you think about it, it's so obvious: if we want to deal with the
problem of third or fourth generation children in unemployable, chaotic
families who, like their parents before them, never stood a chance, you have
to make the mothers think before getting pregnant in the first place.
There are so many, many schemes aimed at wising them up after the event. The
family nurses scheme, for instance, which pairs dedicated nurses with the
most vulnerable teenage single mothers from early pregnancy until the child
is two years old in an intensive programme of support and education. It's
been a great success in the United States and yesterday the initial ten
pilot areas in Britain were expanded to another 20. Which is good news: the
help is far better targeted than the Tory promise to give every baby 23
hours' worth of home visiting from a health visitor in its first five years.
Still, it would be better were it not necessary.
The Government announced another new scheme yesterday: getting kids aged ten
and over to sign good behaviour contracts, and give them mentors to help to
tackle their problems. But you can tell that none of this stuff is working
just by glancing at the press release rolling out of the Department for
Children, Schools and Families yesterday. There is now a Government's
Children's Plan, a Ten Year Youth Strategy and a Youth Taskforce Action
plan, promising 20 Intensive Intervention Projects, 52 Challenge and Support
Projects (“fresh emphasis on the use of Individual Support Orders and early
intervention”), a network of Family Intervention Projects, Parenting Early
Intervention Pathfinders. “Today we are also publishing the Aiming High
Implementation Plan...”
All those projects, all those plans... and it is almost always too late: you
can identify the children who are more likely to get into trouble at a later
age, by the time they are 6 or 7, yet nobody wants to brand a child a
potential criminal then by targeting them for help. You can see kids from
poorer families beginning to slip behind from pre-school age. Or, as the
family nurses scheme recognises, you can identify the sort of families
likely to need extra support as soon as the mother is pregnant.
But what the Government should be trying to do for future generations is to
stop the cycle. And that means teaching children, from as young an age as
they can begin to understand - yes, ten, perhaps - about the realities of
parenting, the responsibility, the cost, the consequences of failure and the
joys of success, from the price of nappies to the effect of drugs on the
unborn, the sleepless nights to the penalties for children carrying knives.
You introduce them to the idea of a good and a bad parent, and their effects.
For some kids, this might be the first time they have seen that there can be
an alternative to chaotic parental management. They might have had rotten
experiences with their own parents; they will often have already effectively
been parents to younger siblings. But it is all the wrong experience. They
might know a lot about parenting, but not about what good parenting can be.
They might not realise that they have a choice - to be a positive influence
on their child or a negative one. They might not realise how essential their
own role is going to be.
If teaching them all this deters them from becoming parents too soon,
fabulous. If it makes them better parents whenever the time comes, great. If
it puts them off for life, fine. Ministers might even find that it launches
many more teenagers on a path towards professional childcare, helping to
fill the gulf between official expectations of pre-school childcare
provision and the reality.
I know what people will say: it is patronising. Well it's not if you include
everyone in the lessons, and I know many unhappy children in better-off
families as well as in poor ones. It's only patronising if you consider it
an exclusively “poor” problem. Then the critics will say that it is
dangerous, in that it might encourage the children to think they could try
being a parent - to which I would reply that they seem to be trying anyway,
but in ignorance.
And then they will say that it isn't the job of schools to teach this stuff.
Well, no, in an ideal world it's not, but it isn't an ideal world and too
often the family structures and the example no longer exists at home to
teach it. Better lessons in parenting than those silly citizenship courses.
I rang my friend's ten-year-old daughter, who is wise and the best unofficial
childminder I know. What would she think, I asked, if someone were to
suggest that she and her friends be given lessons in how to be good parents?
“I think it's a really good idea”, she said without hesitation. And what
would the boys in her class think? “I think they would think it was nothing
to do with them.”
And there, John, I rest my case.
Marvellous. The most ridiculous suggestion in the debate about teenage pregnancy to date. Does it not occur to these presumably white middleaged middle class men that if you want to stop 15 year olds having babies you don't give them lessons in how to do it at 10 when they might just discover something they are good at at school for the first time in their lives and decide not to wait until 15 but give it a go at 13 or 14 years old. Why don't we teach children the basics and leave the rest until they are older or let their families show them .
Jo , London,
I think Dave from Wrexham has put his finger on it - 10-year-olds need teaching about long-term working relationships between co-parents. It is bizarre how in Britain it is treated as insulting to assume that a person with children must have (or have had) a spouse, although that is by far the most responsible way to start a family. British children are involuntarily taught by society, the media, and at school that pregnancy and single parenthood are free choices that a woman makes by herself. The actual result is a dumping of unsupported parenthood on women; and a failure by society to ensure that both parents give their children the emotional and financial support that is their right. I think 10-year-olds of both sexes need to be helped to consider what they expect from a life partner, when they plan to have children, and how to negotiate with a life partner when those plans and expectations diverge or the unexpected occurs. That's a lot more challenging than nappies.
delilah, DC, USA
Can't believe some of the lefty nonsense spouted here.
