Western parents don't know how to bring up their children

hello and welcome to all of you thank you for coming tonight I must say after Hannah's introduction I can't say that the newspapers seem to think there is a more important topic in the world at the moment other than Fidelity and Affairs as I think we've witnessed over the past few weeks nevertheless I am Jenny Russell I'm a columnist for the evening standard and the Sunday Times and when I was asked to chair this I thought about the remarkable fact that in my adult life as a journalist and political commentator I don't think I've come across any topic that has the capacity to re to divide and enrage people so much as a topic of how we should bring up our children and even the current debates over Affairs or whether Ken Clark should be sacked or whether Fabio Capello should beat him to it don't interest people half as much as the private question of whether they're bringing up their children properly are they best pushed to their limits or should they be left to their own devices to find out who they are as people to investigate their own personalities and to find their own codes of behavior I have to say that um for 18 months I lost a friend after her small daughter turned up to my daughter's birthday party and then proceeded to spend most of the party leaning over the table and scooping the icing off the top of the birthday cake with her fingers and then licking them and when I told her to stop and behave herself my friend stormed out of the house and didn't come back again and I have to say that in many years of debating race and class and politics and religion with my friends I'd never lost one until that point the format of tonight is going to be that as usual I'm going to announce the results of the way you initially voted when you came into the hall and I'll do that at the end of the opening speeches and then we're going to take the second vote as the concluding speeches are being made and after the question and answer session from the floor and I'd just like to remind you how how to cast your vote in case you don't know you tear your ticket in half and you put either the for or against slip into The Ballot Box unless you're still undecided in which case you post the entire ticket well I can't really believe that there are going to be many of you who are undecided at the end of listening to tonight's panel and I hope this is going to be a pretty contentious discussion and the first Speaker for the motion is Amy cheer the year law professor whose somewhat Ry Memoir of her fanatical Chinese parent parenting style battle him of the tiger mother has been a sensational hit on both sides of the Atlantic and it's made her a heroine to some people and a complete hate figure to others and the most remarkable thing I find about this is that Amy says she had absolutely no idea she was going to get any reaction to it she wrote it as a literary Memoir and didn't foresee that people were going to take it off as a kind of personal stamp of approval or disapproval of the way they raised their own children I must say I think Amy's image of turning her small daughter out into the snow because she wouldn't do her piano practice is one that's pretty Unforgettable I'd now like to welcome Amy to start tonight's [Applause] debate thank you so much Jenny and thank you all for coming this evening let me first very clearly State my position to the extent that I believe Western parents don't know how to bring up children I also believe Chinese parents don't know how to bring up children we're all struggling to get it right there are many ways of being a good parent and I absolutely do not think that Chinese mothers are superior contrary to a certain newspaper headline that you may have seen which I never approved and do not agree with in fact when it comes to child rearing I think that Asia and the West have opposite problems in general Asian child wearing can be too strict too harsh and too stifling whereas in general I think Western parenting has become too permissive and too indulgent and battle hym of the tiger mother is really about my own struggle to find a balance between eastern and western Parenting by way of quick background I was raised Myself by extremely St but also extremely loving Chinese immigrant parents and the approach worked with me I had a wonderful childhood and to this day I adore my parents um we voluntarily vacation with them every chance we get which I think is saying a lot and I feel that I owe them everything which is why even though my husband is not Chinese I wanted to raise my own two daughters sopia and Lulu the same way that my parents raised me me with my first daughter Sophia things went smoothly and I got cocky but then my second daughter Lulu came along and I got my comeuppence she is a real Fireball we have very similar personalities I feel she was born saying no we locked horns from day one and the book is actually filled with zany show Downs I want to just uh say I never put my daughter out in the cold actually what happened is I said if you don't stop banging on the piano I'm going to put you out there in the cold and Lulu true to her personality stepped out and faced me defiantly and the end of that chapter is me bribing her back with hot chocolate and marshmallows to make her come back in um so we fought a lot but she always came back but then at age 13 something very different happened Lulu rebelled not in a funny way she became very angry very alienated seemed to turn against everything I stood for and the CL X of my book is a terrible public fight in Moscow Red Square I'm not going to give it away but the most uh terrible things that have ever been said to me were said there um and Lulu threw a glass broke a glass and said I you know I hate you I hate this family you're a terrible mother you're selfish everything you say you do for me is actually for yourself you make me feel terrible about myself so for those of you who haven't read the book I'm pretty tough on myself um but it was a horrible uh experience and at that very moment it suddenly uh hit me that oh my God I might lose my daughter and when that hit me nothing else mattered I don't care about school or grades or the violin and that's when I changed uh not completely um I still refus to compromise on academic uh excellence and many things but but I pulled back I let Lulu drop the violin to do what she wanted which at the time was to play tennis I really loosened up socially she has a Facebook an iPod uh the kids had four sleepovers in the last two months um something I'm not happy at all about so Battle himym of the tiger mother is the story of my own Journey as a mother it was never intended to be a parenting guide or a Sally into the mommy Wars with all that said the book does have a point of view while I certainly have regrets if I had to raise my girls all over again I would basically do the same thing with some adjustments so um I'm not saying it's for everyone but I'm a proud strict mom taken down a few notches proud of the daughters I raised and proud of my relationship with them what I want to do now is switch gears and address some of uh the weaknesses that I see in Western parenting first on the point of self-esteem Western parents spend a lot of time worrying about this but I'm not really sure they know how to instill it I think we do our children a disservice when we praise them when they know they haven't put in their best effort or when we give them trophies when they haven't accomplished anything that doesn't give them real Inner Strength real self-esteem has to be earned by overcoming a challenge or mastering something jokes about a pluses and gold medals aside for me in the end it's not about grades or achievement it's about believing in your child more than anyone else not letting them give up even when they want to and helping them see that they are capable of more than they think second on the point of choice and freedom whereas I think Asian parenting tends to give children too little choice I think Western parents tend to give children too much Choice particularly when they're very young if you give a six or seven-year-old uh the choice to pursue their passions on any given day that passion is going to be probably playing video games and eating candy all day very young children are not mature enough to know what's best for them I remember once Lulu came home from