Parents' Forum

Everyone is talking about social mobility these days. And everyone is identifying that quality of parental input is probably the most decisive factor. Is this true? What is the social mobility agenda – and is it desirable?
Sally Millard introduced.

Readings:

www.suttontrust.com/news/news/latest-research-report-what-prospects-for-mobility-in-the-uk/

www.battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2011/battles/6622/

blogs.independent.co.uk/author/sally-millard/

www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11885/

www.dpm.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/social-mobility-strategy-launched

A friend of mine recently talked to a child who was on a school trip. While she was chatting to the child the teacher in charge rushed up and told the child to stop talking to my friend as it was school policy not to talk to strangers. My friend wrote an excellent article about the experience; http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10878/.

The next week my mother-in-law gave my children necklaces she had bought on holiday which had their names on it. She said when she was buying the necklaces her friend had warned her against it because if they had their names around their necks then strangers would know their names.

Shortly after I was at a petting farm and park and my children were playing and I was sitting on my own on a bench. A little girl ran up to the bench and she had a big badge with Birthday Girl on it. My instinct was to say hello and ask her how old she was and was she having a nice birthday. I didn’t, mindful of the two incidents cited above. I was conscious that this would be construed as a suspicious act, not a friendly one. I do think it is so sad that adult’s relationships with children have been so poisoned that if we are a stranger to them we know that we cannot connect with them.

Wednesday 13 July 2011, 7pm

The review has sparked off a huge discussion about whether there is a pornification of society that needs to be addressed; or whether there is an increasing anxiety about sex and children, which has nothing to do with pop videos, but has a lot to do with adults own anxieties about boundaries between adults and children.

Dr Jan McVarish will introduce.

There have been a plethora of articles. The readings below are certainly not exhaustive.

www.education.gov.uk/b0074315/bailey-review/

www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10587/

www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/the-sexualisation-debate-which-side-are-you-on-2293860.html

www.heraldscotland.com/comment/guest-commentary/it-s-not-children-who-are-sexualised-it-s-us-1.1108473

Contact Jane Sandeman at parents@instituteofideas.com for Central London venue details.

Had a great Cybermummy 2011.

Thanks to all the bloggers who came to Sue’s sessions on Blogging Essentials and WordPress. Let us know if you want a guest post on our blog, or fancy coming to our London meetups.

Thanks also to @PippaD who live blogged the sessions.

There are many things I dislike about the fact that David Cameron has commissioned Reg Bailey of the Mothers Union to write a report about the sexualisation of children. Not least that this is a panic that has nothing to do with children, but everything to do with the rather horrible way that both parents and children are thought of by a certain section of society (David Cameron and Reg Bailey being two of them).

There is no sexualisation of children. Parents are not rushing around pimping their children, and there is not a plethora of sexual activity within young children.
But the propositions from the report show what the fear is about. The main proposition from this report is that a single website will be set up for parents to report inappropriate images, products and services. According to the reportthe website should set out clearly what parents can do if they feel a product is inappropriate for their children. Don’t we just not buy the clothes if we think it is not appropriate for our children? Do we really need a government sponsored website to tell us how to navigate this particular issue? And isn’t one persons inappropriate clothing something someone else likes?

What particularly makes me mad is the contempt this expresses for parents and children. We can’t be trusted now to clothe our own children- we already can’t be trusted to feed our own children properly. And like the ridiculousness of the moralisation of food (whereby white bread is somehow evil but ciabbatas are somehow morally good) to try and rule between good and bad clothing is equally absurd.

The padded bra seems to get a particular drobbing but as parents of pre pubescent girls will know, is that when they start developing girls do need some protection and also want to protect their modesty by having a little bit of padding over their breasts.

I think as parents we should react against this constant intervention into our choices and our childrens choices about what we should and should not do.

It has become a very accepted practice nowadays but I don’t think you should take your children out of school for holidays or for cultural experiences.
I think education is important for children and I think it is important that children should respect the institution of the school. The lesson we should teach our children is to respect the authority of the school and the teachers. By taking a child out of school for a holiday I think the message you are giving is that personal gratification is more important than education. I think you are undermining the authority of the school in the eyes of your child.
I also think the argument that they are learning more by being on holiday and seeing Greek ruins etc is not a valid one. School is there to teach children a body of knowledge that is rational and abstract and experiencing things is not the same as knowing things.

But mostly as a parent we do have to make value judgements and we are part of the process by which our children learn what is valuable or not. Taking your child out of school for a holiday indicates to them that going to school is more arbitrary than they have been led to believe, and that personal pleasure trumps respect for educational institutions.

5 May 2011

The mumsnet phenomenon has been discussed extensively. mumsnet was seen as the kingmaker in the last election.

A Save the Children initiative in Bangladesh  invited three mums who are the leading ‘mummy’ bloggers to go along and see work they had done there and discuss it in their blogs. NSPCC are a sponsor of netmums.

The three bloggers the Save the Children charity invited were:

• Josie George www.sleepisfortheweak.org.uk
• Sian To, who also runs a parenting PR company  www.mummy-tips.com
• Social media consultant Eva Keogan: www.nixdminx.com.

We are very fortunate to have one of the leading Mummy bloggers introducing this discussion – Jennifer Howze.

Jennifer Howze is a journalist with more than 20 years’ experience. She is the co-founder of CyberMummy, the UK’s only conference for parent bloggers, and the partner in charge of content for the British Mummy Bloggers social network, which has more than 2,000 blogger members. Previously, she was the online lifestyle editor for the Times and editor of its Alpha Mummy blog. Jennifer has written for publications in the UK and America including The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Independent, CNN.com, Conde Nast’s SELF magazine, Travel + Leisure, and Frommer’s Budget Travel, among others. Her work has been included in two books, Standing Up to Supernanny and Budget Travel’s Secret Hotels.

Forum details:

Date: 5th May 2011
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: Contact Jane for details of the venue in Central London.
parents@instituteofideas.com

25 November 2010

We will be looking at the subject of child protection as Eileen Monroe’s report has recently been published:

Download the Munroe Review of Child Protection report

Venue TBC: Contact Jane Sandeman at parents@instituteofideas.com for details.

14th October 2010

The topic was the Graham Allen and Iain Duncan Smith document – Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens.

Download Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens

Although the Con/Lib Dem Coalition has not yet set out family policy, this gives a flavour of their key thoughts around this area.

Venue TBC: Contact Jane Sandeman at parents@instituteofideas.com for details.

Our meetup on 14 September 2010 looked at Male post-natal depression.

Introduced by Dr Ellie Lee.

Ellie wrote up what we discussed on Spiked.

Contact Jane Sandeman at parents@instituteofideas.com to attend future meetups.