By all means let's teach kids about parenting - really important for the chav class that are spawning ill-disciplined yobs that are destroying our country. But also:
- No benefits for anyone under 21, irrespective of whether they have children.
- Make child benefit conditional on children over 10 or 11 receiving a contraceptive injection as often as necessary.
- Enforce the law on age of consent issues.
- Lock up teenage offenders in proper prisons, not soft 'punishments' like being given loads of pocket money and 24/7 access to video games and Sky
It's all about personal responsibility, not laughable Gov't 'initiatives' to make exams easier and force everyone to stay in school until 18 - how exactly will that be enforced?
But won't happen with the current idiots in office (but not in power)...
Paul, London, England
Who will have all the babies then? The middle classes aren't having enough - they prefer meals out, cars, skiing and holidays abroad. The problem we have is not enough children, not too many.
I learned childcare by babysitting from the age of 13 but that was in a Catholic community thirty years ago which gave me lots of work. Now, those (middle-class) parents would probably be arrested for letting a 13-year-old look after their children so you meet a lot of (middle-class particularly) women who have never even held a baby before they give birth to their own. So they are incredibly stressy, see children as mini-aliens, and think you need "lessons" or some kind of certificate to be able to care for a child. Funny how these kids brought up by their "unlessoned, underclass" parents often seem to have fonder, closer and more attached relationships with their parents than kids brought up by professionals with "expertise".
RW, London,
Paul MaCartney should be ashamed of himself for shunning HIS young daughter like he's doing.Forget the mother he could of set up a trust to ONLY insure HIS KID lives a life style like his at least.Schools,nurses,nannies,a decent home and decent travel expenses that ONLY SHE can use Not her mother. SHAME ON YOU SIR PAUL she IS YOUR daughter after all.
olie, billerica, USA
The thing I find slightly aggravating about this proposition is that middle class people in high paid jobs who barely see their children have got it right, I agree that it's pretty sad to think of teenage girls producing babies in envrionments where neither they nor their offsrping get much help. But frankly, I wonder how all these kids brought up by nannies and nurseries are going to turn out. What, exactly, is responsible about producing children you can pay for but have no time for? The only difference is that these highly paid, highly self-centred people can provide 'materially' for their children. I would rather be the child of a hard up, loving, involved teenage mother, than a remote, suited individual who thinks love amounts to school fees and a holiday in Saint Lucia.
Jac wheeler, London,
4. You also set it up so they can tell you how to raise your kids. So if they feel religion is necessary to a good childhood and you think it's tantamount to abuse, then you are stuck.
Jalestra, USA,
To be fair though Rosemary from Germany, you don't find an awfully large number of teenage boys getting pregnant do you?
Cindy, Manchester,
1. As a teenage mother, parenting classes wouldn't have helped. Reliable ways to get contraception would have, being able to talk to my mother, being able to talk to my counselor and be educated properly on contraceptive methods without screaming Christians, THOSE would have helped. I was going to have sex anyhow, education would have made that sex SAFER.
2. As a now mother of 5 (and yes, I went to college even with 2 children and yes, I support myself without welfare than you very much), you aren't going to learn proper parenting in a class, and NOT at 10 years old. Parenting is something you do. Sure, there is advice that would make it EASIER, but you just aren't going to be able to TEACH it.
3. Remember how you country works (I live in the US and it would work this way here for sure). When you start setting up prerequisites for parenting, what you are setting up is the ability to deny perfectly qualified folks based not on abuses, but on weight, lifestyle choice., etc.
Jalestra, USA,
When I was at secondary school in the 70s there was a class in parenting and other life skills for the non-academic children - I think there was a qualification at the end of it (this was in Scotland). The special school that my daughter, who has a learning disability, is going to attend next year does the same. There's no reason why parenting classes can't be offered, but these will have to focus on 'how to do it' rather than indoctrination against having children in the first place - one of the great things about living in this country is that you are not told how to live your private life. Look at the benefit system by all means if you want to stop people from having children, but persuading young people that they shouldn't have children, when having offspring offers the greatest kudos in their community, is a non-starter. What else are they supposed to do? Concentrate on their 'career' in the local shop or chippy? Given the choice, even Alice Mills might choose the kids.
Jackie, London,
"you have to make the mothers think before getting pregnant in the first place"
Love that assumption that it's just for the girls, Alice.