school with a bad math test she was about 7 years old and she came home and announced I hate math I'm bad at math now I think a lot of Western parents I know this because this is my husband uh would say don't worry Lulu you don't need to be good at math you could be good at something else not everybody has to be good at math I went the other way I said no way how do you know you of course you're good at math and I wrote up all these practice tests um and we drilled them I had a stop every night for one week um it wasn't guantan Bay it was just one week and after that uh the next test one week later she actually did very well on her test and then she decided that she quite liked math and today at 15 math is her favorite subject one of the reasons that my husband who was raised completely differently supported my strict parenting is because he was actually somebody who wished his parents had forced more things on him he he remembers when he was about eight and his mom gave him the choice do you want to learn to play the violin or go play with your friends go play with my friends um he also wishes that somebody had forced him to learn a second language when we got married he got the language tapes didn't work it's really hard to learn Chinese at age 30 third I think that Western parenting or at least the mommy Wars is often based on false dichotomies there's a tendency in these parenting yours to boil everything down to Black or White do you want success for your kids or happiness do you want to be a strict parent or let your kids have fun do you want them to drill and work hard or do you want them to be creative and I think these are false choices and not helpful and I think they tend to give parents the easy way out take happiness if I had a magic button and I could choose either happiness for my children or success I would choose happiness in a second that's a no-brainer I just think that it's more complicated I do not believe that if you say to your children do whatever you want pursue your passions I love you that that will necessarily lead to happier adults and I don't even think it necessarily leads to happier children in all the Western Nations we have very high rates of teenage depression teenage alcohol and substance abuse and teenage age pregnancy and in general I think these are problems of too little structure not too much and they do not lead to happiness another false dichotomy creativity or practice and hard work obviously we want both particularly in America I think there's a tendency to romanticize creativity just give your kid a saxophone an amazing Jazz will pop out especially areas with math like math and music you need to have basic skills first before you can come up with string theory or the theory of relativity you need to know how to multiply really well before you can play an amazing Mozart conero brilliantly and emotionally and passionately you need to be able to play in tune you need those basic foundations first I want to wrap up uh by saying that I didn't write this book to have foreign policy implications uh those are my two previous book which nobody ever read um but nevertheless like it or not um child raring in fact is inextricably linked to the future of Nations and I have no doubt I've been thinking how could this happen to me why I have no doubt that at least part of the reason for The Firestorm at least in the United States is that my book accidentally tapped into to two of America's deepest anxieties fear of parenting and fear of China okay but China has but China you has anxieties too you might be amused to know that my book with no words changed is being marketed in China in exactly the opposite way in fact uh I'm a lawyer when I first saw the cover of my book I thought oh my God I need to bring a lawsuit to uh bring an injunctive relief because I looked at the cover and the Chinese title of my book is Parenting by a Yale law professor raising kids in America and there's a picture of me in a red white and blue flag and so I asked my Chinese friends I said this is I can't take this this is terrible but talking to a lot of Chinese people they explained to me and convince me that it's actually not a bad title the reason for that is because all of the things that are so outraging the Western audiences you know uh drilling math and piano to um uh uh you know two hours a day no playdates or sleepovers they never even heard of these things um are are not even controversial I mean that's just not even considered strict I think you'll be um so for them it's the last part of the book you know this see this woman learned to give her kids more choice and more freedom and things came out well so that's a how the book is being pitched I'm sort of the cuddly mom over there um the uh done okay great let me just so the key takeaway Point um am I done with 10 minutes or 12 oh 12 okay so let me just uh the key point I want to make here is that China is trying to learn from the west and I think instead of being complacent we should try to learn from China too um to conclude then I just want to ask everybody here tonight to think back to your own parents or grandparents or the generation that survived wartime Europe what do you think those parents were like I bet they didn't sugarcoat or spend their whole time arranging play dates for them parenting was about preparing kids for the future to ensure that they would have a better life after all the British education system was one of the envies of the world and perhaps it's time to reclaim those traditional British values of discipline rigor hard work and respect for excellence thank you thank you very much Amy that was extremely amusing and did you notice she reclaimed her character um the first Speaker against the motion is Justine Roberts um the ex- banker who started a mother's website mumsnet in her back room after her babies were born and who now finds herself one of the most famous and influential women in Britain every political leader quoted that website at the last election and Justine's just published um a new book of which he's the co-author the mom's net rules which is aimed at parents who would like to navigate parenting without losing either their cool or their sanity Justine thank you well I should start by saying having spent a futile 30 minutes trying to prize my 5-year-old away from Angry Birds this morning at and towards his cornflakes that I am very very strongly tempted to cross the floor and join Amy's team um but fortunately there are plenty of other Western parents out there some of you in the audience no doubt uh who are far better role models than me and I will speak I hope on your behalf um so yes if we judge um ourselves by the number of musical prudes we produce and the number of mass wizzes Asian parents are beating us hands down there's no doubt about it and I agree with Amy who does not regret giving not practicing their instrument more who amongst us wishes perhaps they hadn't given up uh at the first chance and who doesn't think that they might have got better grades if the either their teachers or their parents had pushed them a bit more but we know in our bones that there is more to life than agres uh and most of us I think would count a happy pre- childhood as being one of the best gifts gifts we could bestow on our children and on that we're not doing too badly now a survey of British teens recently found that seven out of 10 were very satisfied very satisfied how many teens do you know who are very satisfied about anything they were very satisfied about their lives in contrast South Korea has the highest rate of teen depression in the oecd and the biggest killer of 17 to 2 four-year-olds in South Korea which I have to say are are kind of the most tigerish of all the tiger Nations as far as parenting is concerned is suicide you know it's no joke this onethird of CH Chinese primary school children suffer from psychological ill health Accord according to a recent survey and that's caused they say by classroom pressure and parental uh parental stress um so it must be said you know I personally might swap a little bit of psychological ill health for a few fewer Renditions of Chopsticks paid ever more badly but you know we're relatively speaking I don't think we're doing that badly quite apart from being a good parent you know um you know quite a large part of it I agree with Amy is preparing our children for the future and