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Roy Parker, Centre for Social Policy
Roy Parker is Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of Bristol, he was also the first Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bristol and is a Founding Fellow of the Centre for Social Policy at Dartington.
After an early career in teaching and social work, Roy became a Research Assistant at the LSE and then held a lectureship in Titmuss’ department at much the same time that Peter Townsend was there. In 1969, he was appointed Professor at Bristol where, later, he was joined by Peter Townsend.
He has been Chair of the Social Policy Association and of the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering and of a number of committees of enquiry. He was a member of the Seebohm Committee on the Reform of the Personal Social Services, of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation and of committees of the University Grants Committee and the ESRC as well as acting as a scientific advisor to the Department of Health.
Roy’s publications have included: Decision in Child Care; The Rents of Council Housing; Change, Choice and Conflict in Social Policy (with Hall, Land and Webb); Away from Home: a Short History of Child Care; Trials and Tribulations: Returning Children from Local Authority Care (with Farmer); Disabled Children in Britain (with Gordon and Loughran) and, most recently, Uprooted: the Shipment of Poor Children to Canada, 1867-1917. He has also edited a number of publications Caring for Separated Children and Adoption Now.
Speech
Parents, Problems and Policy
Much is heard about children and families but less about the policy implications of the parenting task in today’s society. I argue that the demands placed upon parents have increased but that this has yet to be reflected in broader-based policies.
I first encountered Peter Townsend in Bethnal Green in 1956 when he gave a talk on the research that he was conducting about the family life of old people.1 I was much impressed by what he had to say, most notably because he placed the lives of these elderly people in a ‘context’ that broadened the way in which the various issues confronting them were conceptualised and explained. Indeed, this approach became a hallmark of his work. In 1973, for example, in a lecture on sociology and social policy, he warned against relying upon administrative categories and concepts in our approach to the study of social policy.2 It is, therefore, Peter’s approach that I am taking in what I have to say on the theme of children and social policy. However, before I embark on that it is appropriate that I should remind you that today (20th November) is the twentieth anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Convention covers some 40 rights, many of which require for their realisation that there be a protective and benevolent context within which children can live and develop. That context comprises many elements, but the most important is the one created by parents. What, therefore, has been, or should be, the role of social policy in helping them to provide the kind of context that promotes the well-being of their children? Quite obviously being poor makes the task harder, but I am going to ask you to take that for granted in what follows. There are two reasons. First, because much has been said and written already about the ravages of ‘child poverty’: it is unnecessary to go over it again. The second reason is that if the aim of eliminating child poverty in the UK by 2020 is achieved it will still leave unresolved certain questions about how parents can be assisted, issues that have to be thought about now alongside those that are raised by the problems of conventional poverty.
Let me begin by looking back at what has typified the support that has been offered to parents in the past. One of its characteristics has been its selectivity. In order to receive support parents have had to satisfy certain conditions. That is, they have had to fit into certain administrative and sometimes clinical categories, or their children have had to do so. These categories have often carried an overtone of censure, or at least the implication that the recipients have been found wanting in some way. Of course, there are parents who pose a severe threat to the well-being, and sometimes the lives, of their children. However, other parental shortcomings have reflected little more than overwhelming poverty or moral disparagement. Whatever the actual or assumed deficiency the result has generally been a selective response. In its turn this has tended to lead to fragmented and piecemeal responses.
Nonetheless, it might now be argued that there has been a significant movement away from selective and piecemeal reactions. The aim of ‘supporting’ parents has loomed large in recent government pronouncements and initiatives. There are numerous examples. In the 2003 green paper Every Child Matters3 we read that ‘the government intends to put supporting parents and carers at the heart of its approach to improving children’s lives’ and, in 2007, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls, proclaimed in his foreword to The Children’s Plan4 that all parents were to be ‘backed’ in bringing up their children. The sentiment was echoed in the same year in the Treasury document Aiming High for Children5 and in the more specifically entitled Department for Education and Skills publication Every Parent Matters.6 This last set out what had been done to support parents and what it was intended to do. Both lists are impressive. So far, for example, we have the Sure Start scheme, the Childcare Act of 2006 (that, amongst other things, requires local authorities to secure sufficient childcare for working parents) and numerous other projects to improve parenting. Between 2007 and 2010 there were even more ‘actions’ planned; in the summarised list 49 are mentioned.
