Yes, I know, it was reported in the Daily Mail. I really shouldn’t let it bother me, but I saw the link and just had to click.*
*Update: the article this link leads to has been changed to incorporate the second stage of this report of luncacy. You can find more information here, if you really want to spoil your day.
According to a report that followed a 2 year inquiry commissioned by the Children’s Society, we are now overrun with copulating Lolitas and Lolitos because, amongst other things, our children are afforded too much privacy (heaven forbid), courtesy of their unmarried, working, non-Christian mothers*. Next on the list is the availability of contraception, commercial pressures towards premature sexualisation, and, most terrifyingly for the do-gooders, that dangerously intangible thing - “a shift in attitudes”. Oh, whatever. If there were never shifts in attitudes we’d still be fumbling around in the Unenlightment, drowning people to prove their innocence and steering our ships away from the edge of the world.
The reports recommends the following (to whom exactly, I have no idea):
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Mothers to have three years’ unpaid leave with the right to return to their previous job at the end of this time – so employers are expected to shoulder even more responsibility for someone else's child
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“A new state-recognised birth ceremony similar to a christening so that non-Christian parents could affirm their commitment to the family after the birth of a child” – thus assuming that only institutionalisation of intent could possibly increase parental responsibility
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The introduction of emotional report cards for children at the ages of five, 11 and 14, as a check on their development and wellbeing – wonderful: teachers, health visitors, social workers taking on even more questionable responsibility for someone else's child
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Parents-to-be should get classes from the NHS on the demands of bringing up a child, while schools should give pupils lessons on parenting and relationship skills – (if this resembles any of the advice my health visitor attempts to thrust down my neck I would be truly appalled); the NHS and schools taking on yet more responsibility for someone else's child
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Sex and relationships, and understanding of the media should be a compulsory part of the personal, social and health curriculum – again, schools taking on more and more responsibility for someone else's child
So, rather than suggesting that parents and children alike, if they only knew it, could more than adequately equip themselves to do whatever is necessary to ensure that their family is strong, cohesive, and functioning effectively, yet again we are told that, actually, parenting is best if it is the responsibility of everybody but the actual parents, who are inherently too stupid to do it themselves.
The Children’s Society bemoans that our children have been “betrayed by rampant individualism” that has (wait for it) “eaten away at personal responsibility and any sense of the common good.”
What? Do they not realise what illogical nonsense they are peddling? Can these morons not understand that "rampant individualism" is exactly what we need? Telling people what to do and how they must do it; encouraging dependency on the state from the moment they are conceived, results in people who have no concept of personal responsibility in any aspect of their lives – people who will always need their arses wiped and will blame someone else when something goes wrong. People who have children they don’t really want, aren’t that interested in, don’t want to spend time with and don’t feel responsibility for because, paradoxically, that’s what been encouraged by the Experts Who Know Best. These are the people who can never truly choose to give anything of themselves to a “common good” – because someone else would have to give permission on their behalf in the first place.
You want parents to be there for their children? Stop telling them what to do - and even better, stop doing it for them. Enable them to realise that they are the authors of their own narratives. They can equip themselves with the knowledge, skills and abilities they need to find employment that is appropriate for their unique family arrangements. Never before has equitable access to unbounded information been easier. There are flexible employers out there. Home working is an option. The choice is there to set up one's own business or become self-employed. Parents can do whatever they want - if they want it badly enough – because there will always be people who want it less badly than them.
You want children to have a “childhood”? Allow them to set their preferred rate of development at their own pace, within their own families, amongst relatives who know and love them far better than you ever will. Age-appropriateness is utter nonsense, a subscription to a statistical idea of normal that doesn’t exist because children, like adults, are individuals. You want them to understand about sex, relationships and the media? Recognise that human beings are biologically hard-wired to learn autonomously if you’ll only let them. Teaching isn’t imperative to learning. Ensure that children can live amongst informed adults who are empowered to make their own decisions about what they deem to be appropriate for their individual circumstances.
Please realise, The Children’s Society - schools and teachers - the NHS and everyone else - you cannot and do not know the One True Way that we all must accept and follow. We’re all different, and some of us actually choose to think for ourselves already. Judging from the representatives of your organisations I have met and worked with over the years, there are very few of you who can say the same.
*That’ll be me, then.
