Are parents in Cambridge uniquely ineffectual?

[ohrly]

Name change. I apologise for the clickbait title, my observations are based solely on our (primary) school and not all parents here.

We moved here six months ago from a more working-class area. Although that area had its problems, parents generally ensured their kids had basic manners, proper grooming, and weren't violent.

However, at my son's new school, I've noticed a significant lack of manners among many kids. Parents don't seem to enforce them either. The children demand things from their parents and others and are generally rude.

There are a few kids, despite being over seven years old, who frequently hit and push others. Parents respond with mild comments like "Oh no, that's not nice" instead of a more assertive, proportionate reaction like, "Do not hit. If you do that again, we will go home."

Parents also don't seem to enforce boundaries effectively. Instead of saying "5 minutes until we leave the park," they ask, "Are you ready to go now? Okay sweetie, no worries."

Moreover, parents often talk about their kids in a way that suggests the children are in control. They say things like, "Oh, she won't let me..." or "Oh, she doesn't like..." A common issue is kids refusing to let their parents brush their hair, resulting in matted hair.

At parties, no parents watch what's happening, and the kids go quite wild. I've had to stop myself from telling off so many kids.

These observations span a mix of nationalities, but all are middle-class families.
Is this a common occurrence now, or is it specific to Cambridge, this school, or the middle classes? Or am I just going mad?!

I honestly thought I was a super liberal parent until I moved here!

YABU - Stop judging / this isn't a real thing
YANBU - Yes these parents sound dreadful

@TorroFerney

I wonder if the kids you are talking about will be more forceful in adult life?

I certainly think for girls in particular a little bit of over confidence isn’t a bad thing. Obviously they shouldn’t be feral or rude or entitled. But education, work and encounters with men generally have a nasty habit of knocking the wind out of their sails in various ways.

It shouldn’t have to be an either/or and I try to instil both confidence and respect. But on balance I would rather have a slightly cocky daughter than a people pleaser who will get blown whichever way the (male) wind takes her.

A kernel of stubbornness is quite a protective factor.

So I was born in Cambridge and I’ve lived here most of my adult life. My parents came here in the 50s, it was very different then. Where they lived was a village, it’s now a suburb. The accent has lost its East Anglian authenticity and maybe a bit of humanity has escaped along with it.

I think the division between Town and Gown is still there. There’s also all the tech and science people who are far better off than locals or university people. I have been more gown than town in my adult life. Gown can’t afford to live in the big houses anymore and those under 40 not really even in the city areas.

Where we live is inner suburb and there are both very disadvantaged kids and very middle class kids in the primary school. Our DC is sixth form, and I don’t recognise anything much from the OPs original post.

In his primary era parents were as parents are - some hot on discipline, some not. It didn’t relate to their social class, just personality. Re scruffy versus smart - some academic parents were less bothered about having the latest trendy kit but only some.

Cycling - always a thing here. Some people made this battle ground. I think theimpact on the city has begun to tip over into the negative. I say this as someone who doesn’t own a car. I long for it to be the ‘we cycle here a lot because it’s flat’ of my childhood. Protect cyclists and pedestrians by all means but the whole congestion charge/bridge closure etc. is out of hand.

I think it's just modern parenting.

A bit disappointing because I visited recently and really liked the feel of the city, much more than oxford.

@Summertimer Yes I found the cyclists pretty aggressive and I have no issue with biking in London, Amsterdam or Copenhagen for example.

Sorry to hear about the incident. That sort of thing is never acceptable.

An example of this from my own family was when a neighbour’s child hit my DB with a metal toy and he had to go to hospital. The mother was similarly unrepentant as in your example. This happened in Cambridge in early 1960s

I don't think runners should be running full pelt in an area that is just as much for other people including young kids to be using/playing in. It really annoys me when adults on bikes or on foot are going at great speed in a public area. They're the danger not a little kid learning to ride a bike IMO.

Never underestimate the power of Facebook to reinforce social norms.

My DC went to a Steiner inspired preschool and a very hippy, bohemian primary. Being an "unconventional" autistic person, I felt comfortable with the parents and made some good friends, many of them also ND. However, I have a relatively Dickensian parenting style myself, and privately disagreed with how a lot of the kids were allowed to behave. Physical violence and bullying were definitely not dealt with as they should have been in that primary school 🙄.

However, that means that my Facebook feed is now full of stuff that these fellow parents share, and my god, the guilt! "Nobody can replace mama, who cares if you have broken sleep for 3 years your little ones are only tiny for such a short time, don't impose boundaries on your children and break their unique spirits" etc etc.

