To think that being able to tie shoelaces does not equate to good parenting?

[ElusiveMoose]

There was a debate on Radio 4 this morning relating to the headline about childcare costs, and one of the guests (don't know who she was) was using it as an opportunity to bemoan the lack of stay at home parents (surprise, surprise). As part of her argument, she suddenly exclaimed that 'the lack of one-to-one parenting has led to a situation where many children start school unable to even tie their own shoelaces!'.

Now, this is drivel in all sorts of ways that I won't dwell on (I didn't come on here for a debate about SAH vs. WOH), but it got me thinking about shoelaces. More specifically, I would be very interested to know how many of your starting-school-age children can tie shoelaces? I'm a gave-up-my-career-to-be-a-SAHM person of the sort that this woman would no doubt approve, but my nearly four year old son could no sooner tie a shoelace than fly to the moon (admittedly he's not actually starting school this year, but he would have been if he'd been born two weeks early instead of two weeks late). I haven't asked, but I imagine most of his little friends are the same.

It seems to me that the reason lots of (most?) 4 year olds can't tie laces is because a) it's actually quite a tricky skill, requiring considerable dexterity and practice, and b) very few shoes for young kids have laces these days. I was in Clarks today, and I noticed that they didn't have a single pair of school shoes with laces for young boys; the only laced ones were a couple of pairs of hiking-style boots.

So, in a nutshell I thought that this woman's assertion was the kind of lazy, thoughtless and baseless kneejerk criticism of working parents that we hear so much of. But then I got to worrying that maybe my son is unusual, and that other kids his age are busy tying endless Gordian knots with happy abandon. Opinions, please?

Sorry, she may have been primarily talking about nappies, but as I say, I only caught the later bit of the interview. And she may not have said that all children MUST be able to tie shoelaces when they start school, but she definitely implied that it was regrettable that many couldn't, and that this was linked to the rise in working parents. But as others here have said, it's surely primarily to do with learning skills when you need to. I just resent the implication (from others in society as well as her) that it's some sign of moral decline that children can't do the kind of things they did in the 'good old days' - when in fact, it's just that the world has changed, and necessary skills have changed. IMO it's like criticising me for not knowing how to use a mangle - to which I would obviously reply 'I don't need to, I've got a washing machine FFS'.

(Incidentally, WRT to the nappy issue... I think the point about increasing numbers of SN children at mainstream schools is a good one. But also, surely it's partly because children generally are learning later these days (again, not because of parental laziness or moral decline, but surely because nappies are so much better these days that there's no need to rush babies into toilet training). So if training happens later generally, then there are likely to be a very small number who don't 'get it' quickly, and end up still in nappies at age 4. But as others have said, I would guess it's a vanishingly small number of children with the exception of SN.)