Is there a worrying class divide with parenting?

[teaandcupcake]

I saw a tweet (and subsequent TikTok) about this and found it interesting.

The author of the tweet and the girl on TikTok were basically saying they notice the way their middle-class friends parent their small kids is screen-free, lots and lots of books, lots of time and attention. Their toddlers can read and write. In contrast, teacher friends at deprived primaries have shared stories of reception starters in nappies, children who have no idea how to turn the page of a book or use a knife and fork.

The concern being that the divide between middle-class and working-class children is going to be so vast in the future we ‘can’t even fathom it right now’

I found it interesting as the topic of reception children starting school without reaching basic milestones has been discussed on here many times before but not whether it’s class issue and what’s causing this.

At the same time any time someone comes along saying "my 2/3/4yo seems really interested in books and is asking about letters on signs" the response is something like "don't even try to teach them, you will mess it up, only the teachers can be trusted to do it right, your children should be allowed to play and not forced to sit at a desk studying!!"

Which I disagree with. There are ways to teach phonics that don't even involve sitting down, and which toddlers enjoy and see as a game and a way to learn about the world. I think it's wrong to keep it from them. Forcing it, yes, but you can take it slowly and do it in short stints.

Wtf is wrong with "interested in horse riding, art"?

I know a few families who do not have a TV. Most of them and their children do watch series, programmes etc though, just on their Macs, which apparently doesn't count as watching TV. But they do get to say that they don't own a TV.

Huh I’m London based where it is so much easier. All the extra curriculars are in the local area at that age. As they have got older things have got further afield but certainly when young football was all in the park for instance. Ballet the local church hall. At that age pretty much all activities were within 15 mins of the house. Benefit of living in London!

This is also true - I used to work in IT and my DC didn't have mobile phones until they needed to travel in London independently, and we used brick phones for a long time. This doesn't change the fact they will have to use tech extensively whether we like it or not, and they'd better learn how to manage that.

It's not about coding at all, my job in IT didn't require any coding whatsoever. It's about productive use of tech. Ironically, as you mentioned creativity, for creative types the issue is even more prominent - my DC is a musician and it's REALLY hard to establish a career these days without using internet, SM and music tech a lot.

Re. "we didn't learn it and we managed fine" - but we lived in an entirely different world! 😂

Yes, you are right, there are ways to make it fun, and it isn't always bad. I was one of those children who wanted to learn to read signs etc from a very young age. But really, I suppose I meant the parents who desperately want to have the 'advanced' child they can boast about, rather than a child who is happy and thriving doing age appropriate fun, playful and educational activities broadly in line with their peer group.

I was with you until your last sentence.

People are using "middle class" as shorthand for affluent, privileged, wealthy or similar terms in this context - all of which you eloquently admitted to possessing in your opening paragraph.

Yours is indeed a textbook case of how an affluent family are able to secure better outcomes for a given child than a working class family that does not enjoy the generational wealth, privilege, education, socio-economic standing, and financial health that you do. And this is doubly so with SEND children where resources are so very competitive within state provision.

It's obnoxiously middle class! 🤣

Yes, I agree with you. I’m definitely MC and the recipient of intergenerational privilege - I think I was trying to make the point that that privilege is some very tangible stuff that we’ve drawn on, not just the “label” of being MC. Probably not a helpful distinction!

Same. I would have said it was a lot easier not harder to get children in London. We don't drive or use public transport for any of our kids activities - everything we do is within 10-15 mins walk or cycle.

It's also totally possible to get a child from activity to bed in an hour, if an early bedtime is important to you/your child.

A few months ago, we used to have them in bed for 7:30 every day, we recently moved to 8pm

I remember reading that children were going to school unable to sit at the table and use a knife and fork -mine sat at the table for evening meal ever after that - that was around 1986 😂

We lived in London until very recently. Perhaps we lived in more competitive MC circles - at 8yo children start competing in tennis, swimming, gymnastics, music etc and to get to that level they do longer training hours from about 6-7yo, and not at a local club. DC2 did competitive football and we drove ~45 minutes each way. Our friends did the same for swimming but on public transport.

From 8 and certainly from 9yo many start doing 1-2 hours of 11+ prep every day. That was definitely the case for everyone in our pre-prep.

I guess my point is that going to bed at 7 is not what defines MC :)

Same. I would have said it was a lot easier not harder to get children in London. We don't drive or use public transport for any of our kids activities - everything we do is within 10-15 mins walk or cycle.

We're in rural Scotland. Most activities my kids do are walkable but more like 20 mins minimium. Tonight dc2 (7) may cycle home but she doesn't finish til 7.30 so will be at least 8 before she's in the house.