It actually makes me quite angry, because a lot of this stuff seems quite regressive (over emphasis on "mama" being the essential caregiver) and designed to make the life of vulnerable and struggling parents much harder. God, the amount of times I've seen parents hollow eyed with exhaustion because their 2 year old is still up 4 times in the night and had to bite my lip to stop myself saying "You're not going to damage your child if you sleep train you know, no matter what Facebook says...." 🤦‍♀️

The working class obsession with brushed hair as a symbol of respectability baffles me. I'm not sure if that's because it's just inherently silly, or if I can't see past my own middle class socialisation telling me that having brushed hair is neither here nor there.

😀 There is, but two years ago it had only 100 students, according to OFSTED. That’s with an age range of 2 - 16.

Their website it says “In September 2023 we will launch our new Upper School“ so it may have expanded.

The school’s is the first one I’ve visited which doesn’t have a link to their latest Inspection report.
It summarises the report into a series of bullet points, which may be legal: the only reference I found about that is for maintained schools, where it wouldn’t be.

It possible they want to hide that the school received “Requires Improvement” at the previous inspection.

You missed that it was a park run, then? You know, those organised events for hundreds of runners? Children shouldn’t have been playing there.

I don't know about you, but I definitely had socialisation that (although it was important to be clean and ideally "presentable" in public) anything but a minimum of grooming was a bit suspect as haircuts and styling lead to make-up, make-up leads to parties, parties lead to boys, and boys lead to not getting straight A/A*s at GCSE and going to Cambridge....

You would have been proud of me when I was on an actual sidewalk and heard a 'ding' of a bike bell behind me. Parents and child riding together. I ignored it and they were able to adjust.

On a sidewalk - get off your bike and walk past, for crying out loud.

I think it’s a reflection of the fact that in a working class neighbourhood not having brushed your kids’ hair would mark your family out as being “not respectable”: ie on the lowest rung of the social ladder. With the attendant risk of attracting the interest from social services etc.

Middle class families instinctively know the bar for social services to come after them is much much higher and it’s a risk they can get away with taking.

Often it’s just something they can’t be bothered to deal with but in a particular sub sector of this middle class there’s a cachet about having your kids appear a bit feral because it’s a stealth signal that you are all about weighty and important things and don’t preoccupy yourself with trivia. I think a fair few academic families tend towards this line of thought.

I can see both sides of this. I don’t think hair brushing is the most important thing in the world but I also think allowing your children to acquire dreadlocks because you’re too busy signalling how intelligent you are is a bit self indulgent. Ultimately people will judge you on how you present yourself and teaching kids that it’s of no importance whatsoever isn’t helping them.

The people I work with must all originate from Cambridge. They all have 3-5 kids who they spend hours complaining about but who can't do wrong. "Gentle" parenting on steroids.

(I'm not in Cambridge but I think that this kind of useless MC parenting is now absolutely endemic.)

I was teased at primary school for having unbrushed hair (academic parents, mum went off to work early leaving dad to get us ready for school, which he didn’t) and I regard that as being borderline neglectful of my parents, who needless to say couldn’t have been more assiduous when it came to Oxbridge entrance later on.
Kids who won’t let you brush their hair due to sensory sensitivity and you have decided to pick your battles is a different kettle of fish.

I see your point although it was a clearly marked out course using maybe 20% of the park. Whether the adults should or shouldn't have been running , (I know parkrun is a contentious subject) if as a parent, with a small child on a bike you noticed lots of people running in one direction - whatever speed - for your own child's safety you might think it was worth looking for sonewhere quieter, or trying to move them in case anyone including the child got hurt?

I would argue that an area even busy with people walking is not the ideal place to learn to ride a bike when you are unable to steer, or reliably stay on the bike - see my point about kids on scooters in busy areas.

I think we can let them have a clearly-advertised and marshalled Parkrun once a week tbf

@BestZebbie

I don't know about you, but I definitely had socialisation that (although it was important to be clean and ideally "presentable" in public) anything but a minimum of grooming was a bit suspect as haircuts and styling lead to make-up, make-up leads to parties, parties lead to boys, and boys lead to not getting straight A/A*s at GCSE and going to Cambridge....

I had this socialisation too. My mum came from a solid middle class but very straight laced family where the girls were encouraged to “marry well” and discouraged from going to university. Her way of rebelling was to push my sister and I to be academic and ignore anything to do with self adornment as it was seen as trivial and lightweight.

I would rather this than have a mother who pushed me to be a teen beauty queen and desperately try to find a husband but I think the whole ethos of “it’s your brain not your body” can be taken too far.

The ability to present yourself well, to make the best of yourself and to allow yourself to feel good about the way you look is pretty important for self confidence. I still struggle with the idea that it’s self indulgent to buy nice clothes and dress appropriately.

Teens shouldn’t be made to feel that there’s something shameful or inappropriate about wanting to look good.

I feel like I don't know where I fit in it all a lot of the time

My grandparents ( who had a big hand in my upbringing as we had an extended family set up) were solidly working class farm labourers and miners, my parents were first generation grammar school and uni and were teachers and I am an Oxbridge educated academic. However I do not aspire to that necessarily for my kids and in fact I doubt that is the path they will take. I care more that they are happy and good people than about their academic success specifically. I have always sent them to local state schools and would not use the private sector.

