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.

"But it was also very often born out of neglect of disinterest, there was woefully low safeguarding involved and a lot of the time it meant being forced to play with children you hated."

This was exactly my experience. School holidays were not eagerly anticipated. "Go out and find someone to play with."

There is nobody nan. She had no interest whatsoever in engaging with kids, despite having had so many herself.

Halycon days they were not. I remember entertaining myself by jumping off a 10 ft wall into an underground car park entrance. How many parents would be happy knowing their 8 yo kid was doing that, alone?

As far back as 2005 my great uncle was working at a secondary school running a specialist reading program for year eights because a staggering amount of them were starting secondary without being able to properly read and write. This school had a lot of children from disadvantaged areas.

You can usually guess as all the dc talk about their parents jobs and when they get older all of them know who is on free school meals and who can't afford the school trips.

This an interesting observation. One thing I would add is MC are being squeezed more and more these days, it will inevitably lead to changing behaviour but also in a complex way. Some will/already have to work longer hours to maintain the lifestyle, others will probably quit work or reduce hours as it doesn't make sense to pay that much tax and get nothing in return, and barely see your children on top of that. I can certainly see this pattern emerging among our MC friends where one parent has to work harder while the other reduces hours to be more involved in education.

It looks like there will be other internal divides and gaps opening within MC stratum itself, with overworked lower MC drifting towards "lazy" parenting which is often just time- and energy-poor parenting really.

You’d definitely call and My friends middle class. All our kids watch tv (not phones or iPads). My toddler can’t read or write and she’s at a very expensive nursery. She’ll learn when she gets to school. She is, however, fully potty trained, able to dress herself and has lots of interest in all her activities.

My kids go to a classic London state primary which has a lot of people from different backgrounds.

One of the big things I noticed is attitudes to sleep - my kids and the other middle class kids all go to bed early (between 7 and 8:30), my kids more working class/first generation immigrant friends are all in bed much later (between 8:30 and 10:30). My 8 year old is in bed for 8pm and his bedtime is one of the earliest in his class.

The middle class kids are much better rested and ready for school, they are waking up naturally not being woken, etc. I am sure it has a big impact on their academic performance

I'm working class. WORKING class as opposed to BENEFITS class. I could read before I started school and got an English degree.

Yes there was more free play in the 1970s and 1980s and there was a lot of good in that. But it was also very often born out of neglect of disinterest, there was woefully low safeguarding involved and a lot of the time it meant being forced to play with children you hated

Great point. People also forget that the media was basically TV and newspapers. So by nature, nobody heard about all the negative things that happened as a result of all that neglect and zero safeguarding and therefore assumed it was a safe and idyllic time. Unless something happened that was so heinous like a murder, it would never even make it to the headlines. There must have been millions of cases of child on child abuse, bullying, abuse by neighbours or other trusted adults, injuries, car accidents, bike accidents etc that were all swept under the rug simply because nobody found out about them.

Parents have now realised that the much romanticised "free play" in the 80s-90s comes with unacceptable levels of risk. Back then, kids were outside the house and adults were inside the house! They could do chores, cooking, work etc because letting kids roam around was basically free childcare. The same activities these days would require one adult supervising the entire group for the whole time which means there has to be payment coming from somewhere for them to be there, rather than it being their own free time which they can use to earn money, tidy the house etc.

Is this partly due to space? Kids sharing with older kids so they have a default later bedtime?

My children are small but have a very strict bedtime/routine, in their own rooms, away from noise in the house.

@KievLoverTwo

Halycon days they were not. I remember entertaining myself by jumping off a 10 ft wall into an underground car park entrance. How many parents would be happy knowing their 8 yo kid was doing that, alone?

Exactly: it now suits people with the benefit of hindsight to paint this as a unanimous good which helped build "character" and "resilience" but this was far from the case all the time. Nowadays in the popular imagination people have convinced themselves "we made a fort and went apple scrumping" like some Enid Blyton fantasy but there's a lot of rose-tinted spectacles being applied. I remember "playing out" for hours as a primary school aged child with a pair of sisters who clearly hated me and ganged up on me relentlessly to make me feel excluded. It was presented to me as a fait accompli by my parents because they were getting pissed with their mates. But it left me with very low self-esteem for many years.