Amd gateways to drugs seemingly....who knew

Hmm, I'm not sure about this one. I teach in quite a 'naice' area at the moment and we are seeing dreadful behaviour with our new intake-and increasing meetings with parents are showing that they don't use the word 'no' with their child and try to distract them instead. This is resulting in enormous tantrums as they start reception and are simply refusing to do what the class teacher asks and are kicking off when they are told 'no' at school!

Art is addictive for sure! And can easily ruin you if you try to do it professionally 😂

I think people use "screen free childhood" to mean quite different things.

I think scrolling handheld devices at pre-school age are essentially an unmitigated evil for the child. This is different from an 8yo using a computer to make a video for a school project or a parent giving time limits for a 14yo's social media time to help them manage it.

I don't think it's possible to help an 18mo "learn to manage technology and regulate themselves" by handing them a tablet explicitly designed (after 20+ years of fine-tuning the addiction algorithms) to completely capture their attention.

Lol yes but not sure most MC DC are aiming for that 😆

I find this thread really interesting. I was brought up in a WC household- mum was a dinner lady and dad had a trade job. Lived on a council estate. We were one of the more “well off” families in my school class- despite neither parent being anything close to being a high earner. Both my mum and dad put a lot of pressure on us to do well academically but seemed to have no idea how to actually support that- at 16 I was juggling working several night a week and weekends in a shop, doing my highers and looking after my gran (my mum had me move in with her and help her out when my grandad was moved into long term care).

Husband and I are professionals- he is a high earner and I earn a good wage for the hours I do. We live in an area where one of the most affluent parts of the city borders one of the most impoverished(there was a documentary about the conditions and poverty of this particular area). The affluent half were traditionally attendees at schools which were listed in the top 5 of the city. Now, the schools are so oversubscribed that children are having to attend the school in the less affluent area (which in itself is now oversubscribed). This is the school my children attend. There is such a division within the parenting styles. It’s not so much predominantly WC parents- but many who have never worked and rely on benefits. Many have had several previous generations also experience unemployment and poverty- the result is that they often are living with addiction issues, poor mental health, learning disabilities etc. The school has put on various groups for parents to attend to help them with things like supporting their children with homework but attendance was low as the unemployed parents wouldn’t attend and the working parents were unable to. There was also lots of things like free tennis lessons, free dance classes etc but these took place a bit further out and those without access to a car couldn’t get to them, so they were better attended by the more MC or upper working class children. There are no baby groups or anything for toddlers whatsoever in the poorer area. There was a baby/toddlers group but funding was reduced and they used the same hall to run a “men’s group”(focussed on reducing loneliness in older men) in the same room at the same time- literally both groups running side by side. This meant things like breastfeeding support sessions which ran during the baby group had poor attendance as mums felt awkward doing this with older men sitting within arms reach. Both groups were essential but it simply didn’t work to have both at once.

Is this directed towards my earlier post? If so, I didn’t learn to code in the 90s, and I’m not entirely convinced that “screen upbringings” have “degraded in status” given the accelerations in technology and the continued integration into daily life.

I’m not sure what the point of your strangely adversarial post is frankly. The people I know in tech, embrace it. Whereas people who refuse to are held back. Low digital literacy is a barrier to finding employment according to the DWP.

Also many people learn how to code (alongside hundreds of other skills) using YouTube. Following tutorials is a great way to learn, someone teaching you how do it and sharing practical exercises and resources so you can follow along at home. It’s no different from the facilitated training I did at work. Short form educational content exists as well. YouTube is merely a video hosting platform, an array of content exists.

Actually, as I typed this I recalled our pre-prep was only doing 7+ until recently which means children had 1-2 hours of prep from age 6.

Totally agree. My circle of best friends are ten years older than me and DH and their children are ten years older. Two of them work(ed) in primary. We all agree it's getting tougher.

They have much bigger houses and were able to take more time off when the kids were young than any of my peers with kids the same age. It's making a huge difference.

My son's school is finding it increasingly difficult to get parent volunteers for things like trips as there's fewer parents who don't work and there's fewer parents who work part-time. Ironically we find at scout that the more deprived areas have more parents who don't work and are more willing to volunteer - my friend who lives in inner city Manchester says she's the only working mum for her son's class so I think there's a particular issue with squeezed middle classes going on.

This means that even ten years ago it was easier for schools and parents to support the kids. I think it is getting harder and harder.

