If we were to consider bad parenting under one umbrella

[hobbgoblin]

To include the myriad of misdemeanours any of us might consider to constitute Doing A Bad Job, for the sake of argument...

What would you define as the cause?

My number one defining cause would be lack of sel esteem, please add to the list.

Self absorption, navel-gazing, introspection. Whatever the proper term for that is. Is it narcssism (sp?).

mrsq
i have been in that position when DH lost his job, and my parenting didn't suffer
in fact I think i was a better parent then, as I didn't have the guilt that i have now, working full time to pay the mortgage, car loan etc etc

being a parent isn't effected by how much money you have.
parenting is not about the material stuff. whilst i agree that the worries of the family fincances may put an added stress, which could result in lost tempers and less patience. but essentially the parenting will remian the same.

Sorry if I have offended anyone by suggesting if you are poor then you are more likely to be parenting poorly.

Personally I feel it is easier to parent well when you aren't living in relative poverty.

Though, I am no expert and who am I to judge anyone else's parenting abilities.

Is there a definition of "poor parenting". Not sure if I want to read it though, what if it is me!!

I also agree with all the other posts that there are loads of contributing factors to poor parenting.

How can you even suggest that having very little money equals bad parenting? Do you look down on others with less material wealth? MN is actually a very materialistic site I find. Children can grow up to be happy adults, so long as the adults around them try to support each other in times of difficulty, and the children receive adequate amount of love. What about the people who fought wars and poverty to offer you a free prosperous country to live in? Were they "bad parents"?

I have to agree that poverty affects parenting. I don't mean that poor people are worse parents- we all know well-off people who are emotionally stunted. But what money can do is cushion you from things in life.
I hate admitting that money is important but I think when it comes to raising kids, it truly is.
You can get a cleaner once a week, for example, so if you get depressed then you will still have a clean home. But if you can't afford this and don't have the ability to clean yourself, you could even lose your kids if social services got involved.
Also, you can eat out more, which lifts the burden of meal preparation and clean up and enables the family to eat healthily even if the mother is too tired to cook.
You can buy more clothes for your kids so you will have less pressure to wash as frequently thereby decreasing the urgency to get the washing done.
I think that lack of money can make a huge difference to people's ability to parent effectively. A certain level of money relieves stress and worry to a certain extent.

On top of that is the obvious: repeating your parents mistakes because you don't want to admit they made any i.e I got a beating and it never did me any harm . Along with that goes what others have mentioned i.e ignorance, not knowing that you should teach your children politeness and social responsibility because you've never actually seen it yourself in the adults that raised you.

I hope my post shows that I DON'T think that people with less money are worse parents (I don'T have much money myself!). It means I think that the ones who get it right without a lot of resources are doing a bloody brilliant job, because if you have more money, parenting is easier, IYSWIM.

An inibility to take responsibility due to immaturity. Not being able to reflect on your decisions/philosiphies/ideas, and consider whether they are good ones, or whether you might be able to do better etc. Not being able to make decisions that prioritise other people, or look at situations from outside your own wants and emotions. I guess thats basic self centredness.

I'm not sure those are root causes though, because the above must still have been caused by something - a cycle of 'bad' parenting, depression etc, as others have said.

Thinking about child protection cases that make the media, there's usually a history of poor parenting for generations. Being a victim of or being exposed to DV, mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse are also closely related to poor parenting.

Poor socio-economic conditions usually mean worse outcomes for children. Don't think this is all down to poor parenting per se. More that if you are really poor you (and your children) can be subjected to a whole set of situations (physical and mental illness, worse schooling, unemployment not through choice, lack of role models in wider community, etc) that you can't easily change. Even when you are a good parent it can be very hard to compensate for the effect these things have.

I also read somewhere that attachment theorists believe we learn to parent without knowing we're learning it and that this happens around the ages of 1 and 2.

In which case it makes sense to have a welfare system that supports some level of economic well-being. Although the social aspect is considerably more difficult to change/influence.

