A young Mum and Dad came to my till whilst I was working. They looked angry, bitter and short tempered. They had two children who they kept shouting at and telling them to shut up and behave, they had vicious voices, when I wasn't really sure what the children were doing. I even heard him tell his girlfriend to "shut the fuck up" at one point. All they bought were a load of Pot Noodles and various other readymade stuff. It's only a snapshot of that family but it has been lingering on my mind for a while.
It just makes me wonder what kind of environment the children are growing up in if they talk to their children and each other like that. I haven't had children myself, but I think some people must think just keeping the children alive is all that is necessary for parenthood. They're burdens and you just have to drag them through the days with you. That children aren't precious beings, they own them and can do what they like with them - they did make them after all.
I was thinking that in many deprived areas children do tend to have behaviour problems and have pasttimes of crime and smoking and no aspirations. I think one thing that may help is if they had "emotional learning" classes in school. I don't think a few classes about the birds and the bees is very good. I remember I had only one lesson on it where I was given a carrot and a condom and left to my own devices, then we watched a 30 minute VHS about it too. So many girls in my year at school have their own kids now and quite a few girls were pregnant in year 11 at school.
If in schools it was as compulsory as P.E to have weekly or monthly classes about all aspects of relationships, emotions, life, then I think it would be helpful, as with many families at home their parents don't have the skills to teach them such things.
Relationships and emotions are the centre of us as human beings, so it should be considered important enough to explore in schools.
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6 comments:
This is an interesting idea and it's such a difficult one to address. The problem is that people don't want to be told these things (myself included) and there is no cut and dry formula for the way parenting (for example) works.
I don't know much about secondary schools but in primary we do something known as SEAL (social and emotional aspects of learning) which I can only assume is built on in secondary - if this is the case, it would makes sense if it touched on the areas you are talking about. At a primary level, it covers friendship, bullying, self esteem and changes (off the top of my head) - this all seems like it could be the foundations for something else... but as I say, I don't know.
Unfortunately though, even if this kind of education was covered in schools, there would still be problems in deprived areas of the community, simply because the people who live there have no options. For some of them, there is no realistic way out (unless you decide to join the army and that begs its own questions). In order to address this kind of issue, we would need to make much bigger changes to the way our society is structured...
... but I appear to be about to rant, so I'll stop there! Interesting post though - it got me thinking.
The SEAL thing you mention was something like I was thinking about and sounds a good idea. I didn't have that when I was in primary school.
It is tricky, I don't really know the "solution" to all of these problems but I think something should change. The government say how the UK have the worst teenage pregnancy rates but I think it comes from more than lack of sex education, I think they should try and improve people in deprived areas lifestyles. In a deprived area I think a baby is the most exciting and prosperous thing that could happen to a person, I would imagine, they might see it as a new life and a way out of their mundane lives and that's why it's so desirable. (I've derailed a bit onto pregnancy now!)
This is an interesting discussion. I'd like to jot down a few of my own observations. These come partly from hanging out in deprived areas with my friends who lived there during my teenage years (amazingly that would be 15 years ago or so!!) and also through having worked in libraries in very deprived (white working class) areas up North and my current job which involves working with children under 5 and their parents (many of whom are in their teens) in deprived multicultral areas in London.
Whew!
Anyway:
First off I don't think that for many people in deprived areas "the most exciting and prosperous thing that could happen to a person". I don't have no sympathy for this idea, since I've seen in my sister who had a baby during troubled teenage years how much hope, focus and joy babies can bring.
But my sister had a middle class family to support her. If you have no money and you have a baby it offers you no extra way out of your situation and instead adds a number of problems to your life. If you are a single mother then its very tough indeed and many mothers in poverty are single.
That said it has been my direct experience that most parents do care for their children very much, whether in poverty or not, and that most "bad" parenting comes from ignarance of how to be a parent.
That is part of my job, oddly, helping parents to develope parenting skills. So there is some work we can do here. Unfortunately I'm not sure how much of that work can be done within education due to the negative relationship many people in poverty have towards education. Middle class children can be reached much more effectively through emotional learning programmes, I would say.
I believe in sex education as one thing that schools should cover, I feel more complicatedly about emotional education, because it is such a subjective area. There are in fact many forms of sucessful parenting, and a problem that many new parents, of all classes, face these days is trying to live up to the hundreds of conflictiong instructions they will recieve.
