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

But wicked, although self-report is obviously an accepted method, in this case surely there is a question about a method that is acknowledged to be biased in a way that would clearly affect the results. Do the results reflect an actual association, or are they just a function of that bias?

Ahem - may I just say, that my children are perfect?

I am a very confident and able parent too. I have never shouted at them - ever, not once in their lives. I have never neglected them for an instant, and I always respond to their cries of "mum, get off mumsnet and feed us now!" by telling them exactly where to find the ingredients for their dinners.

To take another example. Supposing you wanted to prove the hypothesis that insecurity about body image leads to overweight in teenagers. So you send out a survey to a group of teenagers and ask them: a) "do you feel uncomfortable with your body image" b) "are you overweight?". You get a number of varying replies, but on the whole the people who answer yes to a) also answer yes to b). Have you now proved your point.

There are various problems here:

One is that a link does not prove causation. People might overeat because they are already unhappy with their figure/yoyo dieting whatever. But then again, they might equally feel uncomfortable with their body image because they are overweight rather than vice versa (and have lost faith in their parenting because their children have problems in concentrating,e.g. due to SN). Just having those two answers, and knowing what proportion answered yes to both isn't going to prove which is the cause.

Secondly- overweight (like emtional control in children) is open to interpretation. What if some of the respondents are anorectic? They will answer yes to both questions, but their answers won't tell you anything about overweight people, because they are not in fact overweight. (The obvious answer here would be to have them weighed).

IF you ask about opinions, your conclusions will have to be about opinions. If you want conclusions based on facts, you have to set about collecting facts, not opinions.

The problem with this research is that they collect information about one thing (parental perception of child behaviour)and then claim it proves something about something totally different (actual child behaviour measurable by objective outside criteria) that they haven't actually bothered to collect any information about.

This has to be a correlational study though cory. They can't do an experiment on this. I do agree about the objective observations of behaviour rather than self (or parental) reports, but again it is a very common way of studying this sort of thing.

I just find this kind of research so full of caveats I wonder how useful it can be.

Well, that is exactly my point, FallenMadonna. You can't do a study of this kind and then claim it proves something about objective facts. It's not just the correlational aspect; it's the whole fact that the behavioural factors are described in such fluffy tones and that we know that different people have totally different ideas as to what constitutes normal child behaviour. It doesn't matter if it's common or not; the question is whether it is honest.

If the researchers had been honest with themselves (and their funders) they would have said: this piece of research proves a correlation between parental methods and parental perceptions of child behaviour. And we would all have said Big Deal.

Instead, they are saying this proves a correlation between parental methods and actual outcome, and we believe it is causal. It's the first part of that proposition that I have problems with, more than the second.

Hmm. So maybe not the "E=MC2 of social science" then

They aren't claiming that it proves anything. When you are dealing with people, you can never have 'one size fits all'. Biometrics just aren't like that.

The hypothesis that good parenting skills leads to good character in children is sensible though, and I am sure that you can design a study that will show enough evidence to support action.

I am not really sure why this is controversial, except to see that it puts the onus back into the family rather than authority - a situation that is infinitely better, imo. Surely the government's role is to be a facilitator - help parents to become better parents - rather than deal with the fall-out of anti-social behaviour.

I agree with him--in part.

I know children with lots of money, at private schools but with dreadful parents who are never there for them, or abuse drugs, or have constant affairs.

The children grow up to have big problems themselves with drugs and drink, or find it hard to form relationships.

Yet another "new role" for health visitors I see. If in doubt HVs can fix it seems to be one of those recycled political mantras. Sadly the actual quality (and volume) of HVs has never been there to implement any of the initiatives.

Actually evaluating the effectiveness of interventions using proper research and then only applying the good ones would be a good idea. It would be nice if government ever did that, but evidence-based policy has never (and probably will never) be implemented - much more mileage in introducing a totally new (and piloted, or even better run the pilots whilst implementing the whole scheme anyway and then never learn anything from the pilots in any case) scheme or just reorganising everything.

Looking at the tool they appear to use (the SQD) it looks remarkably similar to the assessment used for my son for AS. The fact that he couldn't keep still and had tantrums wasn't anything to do with our parenting, it is the way his brain is wired. Personally I think he has a fantastic character, and will succeed (just doing something offbeat as have many of the family).

