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.

How come in the 1960s when I was first starting school, we were all potty trained, there were no melt downs in class and we all came from poor homes? We all learnt to read and write and do sums and were generally well mannered. It was drummed into us from knee high. You just did it. But the modern generation know better, I believe???!!!!

Most families could live on one salary in the 1950s, and mothers could stay at home. The community support was also much more prominent, with many parental figures around. Completely different ballgame now, with respect.

We’ve very rarely been able to afford the sort of family days out I think you’re talking about (we are both professionals and DH earns well above average salary) and yes even less so now everything seems to have shot up in price. I don’t worry about that though to be honest as was same when I was a child. We do have (don’t really) have just enough to pay for NT membership (our kids loved the summer of fun activities they did), scouts, primary school trips etc which I do feel does makes
a big difference to our children. Affording theme parks, cinema and bowling etc is not really that important. We used to occasionally be able to afford trips to e.g science museum, railway museum with a picnic but train fares to get to those places are now beyond our budget

@Nestingbirds in the age of AI (now) I wonder if uni is still the way forward for social mobility. I know uni lecturers who say in private they wouldn’t encourage their own kids to get a degree

This. I grew up in poverty, but I was clean and fed, had books, etc. My parents got behind on the rent (social housing) and bills but we always had what we needed. DS has books, my house is clean, things like that. I feel I have to fight against the assumptions people make about single mums on benefits living in social housing, because people do make assumptions, (I was 35 when he was born.)

From my experience as a teacher most parents from all classes and income levels do a good parenting job and want their children to do well. I’m not talking about perfect parenting but basically a supportive and caring approach.

It is the parents who have serious mental health problems, learning difficulties or drink/drug addiction who are struggling to cope with all aspects of their lives and that obviously includes raising children. Some people in that situation have family support both with finances and child rearing but many don’t. Even with support from families and social services, it doesn’t generally go very well.

There has always been a gap and although it is there is clearly a spectrum/heterogeneous issue rather than camp A vs camp B.
working with families in my job day to day, I can be certain there are class tendencies but this isn’t a new phenomenon.

I live in a middle class area. You can tell the parents who grew up working class. They aren't as strict on discipline and the kids don't read as much. Thats probably as far as it goes.

There were no toddlers reading or writing. It just doesn't happen. Not in my son's peer group and having helped in reception with another year group, there was no toddlers who could read and write. There were plenty of four year olds who weren't toilet trained though.

What's been interesting to see has been attitudes to home work. There's been a lot of very vocal hostility to home work with a lot of parents saying they just don't have time to facilitate this. It's notable. The kids who end up at after-school club are much more likely to be in this camp but it's not a hard and fast rule. There are parents who do it without fail but they aren't vocal about it and that says a lot too. They may work full time but seem to rely more on family for child care. I was surprised at this. I thought because it was a middle class area, parents would be all over homework and being much more pushy for it but this hasn't been the case. I think it shows up parents struggling to keep up with it on top of work.

DS class across the board are struggling and I know of quite a few kids who are getting tutors just to keep up. It's not to pass the 11+. It's because they are not getting help from parents and quite frankly school is failing them.

I don't know for sure but I think reading levels are significantly down on what they were five years ago. I used to do reading with yr5 when DS was in reception and his peers are no where near now, plus I know several of the local high schools have started to do remedial English lessons in yr7 and 8 because standards have slipped so much. This INCLUDES one 11+ grammar school with an exceptional reputation doing phonics lessons! (My friend and I suspect this is because the large number of Hong Kong kids who have moved to the area have been coached within an inch of their life to pass the entrance examine but can't actually speak or read English beyond that). It's insane. It must be affecting the other kids who passed the entrance exam. The parents who thought they were escaping that must be sorely disappointed. In some ways it's reassuring the schools have identified the issue but it's also concerning. The SATs results of this years Yr6 group will be enlightening. They were in reception when COVID happened and I've heard for years how problematic they've been - not just my son's school or other local schools but for friends with kids who live elsewhere in the country. It marks something of a change in attitude in parenting too - these are the first of Gen Alpha really hitting high school. Gen Alpha strictly starts with 2012 babies so it's crept in the last couple of years but I think next year will be more pronounced.

There is a vocal group of no phone parents but ironically they are also the parents who allow their children free access to YouTube and let them game a huge amount without properly understanding either. It blows my mind - it's all virtue signalling. Again the parents who are actually strict with technology don't make a song and dance about it - but they don't necessarily ban phones / tech - they manage them instead. There's a subtle but important difference. One option abdicates responsibility whilst the other understands there is an issue and actively parents it. Then there's those who just don't care and let their kids on most things because 'their friends are all on it anyway'. So I think there's really three phone/tech camps not two. The divide is interesting - its not on class lines particularly, it's on social circles. The parents of the 'Cool Kids' are the vocal phone banners and don't do homework. The nerdy kids tend to be in the managed usage group who also do homework.