some of that does involve learning skills yes the mass of music but only some of it imag imagination creativity crital critical thinking and social skills are important and evidence shows that rote learning really does um yes it results in proficiency but it doesn't do much for creativity uh a recent survey of 29 countries that that found the Chinese came first in terms of their calculation skills but they came last for imagination the Chinese way um is one of obsessing about perfection in Amy's book she talks about only top of the class is acceptable gold medal is the only medal I will accept nothing but a grades uh but if you chase Perfection the chances are you're going to be quite risk averse um if all that matters in life is scoring top marks when will you ever take a chance now this Tory government is very fond of telling us that the only way we will get out of our current economic meire is VI Entre entrepreneurs entrepreneurs will help us escape and entrepreneurs are Risk Takers we need Risk Takers we need innovators and if you look at this country three of our most famous businessman entrepreneurs uh Richard Branson Alan sugar Simon Cal barely got a GCS between them and who who wouldn't want to produce Simon Cal I mean he's he's very nice to his mom I'm told it's silly to suggest that we're perfect in the west I wouldn't pretend that for a second yes we struggle to get our kids off Facebook off Angry Birds and onto the piano stool and some of us quite frankly hanker after the old days where we could say you do it because I told you say um but the answer is not authoritarian parenting it's not right to control through shame which is some of the approach that Amy advocates in her book instead what the moms net has would suggest in the collective wisdom of the mumsnet rules is an approach of authoritative parenting this does emphasize high standards we agree you should have man manners you should be diligent you should even ask your children to do some chores around the house and start them early but it's accompanied by parental warmth and yes I'm afraid it's a accompanied by a commitment to reasoning unless of course they're arguing for a guinea pig in which case no amount of reasoning should Prevail frankly tiger parenting is just not viable in our modern democratic individualistic Society believe me I've tried it now and then and invariably I get confronted with children who say they're about to call the Social Services uh at the same time giving an impassioned speech about the rights of man but on balance wouldn't you rather that wouldn't you rather have children with a strong sense of themselves with confidence uh in their own work Earth I know I would even if sometimes I wish they would practice the piano more thank you very [Applause] much thank you Justine the second speaker for the motion is someone who has never been surprised when his views have caused controversy Theodore Dal rmle is the pseudonym of Anthony Daniels and he's a doctor who for 15 years wrote wiy Savage and often deeply depressing accounts of the lives of his underprivileged patients in the pages of The Spectator and his despare about the gulf which he clearly saw between the values that he was brought up with and those which he thought he saw being espoused in the people around him was absolutely evident but equally evident and for some readers as a very uncomfortable J position was the contempt in which it was felt he held some of those people Theodor is the author of spoiled the toxic Cult of [Applause] sentimentality well thank you Madame chairman ladies and gentlemen um I first realized that there was something wrong with the way uh we bring up our children of course other than my own childhood um and I must here tell you about a friend of mine who a Russian who went to live in in America and he at his parties at parties he always introduced himself and said uh hello I'm such and such I hate my parents don't you and he never found anybody who didn't hate their parents uh but I first realized that there was something wrong when a friend of mine who was working in Pediatrics told me that a mother had come to him asking uh for his help Dr she said uh can't you do something about Johnny he's terrible he smashes things he won't do what he's told and you should hear his language well I had a a not dissimilar experience shortly afterwards a patient came to me she had a son with her who just had his uh third birthday and there wasn't anyone who could look after him at that moment so she had to bring him into my room and the child was not surprisingly restless and started to pick up things from the uh from the desk and she said put that down he put it down picked up something else she put that down and uh he put it down and then finally he picked up the telephone and she said put that down and he looked at her bear in mind he's just had his third birthday he turned to her and with sheer malignity in his eyes said well you now of course these are mere anecdotes uh but if you listen to the children coming out of the school in the little market town in which I live when I'm in England uh which is prosperous and without the Great RIS social problems uh you can hear the same kind of thing and what is symptomatic is that uh when children are on the street in any numbers when they come out of school uh adults shrink away half in fear and half in disgust and this is not imaginary I would take you and show you and incidentally I was uh just lying down in my bedroom here in South kington and I heard the children coming out and the average British child it seems to me cannot go further than about 10 yards without an exploitive it's kind of rocket fuel for him and the and I also saw in a little Supermarket because I'd forgotten to buy some razors bring some razors uh a French mother obviously very well off actually fighting with her child in the in the supermarket and the security person in this uh uh Supermarket told me that this was by no means uncommon now it's obviously not true that no parents bring up their children well in the west and obviously many do so I'm asking you to consider this motion not statically but dynamically in terms of Trends rather than the current state and I shall also refer to Britain both because I know it best and because Britain is in the Forefront or Vanguard of almost anything that is undesirable and uh unfortunately other countries uh tend to move in our Direction rather than the other way well consider this what what does it mean that more than a third of children in this country never eat a meal at a table with another member of their family or perhaps I should say household I used to go into houses when I was practicing as a doctor and there were many such houses in which Not only was there no cooking apparatus unless you count microwave oven's cooking apparatus but there was no single piece of furniture at which people could have eaten together and that's over a third of children in this country and this is not a small matter because of course eating together is one of the most Elementary and I think important manners of socialization of learning to control one's appetite and behavior for the sake of others and it's not available to a very considerable proportion of the population uh of children in this country it's hardly surprising then that so many of them are fat and this obesity is a manifestation simultaneously of overindulgence and neglect you could say overindulgence as neglect or neglect as overindulgence overindulgence because no attempt is made to reign in their appetites and neglect because such riging in is very difficult it's painful it requires training and discipline and it's usually on the part of the mother but also on the part of the Father Again children in Britain are by the end of their childhood nearly twice as likely to have a television in their bedroom as a father living at home is this not also a sign of indulgence and neglect of course not every such um upbringing ends in disaster either social or psychological or economic or anything like that because human beings are very resilient uh creatures but this is surely far from good let alone optimal if you look around many perhaps most of our schools you will find the surroundings astonishingly littered the reason that no one in this room litters is not because each time he or she has a piece of potential litter in his or her possession uh and