Parenting style the key determinant of life chances, says Cameron ...

[Molesworth]

Today David Cameron gave a speech at thinktank Demos as part of their "Character Inquiry". In the speech Cameron refers to research carried out by Demos and makes the following bold claim: "the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by 'confident and able parents'."

Policy recommendations include training HVs to assess parent-child attachments and parenting styles.

Details of the inquiry are available here: www.demos.co.uk/projects/the-character-inquiry

And the research paper to which Cameron refers is available to download for free here: www.demos.co.uk/publications/parenting

Willingness to discipline, perseverance corporal punishment of children is very much the accepted method of discipline in inner city neighbourhoods in the US, where poor educational outcomes and high stress levels in children are the norm. There is no unwillingness to discipline; what there is is a lack of understanding or knowledge of what discipline should consist of. There is a lot of perseverance in taking approaches that generations of families have used with their children's upbringing (spare the rod and spoil the child), and no change in the outcomes for those children over the generations the result is people who have learned that responding with anger and force is the best and most appropriate way to deal with problems in everyday life.

The problem, imo, is that government compounds problems that affect people in their personal lives as Nighbynight says problems they experience through no fault of their own a lot of the time, as Peachy points out with myopic policies that restrict cash availability if someone wants to go back to school and try to do better for yourself and your children, and the like.

They are measured by parental report. As I posted earlier, it is acknowledged that parents with low self esteem tend to rate their children's behaviour more negatively, and one of the findings is that parental low self esteem correlates with negative character capability outcomes. I'm not sure whether they corrected for that before they drew their conclusions. Still haven't had time to read the whole shebang.

Cory- interesting post, lots of very valid points in there.

I remember reading some research (just this week so can verify it if needed) on assessing situations from other cultures,and the (this was racially based but I think might be extrapolated to class etc) research showed different outcomes dependent on the culture of the person doing the assessment; sending lots of British MC HVs into homes toassess does not strike me as a valid assessment tbh.

Thre's a great parent who is many wnderfultjhings for certain. But good enough parents fudging it a bit and shouting occasionally, or even coasting orless than optimalparents who might not be the best, but are definitely better than any alternative I can think of.

Oh and another thought from discussing this with DH

most famillies are built in one format or another (resident ornot) from twoaprents. It is the strengths of both aprents that count, they make a massive difference.

DH is quick to anger, it is the only model he has ever known since a childhood where his family wereall the same.... indeed,DH is very much a toned down version. I,OTOH,am a bit too laissez faire at times. Together,with a bit ofmutualknowledge, empathy and work webalance it out. When Dh is einding I can step in long before he shouts, DH willcomment if he feels I alm letting something go that I shouldn't.

That's teamwork and it's important in parenting

There is a terrific assumption from Cameron and much of this discussion (especially Attachment theory), and that parents are always responsible for shaping a child's character and thus should be blamed when things go wrong. This is by no means a fact.

Indeed if a child is brought up in a crime-ridden area, they will be susceptible to committing these same kinds of crimes. This is because of the high rate of peer pressure and the want to fit in to the group, not necessarily parenting. Even if the parents try to bring up their children the best way possible, chances are that if they associate with delinquents, they will become one. You can be pretty sure of this because if you take a child who is succumbing to crime and move him to new environment with less crime as the norm, chances are he will get himself on the right track, because he is trying to fit in with a new peer group.

So parents should not be always to blame. Up until a couple hundred years ago, people lived in groups that extended far beyond the nuclear family. So children were influenced by a number of people, not just their parents. People also need to realize that a lot of personality traits come from their genes, not their parents nurturing, as this can be seen in the separated twin studies.

Children will not use everything that they learned from their parents. Children learn how to behave, for the most part, from other people in their social group. Adults do the same; they act more like the people in their social groups rather than their parents.

This nurture assumption leads parents to believe that if they mess up somehow in raising their child, they will mess up their child's life. Parents are sometimes held responsible if their child commits an illegal act but parents may have no control over their child when it comes to something like this. They can raise their child in the most loving home, yet he can still become a criminal loser.