What happens in this area is likely to be replicated in other middle class areas and will filter down. I do believe there's a growing problem in parental involvement generally. That's going to impact on a lot of middle class kids in a way it hasn't in the past. Tutors don't give emotional support, manage behaviour and they don't manage tech.

So yes I think there's a class divide but I also think there's a support network divide in the middle class. Many middle class parents are struggling in areas they haven't in the past imho. I also think there's a split between early adopter parents and parents who don't do tech. DH and I are early adopters and don't think banning tech works. We heavily used the internet in our late teens and early twenties. Our peers who didn't do broadly have much more of a ban attitude to tech. So DHs techy friends and aquantainces are behaving differently to others regardless of class. Id argue that ideas of working and middle class are probably too simplistic and inadequate and we possibly have an emerging tech class to a degree.

It's a complex picture which I'm sure someone will study and write endless reports no one reads and no one acts on. I think there's a change occurring for sure but I don't just think it's about this economic gap, I also think it's about other emerging gaps in social support and technological understanding.

It's not a class divide, it's simply a lazy parenting divide. "Too tired" from working two jobs is NOT an excuse to not teach your child to use a knife and fork. And most parents (I repeat MOST) don't work seven days a week. Do these parents never eat? It doesn't have to be every meal to learn, a couple of times a week would do it in no time. Most of these people who don't have money for books, DO have tablets or even smart phones. You can read for free on them. There are libraries, charity shops where you can get books for a few pence. If you WANT to read to your child, there is time on weekends and bed times. Yes, every day would be great, but it doesn't HAVE to be to make an impact. Weekends don't need to be expensive trips to Alton Towers, it's free walks in the woods or the park talking about what you see and making mud pies and collecting leaves that broadens a child's mind. Maybe taking a home made lunch and having a picnic if it's nice.

It's just easier for lots of parents to say "I'm tired", I need some "me" time, here's the iPad. NO, being a parent is knackering, but the child should come before personal needs. When they are small, they go to bed. Rest then. Let's not pretend it's a class thing. Money is helpful, but not the be all and end all of educating a child. Let's stop giving people excuses for poor parenting.

I am a lonely parent, I work but claim UC. My children read books, they went to primary being able to add up, write names and dress themselves. I suppose im WC but brought up middle class. On paper my children were considered to be deprived !

It’s not just a money thing though, it’s down to how you were brought up. Nothing new either, I bought a lad in dd2’s preschool his first book, his mum couldn’t understand why you needed them before you could read, I explained both mine learned to read before school (especially dd1) from reading phonics books at home eg the Usbourne ones. (Dd2 is dyslexic and of course didn’t know at age 4, and took her longer to learn, dd1 was reading at 3)

I wouldn’t even say it’s a class thing, it’s an education and culture thing. That is, if you think class has an element of money and living in a nicer area.

I have some friends who are proudly working class, take pride in things like not owning any books, having left school at 16, wouldn’t be seen dead taking their young kids to galleries, ballet or educational trips. Their life is very focused on scrolling on their phone, entertaining tv, consumption, holidays ‘just for fun’. I’d say it’s a very prevalent culture in Britain - due to my work I have contact with 100s of people from different backgrounds and get to know many well.

Of course the parents not reading and scrolling on screens all day will rub off on the kids, they’ll see this as normal life.

Let’s leave aside perceptions of traditional middle class people and look at ‘the educated poor’. You also have a lot of people in Britain who are struggling but where you have a family culture of being educated, cultured, aspirational, curious, wanting to excel. You might find examples of this amongst, say, Ukrainian refugees who were professionals in their country, but are cleaners here because that’s how life goes. Or Brits who went into low paid creative roles.

Their kids will likely also be ahead and higher achievers.

I see a lot of kids and their parents and it really does start at home, and with children modelling parents’ behaviours in everything. If constant screens are seen as normal in the household, they will be normalised. We must also remember screens are addictive.

This is a complex and multi-faceted issue.

I don't think it's as simple as a class divide at all. Or even financial.

I'm not going to go into specific details here, but...

I grew up in (if you want to put labels on it), a fairly middle class lifestyle created by aspirarional working class parents. I went to state schools but good ones because my parents were able to buy a house in the nicest part of town. We ticked all the boxes for holidays, after school activities, appropriate conduct and behaviours (in public at leaat), valued education (at school anyway - my mum didn't want me to go to university because I was supposed to get married and become.a housewife). It was very much a, "But we took you to stately homes," upbringing - we were, of course, members of the National Trust.

