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.

What's stopping the grandchildren of those who lost jobs in the industries going to uni then doing as every other graduate does and going where work

I did. I left the area I grew up in and moved to Cardiff. Many of my school mates didn't.

One of the most influential women i have encountered in my working life came from the same place as me and has made it her life's mission to regenerate the area. She's done great works but there is so much to do. Many move away but there are many reasons people don't move where there is work. Logically if you take 20k people from a deprived area and tell them to move to London or Manchester (for eg) to find work... how is that going to work out exactly? They need a place to live, it puts pressure on the areas they're moving into, causes a squeeze on the resources already available in those areas.

"Move where there is work" is kind of facile and nonsensical when you are talking about a whole area of people -several counties - ie the south Wales coalfield which stretches from Monmouthshire to Merthyr and beyond. Not sure what everyone's geography is like but we're not talking about a small estate of a couple hundred people here ....

Moving isn't easy even on an individual level. People have families, they need somewhere to live on the new city, sometimes they don't have money for rent downpayment on a flat and of course you need to secure a job before you go... it's very complicated and nowhere near as easy as it sounds.

The grandchildren of those who lost their jobs are going to uni. The children of those who lost their jobs went as well. My dad was one who lost his job. I went to uni. My son has just gone away to uni too. He's in a non redbrick uni doing a non traditional subject though so I'm sure the uni snobs will shriek he should have become a plumber.

But plenty do. Unfortunately many struggle with lack of confidence or don't do well in school. We need good schools which encourage and inspire young people to realise their potential.

Well the 11 plus didn't help. If a child decides at 16 they want to be a plumber great but it should be their choice not forced on them by someone who thinks they are less academic.

But after uni did you go back to a town with no jobs?

The schools/ confidence thing is the same in many areas, including parts of london

I didn't no. I stayed in Cardiff. But then the cost of housing got too much in Cardiff and I ended up in the Valleys commuting into Cardiff. That's another story. Many people do that. The little Valleys villages where there are no jobs end up becoming dormitory villages for Cardiff white collar workers. But anyway. Not everyone went to uni. Not everyone left. There were many reasons why. As I said you can't displace the entire population of a region as you are talking about literally thousands and thousands ... we're not talking about one town here.... as I said do some geographical research on the south Wales coalfield to get an idea of the scale of the issue....

@KHMP1971

Move where there is work" is kind of facile and nonsensical when you are talking about a whole area of people -several counties - ie the south Wales coalfield which stretches from Monmouthshire to Merthyr and beyond. Not sure what everyone's geography is like but we're not talking about a small estate of a couple hundred people here ...

Exactly.

Charles Murray's book about the underclass was written about the USA almost 20 years ago. Sadly, we've caught up and imported all the bad bits. Poorly integrated migrants; we have those, busily pimping out children in care homes and into county lines gangs. Lost boys? the clever ones are making out like bandits dealing drugs at street level and edging up their power, building criminal entreprises. I am (seriously) glad that I am nearly 70 and starting to be invisible. Happy to be noisy though.

She's absolutely hated in South Wales. I can't see her face without a shudder from chuldhood memories. She treated us like trash. Spiteful nasty woman.

My ex was from Kent and his family worshipped her lol. She's like the very Devil in South Wales though.

You can't "get on your bike" when the entire frigging region has been decimated and there's no work anywhere. And you had to sell your bike to pay the rent anyway.

Maggie is hated across almost every community whose equilibrium she upset. But her 'crime' was to point out that the economic basis for the old model they held fondly was BUST, and it was. Nobody wants to acknowledge reality. And selling off council properties too cheaply without replacing them has forced the delinquent tenants and irresponsible chancers into very precarious situations. I am not pretending to have a solution to the problem, but I can say that I am not rich enough to fund the gap.

Coming Apart? I was sceptical of him bc of the Bell Curve but Coming Apart is definitely good. Sadly true...Another good writer, who I don't always agree with buy is generally astute on this kind of issue is Theodore Dalrymple.

I'd agree with you.

I think tbf it was more than that..As I said upthread the German mining managed decline went better. Was there any way she could have been less brutal & abrupt? Maybe she wasn't but lots of people seem to have felt she seemed that way , at least..

I get the miners' strike, etc was very stressful but lots of miners seem to have got an impression of hatred & contempt from her. Hillsborough reaction as I said didn't help.

I'd agree that I don't always agree with Dalrymple's opinions or judgements, but his experience as a prison doctor and GP in Birmingham is hard to argue against.

