Anyone think there's too much emphasis on being a good parent these days?

[hunkermunker]

All the navel-gazing "Am I a good mum" stuff - kinda misses the point there's a child involved.

Very me me me.

No?

exactly waffle, and often it's other mums! It shouldn't be a blardy competition.

hello hunker!

i find this a bit confusing...as a new parent i find there is a huge emphasis on being a "good" parent, and my mum is forever shaking her head re all of the things that hadn't been "invented" when I was a baby.

BUT i am a primary teacher and quite frequently come across things that are (purely in my opinion obviously) eg's of horrendously bad parenting. I've not been teaching for all that long, but colleagues who have been in the profession for longer say they definitely see a decline.

sorry hunker I've killed your thread stone dead...I seem to do that

Can't have that, eh, Caz

Not at all@hunker. I think people are way too obsessive about their children these days. Everything is one huge obsessive, neurotic worry - what to feed them, which school to send them to, how to discipline them. If anything, parents don't seem to have any right to be imperfect human beings anymore. It really fucks me off. My mum says she feels sorry for our generation - that we aren't encouraged to parent independently and trust our own way as the right way. It's all 'a media reports say this' and 'a study suggests that' and 'a well known parenting expert says such and such'. I agree.

No I disagree. I think leaving people to get on with it, can perpetuate bad parenting. If you grew up in a loving, happy family then chances are you are going to be a good enough parent because you learned how to parent lovingly from your own parents. But if you didn't, chances are without a lot of soul-searching, or navel gazing if you prefer, then you are going to continue the circle of emotional abuse that started generations ago in your family unless you re-learn stuff normal people take for granted.

"50 years ago if you had clean, warm and fed children then that was enough." But it wasn't enough. I was clean and fed (and warm sometimes) but I grew up feeling unloved and had no idea what a normal loving relationship was when I was an adult. Without the current focus on parenting, I would have continued that cycle and brought up 2 dysfunctional children. I might still do so, but the odds have been shortened thanks to the current obsession with parenting - of which mumsnet is a symptom by the way!

Good post LittleBella.

Yes, good point LittleBella. I'm glad you're finding the resources to break out of that pattern with your own children.

I think what is often the problem is that people who don't particularly need the advice (those lucky enough to have had a good example in their own upbringing) read it all and get a bit paranoid and competitive rather than trusting to their own judgement. Obviously even those who had the advantages still need some advice and support, but there's a risk that they overdo it and just start fretting.

And on the other hand, some of those who could really benefit from this kind of advice and help either don't hear it, or hear it and don't feel able to make use of it, or hear it and don't care. I guess the tricky thing is to get the help and information to those people in a way which enables them to make use of it, and helps them to get over the problems in their own lives which get in the way of them becoming better parents. But there's a lot more to that than just telling people what they ought to do, which is where a lot of the government initiatives fall down.

It's like all the healthy eating info which we keep being given - it seems to suggest that people eat unhealthily because they don't know any better, so you just have to give them the information and they'll automatically change their ways. But there are lots of other factors which affect what people eat, like the fact they're used to certain things, access to fresh fruit & veg at a reasonable cost, not knowing how to cook from scratch, etc, which you also need to address to make a real change.

littlebella - that is true. But most of us didn't have bad parenting - some of us might have had less than perfect parenting but it was still a fundamentally sound start in life. And for that vast majority who have turned out to be reasonably happy, rounded adults, all this 'advice' is actually quite undermining. I parent as my parents did, with a few of my own touches and using the experiences I had in my life. But I do feel inadequate as a parent sometimes because when other people do things differently, instead of simply shrugging it off, I wonder whether perhaps I have got it wrong and I ought to be doing it another way. Something that was instinctive in me has become less so. And then guilt creeps in. Which is the death knell to any good relationship IMO.

Well, I turned out OK but quite frankly, my mum and extended family really have a lot of issues. Gambling, drinking, lots of my cousins have drug problems - two have died because of drugs and a third one is in detox at the moment. I was sexually abused by a member of my family when I was 12.

Mymum shouted so much at us, and was swearing all the time. God I don't even want to think about it. I remember clearly being asked in one of the anti natal classes what was our biggest fear and people would say things like 'I can't stand vomit and don't know how I will handle it' and I said: 'I just hope I don't turn out like my mum."

So I am quite thick skinned and I don't really make a fuss over what other people think about my parenting skills. But I have to make a real effort, and yes I am a bit of a 'me' parent as decisions that I make are conscious decisions, they don't come naturally to me. For example, I would find it much easier to shout at my kids then to discuss things with them (well one is too young).I sometimes find it difficult to speak to them because our parents didn't speak to us a lot, so I have to make a real effort. I suppose I fall in the category of a 'me' parent and I look for guidelines, good examples, I immitate my friends and take very important cues from my husband who is a wonderful dad.

Blueberry, I know what you mean about imitating others.

I remember when I was in my early 20's (before dc's) and I was watching my SIL with my nephew. She was a teenage mum, but was, and remains one of the best examples of a parent that I could ever hope to find. I remember thinking "OH!!!, Its ok to laugh, and ENJOY your children"
It changed me - I had experienced, and seen alot of bad examples of parenting.

