What seems to have happened is that the time spent working and parenting has squeezed the time for leisure and community. Add to this that families are much more mobile, staying on average only seven and half years in one neighbourhood, it means that ties with others in the local community are much weaker. A recent representative poll by the Family and Parenting Institute of 2,105 parents found that two thirds of parents were not engaged in any community activity.
Trust in other adults has plunged over recent decades as a result. The World Values Survey demonstrates that adults in Britain are less trusting of others than adults in other developed countries. Parenting seems more solitary and stressful. This puts the pressure on parents, especially if you consider that old African proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child”.
Still, unbelievably, there are those who say that parents today are behaving more selfishly, either refusing to marry or divorcing thoughtlessly.
Let’s tackle these accusations head on. Lower levels of marriage do not mean people care less about families and parenting.Marriage actually remains popular. According to a poll by Civitas, the vast number of under-35s eventually want to get married. The reason why fewer do is because it’s held in such high esteem. They want to find the right person and marry at the right time in their lives. That’s more difficult to achieve for young people with employment more unstable and the cost of living so high. As the researchers Jenny Reynolds and Penny Mansfield explain, marriage is now normally entered into – especially for women - because of love, not necessity. Not everyone seeks or finds this; but, thankfully, the stigma and poverty associated with non-marriage has declined, hence the lower rate.
Anyway, it is absurd to say that people are better parents because they are married. Yes, children with married parents tend to have better educational and social outcomes. But the best available evidence suggests that marriage itself doesn’t cause these better results. Rather, it’s the other way around. Those with higher incomes and educational attainment are more likely to marry. These characteristics could be the real reason for their children, on average, doing better. A recent paper by the Institute of Fiscal Studies supports this. If you compare a married and cohabiting couple with the same education levels, socio-economic status and own childhood family structure, there is no significant difference between how their children develop.
Think about it: God doesn’t come and sprinkle special dust over married people which suddenly makes them better parents overnight. What really makes married couples effective parents is that they have a more stable relationship – that’s probably why they’re getting married in the first place – are better educated, and tend to have higher incomes.
Remember that the overwhelming majority of children say they are happy, even against a backdrop of increased non-marriage and divorce. It does not seem to have made life more miserable. If anything, life is better than ever for children, even against this backdrop of the erosion of the nuclear family. That is because, as a literature review by the Department of Children, School and Families showed, what makes the difference to children’s happiness is not family structure, but parental warmth; and this happens if parents are married or not, even if they are divorced.
The classic nuclear family may have declined – with fewer marriages - but this has not made parents less committed. If anything, they are trying to do too much for their children. Perhaps because they feel guilty, they are unfairly punishing themselves for working long hours away.
However, it is important for children to have time for independent play, especially when they are young – it’s good for children’s well-being and the development of key cognitive and social skills. But only 17% of under-11’s say they have been allowed out independently, compared to 39% of today’s parents who report being allowed out independently when they we under 11. And UK children report spending less time engaging in outdoor activities than their Swedish and Spanish peers. With weaker social ties, parents here in Britain have become acutely aware of “stranger danger”, and are thus less willing to let their children out of their sight.
Especially for the poorest children, it is crucial that parents allow their children time to interact with children from different backgrounds. Since a child’s brain is 80% developed by the age of three, it is in the earlier years of a child’s life where exposure to richer and more diverse stimuli is paramount. In addition, the academic literature on social capital suggests that children who have access to a variety of social networks tend to have better outcomes.
This is why enabling and encouraging everyone to access community institutions such as Sure Start Children’s Centres, formal childcare settings and schools – where children from different backgrounds mix – is so important. Facilitating these experiences – especially when children are young – perhaps provides the key to tackling long-term disadvantage and disillusionment, the key causes of criminal behaviour by young people.
Worryingly, the evidence suggests that children from the most deprived backgrounds are not getting these opportunities:only 43% of 2 year olds with poorer parents are accessing formal childcare compared to 72% of 2 year olds with more affluent parents. Government reforms could worsen the situation. There is a danger that many Children’s Centres will close now local authorities do not have a ring-fenced grant which they are obliged to spend on Sure Start. On top of this, the amount of government investment in Sure Start is declining in real terms.
Free schools have enormous potential, so long as they do not cream students from more affluent homes, leading to greater social homogeneity in existing schools. And the Government has made formal childcare less accessible by cutting the amount of support for childcare costs from tax credits in the April 2010 Budget. Already, as Save the Children and Daycare Trust found in a survey this summer, a quarter of parents living in severe poverty have left the labour market because they cannot afford the childcare costs.
Politicians should not be lecturing parents, making them feel more anxious and guilty about not spending enough time with them. They should be generating policies that support them in what is becoming a more isolated and stressful task.
So, that means finding ways of fostering stronger social capital in communities. Call it the Big Society if you like. But it also means defending those strong local institutions that bring families, especially those from different backgrounds, together: nurseries and playgrounds. And if you really want to support parents and improve children’s outcomes, you would make formal childcare – where children from different backgrounds mix – affordable and high-quality for all.