What I think Cameron is reciting is research from Lareau which shows that there are more successful children should their parents have a style called "concerned cultivation" in which parents "foster and assess a child's talents, opinions and skills", whereas on the other side of the fence (and they often quoted as the working class values), there is a parenting strategy of "accomplishment of natural growth", which basically means just leave 'em to it. The research shows that although there is a fine line between being pushy and preparing, the concerned cultivation parents definitely give children bureaucratic advantages and a sense of entitlement ( in the best possible sense of the word). In fact, these children grow up advocating for themselves, asking questions and comfortably interacting with adults.

As ever, parenting is just one small factor associated with the outcome of children, but if the research quoted above is reliable then I hate to say it, but I can only see this as being a responsible opinion. I don't see it as an argument in refusing benefits at all........it is not a monetary argument, more an ideological one.

Thankyou Cory for finding that list. I knew I wasn't going mad.

emotional control - I think this is to do with anger management and proportion.

One of the biggest issues with families who don't parent well is that of anger and boundaries. They get it completely wrong. On one hand, they let their kids run riot on the streets and challenge their teachers, then when they spill some milk, the parent flies off on a rage. The children have no idea of boundaries because they can be lax for serious things and tight for trivial things and always variable.

Peachy, you say that your husband is quick to anger. I am sure this is something he is aware of.

I remember doing a course where you had to recognise yourself as either a hedgehog or a rhino. Your husband is probably a rhino - he gets stuck in and gets it off his chest. I am a hedgehog and will set up a safe zone and stay calm, but unapproachable.

I would hope that your DH is consistent and proportionate in his anger. Less angry with dropping something and more angry with injuring a sibling.

The problem with poor parenting that it is often disproportionate, where trivial dismenenours are greeted with rage, and ASB is laughed off.

wicked - Im not in the top 10%, and Im not in the bottom 10% either. The middle 80% is what you were talking about, isnt it?

I am now in a community, but I am angry that I had to go abroad to get this.

Morality was never clear - it has always meant differnet things to different people.

Eg moral to allow gay marriages? I think you will find that the word moral is interpreted very differently by people who disagree on this question.

compassion is far easier to define.

cory's list is interesting, but I would say, very heavily slanted towards middle class virtues.

Cameron obviously didn't read the end of the Demos report!!! Parents ("usually the mother") were indeed used as the source of their children's behaviour. And this is the conclusion of the report :

"There are numerous
problems with using parents as proxies. Studies have suggested
that mothers who are depressed or who have low self-esteem or
perceived competence are more likely to report negatively on
their children?s behaviour. It is possible that the association
between parental perceived competence and child behaviour
outcomes is spurious. Unfortunately, without information from
surveys administered directly to the children, it is impossible to
test this hypothesis. We have therefore proceeded on the basis
that the data from the parental surveys constitute an accurate
assessment of each child?s behaviour."

I can't imagine how this could ever get through any kind of peer review: "We don't know whether these figures mean what is claimed or not, as there aren't any checks, so we're just going to assume that they do". If ever I caught an undergraduate with that kind of reasoning- well, they would be sorry!

And the problems are SO obvious! Think the kind of parent who can't imagine anything they do being less than perfect- they're not going to put down that little Persephone is deficient in vital areas of emotional or behavioural development, if there are no outside checks. On the other hand, if you worry that your child might have problems, you're hardly going to describe yourself in quite the same confident way.

In fact, you would have to be pretty dim to say: 'my children have no empathy, no emotional control, can't stick to a job- but I have perfect confidence in my own parenting'. One factor is dependent on the other- and not quite in the way Cameron had in mind either!

If there is one thing I hate worse than crap reporting of research- it is crap research.

Argh - middle class virtues are what we are talking about.

As for community, I believe the way forward is to pass back responsibilities to the churches (Christian, Muslim, Sikh, etc).

There is a strong correlation between a church upbringing and doing well (caveat: not everyone, and some who aren't brought up in the church do well).

