Nanny state or useful tool? Can you teach people to be parents?

Published on Wednesday 13 December 2006 01:36

THE concept of robot babies and state-sponsored classes teaching us how to raise our children is about as science fiction as can be. This concept is not from the pages of George Orwell or Aldous Huxley, though. It is the next step in an initiative by East Ayrshire Council to implement positive social change in the region.

Last month, the council announced it was launching parenting classes, both as part of the curriculum for children and as evening classes for adults. The school classes follow the virtual baby initiative, started in Doon Valley in 2000, where children were given a synthetic baby to look after. Technology within the model ensured the "baby" behaved like a human counterpart - crying when hungry, getting irritable when needing sleep, requiring nappy changes - so children would fully appreciate the responsibility that parenting brought. The new scheme sees children of ten and up taking parenting responsibility classes.

Meanwhile, the council has launched a different set of classes, aimed squarely at adults. New parents can learn how baby massage helps combat postnatal depression and how to establish regular sleep patterns, while parents of any experience are welcome to participate in parent support groups, where parents are free to talk about common parenting problems and exchange ideas and solutions.

Graham Short, the executive director of educational and social services, says that the idea has very strong roots in the community: "It started as a joint initiative, through the Schools For Ambition project and Sir Tom Hunter's 2020 Vision programme. But it was also a personal idea of the community link worker Helen Law.

"She'd worked there for some time and she was aware that some parents needed a bit of support in giving their children the best opportunities, so she helped develop the programme. It's in its early stages, but it appears to be very successful and well received."

Is this all really necessary? With an initiative like this, you couldn't get much closer to the idea of the nanny-state. Surely good parenting is just common sense, and classes such as these merely exploit the anxieties of already stressed parents?

Not at all, says Linda Russell, the head of the Parent Coaching Studio in Edinburgh. She believes the reason so many parents are struggling with raising their children is due to a vicious circle that's been in place for more than 20 years.

"There is a very real need for parenting classes and the development of parental skills," she says. "The reason being that we are currently in the second and third generation of parents who have been brought up in nurseries. In many cases, both parents have to work, so children spent their formative years in nurseries. And because they were raised in nurseries and not by parents, when it comes to raising their own children, they don't have the necessary skills."

There is also another factor to contend with: the disappearance of communities. Where 25 years ago communities were a place of strong local ties and networks, today they are, by and large, transient environments where parents neither talk to nor know one another. In the past, a support network of neighbours, friends and family would be likely, and new parents often lived close to their own families, meaning grandparents were nearby when it came to offering advice or even a night off. Similarly, when communities were more closely-knit, friends and neighbours were more likely to discipline a naughty child or mention it to the parents.

"Where children in the past had very strict boundaries, now those boundaries are less defined," says Russell. "A four-year-old having consistent temper tantrums is not a bad child, but it is very confused and angry. So how do you, as a parent, deal with that behaviour when you don't know where it comes from? Because parents don't understand the causes of their children's behaviour, control is being lost at two or three years old."

And while such behaviour makes for such voyeuristic TV as Supernanny and Little Angels, the social repercussions run far deeper, something the government has acknowledged.

A MORI poll for the Home Office says 53 per cent of people think poor parenting is the main cause of bad behaviour and 85 per cent blame other parents for allowing children to become out of control.

In November, the Institute for Public Policy Research published a survey that said more than 1.7 million Britons last year avoided going out after dark as a direct result of young people hanging around.

In response, the government went so far as to launch a network of 80 "super nannies" in 77 regions across England at a cost of 4 million, to show parents how to control their unruly children. The aim: to prevent future generations of ASBO teenagers.

Shadow home secretary David Davis described the scheme as "another headline-grabbing initiative", but Russell says this is a step in the right direction - and she believes more could be done.

"We actually need to start dealing with these children before they are in their teens and require psychologists," she says. "The facility to attend a parenting course needs to start before a child is born, so parents understand what having a child is about, and they need to continue with each stage of the child's development.

"I'd like to see drop-in centres where parents can walk in and get advice. Rather than being put through a referral process, which makes people feel like bad parents. Parents could be trained to take classes in conjunction with schools."