Rosemary , Germany,
Interesting, Simon - I'm not sure how many radicalised young women you know, but I have to say the majority of young women (and slightly older ones) that I know don't hate men but envy their lifestyles, and seek to reproduce them. That's the cause of the problem - no-one wants to take care of babies and homes, because it's hard, unremitting and under-valued work. It's far easier to have a well-paid job that's incompatible with having children, or a 'laddish' social life with no commitments that to commit to looking after someone else and be getting up through the night to look after a sick child (for example).
The problem isn't feminism - it's that women have looked at the traditional female role and voted with their feet. The solution is possibly to start valuing the women who are 'just housewives' and people who put their careers on hold to bring up baby, or at least give credit to those who are trying to combine a number of difficult roles.
P Bird, Kingston upon Thames,
Being a parent is not a right? If that's the viewpoint of some readers, perhaps they ought to vote against the EU Treaty of Human Rights. Either way, though, what I'd like to see is a water additive that reduces libido in people under 25. That way every one is able to become sufficiently mature to have a family.
Robert, Slough,
what you are saying really is that this segment of society have to be educated in the concept that actions have consequences. In this segment of society that concept largely doesnt exist. It is entirely an existence in the present. I wont try at school because it doesnt matter if get a job, i'll sleep with this girl with no contraception because it doesnt matter if i have a kid, ill eat a terrible diet, drink too much, smoke too much you name it. They do all these things because they dont think about anything because there are no consequences to anything. No matter what happens they will get money, housing healthcare of suffcient quality to prevent them thinking i want more than this. The benevolent society traps them in this existence. The greatest reduction in poverty in the US in recent time came when welfare was cut under clinton and people were forced to confront the reality that they had to look after themselves.It also enabled true welfare to be given to those really in need.
db, london, uk
Better still, stop the dysfunctional kids having kids in the first place. We should give no benefits at all to anyone who has not worked for 2 years or under 18 and child benefit should be for the first only. That way, we will not have teenage girls with no future, no qualifications, chaotic familliy finding a way out by having a baby then having more and more to get more money. No-one should have a child without earning enough to keep it.
R Mason , London, UK
Starting parenting lessons for 10 year old girls may be useful. But, as Alice Miles implies, not for boys - they are not as mature as girls at that age. Most small girls play with doll babies - partly preparing them for motherhood; boys do not. But parenting for boys should be introduced later.
It would also be of considerable value, when they are teenagers, not to assume & ask, in personal & social education lessons, "When do you think you will be ready for a relationship?" but instead to ask them, "When do you think you would be ready to marry and raise a family?" It might, over time, transform family life in this country.
Dave, Wrexham,
Marvellous. The most ridiculous way to deal with teenage pregnancy I have ever encountered. At best and hopefully the average 10 year old would find parenting classes irrelevant to the millions of things wthey want to find out at school. But more worryingly for that minority whose aspirations centre on motherhood at a young age, this could well persuade them that at last they have found something they are good at and instead of postponing pregnancy until 16 they decide to try it earlier, say 13 or 14 years old. Can we just concentrate on teaching our children what they really need to know.
Jo , London, UK
Marvellous. The most ridiculous way to deal with teenage pregnancy I have ever encountered. At best and hopefully the average 10 year old would find parenting classes irrelevant to the millions of things wthey want to find out at school. But more worryingly for that minority whose aspirations centre on motherhood at a young age, this could well persuade them that at last they have found something they are good at and instead of postponing pregnancy until 16 they decide to try it earlier, say 13 or 14 years old. Can we just concentrate on teaching our children what they really need to know.
Jo , London, United Kingdom
In further response to Simon from York:
Firstly, boys hardly have their 'backs to the wall' in this life. They underperform in the educational system, true, and this needs to be remedied. However, this shows no signs of disadvantaging men as a group in working life: far from it, as the pay gap between men and women is still going strong.
Secondly, I don't think feminism is a flawed concept. It can be implemented in flawed ways, as can any ideology, but the fundamental concept is that men and women should be equal. What is there to argue with in that?
Thirdly, I am one of these 'radicalised young women' you talk about, but I don't feel any hatred or 'sexual bigotry' you accuse me of. Feminism is about ending sexual bigotry and hatred. I am extremely happy with the way feminism has empowered me to interact with men- on an equal footing. If feminism had never happened, I wouldn't be able to talk to men as my equals- I would be an inferior and probably a dependent, like a child.
alice, oxford,
"being a parent is a privilege and not just a right"
Tosh! That's the way it should be but under Labour, childbearing is just a way of getting money. How the kids are raised is immaterial to these serial childbearers. The money that they claim from taxpayers in order to be able to raise the kids is for them and they have a good time with drink and drugs with it. Their children don't come into the equation they are dumped in taxis to get themselves into school at half nine every morning if they're lucky. Stop the supply of money and you won't need to teach these women anything. They are sharp enough to stop having kids if there is no remuneration.
judy, Liverpool, England
how about teaching boys and girls about the 'facts of life' beyond heterosexual intercourse and parenting!! about bodies, emotions, socialising with each other. sexual ignorance in this country is staggering, and girls don't learn to protect themselves, neither do boys. UK wake up!
elias, London,
I have fond memories of "Parenting" not being a word. What has happened to my beloved English language like she should be spoke and wrote?
