To think that 'middle class' parents get away with murder

[catfunk]

I grew up in a beautiful but modest part of the north with a fair amount of poverty and unemployment. Lots of families were under social services' care (?) police called out a lot, etc.

I now live in a fairly expensive city in the south, a fairly left wing liberal place where people party, lots of mums are 'trendy' types and generational wealth is quite common.

It struck me the other day that if the parents in my home town behaved like the parents in my current home there'd be real repercussions.
Noisy house parties whilst kids are in bed upstairs, parents getting drunk and staying out all night, recreational drug taking and being too hungover to do the school run. But it's ok because they're drinking champagne and expensive gin instead of tenants, and expensive cannabis tinctures instead of smoking resin?

None of the kids seem unhappy or affected and they do have lovely family times together of course but AIBU To think this is not fair ?

There is not their! Getting tired

Obvious I suspect it's the same as with other front line support services.

Underpaid
Overworked
Under appreciated/ actively disliked
Massive responsibility
Battle weary- losing empathy/ sympathy because seen it all before, couldn't help, getting hardened about the people
Red tape/ massive procedures/ this list that check in out no room to exercise personal judgement

All that stuff.

ObviousNameChage Thankfully I don’t work front line (manage services) but sometimes such as today have to step in to deal with things when staff are off etc. But thank you.
There are lots of truly caring and dedicated people working in social care who are of course appalled when things go wrong and children are missed.

@NiceGerbil

Obvious I suspect it's the same as with other front line support services.

Underpaid
Overworked
Under appreciated/ actively disliked
Massive responsibility
Battle weary- losing empathy/ sympathy because seen it all before, couldn't help, getting hardened about the people
Red tape/ massive procedures/ this list that check in out no room to exercise personal judgement

All that stuff.

Yup. It fucking sucks.

Obvious and top down-

Massive squeeze on budget
Targets to meet to demonstrate delivering
Fear of anything that could cause reputational damage/ bad press/ management having to personally answer questions/ be in press/ lose jobs???
(Leading to better to turn a blind eye to X massive thing. Really complex. If even recorded as s problem then have to do something. What though? No resources. No capacity to do it properly even dctst6 the surface. Victims are not amenable to help/ talking. So. Leave well alone. Rotherham is example).

Probably more.

The total failure to protect children here is systematic and extensive. Awful to contemplate. So people don't. Understandably I suppose. Each incident is reported as a one off.

My view is there needs to be a group formed by govt to look into it all as a piece. The whole lot. Of massive failures.

Off the top of my head and recent or reported recently.

Scouts
Sexual assault rape in schools
CSA in care homes
CSA grooming in some cities. (That we know, could be more).
Sports coaches
And I mean it goes on and on.

Each one representing large numbers of individuals abusing children. And the orgs that were supposed to be looking after them doing nothing. Reports to police. Nothing. SS. nothing. Doctors. Nothing. Etc etc

And then the children who are in situations they can't escape with family etc.

Due to all the stuff in my last couple posts.

Not really working.

Add in a government that believes in low tax etc.

I don't know what can be done.

I very much doubt/ am fairly sure that these issues are not being addressed decently anywhere in the world though tbh. So I'm not saying we're the worst or anything. Or that it's the fault of individuals or even orgs.

I just wish it could be better.

'Society' likes to think children are very important.

Well not really imv.
I think people who have children should make their children very important in their lives but unfortunately all people have rights so any narcissist, drug addict, alcoholic can have as many children as they want. Whilst due to their addiction or whatever are incapable of prioritising their children.
Expecting others to deal with this whilst not infringing the rights of the parent is difficult if not impossible.
Perhaps blame the problems on human rights.

Middle class and living in v middle class area in the Surrey countryside. The lifestyle you describe could not be further than my lifestyle. Thank goodness! Where do you live

You could only hope to protect all children from long term abuse if you had a colossal pool of genuinely good people intent on helping deeply damaged human beings. We don’t have that as a society - not nearly enough people want to be foster carers or to adopt children harmed by traumatic experiences in their past, or to run children’s homes and support services, and a proportion of those who do are as abusive and dangerous as the people these children have been removed from. Vulnerable, damaged people attract abusive people and it’s difficult to screen them all out.