and he makes a decision not to litter by means of a deduction from a cartisian first principle which is indubitable it is because his mommy told him or her not got to and instilled it into him or her well wherever you go in this country as it happens I've just written a book about this uh there is um there is uh litter and if you want to see the nplus ultra of it I recommend the A14 between the m6 and Huntington it's truly astonishing each piece of litter and there are millions of them is a kind of material trait place of deficient socialization I am amused but also despairing when I see the children in my town approach a litter bin with a piece of litter and then as if they knew that litter bins had something to do with litter but they couldn't quite work out what it was they drop it not in it but by it in other words civilized or Civic conduct in this country is a kind of faint memory it's a bit it's a bit like what somebody one of my patients said when I asked him who Shakespeare was he said it rings a bell well I'll I'll be very brief I'll uh when someone in my town complained of uh the litter around the school the school instit Ed litter studies if we take education in this country we spend £60,000 per head on education uh on compulsory education or I should say attendance at school and yet 25% about 25% of our children turn out illiterate and enumerate or barely literate and barely enumerate there is no protest about this whatsoever and if a teacher should should draw attention and no doubt he uses very bad methods in teaching but nevertheless if he draws attention to some deficiency in school he is more likely to be attacked by the parents than the parents are are likely to try and do anything about the child and in this country recent survey showed that 10% of Headmasters has have been physically attacked in the last year uh by uh by parents or what are known as car carers of children if you take again the the lack of protest about this terrible deficiency it is not that mothers do not protest in this country if you see a pedophile being brought to court there are often large numbers of of mothers with terrified children in toe screaming for the death of the pedophile but if you look at the the story of the so murderer what it revealed what was interesting about that was what it revealed about the murderers relations with many children before and the complicity of parents in what he had done in for example a TW the mother of a 12-year-old refused to cooperate with the police uh in investigating illegal sexual relations with so ladies and gentlemen to conclude I will say taken in the round there is plenty of reason to support this evidence if you do not take it too literal mindedly thank you thank you Theodor and the final speaker against the motion is Frank fured who is the provocative professor of Sociology at the University of Kent and Frank is a slightly unusual academic in that he's actively interested in taking academic debates and bringing them out into the public Arena he's particularly interested in the whole questions of authority and parenting and how he managed the relationships between children and adults in a suspicious Society he's the author of 13 books including paranoid parenting Frank thank you very much [Applause] Jenny good evening everybody I I don't know if you noticed but whenever it comes to discussion on parenting everybody feels that they got a warrant to take their own personal story and to recast it as a grand philosophy and on no other issues are we allowed to communicate such prejudices and such stereotypes as we do in relation to Parenting so Theodore happened to hear a couple of children swearing and it's concluded that has never happened before in British Society you know children of my generation would never use a four-letter word that was Unthinkable uh whereas now what we have is this epidemic this pathology of children going around and swearing and and and because of that uh sort of obviously British parents are not doing their bit Amy on the other hand concludes that in Western societies children have too much choice in fact they have so much choice in Britain that middle class children in London have literally their entire life organized for them by their parents from the moment they got up in the morning for the first set of activities as they kind of transfer around by their parents from this activity to the next literally they got no free time to be children and to relax the idea that somehow we live in a world where children have these incredible choices you know so parents are laidback chilled out just get on with it is a myth that bears literally no relationship to reality and I think it's important to realize that uh you know when we're talking about Western parenting you know uh what we are really talking about is intensive parenting Western parenting is phenomenally intensive parents spend far more time with their children today than they did in any other Generations a a working mother in the 21st century in Britain spends about 2 three hours more a day looking after her children that a mother who stayed at home in the 1970s that's how intensive it really is and I think what's very interesting is that all these so-called Asian attributes that are brought out in am's books are not Asian at all I mean anybody body that's been been to New York Westchester County been to Cambridge Massachusetts will recognize those characteristics straight away just to give you an example of how this works uh the other day A friend of mine who lives in New York uh told me a story about how her four-year-old child has been on this waiting list for this high-powered preschool Nursery a waiting list and and she's been on us for months and months and months and she really was at a loss to know how she could you know sort of train her child to get into a nursery so she can play with toys and and develop and at first I thought she was exaggerating the way most parents do so I went online and I discovered this uh online service which is called how to Ace at a preschool interview this is in in New York these are not CH this is not an online service for Chinese people or for Cambodian refugees this is address towards westerners it this what they say education nowadays starts even before kindergarten like age three months the best and the most elite preschools don't just have expensive T tuition they have long waiting lists of eager parents who would love to send their children there in a heartbeat if you're lucky enough to have a preschool call you and your child for an interview you should do everything in your power to give the best possible impression now that kind of intensive High powerered parenting would be familiar to anybody that lives in Northern L North London as it would be in most middle class neighborhoods throughout the country in in in London as far as I can tell there seem to be more tutors of young children than rats these days literally literally everybody I know has got a has got a Tor working for them so that's on the on this kind of stereotype that we're very laid-back and relaxed we care about self-esteem we don't you know we don't let you know we kind of allow children to make too much choices and then the other side of the stereotype is that in China or in Asia parents are really hardass I mean they really they they would never dream of spoiling a child right the fact that there are these little Emperors in China and that there's been a a protracted debate in China about how children are spoiled by their parents a debate that's been going on for a very very long time um it just happens to be an awkward fact and if you happen to have gone to Shanghai or if you go to Beijing you'll find that the equivalent of the Westchester mummies and the Islington daddies in China have entire exactly the same parenting style maybe they say it in the Chinese language they not than English as they do here so it seems to me that what we're discussing at the moment are essentially two middle class approaches towards parenting rather than anything that is culturally different from one another so it's very easy to get confused in the debate my argument is simple and straightforward Western parents are actually quite good at parenting it's not rocket science you don't need a pH in development psychology to be a good mom or or a good dad there's no problem with Western parents the real problem is