It would be unfair not to acknowledge so many good intentions, but they betray features that still reflect the narrowness that comes from their selective nature. Let me give two examples. Many of the projects, such as nurse-family partnerships or the ‘incredible years’ scheme, are concerned essentially with improving parenting, with offsetting ‘parenting deficits’. It would be hard not to agree that there are cases where this is needed in order to enhance children’s lives, provided, that is, that they achieve what is intended. They not only offer what might be broadly considered to be education in parenting but various supports as well. Of course, there are the questions of who is thought to need such help and of how they are chosen, encouraged to participate or choose to do so.
Whatever the answers the result is that some parents will not be candidates for this kind of assistance. For example, in the 2007 paper by the Social Exclusion Task Force entitled Reaching Out: Thinking Family the proportion of ‘families at risk’ is put at 2%.7 Yet some who fall outside the scope of this definition will be engaged in a daily struggle to manage and who, often only by heroic and unacknowledged efforts, succeed in keeping their heads above water. Against the odds they provide good, or, in Donald Winnicott’s wise phrase, ‘good enough’ parenting. It is difficult to estimate how many there might be but certainly they will include lone parents; parents of large families; parents on low wages or in intermittent employment; parents with sickly or disabled children, or parents who are themselves suffering from limiting conditions. How, we should ask, can the task of child-rearing be made less arduous for them as well? Obviously, by a reduction in poverty, but also by other means that I’ll come to in a moment. Before that, however, let me give my second example of the rather narrow approach that is detectable in recent policies to support parents.
For quite understandable reasons, support for parents has been focused upon those with young children: upon the antenatal stage and then upon ‘the early years’. This emphasis is based upon the established importance of these first years in shaping a child’s development, psychologically, socially and neurologically. If there is to be a ‘preventive strategy’ then clearly that’s where it has to start. Nobody would argue with that. Nonetheless, if one is thinking about supporting parents it has to be recognised that the stresses and strains do not cease when children reach school age. Indeed, they may well intensify as, for example, family break-up occurs, as fatigue sets in, as expenses increase and as life becomes more complex with the extra demands that growing children impose. In short, are we paying sufficient attention to helping parents with children in the ‘in-between’ ages, say from six to eleven? As the Every Parent Matters document recognises, these parents ‘remain a major influence on their children’s success’8, but in some ways policies begin to shift from supporting them to imposing new expectations, although still couched in the language of support. And that brings me to what I want to say about other, less selective ways, of supporting parents.
Policies of support for parents are typically cast in terms of the provision of services and, as a result, most become necessarily selective. However, if we consider what it is that causes the job of bringing up children to be so demanding for many we have to look beyond the provision of services for ways of making it easier. That is not to say that services are unnecessary but that they are not sufficient. Taking our lead from Peter Townsend we have to examine the structural pressures upon parents and then consider what might be done to make them less onerous. Let me list a few of the salient pressures.
Fairly obviously there are the complexities that arise from paid employment, especially when both parents are out at work (rather than out of work); when low pay means looking for extra hours, often at unsocial times; when several part-time jobs are being combined in order to secure enough income, or when the place or places of employment require long or complicated journeys back and forth. You will be able to compile your own list. It all adds up to a marked erosion of the time and energy that might have been available to be devoted to the children. Here, for instance, is a finding from one of the studies undertaken for the recently published Cambridge review of primary education: ‘… working unsocial hours leads a half of mothers and a third of fathers to say that their job limits the time they can spend reading [to] and playing with their children.’9 Not only this but the organisation of child care, or the taking to and fetching from school, have to be fitted in with working hours and then sustained over time. If parenting is to be made less demanding then the patterns of employment have to be made less demanding. Job-share or flexible working may be steps in the right direction, but they may actually impose additional complications. A government’s employment policies, as well as those that they encourage employers to adopt, need to be more carefully vetted with respect to their effect upon parenting. For example, as the British Association for Early Childhood Education has maintained, ‘there are unresolved tensions between the realisation by government of the key role that parents play in their children’s education and development, and the drive to get parents back to work’.10 This concern has been echoed by others, particularly in respect to the push to see more single mothers back in the labour force; for example, in Millar and Ridge’s study of such mothers where they conclude that the ‘family-work project’, as they term it, ‘requires substantial commitment from both the mothers and the children and effective social relationships’11 (my emphasis).