I also think that whilst there is a lot of competitive parenting (which is not good)that the availablilty of parenting information and online sources of help (like MN) are a good thing generally. I had a very interesting conversation with my mum a week ago about all of this and although I would describe her as a very good parent she said she would have loved to have had a fraction of the advice available today when I was little. I was a difficult baby/toddler/child, very stubborn and strong willed and my mum was a young, inexperience mother who lived 100's of miles away from any family support. She said there were so many times when I was having a massive tantrum that she felt out of control. She would shut me in my room simply to stop herself lashing out at me and sit at the other side of the door crying and feeling like a failure. I have no memory of this, I think she was a fantastic parent yet there were times she felt alone and completely overwelmed. Today all she would have to do would be to post "HELP my 2 yr old DD is driving me up the wall" and at least she would get support and not feel alone and at best some tips suggested that may actually work and help. I think there are times when any parent can feel alone and out of their depth even if they have had good role models and are generally a good parent themselves.

Hmm... I wonder if most of us didn't have bad parenting. When you consider that 2/3 of marriages in this country end in divorce, that's an awful lot of unhappy people out there. And OK not all of that unhappiness can be traced back to bad parenting, but it does give me pause for thought...

I think it's very difficult to know whether most parenting is good or bad, really, particularly when you haven't had it.

The other thing that I've always been suspicious of, is the fourth commandment. Honour your father and your mother. Why did our culture need that commandment? You don't need to be told to honour your parents if they were good at parenting. And why isn't there a balancing one of "nurture your children" and it being a sin not to? Seems like a charter for bad parenting to me...

I'm not arguing anything specific, just meandering around...

I think the 'honour your father and mother' thing was about making sure that they were cared for in old age and you did what they told you as an adult (convenient for society) rather than ensuring that you liked them. And I take issue with the thought that most parenting is bad. I know many parents and although none of them are perfect, most of them do OK...the best they can. Unless you really think there is only one way of being a parent? Which brings us back to childcare theories which can tell us what to do. Shame so many of them differ

I think that there are many reasons for divorce, bad parenting of the divorcees being quite a way down the list IMO.

Orm I'm not arguing that most parenting is crap, I'm arguing that we don't know if it is or not. "I know many parents" isn't evidence. If you were a teacher in a really crap area where most of the children came to school without breakfast and got ignored, shouted at or hit by their parents in greeting every day, you mihgt think most parents were crap. But that would be a very skewed view of parents, because our own experiences are not reliable sources of information.

As far as divorce goes, I agree that there are many reasons and that it's too simplistic to say "bad parenting of the divorcees" is one of them. However, far along the chain, it may be one of the factors affecting choices or attitudes but of course without analysing a massive sample and coming up with hard numbers, we can't ever really know.

Oh and hard numbers aren't really enough either, because the reasons behind the numbers are what's important and sometimes they're surprising and not obvious from the numbers.

I was taking issue with this statement "I wonder if most of us didn't have bad parenting". I can tell you as a fact that my parents were good at it. Whether they could have been better I couldn't tell you. But that is an endless argument - it's good, yes but it could be better, it's bad, yes but it could be worse. There is no gold standard IME. That is the whole point - parenting is a totally variable skill (for want of a better word). There are some things that always have to be unacceptable but beyond that I think it's unquantifiable. So calling it 'bad' or 'good' is a pointless exercise.

Perhaps we should all be Ofsteded?

Don't suggest that, someone in New Labour will take it up as a good idea...

We'd all have to fill in forms and demonstrate that our offspring were reaching their targets.

BTW that statement (I wonder if most of us didn't have bad parenting) was in response to your assertion that most of us had good parenting. I was just wondering if that is true. (I don't know btw and I agree with you that it's probably pointless trying to define it.)

OK. Maybe I should have said 'most of us have good enough parenting'

The biggest thing I have to contend with is the fact that my mother considered (and still considers) that she "brought us up well" and was a "good parent". Listening to her today you get the impression that from day one (even though I, the eldest, was unplanned) she knew exactly how children "should be brought up". And any way other than hers was wrong (and still is). We grew up with the distinct and very warped impression that we were better brought up than all our friends.

Of course this makes me feel like a crap parent. From the very beginning if I picked my baby up after she'd gone to bed in the evening because she was crying I was "making a rod for my own back". My kids at around 2 have both had phases of wanting to sleep with us (and then they stopped) and I humoured it so I was "encouraging bad habits that will get out of control". And if one of them has a tantrum (very very rare) my mother comments (usually through melodramatic tears): "I feel so sorry for these children. Oh well, my mum [my grandmother] used to say that if you haven't got your kids sorted out by the time they're 4 you may as well give up" WTF??? What is "sorted out"??

I am very very slowly learning that a) I am a good enough parent for me and my children because we are all happy b) my mother is not the parenting goddess c) "good" children are not always the result of "good" parenting and vice versa.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad... And there are so many different ways to do it!

Cathaaarsis!!