That said, as I mentioned, and as you touch on, if people don't know how to help their children learn and develop, or they don't realise how fun the process of engaging with their child can be, how rewarding it can be for everyone, then they need to be taught.
There are lots of people doing this in different areas, and in different ways, with different goals. Some of these people will be effective some of the time. But ultimately there will always be bad parenting, as their allways has. All we can do is try and help people.
And as Jen says much of the problems are systematic. If you get rid of poverty you would get rid of many of the problems. Although that is a very large goal to try and achieve!
And lets not forget that middle class children are also brought up often by distant parents who don't connect with them emotionally. And also, and I find this is frequently a problem, they are also brought up by very overprotective and anxious parents that cause their children all sorts of emotional problems!
Sex Education won't solve oyr problem with teenage pregnacy, although it is still essential. Sadly much teenage pregnancy happens either because the teenager is very intoxicated, or because they have very low expectations and don't care what happens to them, or sadly as a form of self harm. We need to address peoples expectations and lifestyles by giving them hope.
The youth of today is really so full of hopelessness and this is, I truly believe, the root of many of societies problems.
One last thought (I aplogise that they are so higgledy piggledy) the parents you saw were as you say a snap shot. I'll just offer some possible (though not nessesarily likely) interpretations of that snap shot.
Many people are brought up in families that eat junk food. It isn't great and it does much damage, but most of those families are loving and many of them have little choice in what they can afford to buy (or at least that is what they believe due to not knowing about healthy cheap options.)
Many people swear at each other and in front of their children in times of crisis and sadly for the demographic we are talking about times of crisis are frequent. My mother who is middle class and was at the time a social worker, certainly snapped at all her children in a nasty way, and also at her partners. But that was only one facet of her parenting, much of which was very good and she certainly loved us. Would she have been able to control her temper better if she'd had emotional classes at school? I'm not sure. Perhaps some people would. But not everyone.
But having outburts, arguments and stressful times are common in many families and has been throughout history.
It's hard to quantify what makes sucessful parenting. All the parents, both in my friendship group, family and those I meet proffesionally who I'd consider to be good have very different styles, many of which would be frowned on by emotional literacy courses.
I'd say the essential things are to love and engage with your child, to accept that life and parenting can't be perfect, and to give your child freedom as well as safety. All of those things could be present in that family you were so effected by, on a different day, at a different moment, and for the majority of the time.
I'm not saying I don't despair of many parents. I do. And I make snap judgements the way you did. And families stick in my mind as being appaling and I just can't understand why and how people can behave so stupidly and hatefully.
But many have their reasons. And they are certainly the minority in my oppinion.
Sorry to have written such a long comment.
Cheers,
Dave
Ugg - sorry I didn't proof read or spell check it either!
argh I wrote quite a lot and then my computer crashed!
anyway...
I began saying, don't apologise for the long comment as it is very interesting!
This sounds quite disjointed as I was trying to address your points....
when I said that people have children because they think it is prosperous, I meant that I think some people view it as a change or an escape from their current situation, or perhaps they think of how much they will love the child and how the child will love them back.
That's before they have the child, I suppose then the reality sets in but it does happen for other reasons - uninformed decisions or being careless etc.
It was only a snapshot of that families life. I suppose that could be a comforting thing - as it might just have been a bad day or who knows their situation. I am quite a sensitive person and I do tend to think of the worst possibilities when something is bothering me.
Humans are only that, humans. And one aspect we might see of a person that's negative - it doesn't mean they are bad parents or don't love their children
very much.
I know what you mean about the opposite of that - overprotective families. I had quite a sheltered childhood and couldn't really play with children and it caused me a few problems in later life.
when you say about emotional learning conflicting with the messages they recieve at home, I agree with that - it just seems a complex issue that is very difficult to tackle..I'm not really sure how to go about it all.
Thanks for commenting
Jenny
I hate it when you write a long comment and then lose it cos you're computer crashes.
Having a kid can really give you the meaning that you feel you lack. The problem is you can't predict it. My little sister got it right, despite us all thinking it would be a disaster. But then some people don't have that experience, like you say.
Problem is you can never know what you will react like, you can never know.
Impressed you managed to trawl through my rambling comment and glad you found it made some sort of sense.
Thanks for writing th thought provoking blog.
Dave
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