Are there any absoute rights and wrongs in parenting?

[seeker]

Apart from bottom line safety issues?

I have been thinking about this because I consider myself by nature a relativist, and the mumsnet consensus is to end most discussions with something like "each to their own".

But I was on a thread recently when I felt very strongly that someone's viewpoint was just wrong. Not a different point of view, but wrong. And I said so - expecting to be flamed - but somewhat to my chagrin I was reminded of my insignificance by being ignored!

So, are there any parenting issues that people feel are absolutely right or wrong - or is everything except basic safety things like car seats and smoking over babies heads and not leaving your valium open in the cot a matter of opinion?

But would you help them if you had earlier seen them smoke near a baby!! I am not arguing for rampant individualism, in fact, the opposite, for a much more open-minded and positive orientation towards our fellow parents.

We are, in the main, talking about children being hit.
I don't believe that should be a 'lifestyle choice' (how utterly revolting), and I am prepared to stand up for what I believe in.

You, on the other hand, appear to have a libertarian attitude to humanity which puts an adult's right not to have their lifestyle choices 'interfered with' above children's rights not to be harmed.

I think the point of this thread - as I saw it - is to discuss whether there are any actual rights and wrongs when it comes to parenting. I used smoking over a baby's head and not using a car seat as examples of absolute wrongs that nobody could possibly argue with. Seems I was wrong!

Regardless of the smacking question, the most important thing is that parents possess the autonomy to make choices for themselves, otherwise they are not really parents, just temporary carers subject to the judgement of a higher power - who exactly? Parenting experts? Psychologists? Paediatricians? A people's jury of other parents? A parental licensing authority?
Being a parent is not a lifestyle choice, that's the point, it's a very important social role that needs supporting in all its diversity.

Doea supporting autonomy extend to defending a parents's right to carry a child in a car without a car seat?

no its a very important social role that brings with it huge responsibilities to another weaker human being.

You are the Daily Freaking Mail and I claim my crap dvd.

Nowhere is judgement of parents (especially mother) so shrill as in the pages of the Daily Mail so I wouldn't feel so smug if I were you, you silly billy.

Anyway, surely you shouldn't be sitting at your computer when there are so many children to rescue, parents to judge, wrongs to right. Off you go and set up the 'Good Mums' Militia for the Protection of Children Everywhere from their Ignorant, Emotionally Illiterate Parents'.

your humour, like your argument, is crass and shrill.

I said the law is a good thing to follow so that would answer your question on child safety seats although even then some of you would shoot me as I we don't bother with them for the old ones under the silly new law. But the law is a pretty good indicator. You can breast or bottle feed by law but you can't feed the baby cyanide or paint stripper etc.

I think parents should be allowed to live different kinds of lives with their children from home schooling to boarding school. Some state interference is useful - e.g. I think there should be an obligation to educate children (as indeed there is)

Why do you think that if smacking is so henious, it is not illegal in this country? Am honestly interested.

I am taking this as a serious question but repsponding in a rush.

I think it's because the British feel about their children as they do their castles.

Children are still perceived to be the property of their parents, and British culture (and law) has traditionally valued the idea of property highly.

Any attempt to legislate against owner doing as they wish with their property hits a wall of anti-interventionist fury.

Smacking IS illegally if it leaves a mark. So if you do it hard enough to have an effect you break the law unless you've found a clever way to do it really hard but without marks I suppose.

It was permissible to beat servants, wives and children in England. We have not quite got in England as far as stopping all smacking but it is becoming so politically unacceptable anyway I think it will die out. My parents never did it in the 1960s and I've never smacked a child. Clever parents don't and usually fed up working class parents without much education smack I suppose. The more childline numbers given out in schools the better and if we encourage more children to report parents then that will help too.

How dare you put parents that smack in different classes, they come from all walks of life and i for 1 am very well educated, and i am not stupid (clever parents don't smack)...what utter crap...parents that smack are practical not stupid and even if it was illegal i would still smack mine and there is no way that the police and law can possibly enforce this law unless they are in my house everytime i smack mine!!! We are living in a nanny state as far as i am concerned!!! Whats next all mother must bf!! All fathers and mothers must never shout at their children!! How far are they going to go, you cannot keep making choices for others and their children....and this is what i meant about snobbery and you have just proved my point!!! Now go away and remove that plug from up your arse!!!

Xenia - yes, I agree, smacking (or any kind of physical violence) will become illegal.

Agree wholeheartedly with onebatmother (this is getting to be a habit )

The "so long as doesn't leave a mark" deliberate legal bloody fudge makes my blood run cold - as a child who was told "I can do what I like as long as it can be construed as reasonable force" that is.

Anna8888 and Xenia are right - I think smacking will become illegal. I think what I mean is that why is it only now, in 2008 (or whenever it does happen)? Why did previous generations of parents not consider making smacking illegal a neccessity (and I mean our parents and grandparents, not hundreds of years ago re: the wife/servant/child beating thing). Did all the parents who used systematic smacking (including mine and the vast majority of my friends') just get child-rearing terribly terribly wrong?

ibblewob - the past is a different place...

They smacked, they denied women the vote, most children died in infancy, there were no indoor loos or running water, no cars, many people couldn't read...

xenia, have to disagree with clever v working class... not good at all..

Isn't it the case that smacking IS legally an assault, but that there is currently a statutory defence of reasonable chastisement? The legal debate is about whether or not to remove the statutory defence, not whether to criminalise smacking. Technically smacking is already criminal, as is any other common assault.

Anna8888, your post implies that the only lessons we take from the past are about what not to do, what everyone got wrong. And obviously some things were worse, and some things better (i.e. I remember reading something about how more people would class themselves as "happy and content" during the rationing periods of the war than now). What I'm interested in is why a smack on the bottom was not considered as an 'absolute, moral wrong' by the vast majority of people just a few years ago, and why it is now.

Same reason hanging by the neck was considered an unfortunate necessity not so long ago, and birching in Borstals...and a little further back, thumbscrews and boiling in oil

Societies progress. But there will always be a depressing contingent of idiots who want to return us all to savagery.

Well, no cars was a good thing IMO .

I think you could do PhD thesis on the cultural acceptability of smacking and other forms of physical assault - all I mean is, the answer is not simple and millions of things are done differently today.

Greensleeves - is that right about the legal situation?

I think so! I'm not a lawyer, but I've had this argument a fair few times [maniacal laughter]