But I also grew up in abuse and we.werent nearly as well off or privileged as the families around. I wasn't loved, supported or encouraged. My parents raised me in shame, humiliation, and despair. I could tick several of the ACE boxes.

In my early.mid twenties, I was engaged and pregnant. My fiancé cheated and I ended up back at 'home' with a mother who didn't want me there having disgraced the family by becoming an unmarried mother. And arranged behind my back for me to go into a mother and baby home - lying about me, my capabilities and my mental health to get me in there. It was all part of the abuse.

I entered a very different world. A world of poverty and disadvantage that I'd never been part of before. I saw first hand the difference in parenting, expectations and opportunity. But fundentally in aspiration.

I was eventually allocated social housing and was again surrounded by people whose children would be described on here as 'feral'. Not all of them, of course, but in numbers I'd never seen before.

I was a single parent with absolutely zero support. No family, no partner and no friends. By this point my mental health, self esteem and sense of self worth couldn't have been lower.

I had no contact with anyone from my 'old life' and I shied away from new people.i met who would have been the 'sort of person' I previously would have known because I was ashamed and no longer had anything in common with them. My life had become about survival and stigma. My old life had become a distant memory that I could see no way back to.

My world became very small. I had no money, no support, and my son was growing up in poverty. And I was surrounded by it.

But I wanted more for myself and for my son. He played with the other children where we lived but he was already different. They commented on the way he spoke, the way he dressed, what he ate and the fact we didn't even have Cartoon Network. They liked him but regarded him as a curiosity and couldn't relate to him.

I had no money and couldn't afford to eat what they did so I cooked from scratch every night. I read with him every day. I found free and very low-cost events to take him to so that he was immersed in culture. He loved going to the local museum and art galleries as a child. He became interested in classical music through free events and theatre through local low cost and free events. We had a crap TV and no games consoles so we made.our own fun elsewhere. I engaged with him.

Ultimately, I prioritised him. We still lived in a shitty damp ridden flat. We didn't have a car. We shopped in cheap supermarkets. His clothes were mostly handmedowns/charity shop/cheap. His life looked nothing like mine had in many respects. He was in poverty, surrounded by poverty but loved and cared for and with a parent who was invested in him.

I eventually went to university. At the end of the first year, I bumped into one of the young women from the mother and baby home. She was amazed I was at university. Many of the other young women I'd known with her had had children removed or had gone on to have a couple more children on benefits. Their lives were chaotic- richochetting from one shit relationship to another; one shit man to another. She, herself, had lived in the mother and baby home with another child for another 18 months and had also been allocated social housing. SS were involved. Her children were (in her words) a nightmare.

The crux of it was that at the point we met, our lives were no different. Our living situations, money, mental health, potential outcomes were veey similar. Our upbringing had been similar - mine was just physically more comfortable. But I knew I wanted better for my child. She couldn't see a 'better'.

Anyone can make the decision to want more for their child. Anyone can decide to prioritise their child. (Pretty much) anyone can choose to be a good parent. But you have to believe that it is available.to you in the first place.

I was provided for as a child but I didn't have good parents. I haven't had contact with my mum since I was mid thirties because the abuse didn't ever stop. I practised what I called 'opposite parenting' in that I assessed every parenting situation and did the opposite to my parents would
have. Anyone could do that.

So what was the difference? I grew up in a nice area surrounded by wealth but it wasn't mine. I had a warm bed and a full stomach but I wasnt loved. I was discarded in the worst way and left to survive. And, worse that that, my mother actively tried to sabotage me.

Anyway, I went on to become a teacher. My son grew into a wonderful young man. He went to university and now out earns me.

What was the difference?
Intelligence?
Aspiration?
Capacity?
Resilience?

Because it certainly wasn't money or class.

It’s not a matter of money - I used to work in a PRU, and by and large the children came from households with enormous televisions and no books. Their houses were also notable for a lack of dining tables: they would eat in front of the television, so a chance for interaction with the DC lost. A much cited piece of research (Hart and Risley, 1995) suggests “that by age 4, children from professional families hear a total of 45 million words on average, while children living in poverty hear 13 million words on average. This finding is often described as the ‘30 million word gap.” This obviously has a massive effect on vocabulary and language development. If I made the rules, I’d take a lot of money from the universities and put it into early years - it would be far more effective, and have far longer lasting results.

'Too tired' possibly isn't the only issue. A growing number of families simply don't eat together at a dining table. One of the consequences of house prices going up, is that fewer families - even middle class families - have space for a dining table.

