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‘It should be a wonderful time to be a parent. Standards of living are higher than ever before; women no longer have to choose between work and motherhood; thanks to modern contraception we can plan the number and timing of our children, ensuring that we only have kids if we want and when we want....So why is it that with all these choices, all the flexibility, equality, love and respect we have come to expect as our right, parenthood comes as such a shock to the system?'
So Jennie Bristow opens her excellent new book Standing up to Supernanny, in which she argues that the problem is not that parents are inept, but the current obsession with perfect parenting. Relentless official pressure upon parents to do everything right ‘has made adults increasingly insecure about how they relate to children in general and crippled with anxiety when it comes to raising their own', Bristow argues.
Standing up to Supernanny, Bristow explains, is ‘about the need for privacy, and space from which we and our children can be ourselves and be with each other, shielded from instruction by parenting manuals, reality TV shows, and authorities'.
This week it came to light in the UK press that two working mothers have been told that they cannot look after each other's children unless they officially register as childminders and undergo Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) inspections. This is just one example among many of government-sponsored suspicion undermining and destroying the informal relationships and mutual support that parents rely upon.
As Bristow writes: ‘Families need privacy, but they also need each other. One of the most bitter ironies of recent policy developments is the way that the refrain "families are increasingly isolated" is offered as an excuse for intervention by the authorities, while policy actively works to increase families' isolation from each other'.
For those concerned about the pernicious effect of the professionalisation of parenting this book is a must-read.