The statistics on the life chances of people who have been through the “care” system are not a good advert for this being a panacea that saves people from the appalling effects of abuse and neglect. Some children are better off being removed from their own families, some should have been better off but were merely moved from the frying pan to the fire, and some might have been better off with the level of abuse or neglect meted out by their own relatives. Yes, spending more money on it and having better resources to hand would make a huge difference, but I wonder how many of the people complaining about their friends not being helped, or about their own childhoods, have gone on to try and change things themselves by fostering children, or campaigning for change, or providing other services for abused children? Few people have what it takes, but the needs are colossal.

Social work must be one of the most thankless careers - publicly blamed for the consequences of every serious mistake or bad outcome and seldom thanked (certainly not publicly!), and only having an inadequate pool of services, people and support to call on. Generally either accused of being too interfering or of being negligent.

As for the OP’s examples of the middle classes “getting away with murder,” they are very poor examples, as they are examples where a child genuinely is better off in that situation in a wealthier household than a poorer one. That’s nothing to do with levels of blameworthiness, though - just that poverty itself is unforgiving. If you are poor, you literally cannot afford to behave irresponsibly. If you are rich, you can afford to be pretty damn irresponsible with genuinely fewer knock in effects. And yes, perceived levels of intelligence and education can and do make a difference to how people react to you, too, as do perceived levels of influence, but not when it comes to occasionally admitting to being hungover - as a society, that is so endemic, it isn’t a trigger for social services involvement.

I don’t recognise any of this behaviour at all, I think you just have poor luck and wind up living in strange areas. I’m MC and live on possibly the quietest street ever, nothing happens here at all. Definitely no crazy house parties and I don’t know any parents who take drugs.

just that poverty itself is unforgiving.

That's such a good way of phrasing things. Not even regards drinking/drugs/being irresponsible but it's just harder work being a good parent if you are poor. Silly example but last year I was always struggling to keep up with school uniform laundry - this year I'm just going to buy 6 poloshirts so I don't have to do a white wash midweek.

I think there is some truth in that, not the poor luck thing but if it is the city on the south coast, the type of 'middleclass' people that are being referred to are not typical of say the middle classes of Lichfield!

My view is there needs to be a group formed by govt to look into it all as a piece. The whole lot. Of massive failures.

In competition with the feeding of porn etc by the global internet and addiction to phones it would have difficulty implementing major changes I think.

just that poverty itself is unforgiving.

Very true

@PeacheyPeach

I'm slightly flabbergasted at the complete generalisation of class and the snobbery on this thread! Saying how single mums/ working class families drink cans of special brew and cans of lager while it's the middle classes who drink gin/processco etc!! Who do you think it is whose buying the big bottles of pink gin these days.. and drinking bottles of processco with their friends, you only have to take a look on Facebook and see peoples posts about their weekend to know that the middle classes are doing exactly the same.as the working class just with more money to spend! But reading through some of these posts its like people are stuck in the 1980s

That was literally the point of the thread.

I see it at work. Kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds presenting with MH difficulties which are always assumed to be caused by the family dynamic.

Of course the MC kids MH problems are always biological , well according to their parents. Suits their narrative.

I was a kid in a MC family, parents both alcoholics. They were mostly functioning and people turned a blind eye to the fact that they liked a drink. The fact that I used to walk miles home from my friends' houses at 15 and 16, in the middle of the night, because they couldn't drive to pick me up.

I attempted suicide at 17 and school/GP finally got involved. My parents did what they could to cover it all up. The authorities decided it had to be biological as I had parents working in good careers.

I don't know what the answer is. There isn't enough money to help the kids living in poverty. Those who aren't just can't be the priority, and it breaks my heart.

My friend lives in a town like you op
Total caners !!