that we do everything possible to make it very difficult for parents to have confidence in making judgment calls we make it very very difficult for parents to live the life of being a good parents because all of their intuition all of their all of their way approaches towards life is continually undermined so what are the problems with with with with problems that we Face the first problem that we face in the west and Western culture is that we devalue parental competence time and time again we continually pathologize what parents do politicians of all political parties seem to dine out on on on lecturing parents about their failures and I I can still see the moment I think it was either David Cameron but it could have been Gordon Brown because on this day at one you know they are totally together on this particular kind of issue I remember that typical sort of presidential lecture where you get that kind of look on their that pain look on their face they that passionate care that really pain look as they say you know you know Jim this is on the Today program parenting is probably the most difficult job in the world right and everybody gives them a standing ofation because we you know it's such an obvious thing parenting is the most difficult job in the world actually it isn't I tell you if you know being a nuclear physicist is a little bit more difficult it's a little bit more difficult than being a parent being a you know sort of a like a Formula One driver on balance is a bit more complex than changing the Naes of your son right but the very idea that we say parenting is the most difficult job in the world which sounds really good it's meant to say meant to communicate the idea that that I feel for you you know I take this very seriously is actually another way of saying that you mom over there and you dad over there are unlikely to be up to this very difficult job right you Mom and you dad need a phenomenal amount of parenting advice you need a a policy of experts to come in and hold your hands and give you what what Cameron and bran always call support right so it seems to me that what we have under these circumstances are these very helpful reminders that tell us how difficult parenting is which then makes parents very insecure which then leads to what I think is the the real problem is that when there are so much pressure on parents to do this very difficult job what they invariably do is begin to live their life through their children and as you live your life to your children you begin to lose sight of just what it is that you ought to be doing and because you live your life to your child your parenting style becomes synonymous with your identity and I think that's a really sad tragic thing about the world that we live in we forget about the real job of child rearing and we become much more concerned about parenting as a cultural accomplishment of identity construction and the reason why we have these debates and we have debates around dinner tables all the time is because these days when your identity is apparent is so much part of who you are you cannot simply say well Amy brings her child up this way that's cool I don't like it but that's her business right just brings up her kid that way yeah well you know bit slack not what I would do but but fine you know instead of saying I'm just leaving it at that we do it differently because maybe our children are different our circumstances are different we need to make a political issue out of who we are as parents and the more we make a political issue out of who we are as parents the more we take our eyes of the real job which is just looking after our kids in the best way that we can and I think that on a good day Western parents do that really really well and the problem is not the fact that Western parents cannot bring up their kids the real problem is that because of all these pressures that I've described Western parents have lost the capacity to chill out relax and get a life thank you thank you Frank well from the whoops of Applause that greeted that last contribution you might be unsurprised to know that in the prevote the the number of people voting for the motion was 149 the number against was 325 but the don't NOS amount to 194 so there are an awful lot of people to be swayed over the next 25 minutes um I'd like to start by um dimming the light slightly so that I could see the audience because now it's time for questions but at the moment the lights are so bright that I can't quite make anybody out um there are a couple of ushers who have got microphones um and we're going to take questions in threes and it would be great if you could just say briefly who you were but apart from that please keep your questions very brief and to the point and don't make statements because I'll just have to move on um could we start if anyone who'd like to speak raising their hands no one's got anything to contribute um somebody right at the back there hello um my name's J I'm parent a seveny old and I'm just wanted to BR studies um I just wanted to ask um Justine a question actually because I do think that there is um a sort of tendency for us to sort to say well we don't want to impose too much on our children and I think we do it in education as well um do you think that there's a tendency nowadays to um make children make decisions work out their own risks and all this kind of thing and actually what we're doing is we're creating U we're sort of saying well we can't do it ourselves so we'll let the children do it and um we're creating a nation of warriors in our own children thank you very much Josephine is there another hand gentleman here in the middle and another one after that thank you this question is for any yeah I had a tiger mom and I was actually wondering um looking back how would you recommend um encouraging your children to follow their passions but still um I guess having that rigorous high level achieving type of an attitude thank you and young boy over here I just wanted to ask do you think that achieving academically is as um good as achieving like socially is that a question for anyone in particular no thank you very much Amy do you want to start to start out what would be the new revised tiger mothering um well in the end I actually do think that uh having your kids follow their passions is the most important thing um you know I think that uh I guess where I would differ with a lot of Western parents is I don't always assume especially when kids are little that they know exactly what that passion is going to be um you know I know if you ask my uh children my girls you know their best all of their friends at around age 12 they all want to be Hollywood film producers and rock stars and I wouldn't be against that I think those are actually great passions but they're they're those are hard to achieve too you know so um but to answer your question I you know I don't I'm still struggling with this myself um Lulu wanted to play tennis instead of violin and it really broke my heart because she was a beautiful and very emotional violin player and all I can say is maybe it's about instilling those early skills uh at a young age so that they kind of have rigor and focus and then letting them just kind of out to uh pursue to make their own choices later um a nice compliment I got from her coach was uh you know that you know your kid has a great work ethic she never blames anybody she really just keeps at it she doesn't give up so I was thinking wow maybe you know Chinese parenting did work with Lulu afterall and I started getting all excited I started you know like making calls and uh she said lay off mommy you know I don't need you um uh this is my thing so so I'm still looking for that right balance Amy just to pick up that do you think that achieving academically is as important more important than achieving socially you kept your children away from play dates and so on for much many of their years did that matter I I actually think that socialization uh is extremely important and I think that in China this is a real problem or I've seen kids that look like their parents agree with Frank they're just hovering over them they can't do anything um I don't tend to think that this is the main problem we have in the west so my you know I think we've overe exaggerated the need to kind of sculpt uh you know how much playtime when I was little we just played outside and the