It's a shame so many people abuse the benefits system and potentially make life more difficult for those who need it.

Any situation where a parent fails to treat their child like an individual in their own right but rather like an extension of themselves or as an object for their own gratification.

There are people with certain personality disorders that make very bad parents. Perhaps their personality disorders stem from the bad parenting they recieved themselves.

eg - Julie Meyerson using her son to get attention and profit from writing about him.

Karen Matthews using her daughter to extort money without regard to her own wellbeing.

My uncle - who I am sure has a personality disorder and has royally f*cked up all 3 of his kids.

Re poverty and parenting. Of course it has an impact. It has to. Not because the children miss out materially, but because the parents of those children will always be stressed about money. Struggling to make ends meet is not conducive to being a contented person. That does not mean poverty = bad parenting, but poverty is going to lead to more difficult parenting, you'd need to be a better, more grounded person than many of us are to cope with it.

I don't know if I agree that poverty itself is the main factor - even high earners can stress about money - but living in an environment of poverty where you are perhaps running against the tide in trying to parent well must be crushing.

I have a friend in this situation - she's been poor all over the UK, but it's hardest for her now that she's living in the proverbial tower block, and the overall attitude to parenting, for whatever reason, is not a positive one.

In myself, the times when I've felt like a bad parent have come about because of selfishness or self-indulgence - like giving in to my temper and squawking like a harpy instead of being reasonable with the little oiks.

I dont think poverty per se affects parenting - i would say it was more social exclusion that affects parenting.

In the same way running around trying to pay the mortgage affects parenting as well.

Inconsistancy is the main thing that I think is the cause of bad parenting practice though - ie letting them do something one minute and then shouting at them for the same thing the next. I suppose someone said it earlier when they commented about doing things with them for the easy life.

In that vein as well - saying what comes into your head immediately instead of taking time to say the right thing even though its not what you feel. So being able to do/say the right thing even if its against your instincts.

over-indulgence

Salla-thanks for that.

Tiredness.

Colie, why the sceptical face? Do you not understand the point that I was making, which is that children in the past have lived in extreme poverty while their parents have fought wars etc. but the ones who grew up to happy adults were the ones who had love despite the hardship of the adults. Life is a tough business you know, its not all hanging on the websites and passing the time cause you can.

temper.

all my worst parentling habits are due to my temper... namely losing it.

although, thinking about it, most of the shit parents i know are shit because they're lazy so no, sorry, i change my answer to 'bone idleness'

Salla-do you really have to ask why the sceptical face?

The sceptical face is because you were so rude to me. I am not a snob.

Go and read a few books before you name call again.

People during the war may not have been well off. Obviously there were great hardships. However, there was not a great divide, actually a gulf, between the rich and the poor. That came about a good few years after the war and continued ever since. This, has lead to social exclusion, which is caused by poverty and leads to social isolation. This in turn can contribute to poor parenting,

The war united communities. Social exlusion and poverty divides.

I never said everyone living in relative poverty is a poor parent. I just said of course it makes it harder to parent as well as goverment directives would want all uk residents to parent.

can I join?

I think that bad parents are often the ones who want a baby rather than wanting to be parents.

They are focused on how lovely the baby will be and what a baby will bring to their lives when they should be taking a good honest look at themselves and thinking about what sort of parent they will be and how they can excel.

I also think that some people are just lazy.

With questions like this there is never a simple answer. You can define characeristics of 'bad parenting' such as laziness, not putting the child's needs first etc, but the root cause will be different in each individual case. I think saying, for example, depression causes bad parenting is generalising. My sister had PND, she is a good parent. It made her more careful with her baby, it made her worry more, it did not make her a bad parent.

So, I thnk you can say X is a bad parent because of Y but I don't think it is logical to say Z causes bad parenting.

Hope this makes sense.

Anger.

i get you supercherry:

if people eat ice-cream on a sunny day does that mean that eating ice-scream makes the sun shine

... but some people are just lazy and that crosses over into their parenting