This isn’t the norm , it’s commonplace but it’s not necessarily the norm for MC people
As can of tenants and spliff ends isn’t the norm for WC people either

I don’t ascribe to the view that all drugs are inherently bad either , sorry but I don’t

And their kids will grow up and form their own views

But we seem to expect total perfection from parents sometimes and it’s not always possible

Yanbu- bouncy castle and a few cans of lager is massively frowned upon. Garden party with Prosecco not so.
I’m Children’s services working parents are seen as a protective factor and families are less harshly judged when they are educated and not viewed as ‘vulnerable’. I’ve seen this time and time again.
My own experience of having a deprived and neglected childhood was with two professional parents who owned their own home. Were seen as ‘liking a drink’. Nobody ever stepped in for me, not friends nor family. No teachers at school ever asked if I was ok despite being underweight, badly behaved, grubby and sometimes bruised. I know things were different in the 90s but several of my friends from less naice houses had social services involvement

I dont really recognise this. I work in children’s services and the families I work with we aren’t worried about parents having the odd party with the kids asleep upstairs. It is sustained neglect, lack of food, lack of supervision, lack of affection, random people coming in and out of the house at all ours, physical abuse…
In my middle class area when parents are having a wild night out then children are usually staying with grandparents or are at home with the nanny.

@Quickchangeartiste

I think the key point is the last one you made ‘ none of the kids seem unhappy or affected’ Presumably in your previous experience, something triggered Social Services or Police involvement. Plus of course, you don’t know the whole stories in either case, and to be honest it seems as if you have a chip on your shoulder. In no way am I condoning drug taking etc btw, but I doubt it’s as bad as you suggest.

I can definitely corroborate what the OP is saying re your last point. I am aware of quite extensive recreational drug use happening amongst some of the middle class parents I know.

I am loosely friends with a group who have kids now (I knew them all from my student days and they're slightly older). I have been to house parties with kids present where a huge amount of drink and drugs were consumed by parents, including ketamine. The small kids who lived there were around, their bedroom in the attic, and frankly, mum and dad are lovely people but both off their faces on drugs and drink. But very well to do. It was very normal amongst their peers. Obv not saying it is the norm everywhere.

But I think if all other needs are attended to, the kids are well fed, homed, clothed, educated, have plenty of activities etc, then no this doesn't seem to raise a concern in a comfortable but slightly bohemian family

Plus it also happens more discreetly than perhaps if police are needing to be called out to drunken rows. This may be because they are drinking and taking drugs for different reasons, money removes the discomforts/ issues that probably lead to the arguments after getting tanked up.on Tennants.

Absolutely true. And it's not just a class thing, it's a race thing too. If you are not white, you are so much more likely to be arrested than if you're white.

The system was designed by the privileged to protect the privileged. The day that people are treated fairly irrespective of ethnicity, gender, age and social class, is the day the system is broken. I hope I live to see that day.

I just don’t think this is a class issue at all. I don’t know any parents who have noisy parties or do drugs. Perhaps you need different friends? Or perhaps I do 🤣

Anyway it does sound to me like you have some resentment bubbling away at the more privileged people you now mix with and it aounds like you don’t much like your new aquaintances.

Yabu for thinking that social services / police etc get involved if working class parents have noisy parties.

@beattieedny

I'm solidly middle class, country living person. I don't recognise that sort of behaviour at all. Maybe you're unfortunately just surrounded by arseholes? Get better friends, would be my top tip.

#notallmiddleclasspeople act badly but it does not disprove the OP's point.

I recognise the unfairness.

I recall a particular situation when I was supporting as a professional a young single mum - where SS observed her and criticised her for the most ordinary of things. I’ve obviously changed the examples but something like using the same tube of toothpaste for both children or comforting a crying baby rather than playing with a toddler who was happy and in the same room. It was very bizarre.

I think the reality is once ANYONE has SS involved they tend to find things to criticise (since there are no perfect parents). Whether they get involved in the first places must be hugely class dependent.

That then means there will be some working class families unreasonably targeted and some middle class families who don’t care for their children the way they should.

I also agree that thresholds also tend to focus on material needs far more. Middle class parents generally meet their children’s needs and abuse is emotional - which can be massively damaging but unlikely a child will die from it. Whereas a child could die from trying to turn the hob on themselves.

In the long run, a child whose mum is loving but a poor and messy might actually be better off tho an a child whose mum has a cleaner and plenty of cash but is an alcoholic and makes nasty, cutting remarks at any opportunity.