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

It’s a very affluent city with a high proportion of people who are very highly educated.

And a lot of the people in Cambridge are used to being better than everyone else. This extends to their children, so they don’t cope well with having to be part of a herd.

I know nothing of Cambridge but I have noticed the difference in parenting you describe. To me it's about confidence bordering on arrogance (my children are the centre of the world. I want to parent them in accordance with what I've read and if that inconveniences other people, too bad) versus a more self deprecating less sure of themselves attitude (I have no right to inconvenience anyone. My children are an extension of me and mustn't inconvenience anyone either) It would of course be a huge generalisation to link these attitudes to social class.

Given that the ethos of the centre (university) and surrounding area (tech) is about pushing boundaries and questioning, it's not surprising that many parents see these as being positive attributes to encourage in their children.

And of course, if everyone around you is encouraging and validating their children and respecting their viewpoints, it's hard to be the one parent shouting "YOU WILL COME THIS MINUTE BECAUSE I SAY SO. I'M GOING TO COUNT TO FIVE. ONE, TWO, THREE..."

My favourite post of the whole thread 🙂

As a Cambridge primary school parent I totally recognise this - it has driven us to move! It is the exceptionalism of it all - and don’t get me started on the driving and parking……

I've lived in/near Cambridge all my life.

I now live in one of the commuter villages and whenever I come into the city I'm often surprised by the difference in parenting compared to the parents I know locally. Last summer we went to the big paddling pool (I won't name it but Cambridge parents will know where I mean) and there was a mum there shrieking at her daughter not to get her lovely dress wet... I wanted to ask WHY have you brought your kid to a paddling pool if you didn't want her to get wet?!

I don't think it's unique to Cambridge though, and it's not a new thing either. When I was a toddler my mum broke off a friendship with another mum whose son hit me in the face and the mum excused it with "oh he's a boy!"

The snobbery and obsession over high achievement makes me eye roll but it's rarely from people who are born in Cambridge - always the ones who came here to study or work. It's like they feel they have to keep up with the Jones', or have something to prove.

Fortunately our village is amazing with a fab school, although it's very white. The city is much more diverse.

I do think that's true.

Research is inherently about questioning norms, and so it would be surprising if the kids weren't brought up to ask "why" a little bit more assertively.

I think if you have two academics who have produced a baby together then there's a decent chance that the kid is going to be asking some hard questions.

Anecdote follows:

When my DC was in reception, the headmaster stood up in front of all the parents and said "So what is the one thing that we all have in common here?".

He wanted us to say "We all want the best for our kids."

I was bursting to say "We have all had unprotected sex at least once." but I didn't because obviously that was not an absolutely definite fact. I mean some people might have adopted, or had IVF without having unprotected sex in the normal way.

But honestly, if I spent quite a lot of the first introductory talk mulling that over in my head, then the headmaster is going to have his work cut out isn't he?

Also in Cambridge, a lot of the parents are a bit obsessed with getting their kids into private schools, of which there are a lot. That is a whole other side of the question which we haven't got into.

Is skin colour a factor as well as class now?

No.

I thought these ineffectual parents are everywhere.

I would disagree - I have never seen ineffectual parenting from non-white parents. In Cambridge non-white parents tend to the tigerish end of the parenting spectrum IMO and have far higher expectations of behaviour and attainment.

I'm sure they are, and there are some in the place we moved to, but in Cambridge they were in SUCH high numbers that it was suffocating for us - it felt like we were the only ones saying "no" to our kids ever. This thread has been so interesting, because I hadn't really considered why it might be more like that in Cambridge than elsewhere, but there are a lot of interesting and observant statements made by PPs.

When I moved to London from another country and started nannying in my 20’s I ran into these kinds of families, couldn’t understand it but I think ‘gentle parenting’ is common amongst these families. Most middle class kids are spoilt, these parents don’t raise their voice or discipline, everything is ‘please darling, don’t hit mummy’ whereas other countries I nannied in - well these kids wouldn’t dream of it, it would have been nipped in the bud before they even thought of it.