My grandparents thought that being clean and tidy with shiny shoes was super important and I never really got that and don't care hugely for my kids or myself. I find the insistence on very strict school uniform rules odd and often a guise for oppression of women. I think as long as your appearance isn't outright offensive to others (eg offensive tattoo) then it should not much matter what you wear. However I do buy the uniform and don't collude with DC to evade the rules.

I don't agree with blind acceptance of rules and phrases like 'because I told you' or 'because I said so' as recommended upthread are something I would never say to my kids. I think they should have some age appropriate degree of agency and that it's more adaptive to teach them how to reach a compromise than just to obey at all costs. We discuss world issues in our house and I encourage them to express their opinions even if I disagree. However I don't teach them or support them in talking back to teachers (outside of a classroom debate) or being rude.

Respect for others, kindness and consideration, putting yourself in another's shoes, being aware of the advantages you have, working hard and doing as you would be done by are core values for me. I therefore did teach them to share toys and take turns on the swings!

Because if you're working class and scruffy no one will give you the same allowances that a scruffy Cambridge academic would get.

How do you not get that?

@ThePure the shiny shoes thing was because in the past employers cared about that kind of thing, especially for working class people. I knew retired people when I was young who said they would never employ someone with dirty or scuffed shoes. That is why your grandparents cared. It wasn't some strange foible.
Reaching a compromise is fine in some occasions, but it does not work in group settings or if you have more than one child. Sometimes children do have to do things they do not want to. My DD may not have wanted to go out on the school run. But there was no compromising, her DS had to go to school and she was under five so had to come on the school run even if she did not want to. If you are trying to claim that compromising in some occasions is some unique special parenting, it really is not. Anyone with half way decent parenting skills does it sometimes. But it is a balance.
Children from working class backgrounds get reported for neglect to SS when kids from middle or upper class backgrounds do not. Although I think matted hair that can not be brushed is neglect.

What a fascinating thread. Are there any mothers in Cambridge who haven't contributed yet?

Much of it resonates with me, but I'm harking back a long way, as my children are over 30 now. I think particularly of the woman I knew who was a teacher herself but still begged her daughter's class teacher to back down and allow daughter and best friend to go on sitting together in class because it made them sad to have to sit on opposite sides of the class. Teacher (fortunately) said no. She had made it abundantly clear that if the girls couldn't stop talking during class they would have to sit apart. Kids were something like year 4 or 5 at the time (so not babies - aged 8 at least). I heard about this from the mother and privately thought hurrah for the teacher!

Then there was another woman who saw her extremely badly behaved 5yo son hit another child for no reason at all and who said to him plaintively 'X! That was so ... not good!' FFS, just use the word 'bad'! If he'd been told that a bit more often and given more structure to his life and clear boundaries, he'd have been a lot happier, in my view (he was not a happy child, for a number of obvious reasons I won't go into here). Nothing about parenting seemed to come naturally to his mother. She read obsessively about the theory and then fell down utterly on the practice. It was quite sad, actually. I often wonder how he turned out. They moved away (to one of the places named in this thread, where I imagine they fitted right in).

This is something I really benefitted from as a working class child in Cambridge - the standard of state education was high and the expectation was that if you were bright then of course you would do A levels and then go to a Russell group university. The trickle down effect I suppose of highly academic parents and their expectations of their children became the norm.

My DM went to Netherhall when it was the girls secondary modern and left school aged 15 in the late 60s, and was considered by her family to have done well to have an office job, her DM was a cleaner. So the Cambridgeness most likely changed the course of my life in a way that may not have happened if I'd grown up with my background elsewhere. My family had no idea about sixth form or universities, it all came from school.

I totally agree. I see so many over tired young children and exhausted mothers. I know its their choice, but their life would be so much easier and happier if they just spent a few weeks sleep training so that everyone got enough sleep.
One of my friends sent their child to a Steiner school for a short while. She said the level of bullying was horrific. And the school did nothing about it.

@Pleaselettheholidayend

How do you not get that?

In fairness to this poster if you are brought up in this world (as I was) the idea of caring about brushing hair and having shiny shoes was looked down on as very provincial and lower middle class.

These sorts of academic families derive cachet from projecting an “I don’t give a shit what I look like” vibe and being preoccupied with being clean and tidy would be discouraged. They would associate having shiny shoes and tidy hair (erroneously) with being a snob. My mum used to tell me that people who cared about grooming were “shallow”.

I’m not excusing this: looking back on this I find it very self indulgent and tunnel vision. Just pointing out that these sorts of snobberies and social neuroses work both ways. If you grow up with it it’s hard to see past it until you leave.

Depends on the child. Some autistic children are easier to teach manners to than others. (Sample size 2)