The former Times editor Simon Jenkins has a Welsh dad & has done a program on Wales' economic problems in the 20th century. It's really sad it's still like this...and disgraceful Thatcher is so uncaring & blind to these issues...

She genuinely had contempt for whole sections of humanity, all those she saw as less resourceful and intelligent than herself. Which was everyone basically. She had no humanity. The social problems she left behind in Wales are awful. I can't even begin to go into them on here.

Definitely. When he says things like, "It was better when patients didn't ask for lots of info & followed the doctor's lead' I get a bit sceptical, since reaction to dictatorial doctors was partly what led to the over-the-top natural birth ideas in the 70s (which persist with the NCT pressuring NHS to do less C sections but that's another story)

He also blames feminism for rising DV in the 70s (as he thinks women leaving more made bfs more jealous & violent) which I'm sceptical of & not convinced the DV stats support that.

But definitely his descriptions of the problems of the people he's met are sadly spot on...

BTW have you read any of his travel books written under his real name Anthony Daniels before he became a doctor? Or his cinema review book? He's a great writer generally, not just on poverty etc

@CleopatraSelene , I didn't live in the UK during 1980-85 so I missed some of the details, but most of my family then lived in Sheffield or overseas. The old industrial areas of the UK have really been sold very short. Industrial dislocations have been dismissed and diminished as trivial concerns, when they affected tens of thousands of people's jobs and livelihoods and communities.

It's extremely tough. I see poverty everyday. It's everywhere. There is no work where I live (but I commute as do most around here. It's picturesque and the cost of living is low).

It's heartbreaking what was done here. My son was intending to go to Surrey for University but he changed his mind and decided to stay in Wales, albeit North Wales. I sometimes wish he'd gone to Surrey. It's like another world there. We went for open day last year and the supermarket over the road from Halls was a Waitrose. He would have been living the dream!

I've not read his travel books @CleopatraSelene , but his opinions on literature are solidly argued, even if you disagree. His take on Virginia Woolf is quite scathing. And I love the way he never minces his opinion, even when I disagree.

@KHMP1971 I live in the rural southwest, and quite honestly, while I read about the awfulness of inner cities, I also think to myself, there is so much more poverty of aspiration and expectation here than in London. A friend of my DC (from a large family) was shunted out at 15 to live in an unheated caravan off grid. His father is deaf and illiterate (I have been introduced) and so we DC said he had made it out, to the giddy success of being a postman in the NW, I could only cheer.

Aha, I read his review of Three Guineas & A Room of One's Own, yes. I do like them but tbf he did have some points about how Woolf was rather detached from reality esp re the war.. a lot of thinkers then & now have ridiculous blind spots. I also get that he probably understandably felt esp angry at her due to her anti Semitism, given his own mum was a German-Jewish refugee.

Definitely true that scathing authors are needed.. I liked his takedown of Freud too..

Heartbreaking. Yes it's not just the inner cities here but the Valleys and areas which were dependent on coal, iron, steel, railways etc (and the docks in Cardiff Newport and Swansea. Modern Wales was built on these resources after all. The post industrial small towns have taken decades to recover and poverty is rife. Welsh children have some of the worst outcomes in the UK.

There are areas of recovery and it's certainly better than it was in the 80s but you only have to look up the statistics to see the number of children in poverty in Wales, children entitled to FSM, average educational attainment and GCSE grades and so forth to understand that there is a deeply entrenched vein of disadvantage here. I think almost a third of Welsh children live in poverty according to studies by the JRF.

I completely agree with you that it is a horrifying waste of human capital and talent, but I must also declare that I am a Tory, but not an oligarch. We have a little business, think local garage and you are close. I think we all need to aim a little higher. Rather than depending on handouts from a shrinking pool.

I don't think anyone wants to depend on handouts. Even those I know who claim benefits would much rather be in a well paid job living comfortably and able to provide their families with a good standard of life. There are multiple barriers however. Ranging from simple confidence to disability. Not everyone has the capital to start a business. Not everyone has the confidence to apply for a job. Repeated rejection wears people down. Mental health spirals. Some people literally live hand to mouth. They lose hope. I don't know how to explain it to someone who is a Conservative who sees the world through perhaps a more privileged lens and hasn't experienced this kind of hopelessness. It's easy to talk of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps getting on your bike etc but what if you dont even have boots let alone bootstraps or a bike? I don't know how to explain it to someone who hasn't experienced it.