I don't know about Cambridge but I've noticed big differences between the parents at the decent school in a working class area my DC originally went to and the "outstanding" school in a v middle class area that we now go to (geographically about 20mins drive away). So cliquey and unfriendly, terrible discipline, letting the kids do what they like. Massive levels of entitlement. Wish we'd stuck at the old school in many ways but new school is short walk from home and feeder to the only half decent local comp so felt it was the right thing to do. I don't know why having a nice detached house and a big car makes people bigger arseholes but it seems to.

It’s not a new thing. In the 70s/ 80s I grew up in a working class area with strict parents. Because of their interests, my parents had a lot of middle class friends (not Cambridge!) who were very much of the “we don’t do that darling” type. I don’t remember physical fighting but the children were definitely allowed to do whatever they wanted, and cause complete havoc, while their parents sat back and made the odd comment.

These middle class children all grew into wonderful, happy, confident adults.

@TotallyIneffectual that made me laugh🙂. That’s exactly how my brain works!

What strikes me about this thread is that the Cambridge people are so busy mulling everything over, we’ve forgotten to be offended🤣. It’s just making me smile wistfully from my home in the north, surrounded by neurotypicals.

We did go down the independent route in the end….a small one in Bateman Street (trying not to be outing but I don’t really care because I’m an over-sharer anyway). Wonderful down-to-Earth place and we both made a few nice friends.

I discussed it with a medic friend of mine once.

She said she thought it was because a lot of the most successful people in Cambridge have got there because there are behavioural differences that are genetically encoded in their family.

She said that she thought that those differences made them a massive success in adulthood, but a massive pain the arse in childhood.

Shortly afterwards, I watched her chasing her child down the middle of a road shouting at him to stop, while he drove his scooter at speed directly toward the bonnet of a moving Range Rover. I do think that maybe there was something in her theory.

I live in Cambridge and quite agree, most of the parents at my sons school seem to have more money than us but they're really lax with rules, if my son is a little bugger, which he absolutely can be especially at school, he doesn't get away with it at all, it honestly seems to be a middle class thing 😂
A lot of them look very shocked with how strict I can be, but I grew up working class with a very strict mother and it did me the world of good!

Smaller families due to choice/higher maternal age/house prices may play a role. My impression (but admittedly purely anecdotal based on friends we know) is that families tend to be limited to one or at most two children. While I disagree with all the silly stereotypes around only children, I do think it is easier to parent in a certain way if you have less children. With a larger family, you reach a point where you really need everyone to do what they're told without questioning it and, if you need to shout and be mean, then you'll shout and be mean, because it's the only way to keep everyone safe.

Yes, liberal lefty parents that let their little darlings run wild. See it all the time where I live.

It’s a very affluent city with a high proportion of people who are very highly educated.

And linked to this high level of education I reckon there will be a lot of parents in Cambridge who are the type to read A LOT of parenting books. And so will be super confident in the theory, if not the practice, of parenting.

I also wonder if in Cambridge, and similar places with lots of academic parents who have moved there for work, there is a collective impact of lower levels of grandparents involvement. Simply as so many children won’t have local grandparents. In my experience grandparents can sometimes be the much needed counterpoint to ‘gentle parenting’!

This is the most measured parenting thread I've seen for years, normally it's tin hat time as soon as gentle parenting makes an appearance on the thread!
I think a big issue is that it's easy to assume all children are similar and it's only the parenting that varies, but I think it is at least 50:50 between parenting and the child.
And I'd second most of the replies, ND is a big problem, in the past the traditional behaviourist approach (think super nanny) would just break all but the most troublesome children down, ND or otherwise.
Now that a whole generation of "high masking " ND children are having their own, they don't actually want to follow that doctrine.
My opinion is-matted hair, none of anyone's business, snatching/hitting etc, boundary to be enforced.
My son comes home from school every day absolutely shattered due to holding it in, so anyone who judges his hair brushing can get to the back of if the queue.

I live in a different area. I've worked as a nanny and now as a childminder. I would say my observations match yours OP middle class and higher don't have as strong discipline. But these are generalisations I can think of exceptions in both groups

My impression (but admittedly purely anecdotal based on friends we know) is that families tend to be limited to one or at most two children.

Years ago someone said to me that academic families have either one child or at least three. That was true for a substantial proportion of the children I was teaching. I can quite understand that things have changed now, though, perhaps because fewer women take a break of more than a year from their academic careers.