I don't know what to think about this - Some parents need to be nannied by the state

[Another2Cats]

An article in yesterday's Times (share token below) with this title. I have thoughts both ways on this.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/d2c38325-db32-4e36-a213-6d84be59a2f0?shareToken=58b28456ef3641836cb2ba7f3f70c791

[redacted by MNHQ for copyright reasons]

So why don’t you share thoughts then?

I agree with restarting Sure Start. It was brilliant, near me anyway.

Start at the beginning. Better, more affordable early years child care.

Re-open Sure Start. I had the benefit of those centres with my eldest.

Don't lecture people, it never goes down well just give choices.

There is no exam or fitness test to pass before you can become a parent so it's bleeding obvious that there will always be parents who need help and support.

I agree growing up I needed mandatory holiday clubs, mandatory before / after school clubs. I definitely needed to spend less time at home from the age of 3.

Sure Start benefited wealthier parents as they were the ones to seek it out. Poor families often refused to go.

This wasn't true in my area at all.

There were a mix as there is a mix in my area of backgrounds.

I was a breast feeding support adviser at our local one so I know who attended over a 2 year period.

Unlike some on here I actually live in a poor area of the country and I can confidently say that wasn't the case.

Mothers living in poverty are amazingly just as invested in giving their child the best start that they can.

The long term impact study of sure start came out in the last year. They obviously had to wait a long time for the children to grow up and that results show that this isn’t the case. The children of wealthier parents may have benifited too but deprived children living near a sure start centre did better those who didn’t.

I don't know why people become so fixated on the closure of Sure Start when one of the principal reasons they were closed was that they were used primarily by the middle-class parents who didn't need them.

These are difficult issues. They speak to culture and identity as much or more than to poverty, as the results for poorer Indian or Chinese heritage students often show. People have a right to a private family life, and the state can't substitute for a family. How do you overcome generations' worth of entrenched ideas about education and work?

I'm not fixated.

I volunteered in one for many years and saw the good that they did.

I’m afraid that was exactly my experience when I worked in a sure start centre.

This a million times. I read an article the other day about how someone has done a longitudinal study of disadvantaged families whose children had attended Surestart. Compared to similar schildren who hadn’t been Surestart children their social and academic achievements up to and including GCSE results were measurable. For those families a cheap as chips intervention has probably paid for itself many times over.

The article also wrote about one of the few remaining Surestart centres, in an area of huge deprivation, which has fought to survive, but had now been told it will no longer be funded. The staff and community are devastated.

I haven't got time to read the full OP (sorry everyone), but coming from a poor background, I do think my parents didn't know how to push me in the right direction. I think they just assumed I would work it out for myself or just work in retail. I did do fairly well academically when I finally got there, but I completely lacked confidence around people who had a better understanding of how the jobs market worked anyway, so even getting a good degree didn't do anything to help me. I just didnt have any sort of plan as a child and didnt know how to get to where i wanted to be (or even what that was). My lack of confidence set me back so much and people forget the impact of this on low SES children.

I think Sure Start was great, but we also need to do more to help teens, particularly ones with SEND. I don't have teens so dont know, but are there any support groups to help parents navigate this time? Ehy are they all in school hours when they can't attend? We also put forward the idea of doing a job for life and there is so much pressure to choose from lifelong career it is overwhelming. Most people don't really have a career spanning decades in one industry.

I also think pushing both parents to have to work full time due to the economic climate is a poor strategy. If they can't spend time with children doing homework or simply talking to them about their aspirations it just falls to overstretched teachers to do it.

I think the article is very glip and missing lots of key issues.

It’s not parental educational level but mother’s educational level which impacts on children. I suspect because on the whole it’s women who are most involved in childcare.

I think health inequalities which are signigificantly impacted by financial concerns also have a big impact. The previous Labour goverment did make mistakes but their every child matters agenda was not one of them.

Cambridge. UCL. Edinburgh. York. Liverpool. Cardiff. Nottingham Trent. Hertfordshire. Bath Spa. Can you spot the most prestigious university on the list? What’s a better A-level for getting into a top university, maths or business studies?
Chances are that you, a Times reader, consider the answers obvious. But they’re not for everyone.

Which patronising dumb elitist twat wrote that?

I wouldn't have done A-Level maths if you paid me to. Sheffield is the most prestigious university for the subject DD2 is reading. Oxford and Cambridge don't offer it.

I agree that was cringe making!

I think there are a few things really. Apparently theres been a change in culture around things like potty training etc (I’m 2nd gen immigrant so not sure what british people used ) but in my culture generally around 18 months is completely normal to start potty training (thats probably on the late side). My mum trained me asap because of cloth nappies.

We’ve instead moved to an idea of “readiness” and I think thats expanded to a lot of stuff. For example instead of giving a toddler an open cup to teach them a lot of people wait till they think they can do it. But giving them the cup is how they develop the control and co-ordination to be able to use it effectively. I did it myself in some areas without realising so I’m not having a pop at anyone. We potty trained ours at just under 2, old enough to understand, young enough to be ok with things changing.

On education, you don’t know what you don’t know. I know people who did a business degree 30 years ago because they thought it was practical. Plenty of first gen migrants had little clue about the UK education system (not everyone was highly educated or even fluent in spoken or written english). But getting to school on time, doing your homework and getting a decent report were very much seen as important.

It is as simple as that, “go to school every single day, do your work there and homework must be completed and woe betide a child who gets a call home or a detention, whatever you do don’t have school complain to your parents because your parents will back the teachers”. It’s not even parents sitting with their kids to do homework etc many didn’t have the time or the ability to help. It was the behaviours that support learning.

I do think parents are expected to do a lot more at home to support learning than they used to. I’m doing things with my Dd that school never asked when I was a child. DD has spellings to learn, she’s learning a poem at the moment, reading practice etc. This must be very hard for parents who lack confidence in their ability to help their children with these tasks.

I would say though there are some parents who just don’t care. The ones that do will still be trying.

They’re doing a brilliant job at dismantling barriers to opportunity, that’s for sure 😞

Interesting, but the examples given don't demonstrate poor parenting, just that some demographics don't have the understanding of higher education etc that others do. That's not 'nannying' or telling people that they're not good parents, just filling in knowledge gaps to help encourage social mobility.

If everyone is working full-time, with their kids in nursery/childcare when are they supposed to attend Sure Start centres?

There are parents who can barely strung 2 words together let alone have any idea,what help is available

Sadly it does not take much intelligence to have children

Also as they all charge the same tuition fees if a degree is not a degree then most of us are being ripped off.

My A-Level in Media Studies meant I had the skills to realise that some of that article is embarassing shite when I was 17/18.

There's a big difference between providing services and teaching/guiding parents and actually doing what would be termed basic parenting for them.

There is a culture of entitlement in this country, what are the government going to give ME. As opposed to the first port of call being 'what can I do to help myself'.

It's disgusting imo that teachers are now having to change nappies of children in reception (I don't include SEN in this) and brush children's teeth. Why is society being dumbed down like this?

We need to raise expectations of individuals. There's now so much information out there readily available. People need to be bothered to read it and act. Yes careers info at school needs to be improved and probably the re-introduction of something like Surestart. However you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

The writer seems to think that poor parenting means being working class and unconnected. As most journalists for such newspaper are nepo babies or otherwise extremely well-connected they probably think poor parenting means "Daddy didn't go to school with the editor of The Times".