Workers' Liberty

It is totally wrong for the government to dictate to parents the way to raise their kids. At the same time, government support for poorer parents is woefully inadequate. What is needed is SUPPORT, not meaningless advice. In terms of your closing comments, corporal punishment in schools achieves very little, but in the home the parental right to smack bottoms is something which shouldn't really be meddled with. It is essential to prevent abusive households, but giving a kid a smacked bum isn't abuse. It's a cliché, but it didn't do me any harm! It is a matter for parents to judge sensibly. The essential point is that if a parent needs parenting classes, they shouldn't be taking on the responsibility of having kids in the first place.

If you smack a kid because they have done something to upset you, then what you are teaching them is that if someone upsets them, they should hit them.

You might not think it did you any harm, but quite a lot of people who were hit as children think it did. But there are also thousands and thousands of kids now who are, thankfully, not smacked by their parents, and that has done them no harm.

I would love to see statistics as to whether kids who get into trouble have been smacked at home. I would be prepared to bet a fair amount of money that lots of them have been.

There's a very good article about smacking here. What do you think?

Janine, I agree with you in principle i.e. I think we should oppose the "Don't tell us how to fail to bring up our kids" brigade. Of course people should be taught how to bring up kids, just as they are taught how to drive before they are allowed out on the road with a car on their own. My reservations would be as on previous occasions that it would be far better that this was done by the working class itself than by the capitalist state, but then as we currently let the capitalist state provide education in general I have less of an objection - though my point here would be that the working class needs far more control over what goes on in those schools in general.

Of course, in years gone by the greater solidaity of traditional working class communities did provide this kind of education because people were more closely knit, family and relations lived in close proximity, and if you were doing anything wrong you'd get told off, or your parents would be told about it from a relation or neighbour. That doesn't tend to happen now because people are far more atomised, and individualistic. People as a result have become more defensive, so if you report a child's behaviour to a parent you are more likely to get an earful yourself than it result in any corrective action by the parent.

But I think we also have to deal with some of the problems such as "latch-key" kids which to some extent our own politics have led us not to want to address. I had a friend who was a teacher who said that many of the kids he had trouble with came from middle class or upper working class homes. They got little attention from their parents whose answer was simply to give them money. They had got used to little supervision of their activities, and getting their own way, being able to buy what they wanted. I am not totally convinced that after school clubs etc. are a real substitute for time spent with parents that give some real attention to their kids.

IN a world where people are expected to be available 24/7, to work anti-social hours, weekens etc. that seems an impossibility, yet unless workers can bring the work process under their control changing that situation seems unlikely without the kind of struggle that would be necessary to replace capitalism itself.

I'm also not sure about the McDonald's bit either. I know companies wouldn't invest in advertising if it didn't have some effect, but I think there comes a point when people really do have to take some responsibility for themselves rather than look for some scapegoat to blame it on. No one forces parents to take their kids to McDonalds. I was watching the "Tax the Fat" documentary the other week which I was going to blog about because I'm still not sure if the bloke was being serious or not. But one thing he demonstrated was that the idea that poor people get fat because they can't afford to eat decent food was crap. He showed that it was at least as cheap to buy a load of vegetables and other good stuff as to buy crap. The thing tends to be that a lot of poor people that are in work do severl jobs, work anti-social hours etc., and don't have time or are too tired to cook, so buy fast food instead. Also many people that are unemployed suffer depression so tend not to do things like cooking either.

Arthur Bough

Hi, I work for a charity in Yorkshire, offering a range of services to families, including (free) parenting classes.

I am trained to facilitate 4 different parenting programmes; 2 pre-adolescent and 2 adolescent courses. As a parent myself I really value these programmes and do my best to promote them widely as of benefit to all parents.

I think that TV shows help to take some of the stigma of attending a parenting class, but don't take the time to explain all of the techniques they are using to the viewing audience, which, in my experience, often confuses and worries parents watching.

We are very fortunate, in our area, to have funds available to offer creche facilities and we run an evening programme so that working parents can attend.

I am interested in hearing from parents who have attended a parenting class, how useful they found the programme and if they are still implementing the techniques they learnt.

I am also particularly interested to know if you felt that you were immediately offered an 'answer' when you raised a question or problem during the course, or if you were encouraged to reflect and find your own solutions more and how this made you feel.