Schools are another powerful structural influence on parents. Their organisation (hours, holidays, location) impose unrelenting demands on those whose family lives have to be arranged around the organisation of the schools that their children attend; and if there is more than one child and they attend different schools it all becomes more difficult. Do we know, for instance, what impact the introduction of a six-term system or the development of ‘extended schools’ has made, or will make, upon parents and, in particular, upon which parents? But it’s not only school regimes to which parents have to respond: there are the proliferating expectations placed upon them. They are expected to be involved at home with their children’s education, helping them with their homework, reading to them, telling them stories, enlarging their horizons and so forth, not only in order to promote their child’s development but to support what is being done in the school. Furthermore, they are being encouraged to become ‘engaged’ with the school in a variety of other ways. All of this draws upon parents’ resources: of time; energy; confidence, and availability: resources that are not evenly spread. If you are poor, overworked, single-handed or feel yourself to be disparaged by the school you will find it difficult to become ‘engaged’ but nevertheless feel that you should be; that that is what is expected of you. What effect does this have? A lot has been done to bring parents and schools closer in the interests of their children, but I do wonder whether enough attention has been paid to what it all means for the parents.
Let me offer one final example of the structural influences that bear down on parents. It follows from what I was saying about schools; namely, that parents have to deal with an increasing range of expectations of their role. As far back as 1956 Richard Titmuss had written that ‘we have added to the psychological and social responsibilities of motherhood by raising the cultural norms of child rearing’ (my emphasis).12 That trend had been detectable since the end of the nineteenth century and, I would argue, has accelerated in a pronounced fashion in recent years. These mounting expectations bombard parents, and especially mothers, from many quarters, not all of which are easy to pin down. I have already mentioned the schools. There is also, for example, the expectation that parents will exercise a diligent oversight of their children’s activities, to see that they are not endangered, to control their behaviour, to look after their diet or to monitor their use of the internet. But as well as these kinds of expectations there are those that emanate from the combination of a rampant consumer culture and a deeply unequal society. These expose levels of consumption amongst the better off that tempt those with less to strive for similar material goods, a temptation that is encouraged by the market and by the easy availability of expensive credit. Parents are liable to feel that they have in some way failed their children if these temptations are resisted. In their turn children begin to feel that they are entitled to have certain consumer goods and add to the weight of expectations that parents experience. As Wilkinson and Pickett have argued,13 inequality increases the pressure to consume. The failure to match that expectation is liable to be felt as a lowering of status and, indeed, by some parents as an indictment of them as parents.
You can add your own examples of the many expectations that are heaped upon parents and which they impose upon themselves; but it is important to emphasise that their resources for meeting those expectations are not evenly distributed and for those who try to meet them but fail, the experience can have a cumulative, undermining and demoralising effect that is hardly helpful to their parenting. Governments could lessen the burden of unnecessary expectations by working towards a more equal society.
My pleas in conclusion are – -That we achieve a better integration of policies for children with those for parents. -That we think in terms of a wider scope for the services that support parents (a greater emphasis on the Every in slogans like Every Parent Matters). -That much greater attention is paid to offsetting, indeed moderating, the structural forces that make parenting a harder job than it need be. -That there is an assessment of the likely impact on parents of any proposed or new policies, in whatever field they may occur. -That perhaps Peter’s splendid study of the family life of old people should be resurrected, but as the family life of parents.
Notes
1 Published a year later as Townsend, P (1975) The Family Life of Old People: an Enquiry in East London. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
2 Reprinted in Townsend, P (1975) Sociology and Social Policy. London: Penguin.
3 HM Treasury (2003) Every Child Matters, cm 5860. London: TSO; p.39.
4 Department for Children, Schools and Families (2007) The Children’s Plan: Building Brighter Futures, cm 7280. London: TSO.
5 HM Treasury and Department for Education and Skills (2007) Aiming High for Children: Supporting Families. London: TSO.
6 Department for Education and Skills (2007) Every Parent Matters. London: DfES.
7 Cabinet Office, Social Exclusion Task Force (2007) Reaching Out: Thinking Family. Analysis and themes from the Families at Risk Review. London: Cabinet Office; p. 6.
8 Op. cit. p.18.
9 Referred to in Alexander, R (2009) Children, their World, their Education: Final Report of the Cambridge Primary Review. London: Routledge; p.71.
10 Ibid. p. 80.
11 Millar, J & Ridge, T (2009) ‘Relationships of Care: Working Lone Mothers, their Children and Employment Sustainability’, Journal of Social Policy, 38, 1; p. 119.
12 Reproduced as ‘Industrialisation and the Family’ in Titmuss, R (1958) Essays on the Welfare State. London: Allen & Unwin; p. 92.
13 Wilkinson, R & Pickett, K (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allan Lane; ch.15.
Word count 2,534 28 December, 2009
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