Tottenham rioting

[sfxmum]

has anyone heard? seems to be all over Twitter but not on other media
apparently police cars burning

My point is that parents should only get one chance at being a decent parent, if they ruin that then they shouldn't be able to make more children suffer. You sound as if you've had a terrible upbringing, do you really want other babies and children to go through that?

Yes, there is a cost element, if your parents had parented you well there would have been no need for all that intervention.

 We need to accept that some people shouldn't have children.   We have lots of support in this country through free education and free healthcare surely it isn't hard to manage the parenting bit?

Well yes I would not have needed the intervention because I would not have existed. Give me a choice and I would rather exist and live with the abuse.

I am not disagreeing with you , there are people who should not have children. I just hate talk of eugenics. I am sure it is not a coincidence that I only have one child, because of my own experiences I have been perhaps over cautious about having children.

At the end of the day this country will never have a eugenics programme and I for one am glad if that . Children like me will always exist and society needs to invest in them or we will pay the price later.

With the support of society I have managed to make my childhood be a force that drives me rather than one that holds me back. The current government seems intent on leaving children like me to rot.

My mother had a second chance at being a parent and ironically I seem to have done better in life than the children who were put into care. I spent years seething about the fact that I was left in an abusive home and not taken into care. It came as something of a shock to me to discover that "being taken into care" is not always the best option. I think that if schemes like Homestart or Surestart had existed in the 70s my mother could have kept all of her children and we would all have been happier in the long run.

We spent the night with relatives in the suburbs after realising that we'd somehow managed to sleep through one of the shops downstairs (we live above a row of shops in SE London) being ram-raided with a stolen car the night before, and the supermarket opposite getting smashed up. Terrifying. Arson was my greatest fear, since if the main front door caught fire (right next to the entrance of a shop) the only way out would be through a 3rd-floor Velux window with a sheer drop onto the pavement below.

DP wouldn't come with us, wanted to stay and protect our home, so needless to say I still didn't sleep that well!

You've come out the other side though, should any child really have to go through it? You survived, plenty don't. Baby P, Victora Climbie... Should those people who abused them really be entrusted with more children?

Just because you're "ok" thousands of others are not. There are babies being hurt and ignored, and worse, while,e we chat on here, babies lying in soiled nappies with raw skin and no food while their parents put themselves first.

Of course no child should have to go through it. But there always will be children like me, so we need to work our how we help these children rather than discussing how we wipe then out.

I am in favour of helping women control their fertility. I found being a mother incredibly difficult, which is not a surprise. I therefore made the decision to wait many years before TTC my second. But that was my choice made because society educated and empowered me.

We're having the same debate on two threads now.

See i aggree about investing in young people but can i say my experience is that we over invest and dont make them earn it thus creating a culture of entitlement.
Eg,if a teen nicks cars they are offered a driving course. If they light fires tbey get to have a jolly with the fire service,if they dont work at school they still get places on the college courses that other kids had to get grades for. The inclusion units take them on lovely free trips ice skating and go karting,and they get free taxis to and from them whilst other kids have to get buses in the rain.

When i worked in residential childcare i was reprimanded for denying a 13 yr old girl the bus far to her local town where she frequently prostituted herself for crack. I was apparently not able to do this as it was her rights. They would frequently assault us,keep us awake all night,damage property and then we would have to give them pocket money and transport the following day-or we would be in trouble.
How does that make achild feel safe and valued by the adults who are meant to be caring for them?

Oh yes and parents who had begged for their unruly children into care then washed their hands of them ,didnt attend meetings or hospital appointments and got annoyed with staff if we rang them to update them on their childrens progress.

I could go on,one day i will write a book. We have become a society who rewards bad behaviour and ignores good.

And breathe.

Twinklytoes To use phrases like 'wipe them out altogether' is daft. No-one wants to 'wipe out' abused or disadvantaged children who already exist. And saying you should not have been born to a woman with a history of neglect and abuse of her existing children is NOT the same as saying you do not have a right to a life now you are here.

How on earth can you say it's better for an abused and unhappy child to exist than to not exist? That's bonkers. You think that about yourself because you already DO exist, and for you to NOT exist you would have to die.

But you cannot punish someone who doesn't exist in the first place. You say you spent years feeling angry that your were left with an abusive neglectful mother, and yet you condone it, as a preferable alternative to being in care.

Believe it or not, there is a third way.

I have not condoned it. I have said that it is not as simple as saying sterilise this group of women or put these children in care.

I often wonder if it would have been better if I had been placed into care. Until about a year ago i would have said that I would definitely have been better off being taken out of the home. Sadly , I have discovered, that is not always the better option.

Also Twinkly, you have said yourself that you are "bright", imagine going through your particular childhood without the benefit of a good intellect. I would imagine that you are in the minority of abused children. Brain development is so often affected by neglect and obviously abuse. Head injury can lead to attention problems and impaired intellectual capability.

No one wants to deny you your existence but by the same token no one wants to see more children suffer and go on to perpetuate the cycle. You had a lot of support to keep you on the right track, the more bad parents and abused children there are the less resources there are for those children.