Parenting in a modern society, has society lost it's way?

It is Saturday 6th August 2011, I woke up this morning and after getting dressed was waiting on the boss to get ready so that we could go out.  I checked the twitter feed from overnight to see if there was anything interesting, silly, there is always something interesting, whether it was Stephen Fry directing us to an article and photo of a Great Tit being eaten whole by a Pitcher Plant (only the second time this has been document apparently) or Brent Spiner pondering, "I just can't understand why the people who are getting screwed are voting for the people who are screwing them."  Well, as I said in reply to that, it is not just an American phenomenon, we do it across the pond too!

But what really caught my eye was an entry by Emma Gerain who posted a link to a blog she wrote, "More of my blogness. 5 A day for parenting..." Emma's blog went on to inform us that after reading a report in The Guardian  that went on to inform us that there should be a 5 A Day rule for parenting similar to the 5 A Day rule for fruit and vegetables(!) and these rules included:

Read to your child for 15 minutes

Play with your child on the floor for 10 minutes

Talk with your child for 20 minutes with the television off

Adopt positive attitudes towards your child and praise them frequently

Give your child a nutritious diet

Emma goes on to say, " This is great news. If I cut back on the time spend with my son to these recommended levels I'm guaranteed to be considered a great parent and I can spend much more time doing piss all!

Seriously though; while I accept the reality is some people out there may actually need to be told this stuff, I can't help but find it sad.     

I also see on twitter that the BBC are getting in on the act, with this "bbcsml BBCSundayMorningLive The children's minister welcomes the idea of a Parenting 5 a Day campaign. Tomorrow we ask: should parenting classes be compulsory?""    

Now, all of this stems from the aforementioned 62 page report by the Centre Forum entitled Parenting Matters as reported in The Guardian.

I am not going to go into that debate in detail or indeed quote from it to much, click on the link above to read it yourself, but I will give you a summary of its conclusions, which are this;

Conclusion

Summary of specific recommendations

This paper recommends that the government should:

explore, as part of its effort to ensure that “high quality 

parenting classes becom[e] widely available”

, the 

particular merits of (a suitably modified form of) 

the Leksand model detailed in Chapter 3. Under this 

model, groups are formed ante-natally and continue

for the initial years of the child’s life as a platform for 

both antenatal and subsequent parenting initiatives; 

implement a national parenting campaign, drawing 

on the science of child-development, structured 

around and building on the success of the established 

‘5-a-day’ concept: ‘5-a-day for child development’; 

and 

extensively explore mechanisms designed specifically to attract parents from lower-income 

backgrounds to the proposed parenting initiatives to 

ensure that such initiatives operate in the context of 

the commitment to improving social mobility.

As far as I can tell this report and everything that goes with it and everyone of the highly intelligent people [government ministers are not necessarily included in that description] and organisations that support it are missing something, I can't quite put my finger on, oh wait yes I can.

Do you see the summary of conclusions above, let me refresh your memory by reproducing the part that caught my eye in particular, it was' "extensively explore mechanisms designed specifically to attract parents from lower-income backgrounds to the proposed parenting initiatives to ensure that such initiatives operate in the context of the commitment to improving social mobility."

So, the report is not about parenting and that it matters, it is basically about looking at the F***ed up lives of the lower income and lower classes of society.  Let's face it, and no one seems able or prepared to say it outright, because of the absolute stink it will cause, but if we were to look at the problems in almost any  society today and I do mean any society not just 'democratic'  or westernised societies, who are the biggest burden on the states and who causes the most problem for the states and the middle classes:  Bingo, well done if you answered, "it is clearly the NO INCOME or LOW INCOME families the have nots if you will,  and their poorly educated children that are bringing every country in the world to its economic knees!"

Why is that (?), well it's simple really, take a look around you, that's if you are not substantially well of that is, and what do you see?  You probably see hundreds of people every single day of your lives who are good for nothing layabouts, who live of state benefits, and I accept that there are people who do but who do not want to, but a large proportion of them are feckless b*****ds who will not go out and find a job and they spend their days drinking booze, taking drugs, smoking fags, driving cars and going at it like the proverbial bunny rabbit and who are breeding out of control.

And who is paying for this? You and I, the people who do go out to work and pay our taxes so that these people can continue to live of the fat of the land that we through hard work are trying to build on to sustain us in our old age, but we can't and wont get any sustenance from the state because it has already been given to these people. And the cycle is self repetitive as their broods of children are brought up in these houses, I will not call them homes, because a home to me is where a family lives, loves, cries and grows together and sometimes they fight, but that is in the the nature of humans, so it should be embraced as part of the whole.

So instead of looking at Lower Income families and getting them to attend Parenting Classes, here is an idea, that I am sure will be truly obnoxious to some, but I think has merit, why don't we go down the road of mass sterilisation, we could introduce it like fluoride, into the water system and every one would be made sterile, one step further than the Chinese with their law of 1 child per family!

But, before the nails and hammers are brought out for my crucifixion, let me just posit this for your consideration.  I am serious about this, the continued strain on any society of people who are incapable of looking after themselves cannot be allowed to continue unless the world changes from one where the $ and I don't mean the US $, I mean the exchange of coin for goods, rent, travel leisure, just plain old living, as we do today, unless you are a a lazy feckless B, and move to a utopian society where everything is free, these problems are going to continue until society or certain sections of it, will only be able to be controlled by force.  A fanciful idea I know, but I am only a 55 year old grand dad who sees this shit and I get worked up about it and I worry about my grand kids futures and I see it being destroyed before they even get a chance to experience it.

If you can not contribute to society then you should place any more burden on it other than yourself, sexual congress should not be taken away from the but the ability to procreate should.  If they get their acts together and join the rest of us as productive members of society, getting a job, paying their taxes, engaging with their neighbours and not just to cadge a fiver for a bottle of meths, then the sterilisation can be reversed, but only once they have proved to be productive in society and not a burden to it!

And before anyone thinks, well we know he has money, don't assume that. Like a lot of people I am in work, I do have a mortgage, occasionally I need to borrow a few bob from my kids to get by, but  I do not ask the state for anything and never have and it absolutely  makes me think that a lot of these people out there, like the guy with 4 cars who does not work and swaggers about as if he owns the world, and doesn't have a job, and  is almost crippled under the weight of carrying his shopping with booze laden bags from one of the cars to the house, care about this report, not one jot.  Just as well to do and upper class families will look at it and say, well, quite right! Don't tell me the problem of poor parenting is just with lower income families, it is not.  Maybe on my next blog I will do one on the upper class families who send their children of to boarding school from age 5 and who clearly do not fall into the model suggested by the Centre Forum report, but have been completely ignored, why?

Let the crucifixion begin......................

Best Wishes