I don't deny that there are benefits for allowing children to be more resourceful and dialling down the over-supervision.

But I don't think kicking them out for hours without any oversight is automatically always preferable to doing a quiet, thoughtful screen-based activity. Like everything else it's about balance and knowing what your child needs.

And in any case allowing children to "play out" for hours isn't feasible for a lot of parents these days and making them feel guilty about not being able to facilitate this achieves nothing.

I think in part yes - my 8 year old's best friend shares a room with his 13 year old brother and I am sure this is a factor

I think also space more generally - some of his friends have a games console in their bedroom because there isn't space for it elsewhere and therefore play it late into the evening. We don't have a console but if we did, we have space for it in our living room

To add to this as an example - in Scotland the government release funding every April called Independent Learning Accounts (ILA’s) for those who earn £22k or less to access funding for training and learning.

As soon as the funding opens there is a race and it’s usually gone within the month. There is an appetite to learn just very little opportunity given.

Think what we could achieve if the correct structures and support were in place allowing people to improve their situation.

There is a lot of assumptions in this thread about working class families from pp's who aren't working class.
My DD attends a MC school as a working class DC. I'd rather have my empathic caring hardworking teenager over most of her MC peers who are wild, interested in horse riding, art, drugs, sly drinking, sex without fear of a ruined reputation.
A lot of their parents are late 50's, past caring about their 16 year old.
Most are divorced, love the wine.
Adding my perception to the issue.

No idea when it came in, but the National curriculum does not include teaching the specific verbal and non-verbal reasoning tested in most 11+ formats.

This is a lot trickier and takes more time to teach well than extremely basic exam tips like telling kids to read the questions. Exams are multiple choice questions to allow (allegedly) unbiased computer marking so your workings and graph axes are irrelevant.

I am not sure it's purely class based either nowadays.

Around me, working class mums are more likely to stay home or work part-time, they spend more time playing and educating their toddlers rather than relying on childcare.

I've also realised when moving my toddlers from private to council-led nurseries that the council ones are much better for the quality of the educational content. And due to the shorter hours and cost, the families are mixed background when private was definitely middle-class.

I am now looking for a primary school for my eldest, and most of our middle-class neighbours just said to send him to our catchment school. Clearly they aren't interested in how the school performs academically, how the curriculum are ran, what's driving the headteacher etc...
I really feel like an alien when I ask questions about that. All they seem to care about is the behaviour and attendance policies, or the forest school...

See my post about certain private schools which certainly aligns with your observations

Nowadays in the popular imagination people have convinced themselves "we made a fort and went apple scrumping" like some Enid Blyton fantasy but there's a lot of rose-tinted spectacles being applied. I remember "playing out" for hours as a primary school aged child with a pair of sisters who clearly hated me and ganged up on me relentlessly to make me feel excluded

I also remember roaming around with neighbourhood kids, and we would occasionally pop into their homes to pick something up, grab a drink etc. What really jumps out at me now is that there were never any adults around to "welcome" us, pour a drink, offer food etc. It was always us kids in some dark kitchen looking for juice cups and snacks, and then leaving again by ourselves. I literally don't remember the faces of any of the mums from the friends I used to play with. Maybe the parents were in the house at the time but they didn't seem to care what their kids were up to or bother with any sort of hospitality.

In contrast, play dates now always have a loving and welcoming mum at the centre of it. There's always someone to pour and serve drinks, plate up snacks, ask if you need anything, take away the plates etc. More often than not, one parent might actively join in playing or crafting, almost like an animator at a children's club. Given the choice, this seems like a much better era to grow up in. You actually know the names of your friends parents, you go to someone's home knowing you're welcomed and treated like a guest. You have the security of always having a trusted adult who can also contact your parent's mobile phone any moment in case something comes up.

I’d prefer this to the current system of throwing money at feckless parents.

In contrast, play dates now always have a loving and welcoming mum at the centre of it. There's always someone to pour and serve drinks, plate up snacks, ask if you need anything, take away the plates etc. More often than not, one parent might actively join in playing or crafting, almost like an animator at a children's club. Given the choice, this seems like a much better era to grow up in. You actually know the names of your friends parents, you go to someone's home knowing you're welcomed and treated like a guest. You have the security of always having a trusted adult who can also contact your parent's mobile phone any moment in case something comes up.

