Positive relationships parents: Trying their hardest?

At a time when parents are coming under ever greater scrutiny and criticism for the way they bring up their children, a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation challenges some of the commonly held assumptions about parents and parenting.

While many 'parenting' studies concentrate on aspects such as discipline and opportunities for learning, Parenting in Ordinary Families: Diversity, complexity and change focuses primarily on the quality of the relationship between parent and child.

The study is based on responses to eight 'parenting' questions asked of mothers participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).

Researchers Andrea Waylen and Sarah Stewart-Brown combined these responses into a scoring system embracing mothers' attitudes, feelings and behaviour towards their child, which they then used to assess the way that parenting changes within different social and cultural groups during the child's early and middle childhood, and in response to the mother's health and social circumstances (see Further Information).

KEY FINDINGS

Contrary to many popular assumptions, what the researchers found was that parents were doing a good job in most circumstances, and that parenting did not vary systematically according to the age, educational level or ethnic group of mothers or fathers.

Child psychologist Jennie Lindon says, 'It is a timely point - given the media focus on knife crime - that most "ordinary" parents are doing their best by their children and that those children are turning out all right.'

The study also found that parenting proved more sensitive to changes in the mother's health and well-being than to changing socio-economic circumstances. Among the findings illustrating this point were that:

- Financial problems affected parenting, but only modestly, while increased family finances were not associated with an improvement in parenting scores

- Changes in marital status and housing tenure were not linked to changes in parenting scores, whether these circumstances improved, remained stable or decreased

- Deteriorations in the mother's physical or mental health were associated with a reduction in parenting scores, and in contrast to all other variables, improvements in the mother's health predicted the greatest increases in parenting scores.

Conclusions

In conclusion, the research noted that:

- Providing financial and social support to families may prevent large numbers of children being exposed to a reduction in quality of parenting. However, it is unrealistic to expect that moving families out of poverty will, on its own, improve parenting.

- Greater benefit may be seen if parenting policy were to emphasise the promotion of parents' mental and physical health alongside measures to improve parenting and reduce childhood poverty.

Early years consultant Anne O'Connor agrees. 'The report clearly shows that it is time policymakers stopped blaming parents and made mental health and emotional well-being a national priority.

'Poor health, depression and other mental health conditions are known to be major factors that affect attachment and set in train the cycle whereby today's poorly attached "behavioural-problem" children become the poorly-attached "problem" parents of tomorrow. And so the generational cycle of poor mental health continues.'

Julian Grenier, head of Kate Greenaway Nursery School and Children's Centre, adds, 'This is a very interesting report which should encourage practitioners in children's centres to continue to think carefully about what helps parents to bring up children.

'The findings are consistent with some of my impressions as a children's centre head, which are that the health, especially the mental health, of parents is of overwhelming importance, and as a society we place too little emphasis on this.

'Inner city areas like the one where I work are still, despite some positive developments, characterised by housing and social policies which lead to parents feeling isolated and unsupported. There are still many parents who cannot access the health services they need, nor specialist mental health services.

'The report also underlies my impression that most parents try their absolute hardest to give their children a good upbringing. The political discourse which sees parents, especially working class parents, as irresponsible and in need of parenting classes and other coercive measures will not help.'

'Children's centres play an important part in offering mothers guidance on nurture and attachment, but there is so much more that needs to be done.'

FURTHER INFORMATION

- Parenting in Ordinary Families: Diversity, complexity and change by Andrea Waylen and Sarah Stewart-Brown can be downloaded at: www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/details.asp?pubID=967

- Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a long-term health research project, www.alspac.bris.ac.uk.