Not only that but we've seen a growing trend where the kids eat different food and at different times to parents too. This has been ongoing since the 80s but the whole food industry now talks about kids food and adults food which simply didn't exist prior to that. It's normalised the fracturing of the family unit within the home in multiple ways. Even not seeing your parents using knives and forks is significant. It impacts on how you learn and what you learn. Manners often start with eating dinner together too to a certain extent. The consequence is they tend to eat on their laps in front of the TV which again impacts on what kids are focused on.

It's a combination of a lot of things.

There have always been class divides in parenting, going back centuries: divides in access to money but also in values. This is nothing new as far as I'm concerned. Factors such as the value placed on schooling and higher education, access to books etc have always had a class dimension to them, although it's not a monolith.

Positive values don't always correlate to higher social classes. There is a lot that the white collar, chattering classes can learn from blue collar classes about work ethic and resilience. It's not a one-way street.

What's changed now in my view is the massive gulf between those people in the traditional class system and the "underclass" which PPs have referenced. It's a horrible phrase but there are children today whose upbringing now is almost completely decoupled from mainstream society: this is nothing to do with the "working class" -- work is a foreign country to many of these families.

These are children whose parents are the victim of intergenerational poverty and trauma, who don't or can't work, who are barely educated themselves, who have addiction and mental health issues which are going diagnosed and untreated. Often children who are taken out of school at the earliest possible opportunity with their parents blaming their non-specific "complex needs" but actually due to their own chaos and inertia and unwillingness to step up. Children raised on screens.

It's almost Dickensian and is far worse than anything I saw as a child (in the 70s). There were children then who I was aware were disadvantaged and needed social support of various kinds. But there wasn't an entire demographic which was basically left to fester without any attempt to bring it into the tent.

We're now almost a generation into austerity and the wealth divide has massively amplified since COVID and the onset of the polarised politics we're seeing now. I'm not optimistic at all about how this is going to go for our society.

No, having works for a childcare agency, I have been to very expensive nurseries and seen neglect amongst the children.

Interesting cross post about dining tables.

I think there's a fair amount of research on the impact of this.

Why are English people obsessed with the "classes" ?

Completely agree with this. Tech/phones/screens has merely replaced the vitriolic whinge about putting children in front of the TV in the 60s/70s and a video in the 80s. All of that can happen if a child's natural curiosity is allowed to flourish.

Highly intellectual, working class MIL (went to teacher training college) fully supported the too much TV mantra and spoke badly about the parents of children in her classes who actually were just fully a part of the poor's apathy about education. What's sad is that the Liberal leaning, usually middle class, teachers and social workers tend to go in with a do goody attitude which switches people off because they don't want to be like them. UK education also doesn't value the skilled trades, although Starmer might be doing something about that, and within schools it has caused an issue. When was the last time a teacher said "listen Jayden, work on your maths, it will help you be a good elelctrician/electrical engineer and you'll be able to earn a good living and buy yourself a nice car".

Oh, and what I meant to say was despite her love of Austin and surprise that I didn't know what parsing was, didn't teach her children how to use a knife and fork properly or basic table manners. That would have given them so much more confidence alongside their RG Universities. I had to teach DH how to hold a knife and fork and to serve himself at the table.

I can tell what class someone is within seconds of sharing a table with them. It only matters if they're an arrogant know it all.

Depressingly, you are bang on the money😥

The test was not and is not an IQ test. It has many elements which favour children from higher socio-economic backgrounds. Thus the majority of children being from middle class backgrounds even when social mobility was more prevalent in this country in the 60s and 70s.

How do you explain this?

Do you believe that middle class children are innately more intelligent and able than working class children? Or do you believe that children who's parents have the resources or wherewithal to prepare their children should be favoured above others?

I passed the 11+, am in my 50s, and have a very successful career. My parents and siblings also. That doesn't mean I sit back enjoying the benefits of the selective system without any concern for the plight of those that did not pass and whose futures were decided by accident of birth.

Many still succeeded after failing the 11+ and going to secondary moderns doing CSEs, NDs, HNDs, foundation courses, etc but my word they faced a long uphill hike and faced adversity along the way.

No one has ever claimed that grammar schools don't provide a splendid education for the selected few, and I am delighted for your grandfather, but we should focus on providing a fantastic education for all.

I think the no screens thing is not true at all.

Go to any Megan’s (certainly mine in Wimbledon Village) and see the screens out in force!

Affluenza (middle class neglect) is much spoken about at private schools.

As an average you are probably right, but there are lots of exceptions to this in all classes.

How do people know all this stuff. I knew what the parents of my kids friends did, I didn't actually know how much they were earning. I certainly didn't know such details about the other 140 kids in their year or the thousand kids in the school.

I would say there may be more of a class divide on here of the way come across when creating or replying to posts especially more than the way they may parent themselves