Do responsible parents have to be boring?

Last week I wrote a defence of parents getting drunk on holiday - and then wrote a longer version in my ‘Guide to subversive parenting’ on spiked. The spiked version immediately generated some stern emails.

‘It really encapsulates the hippy generation that’s now “grown up”,’ said one. ‘Everything plays second fiddle to adults enjoyment and fulfillment, it seems. Personally, I don’t believe the slogan ‘the interests of the child are paramount’, but your degree of dissociation from responsible parenting really takes the biscuit.’

‘The comments in your article illustrates so clearly the British love affair with alcohol, where getting pissed in public is never frowned upon, but rather treated as a harmless bit of fun,’ said another.

These emails made me think a bit - because I am often arguing about the need for parents to behave like grown-ups, and be treated like grown-ups. Is there a contradiction between that and getting really drunk on holiday (which, as I noted, is not advisable, though it is not the end of the world)?

It seems to me that ‘responsible parenting’ these days has become synonymous with leading a boring, conformist life - starting with cutting out all partying behaviour pre-pregnancy, and continiung right through until your kids leave home. In fact, this is a denigration of responsibility - being a responsible parent involves far more than being safe and healthy: and not least, it involves refusing to live your life solely through your children. In today’s conformist times, people seem to get the point about growing up meaning living an anxiety- and safety-ridden healthy lifestyle - which is probably why people are so reluctant to grow up! What is more difficult is accepting that being an adult means taking risks, making mistakes, and living a fully-rounded life.

OK, so a fully-rounded of life might not mean several pints of lager in Portugal, but it does mean being able to enjoy yourself. The fact that parents seem to experience having children as a trap that prevents them from living the life they want is more of a problem in my view than individual parents occasionally having too much fun.

By Jennie Bristow

What do you think? Let off steam at the parents’ forum.