Allan Bilder, Hammonton, New Jersey USA
Dont have kids, never wanted kids, so wasted money on lessons for me then. Bit like trhe unwanted and unused foreign languages I was forced to learn.
Education on mortgages, tax laws, and how to get out of the UK soonest would have been good though.
Russ H, Glasgow, gREAT bRITAIN
Richard's exactly right, classes about the different techniques of parenting for couples becoming as expected a part of being pregnant as Lamaze classes is the way forward. Who remembers what they did when they were 10?
Terence, London,
I think it is a strange thing to teach and I doubt it will make any difference. The solutions to these problems I think would be better solved by focusing on important things like making sure youngsters actually learn something at school and values for example, about respect for elders and hard work - all the values that are missing from children nowadays and which they can then pass on to their children.
Alison Dare, London,
When I was at school we were shown pretty gruesome films showing the consequences of throwing things at trains and also a horrible one about the consequences of smoking. It certainly out me off ever taking any of those up.
Why don't we do something similar for drinking while pregnant, parenting, drug taking etc.
Becky, Nottingham,
In today's high tech society, thru DNA testing every newborn should have a paternity check to identify the father in order to provide financial support to the mother and child.
If the mother is not willing to provide the name of the alleged father(s) for testing then the baby should be removed from her.
Every male will then be on notice that having recreational sex without contraception would result in a financial liability at the minimum.
I would be willing to guarantee you that female single parent numbers would drop drastically.
carmine cicchiello, adelaide, australia
In a society that has abandoned the traditional family this type of perverse reaction only proves that the so-called interlectuals have so completely lost the plot !
"The blind leading the blind"
Phill Jones, Swansea, Wales
Whilst it may never have been taught to 10 year olds in the past I am sure that basic childcare was considered essential to the education of young girls in the generation who also had no hesitation on insisting that they learn cooking, needlework and other skills of a "housewife".
Whilst it would no longer be correct to restrict such lessons to young girls, it does not seem unreasonable to recognise that running a succesful home does require skills and some of these skills cannot be learnt in the home from which a child comes.
A child with musical parents may get free instrumental tuition, this does not mean that we would preclude other children from receiving music lessons. Similarly, some children learn good household management from good parents but should we deny this learning to other children just becasue they were born to feckless idiots?
Children may actually be very keen to learn practical skills used in life, rather than rarely used academic "facts".
Bob, Reading,
One might perhaps suggest that people who take drugs are not allowed to have kids, and nor are people who have never had a job.
And nor are people who have two kids already.
ben foster, penley,
Education should include the realities of life. Teach children how hard it will be to raise children (properly) as young, possibly single parents by all means. Hopefully some of them will be careful and not take that step until they're ready and some who do it anyway will be better prepared.
However it would be good to extend the concept. Teach children what a car crash looks like when they're 14 and hopefully they wont be in one when they're 16-18. Teach them what a knife does by showing them a stab victim and show them what a drunk looks like on life support.
Just a thought.
Roger, London, UK
What about teaching people about the history of feminism? This would be far more beneficial to society than parenting lessons. How feminism started out as an acceptable if slightly flawed concept which then evolved into a cult which recruited influential young girls in their early teens into a thought process of hatred and sexist biggotry.
If this happened, firstly their wouldnt' be the so many radicalised young women with a consequential reduction in hatred and an improvement in how the two sexes interact. Secondly young boys in schools would know that they will face discrimination in the education system, work and their future family life and that they're in a backs to the wall situation and they need to work hard to stay afloat.
Simon, York,
In theory it's a good idea to teach kids how to be parents in order to "break" the cycle of poor performing parents.
However, what are you going to teach them? Ferber based parenting, which is the most popular but very opposed by Aware Parenting advocates, or the inverse? How can a national curriculum decide the best way to bring up children?
It might make sense to offer a choice of courses and methods (hey let's inform people about the different methods and let them choose) whilst preganent - hence when they're interested.
Richard, Brussels,
This is absurd. The parental obsession with parenting leading to the suggestion that children should be indoctrinated as well. You may be obsessed with it but the average 10 year old certainly isn't.
Vicky, Germany,