neighbors uh you know and the states there's a lot of play time at school and my kids actually did have plenty of play dates and playground things before you know when they were very little it's only between the ages of eight and 14 which is a lot of years that I would say they had far few sleepovers and playdates they had tons of friends tons of friends at school you know these camps these music camps these Sports things um so I think socialization I actually agree that it's equally important I've seen it um but uh but I think maybe again it's Asia and the West have gone too far in opposite extremes that you know Asia might have to worry about this can we produce leaders that can function and and be you know be funny and humorous and have initiative but I'm I'm just think that that's not our main weakness that uh we don't have enough play dates Frank you want just come in quick yeah uh I think that uh it's not right to to talk about socialization and education academic education in the same bread for a very simple reason that parents are the worst teachers for their children I mean I don't know if ever any of you ever ski and and and and and and watched parents trying to teach their kids how to ski and they're so emotionally involved in the whole process that they they can they just kind of lose control over the whole thing because they there's too much involved and similarly parents who do a lot of homework with their kids end up losing sight of their own needs from that of the child and that's why I would argue that yeah academic stuff is important but leave that to teachers and to schools and to universities on the other hand parents are indispensable for giving kids very clear cues and signals about how to make their way in the world and what parents be very good at is socializing children to communicate values to them to show them how you engage in awkward situations and I think uh to that extent we should be very very clear that parenting really works well when it's discreet when it's about child rearing the more we load on to Parenting you know my parents become therapists and teachers and philosophers and all the rest of that mentors the more parenting becomes denuded of any real content and I think that's the best way of of seeing the two Justine what do you think about that and what do you think about the idea that we're loading too many choices onto children um I think you know I I hate to disagree with my own side oh no pre country but I would just say that I think it's impossible not to be a mentor as a parent and in some way to be a therapist I mean you know it's you who's going to be there at 11:30 of night when they're sort of worried about their boyfriend or whatever but that's a only a slight disagreement Frank but broadly we are a team um on the on the sort of choice question um I think actually choice on on the whole empowers a child I think if you're talking about causing angst and worry uh you know choosing your child's GS gcses or making them do physics when they'd rather do art that probably causes a lot more angst um but I do think there is a limit to choice and I kind of agree I think with the sense I get from Amy that you know we can give our choices uh our our young kids too much Choice um I know this from personal experience when my 5-year-old son chose to go to school in a gypsy skirt um and um he never did again after that horrible day but I possibly shouldn't have allowed that to happen and certainly most of the other parents at the school thought I'd made a terrible Choice there myself thank you can we take another round of questions if there's anyone on the balcony oh yes I can see someone right there's a static microphone there would you like to come forward to it and then um I can't sorry I can't quite see you but do come line up behind the speaker um and you there go ahead hi Elizabeth forter House really just addressing the panel I've just heard talk of over involved under involved parents and really I don't know if anyone could inform me with regards to mental ill health in children statistically West versus East that's it thank you I have a more practical question I have two kids one five and 17 and I would bring in a new sort of uh uh idea to the whole debate ambition because I want my children to be the best but I don't want them to be the best because they afraid of me or because I was up until midnight with them but uh the question would be can you teach ambition and if you can how how do you make children to be ambitious so that they strive for the best because of their own good not because of an external pressure wow effortless achieving ambition H that's a Holy Grail I look forward to the answers hi I'm Viv grop um I'm a writer and mother of three children which I've recently discovered is an answer to the question how many children is twoo many children bit late to find that out um I wanted to pick up on what Theodore dmle said um about the man who asked everyone um I I hate my parents don't you too isn't this whole debate really about our greatest fear which is excepting the inevitable that our children will hate us thank you very much um the I think I'm going to start with you as a doctor want therefore to know about statistics on mental health and perhaps answers to all the rest too I don't know well I I I don't actually know the statistics about this and in any case child cchi is such a woolly subject that I I wouldn't put much trust them all I can say is that in France they have the highest consumption of um uh of psychotropic medicine in the world by quite a long way um as far as uh parents um inevitably being hated by uh by their uh children I thought I was pessimistic but um I yield that you yield to this I yield to that kind of pessimism um so um and how how do you instill some an effortless sense of ambition well I don't I don't that's a very diffic difficult question because I don't think it's merely a question of what adults uh parents do it it's uh it's much more uh socially um U socially constructed than that and that that uh if you live in in a large in large parts of Britain for example there is no ambition other than to be a footballer or a um or to be a pop star and when they talk about talent that is what that is what they mean by talent and so I think that it would be very difficult for parents in those circumstances too to so I I think that is a very difficult Amy do you have some quick response to that one yeah I have us very um on the our children will inevitably hate us uh I just have such a different uh World viiew um uh you know maybe it's just a falling into Frank's trap my own it's just one case of one but um but you know I absolutely adore my parents and my father's actually here this evening and we my kids absolutely love my parents and we really do vacation together I'm literally every vacation we take we include my parents so uh I just don't have such a bleak view on the ambition question I guess myself I I wouldn't necessarily want to instill just blind ambition in my children uh despite my uh reputation um but uh for me I think it's an interesting question which is how do you instill uh self motivation and I think it's absolutely true uh on the chill out point that I think some people are going to be inherently selfmotivated my husband had the lack as parents nothing and very very just some people are sort of driven for one reason or the other um but have having said that I do think that parents can play a role I sort of see it more as um it being inspiring there have been so many times both my girls have come and said I'm bad at this whether it's in music or school and just being blah I hate this and I think it's a a it's too romantic to assume that everybody is either self-motivated and driven or not again that's a little bit a bleak view I think I'm actually an optimist I feel like when you get good at things when you work at things you often discover oh my God I it's this is more fun than I thought so that's where I see uh parenting feeding into the motivation issue Frank can I just ask you as a sociologist there's um quite a lot of evidence um that it's the peer group that affects children and their values quite a lot more than parenting is that something you could in answer that question up there how do you instill ambition yeah I I think that uh that's really important that quite often it's the children your son or daughter hangs out