Anyway I digress - much of the paper is really quite well written and interesting, and there is discussion of the relationship between poverty and child development, and the link to adult mental health. Trouble is it is a bit circular:

"In other words, parents on a low income, but who are confident and able, are as effective at generating character capabilities in their children as parents on a high income. It is not income itself that causes the different outcomes but other factors which are associated with low income."

I see that the report also says that it doesn't really matter if you are married or not - I'm sure that won't be appearing in any of Cameron's speeches any time soon, oh and being unemployed doesn't matter either, nor do disability or ethnicity (well they do, but not if you are looking at parental ability).

What worries me about the report is when it starts on the parental style and childhood outcome, given that the children are only five, and the whole thing is self assessed. I would have thought that the two would be correlated, simply because if for example you are authoritarian you may be much more likely to think your child is easily distracted, whereas if you are more laisse faire you might well see the same characteristic as positive, and if you are truly disengaged you've probably not even noticed. There also seemed to be a bit of a jump from saying that parental poverty and poor education; vulnerability (due to genetic and/or environmental circumstance) and parenting style and confidence are the key factors, to then saying that parenting is the biggest deal.

The policy ideas of focusing SureStart back on the early years and focused on the most disadvantaged, including more development of peer support, and the Family Nurse Partnership (a scheme for intense support to teenager mothers). The HV bit is more dubious I think (and the finding that three out of four parents wanted advice from "trained health visitors with up to date knowledge" could be read in several ways I think) I wouldn't have wanted any of mine to try and be more of a parent adviser (isn't this what they do in any case?). My HV was convinced that there was something seriously wrong with ds just because he wanted to play with her scales instead of the really very crappy toys she wanted him to play with. However if (as per the last bit) they had the tools and resources to accurately identify struggling children (and this piece was to do with environmental factors in the main part of the report, not parenting skills).

Finally I really agree with Cory, to make such strong conclusions on data that you acknowledge could be spurious is worrying. I don't like the way they measured parenting style either. Very minimal, and it's not terribly clear when the assessments were done presumably the postnatal attachment self assessment (referring to the baby) was done in early infancy, but the rules part must have been done much later, so the two axis might not correlate at all (for example I think I'd come out as dissociated because I don't like babies very much, but I wouldn't describe myself this way at all). It's also not clear when the further two surveys were administered either.

If that quote is really right from Cameron, then I don't think he has understood the report, as the likelihood of thinking of yourself as "confident and able" is related to poverty - ie the child born in poverty is more likely to have parents who do not think of themselves as confident and able.

It would be interesting to look at the same cohort in a few years time and compare to take up of mental health services, or performance at school, or juvenile convictions, or any hard evidence that showed any of this actually makes a concrete difference.

'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.'

Indeed, the problem we have is that with 4 bioys, 2with ASD, 1 a toddler and 1 with probable adhd / dyspraxia type disorder,theinjuring (ar attempting) ia a cosntant.

Therefore, you have to fight actively torebalnce your ideaof normality because what we have is very, very far off indeed.

I think what the debates on meaning,s aetiolies etc is showing that in fact this is very muddy water. We don't know for sure whether confidence is the putcome or causation, I'dput money on the mix though.It almost always is, after all.

And level of parenting skill is entirely about what you are faced with;I remember a quote from a film with Jack Nicholson-nothing scary and Ic ant remember what it is- where he said 'Life is not all noodle sald'and the other pointed out that for some, it is. If your life is noodle salad, then the more negative traits won't show andyour confidence will be high. OTOH if your life is some twisted version of hell- a DV past, maybe disability or illness, poverty- you will know every dark corner of your soul. And very likely judge yourself on it.

I don't agree that those are MC values, they are as present in the WC famillies I have seen that are functioning wellas the MC ones. And i;veseen an awfullot of MCones fail aswell,although usually for different reasons (isolation because of frequent job moves was a common one).

I think I put it further down but anyway- I used tot hink I was acrapaprent,really I did, it has taken time with aPsych to get me tor ealise that I am not,, indeed she says she enjoys our time becuase we bounce ideas (theoretically for the boys ASD but I am given chat time) and I go home and act on them.I thought I was a failure becuase I couldn'tmake them work,she thinks I am great to keptrying....... pretty good suggestion IMO that thre is a massive disparity between parentalself-judgement and reality than people realise.

Also..... TBH this is alot of wasted hot air anyway, as long as SSD are turning away famillies with very real need how on earth are they going to actually address this? Vote winning hot air.