We had a little boy visiting a few weeks ago who was very concerned about what would happen if his mother didn't come to pick him up (I know the mum, she's lovely, no concerns!). I suspect potential ND but it's not really my business. I reassured him that this would never happen because his mummy loved him too much, but if she was ill or late or anything, he would stay with us and we would feed him and look after him until she came for him. And in the meantime he could ask me if he needed anything. He was then able to relax and enjoy the playdate 😁. I agree that children generally feel safer for knowing that someone is 'in charge' of them.

My brothers were heavily using screens -internet and gaming - in the 90s, and we were solidly middle class. For those with means and motivation heavy screen use is not a new phenomenon. One of my favourite things to do as as a 6-10 year old was to watch literally hours of old films, British and Hollywood. Either that or I'd love to be sat reading or writing alone.
We have neurodiversity in our family: quite a few very early readers, late readers, early and late talkers and general high visual-spatial ability!
I really think a lot of this screen panic is a way for some parents to stealth brag. Look at how great we are, spending so much time engaging with our kids! but most parents of the past, no matter what social class, did not hover over their kids or spent lots of time cooped up with them.
There was a recent piece by the BBC about screen time for kids that was well researched and balanced. But a lot of people seem to like to believe things that that they feel to be true.

Yes but we do have Bourdieu for multi-dimensional definitions.

Exactly this. The best mum I know is very working class divorced, SAHM, home schooling (proper educating, not just leaving him to his own devices) 1 of her 3 children due to unmet SEN in school. She is amazing. Everything she does is for her children. They have managed screen time but also loads of other enriching experiences.

Compared to the MC children I see at DC's school who are at breakfast club, after school club. Yes, they go horse riding, but they're at school from 7.30am to 6pm.

As a child, I know which side of that fence I'd rather be on.

Haha this thread, like a lot of Mumsnet posts really does shed a light on how confusing social status is.

From my experience families that are genuinely WC families (both parents work or bring in a dual income amount of money into the house) do prioritise education for their children and giving them skills to improve life. They want their children to do well.

However, the class system is very different now and there are a whole subset of people who are not economically active through choice (which is separate to those who have no choice with circumstances). These people often get labeled as working class. They are not.

I've always considered myself to come from working class. But in reality my parents worked very minimally and were propped up by the system. By choice. I have no idea what you call that, but there wasn't a lot of working involved.

What even defines class really? I come from a family who've been state dependent their whole lives. My own home is dual high income. Both parents educated to a-level but no uni. Both professional white collar roles. Both earn well in excess of the average wage. Detached home, rural and leafy. Low crime area. Solid financial position, safety net and savings. High standards and expectations for ourselves and our children.

As I said before. It's about social mobility. Not social status. I couldn't even tell you what class I am?

There is some truth to it.
It's not only wealthy middle class parents who parent with a lot of attention and fewer screens though.
Generally, parenting is easier with lots of reading books as the kids develop better behaviour and communication and are more controllable.
It continues as the kids get older.
I recently worked with four teenagers on a job during the holidays. Two of them experience swearing at their teachers every single day and disruption to their learning.
Two of them have strict hair cut and uniform rules and once witnessed a peer being sent to the principal for bad language.

Some lucky schools can expell kids for disrupting lessons, Some less fortunate kids have to put up with disruption every day.
It doesn't seem fair.
There seems to be an increase in unruly behaviour in many schools.

One of the big things I noticed is attitudes to sleep - my kids and the other middle class kids all go to bed early (between 7 and 8:30), my kids more working class/first generation immigrant friends are all in bed much later (between 8:30 and 10:30). My 8 year old is in bed for 8pm and his bedtime is one of the earliest in his class

When do they go to sleep though? I went to bed at 8 and promptly read for another 2 hours at that age. I've never needed huge amounts of sleep.

Most of the extracurriculars around here aimed at 6 to 8 year olds won't have them home until gone 7.30 which obviously factors into bed time. Then they need a little time to unwind, talk about what they've done, what's happening tomorrow, read a book, play a board game and so on.

Dc1 who is 10 didn't come in from Scouts last night til gone 9. Then he wanted at least 20 minutes to chat about what they'd done and to have one more violin practice before bed. So for my children, bed between 9.30 and 10.00 pm leads to them being awake by 7-7.30 which I think is acceptable.