with that becomes really critical because if you can create the right Dynamic for example if you're I've got a 15-year-old boy and it just so happens that although I'm a a slothful slack F his friends are all 13 books can I remind you are his friends are all into reading and therefore it's really cool to read books and it's really you know interesting to you know for them to be academically involved and it's to do with the fact that that peer group is for some reason I don't understand why has moved in that trajectory and it seems to me that peer pressure is really a very creative very constructive dynamic in a children's experience irreplaceable in many ways but there's one thing that parents can do um and and and seems to work not so much instill ambition but to continually send out the signal of raising expectations I think that when children learn from a very early age on that a lot of that everything is possible for them that we think that there are no limits that the bar is is set fairly high that even if they lack motivation themselves even if they're not that driven nevertheless you know they will play the role and I think that's that's an important thing that we've learned and one thing that I I learned when I was doing my interviews is after a while you could pretty much tell which children would do well in school compared to other children in the same socioeconomic circumstances and the and the single most important variable wasn't parenting skills it wasn't the fact that mom stood on her head and kind of sped out 5 P pieces it was the fact that uh there's a very clear expectation uh that anything is possible and I think that was the key element and that's something that teachers have learned and other people have learned as being quite important it's it's the mure we create for our kids rather than what we actually do that's important thank you Justine I agree with all that I think those questions have brought up um dare I say two of the sort of vulnerable spots of of the western parent uh and one is our tendency in the past to um indulge in sort of pointless praise uh you know the scribble come someone scribbled a drawing and you say that's marvelous darling I'll put it on the fridge um which has created a sort of Praise junky culture and it sort of makes renders all effort pointless and all achievement redundant um so I think we are a bit vulnerable to that and we do say in our book judicious praise is what you should be aiming for if you want your child to really value um what they do and the other thing is I think we are all a little bit guilty of wanting our kids to be our best friends and therefore um perhaps thinking that we're not the boss in the house and we can't make the rules and that then gets you into situations where you can't remove them from Club Penguin um so so I do think you know they're very good questions and I think we have to guard very carefully against those two practices uh in our Western parenting world thank you can we take some more questions um lady here in the stripe jumper um lady in the front row and person right at the back yes do start okay this question is for Amy um I was wondering if you could comment on the uh crazy us College admissions process uh could you be a little bit more specific I mean that could be a really long lecture so uh you know schools publish data about how test scores are getting higher and higher which uh you could conclude would mean that applicants are more and more talented but in my opinion it's the same baguer kids running faster and faster to stay in the same place the nature of the US rat race thank you yes lady in front hello Yan peel just wanted to ask the speakers how they would respond to the statement which may be a coroller of questions we've heard or of the motion itself uh that Western children don't know how to respect their parents thank you and lady at the back yes i' like to ask Amy a question uh rosn Portman from family links and we deliver a nuturing program through uh trained facilitators around the UK and the outcome from our groups is that parent say for the first time they can enjoy being parents because they learned to set boundaries and they learn to be in charge of their children I was wondering Amy if parenting education has crept into China and if um Chinese parents would welcome an opportunity thank you um Amy do you want to start with that question is there too much pressure in the college Rat Race now um well first of all I just have to unlike a couple of my co-panelists I really you know did just write WR a memoir so I am not a child psychologist or an education expert or a sociologist um I have tons of expertise uh on those other two books I mentioned U uh so uh but just all I can talk about is with that is that I completely agree that the college admissions process is absurd I mean I just think it's at so many different levels um and I don't even know where to begin um I feel like something is broke with the system there there a movie a film documentary film called race to nowhere in the states where it shows that uh teenagers in the United States are so stressed out about this that they're uh you know on medication and they get ulcers and they have to cheat and I feel what I really feel about this is that there's um a little bit of a schizophrenia among Western parenting which is we we're very ambivalent about it in the west so from ages zero to about 14 or 15 you want to tell your children we don't care about grades don't focus on those things no pressure pursue your passions you know we're not going to be hierarchical and authoritative and then my daughter Sophia says around sophomore year in high schools everywhere suddenly you meet the college counselor and he hands to you all these stats and these are all the numbers that you need the GPA and the SAT scores and by the way here are all the colleges that you already can't get into you know and then no wonder at that point these teenagers are scrambling they they're stressed out they they don't have the work skills to so I could go on and on about that but I really do think that there's a a real a problem that is not productive there and I guess the other question was the um Chinese do they need parenting education uh I I do think that the Chinese do um they need a lot of things um and I I again I'm not an expert um for me it's more interesting how much this anxiety about parenting has to do I think with privilege and uh you know if you're somebody starving you know you're in the uh like my own parents or you know the Great Depression or if you come over as an immigrant you have no money um you just don't have time to to look for parenting guides and to worry about that you know it's just all about survival so I think that China is much more interesting in parenting now partly because of increased affluence and they in a way have the luxury to worry about which method is best and I think what they are trying to do is exactly this is the flip side of Justine is saying you know I think they do need to learn more in some ways uh they probably do need counseling they don't have a strong child psychology uh a tradition there how to communicate love you know how to listen to Children better I mean there are a lot of scarred kids from uh from too much strictness so um but again I don't want to speak because I don't have any empirical evidence about that Frank um a quick answer do you Western children have insufficient respect for their parents I think they do I I think they usually the the respect that uh parents get from their children is proportional to the extent to which they deserve it and and it's and it and it seems to me that respect is something you earn you don't get as an automatic right and that's one of the dynamic aspects of a good child parent relationship thank you Justine you want to come back on that yep no I agree with that I think you know much as we would love to uh Retreat into Victorian times where children were not were seen and not heard or you know perhaps our own generation where we thought um you know we were often told because I said so go to your room I think we have entered the age of reasoning and but that good the flip side of that is your kids will genuinely respect you not just because that's the way they had to play behave when they came out of the womb so uh I think uh if if you can bear to reason and fight the argument and uh give them