Parenting initiatives such as those given by churches are so much more successful than Surestart because they have an emphasis on loving relationships.

I know that this will irk many but you can't argue with results.

Aslo, good character attributes match the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

What's not to like?

It is not crap research - it is common sense.

Further down the thread, we are talking about good character attributes, not middle class virtues.

Church must be opt in, not opt out, otherwise it becomes terrible.

Germany has a strong secular commitment to the community, as well as strong (opt in) churches.

wicked Wed 13-Jan-10 20:59:16
"It is not crap research - it is common sense."

It is crap research because it does not have the kind of controls that makes for good research (I have worked in research for 20 years). It is using the same informants for the two factors without any evaluation of how one factor might distort the reporting of the other factor. This is very questionable method.

It is immaterial that you like the conclusions because they agree with the political or moral views you already have. For research to claim any validity as research (which is what this is doing), it has to adhere to certain criteria. Otherwise it is flawed as research, quite regardless of its moral applicability.

What you seem to be saying is: "I already know what I believe about society. This paper seems to agree with this. Therefore it must be good research that proves my point".

Research is only as good as its methods. And poorly conducted research proves nothing- either way.

The very good point made (but not acted on!) at the end of the Demos paper is that we have absolutely no external ways of checking if the informants are telling the truth. They could be lying through their teeth, or they could be misinterpreting reality. The paper suggests some very good reasons why some of them may be misinterpreting reality.

Hmm, I have worked in research for 25 years, if we are bragging.

The lying/misrepresentation is a standard caveat of any research. There is nothing particularly sinister about it, and something we may all be the tinsiest guilty of.

So how come you did not spot the obvious methodological flaws?

Which ones particularly sparked your attention?

wicked Wed 13-Jan-10 21:19:29
"The lying/misrepresentation is a standard caveat of any research."

Sure, but as was pointed out in the paper, there are particularly strong reasons to believe that people's tendency to present their parenting as either successful or unsuccessful is going to be tied up with their confidence in their parenting. So does it not then seem strange to assume that it's the character traits described are the outcome of the confidence rather than the way they are reported?

Wouldn't you want something a bit better than this as evidence?

wicked Wed 13-Jan-10 21:21:09
"Which ones particularly sparked your attention?"

The fact that there is no other source for the children actually having these character traits than the reporting of their parents.

Now, if you were a parent with a lack of confidence would you not be rather more likely to see your child as being fidgety/unkind/not as well behaved as you thought he ought to be etc? And if you were convinced that you couldn't go wrong as a parent, wouldn't you be more likely to see your child as very well behaved, very clever, very focussed?

This might have very little relationship to what the child is actually like.

Haven't we all known little horrors whose parents are convinced they are a treat to have in the classroom? Or nervous parents who always seem to be apologising for their beautifully behaved children?

If I had been conducting this research (a difficult one at the best of times), I would have made sure that there was an external source for one of these factors: I would have compared the parents' reports of their parenting with reports from nurseries/schools or anything that was not reported by the person whose success in parenting I was judging. And if that information was unavailable due to confidentiality reasons, then I would accept that we probably can't know a lot about these things.

I think cory is right about this, and also, you can't use morality and common sense as absolute values, because they mean different things to different people.

But much of what they are evaluating is based on confidence and judgement. It is self-selecting.

I'm not saying that this is how I would have designed the reearch when I was in the MR business, but good luch to them. My company did always feel superior to everyone, even academics. Asking people their personal opionions relative to themselves is very valid.

As in all research the appropriate method will depend on the question you are asking. Asking people's opinion is perfectly valid if the question you want answered is 'what opinion do people hold about this?'.

But that is not the question asked here. We are expected to accept the behaviour of these children as fact, not as a matter of parental opinion. Otherwise, the conclusion would not be "parental confidence leads to better behaviour". Which is the conclusion we are asked to accept.

The only conclusion we can reasonably deduce from this material, with the current method, is "parental confidence leads to parental perceptions of better behaviour". Which is not exactly the same thing- and nowhere near as useful politically.