Bohemian, "lefty" free range middle class parenting really just lazy neglectful parenting jazzed up?

[Naturelover5]

In my three dc's classes we have some of these bohemian, creative lefty parents.. The children are unkempt, scruffy, hair undone & dressed without fail in mismatched clothes... Some of the children have very questionable manners & are either running amock or with their heads glued to screens constantly (as seen on holiday recently, loud obnoxious parents quaffing seccy while the kids were largely ignored).. If council estate kids were dirty, scruffy & looked uncared for social services would be called.. For this particular group (& they are everywhere) the barefoot, scruffy kids are seen as badges of honour..
The lefty parent types are also very anti homework & organised activities outside school as they think kids should be kids however aibu to think they are just lazy & couldn't be arsed putting the effort in?!

I don't know if it's class. We had a PM who seemed to wander around with unkempt hair, quaffing seccy and questionable manners. Apparently ran wild in Oxford at the Bullingdon club, quite feral it seems. He grew up to be an upper class Tory.

"Upper class” isn’t a term I would use in daily life but I wanted to explain the area we stay in which is a very sought after area.
So explain, then... 🤣

The problem is your op didn’t just describe lazy parenting. It was a dig at a certain group of people, who are known to you personally. The description was so specific, that hardly anyone else was able to relate.

I do think there’s a conversation to be had around how a person’s perceived ‘class’ influences how others view their behaviour. But your focus on how the parents voted etc, takes away from it.

@CloseYourEyesAndSee I was just going to post that I saw this type a lot in Brighton!

We live in a very middle class area and have a family opposite us just like this! Kids are so so unkempt but they’re well off family - parents live in huge property round the corner where houses are being bought knocked down - two houses put up in their places going for 2.5-£3mill each! The mum in question’s parents are very well to do!

the mum however is flip flops- just scruffy! Kids are in grey clothes cos they’re all thrown in the wash together. She never reads any emails from the school and inevitably asks questions on the class group where people screenshot email answers for her.

I’ve recently saved her three year old from going into the back of and getting squashed by a 4x4 outside the park. He’s a terror! Cute kids though and polite.

I'm intrigued by the concept of 'right wing' and 'left wing' campsites.

What's the entertainment like? Do they have booking filters?

I haven’t “trained” him in obedience to authority; he’s told why we have rules, and how to question and negotiate with people in authority.
School are going to just love you.

As is the rest of the authority figures he encounters that he tries to negotiate with.

All the lazy cliches here. A thoroughly shallow and prejudiced post full of generalisations. Generally the kind of parents you mention here would be anti screens and would never drink ‘secy’.

since when are SS called if a council estate kid is scruffy and on its phone??

Noone gives a fuck if kids are scruffy, surely?

How on earth do you know whether a campsite has tory or Labour voters?

I also wondered this. Do the campers have to say which they vote for then each tent flies a blue or red pennant according to the inhabitants political views?
What happens to the SDP or Green voters? Do they have their own campsite?

I’ve obviously led a very sheltered life as I’ve never heard of this.

This thread actually reminds me of an old friend of mine very middle class lefty who lives in Hebden bridge 🤣

I think you're mixing a bunch of different stuff together. Bohemian, left leaning, mismatched clothes, barefoot, no homework, activities outside of School : fine.

Rude and dirty: not fine.

Surely there's not much more to it, independent of politics and lifestyle?

... quaffing seccy... !!!!! 🙆‍♂️ ♂️

🎩👔👖👞👞👞👞👞

OP, are you Katie Hopkins under a MN alias by any chance? 🤨

@Naturelover5 honestly I really dislike this trend of massively judging other people’s parenting approach. Maybe they’re lazy, maybe they have a vision for the kind of childhood they’d like their children to have that’s better than yours, or maybe they don’t have the skills to be any other way. Some of the best, happiest, most successful people I know had bohemian parents (rich and poor), and some of the most neurotic, competitive, shallow people I know had very diligent parents who always did the “right” parenting thing. The same is true in the reverse also, but guess which ones are more likely to like their parents as adults.

I would say this, if you’re this judgemental about other parents (and I would tend towards being judgemental too so I do understand the impulse) you have to see this is probably one of the strongest traits you’ll pass on to your children. Someday your darlings will likely have a few notes on your own parent approach, I bet they’ll wish you did a lot of the things you worked hard to avoid. Live by the sword…

I agree that if they were poorer they would be harshly judged, but I think this societal tendency is especially horrific so I would prefer there to be less of it not more.

what sort of person believes that council estates still exist?

Like….in that post I.literally.just.explained.it

You.did.not. Bless...

Well unless the house I live in Is.a figment of my imagination, then I can assure you they do still exist

Despite the grotesque stereotyping in this post, some of which is hilarious, there is a grain of truth to this.

I grew up in this world: absolutely central casting champagne socialism/bohemian parents of the sort who you'd think were exaggerated in a sitcom. There was definitely a lot of benign or not-so benign neglect in these circles which would have landed poorer parents in hot water with social services.

I had friends who as young teens were routinely allowed to stay out all night and bring boyfriends/girlfriends home/smoke cannabis in their bedrooms etc because it was thought to be part of a process of "self-exploration" and assumed that the parents had no control over it. In most cases the kids ended up OK but a substantial minority of them did go badly off the rails because there wasn't enough structure and the parents just gave the impression of not giving enough of a shit.

There's definitely a dark side to this world which isn't very visible to the outside.

Okay so tell me what it is you would like me to explain and I’ll try with all my power to make you understand

Is the real divide between the majority of parents who recognise that there are multiple legitimate way to raise healthy kids, and accept that individual families will set their own values and priorities, and a small minority who have compulsion to judge others? This second group lack the insight to realise their way isn't necessarily any better than anyone else's, it's just different.

At least the call for Children's Service to stage interventions for non-matching attire has raised a smile in our house this evening.

YABU if you think clothes and hair are the best way to judge parenting. Even "glued to screens" sounds pretty judgemental if these are people you saw for 5 minutes in a cafe as you don't know what they were doing the rest of the day.

Absolutely on the nail! Probably more disposed to Lib Dem than Corbyn lefty, but what you describe is right there.

Represented well in Viz magazines Modern Parents.

Yes. Me too!!! And what are working class campsites and what are middle class campsites and how the how do you tell the difference?