My older friends are all in the process of retiring in their early to mid fifties. I just don't think this is remotely realistic for my peer group - even though we all live in the same area. It used to be you could buy here on 1 good income, it gradually shifted to 1 and a half. Now it's 2 professional incomes. That's significant. The number of families living here has declined massively as they have been priced out.

There is a known generational divide that fell in 2008 with the economic crisis. Generally speaking anyone who had bought a house prior to that is better off. This means the rough divide between falls either side of the 43 - 47 age group. Me and DH fall right in the middle of this so know people both sides of it and the differences are quite stark.

This tallies with the start a Generation Alpha too.

So there are quite a few factors driving this change.

This is combining with less support and funding in schools. There used to be one TA per class, now they are having to share between classes and it's likely to only get worse.

It also seems to mean you get concentrations of people employed in tech (as it's comparatively well paid) who have children when they are older. It wouldnt surprise me if certain middle class areas were ending up with higher rates of neurodiversity as they are a) more predisposed to it due to their area of employment b) more predisposed by virtue of having children later. Thus certain middle class areas which didn't see this previously are suddenly facing a disproportionate increase in these children with additional needs that just didn't exist 10 - 15 year ago and this is causing huge disruptions to other kids.

My son's class has two children with significant SEN needs who are both trying to get specialist places at high school next year.

Then there's one child with a disability and they need additional support. Another child who doesn't speak English. Then another two I know with SEN diagnosis with another two in progress. And then two or three with probable dyslexia (which they don't give diagnosis for anymore).

That makes 10 out of 32 that I actively know about. There could be others.

The range of ability between the kids is therefore huge. There's kids who can hardly write and need help with getting their letters the right way round. And then there's ones exceeding. And this is a middle class area so lord help everywhere else. I know the class will not match previous results in yr6 SATs. It's been obvious for a few years now.

But it's not just this year group. It's the ones coming up after them. Friends in education are seeing the same thing.

There's definitely a change and I suspect we will see more news headlines which reflect this over the coming years. The politicians might wake up in five or six years by which time there will be something of a lost generation who have been failed.

I think this is a really interesting debate. And I think the screen time argument does cross financial barriers. In my experience lots of families have two full-time working parents, and children at after-school clubs. When you collect a child at 5:30 after working a full day, you are pretty much exhausted and so 30 to 45 minutes on an iPad before bath and bed is probably all everyone can manage.

Current demographics mean lots of people live absolutely nowhere near grandparents so will get not one jot of ongoing support. This ties into the exhaustion. The load on Mother to be present in WhatsApp groups, have a school ‘app’ for this that and the other, also adds to the general level of exhaustion.

House prices these days are eight times the average man’s salary. In my parents day it was four times the average man’s salary. In essence if it was 30 years ago my husband and I could manage on just his salary with our current lifestyle, but cost-of-living means we cannot.

Apologies if I offend anyone, but my mother-in-law frequently tells me how they and all their friends don’t want look after grandkids but want to spend their money and enjoy their lives. This is absolutely fine but means full-time working parents are utterly exhausted with no regular support.

Thus feeding into the screen time, or amount of time people have to spend on child development at home.

I don’t know the answer, but it’s definitely multifaceted.

And I don’t really think it’s to do with class, I think it’s about whether or not the family can’t afford to have the literal time to spend on the child.

It’s not always about class. My mum grew up in poverty, her dad died and her stepdad worked on the railways. She was my treated well and forced to leave school at 14 with no qualifications and work in a shop, then got a job in admin in Tescos head office until she had kids when she became a dinner lady for the rest of her life.

She really wanted an education but life didn’t give her chances.

So she gave me those chances - I could read and write before school, we walked half an hour to the library every week and got our books and walked back. My dad made sure we learned to play chess and watched documentaries on TV and visited exhibitions when there was something on locally we could get to. We were not desperately poor but we didn’t have a lot.

I went to a good state secondary school and me and my sibling got an Oxbridge education. I’m now affluent and my kids are actually worried they won’t be as “successful” as me (one of them wants to be a teacher and is worrying about whether it’s a sensible choice).

I am probably more disparaging of working class families because I know it’s possible for a kid in a council house to be brought up well-educated and motivated. My mum dragged herself up from a really tough start in life and she made sure her kids didn’t suffer like she did - far more people could do the same. You don’t actually need as much money as you think - especially these days when you can visit museums online , learn languages, download books and listen to classical music or whatever.

That’s mad. I prepped my own children from a state school for 11 plus and only did 1 hour max a day from age 10 and usually we did it before school. They passed all exams. I only had to do that much as state schools do nothing so I had to fill in the gaps myself. 1-2 hours from age 6 is crazy!