that time then ultimately they're more likely to respect the outcome thank you you um Anthony you wanted to come return to some earlier Point yes just a little thing about uh mental health um we in Britain or adolescents and young uh people lead the world in taking overdoses um not in suicide I don't know whether this is a reflection of the general level of competence but pretty strong statistic that one however we are far in advance uh and I personally examine 15,000 about 15,000 people who had who had done it is that children or sorry is that children uh had less Adolescence in young adults yes recently children um I think we've got time I'm afraid for one more random question um the gentleman there with a gray hair thank you Christopher Martin I am I am gray-haired I'm about 50 years older than anybody else here tonight I think um I was for 20 years a Headmaster of um a number of schools um and was at one point responsible for 1,200 young adolescents all swimming energetically in the hormonal cauldron um my question is for Frank and Justine do you feel it significant that in all that time I never once encountered a parent who didn't agree wholeheartedly in theory initially with the school's disciplinary framework as outlined to them but in very many cases almost half I would think um uh objected violently and sometimes energetically when the the disciplinary framework was applied to them or their children personally thank you very much and a question up there yeah hiard I've got four children and if Viv thinks that's uh three is one too many let me tell you that four is an awful lot um this is really a question to Anthony who hasn't picked up on the fact that that the fact that British parents turn into tiger parents largely because the school situation here is so terribly skewed and if you can't afford to get your child into a private school let me tell you you will become a tiger parent desperate to get your child into a state selective school or a half decent School you will be there with the tutors with the cumon with the this and that with the violin and all that kind of stuff because if your child isn't in that school the wish for ambition as the other lady pointed out the wish for social success the peer group pressure all of that you can forget it because you won't get it in the other sort of schools that your child will end up going to thank you okay last one hello um I'm Goda I'm a writer and a mother for a little six-year-old girl and my question is how do we balance parenting skills for the current state of Youth and the feature of future of our Nations due to underachieving children with no pressure parenting theories underpaid teachers and scheme aing councils who always trim down money from the school's piggy bank so how do you suggest you know doing parenting and balancing things out without being a tiger bom thank you thank you well that's one that's one enormous topic for a final round um I'm going to have to ask um the panel to um respond to those very quickly indeed um British parents turning into tiger parents I think Justine I think you could answer that one as well as Anthony well I have to I have enormous sympathy with the school's argument I mean I think um there is um there is that moment when and we discussed it here tonight that peer group is so important and you you look at the local um State secondary and and they're essentially carrying knives and and you know it's Gangland and you do realize at that point you probably do have to be a little bit more tigerish than you'd wished um so I'm totally on board with that and I think it's a shame and obviously it's a wider social issue uh and to the lovely Headmaster who um who talked about um parents in his school well you know parental bias is never going to go away I'm afraid uh we're all shortsighted when it comes to our children and I'm just going to ask you to address the tiger parents because I think we'll take that wider issue and hope that you you take it in your um concluding remarks the four of you uh yes I I mean the sit the educational situation in this country is uh disgraceful and it isn't a question of money because we now spend four times as much behead as we did in 1950 in real terms uh but our rate of illiteracy is if if anything higher than it was then and I don't think money can I don't think money can explain that I worked in an area where I noticed a very big difference between the children of Indian immigrants and uh White uh children and and also West Indian children of West Indian and there was this huge difference so that even where the schools were very bad there was a difference in the results because of the uh wishes of the parents so I think what we can see is that this this terrible peer pressure also comes from the culture that the parents themselves have and I don't if I might say I don't think it's true that uh that parents at one time would have responded to the headmaster's strictures in the way that they now do I think that has changed thank you very much um I hope that the panel will be able to address that question of um what do we do about the general underachieving level of British education in in the face of cuts within their twom minute final speeches because what's going to happen now is that the ushers are coming around with the ballot boxes for the final vote can I just remind you against you either drop in for or against or if you're still in doubt drop your entire ticket into the box um and we're just going to start now with the concluding speeches and the first person speak is going to be frank so can you whis can you keep your whispering to your neighbors until 10 minutes time please go there yes Frank could you all just be quiet please while we listen o I want some respect right I I just want to end with the uh on the question that was read by the Headmaster which is this the reason why parents have become so uh sort of uh promiscuous in tolerating bad behavior by the children in school and the reason why they don't back up teachers is because there's been a lot of pressure on parents to assume the burden of their children's education you know my parents never did homework with me and if my parents had done some homework with me that would that used to be called cheating today it's seen as a sign of responsibility responsible parents do homework with their children you know when little Mary gets her grade then it's not just simply Mary who's being examined her parent is being examined and if she does well that reflects on the parent she does poorly then it's a condemnation of that parent so it's not surprising that parents have become Advocates of their child and have lost the capacity to distance themselves from the real objective needs of both the school and of the child which really brings me to the central problem that we're confronted with Asia and Europe and the problem is is that because of all these pressures that we've been discussing parents and adults in general live so much of their life through their child they recycle so much of their emotions through children that they've lost the capacity to just simply asked the question is this really in my interest or in the interest of the child because the moment we begin to ask that question is it whose interest is this the parent will at that point decide that teacher should be backed up ra rather than the child and it seems to me that all the problems that we be discussing have got nothing to do with parenting they got to do with the cultural pressures that are upon the parents where parents are asked to pick up the pieces that have been caused anywhere else and I just one fin point I don't know what's the best way of bringing up a child and I don't particularly care how you do it as long as you're happy with that but the one thing that I do know that we learned throughout the centuries and that is that the principal accomplishment of child rearing of really good child rearing the principal accomplishment of that is the capacity to prepare your children for Independence and if you've done that and if you made your child gen independent then you've done a good job and that's really what we should be assessing rather than all these other [Applause] stuff on it sorry thank you very much Frank though for giving me that seemed to be an argument for the other side Western parents not so good at parenting but never mind Theodore well yes ladies and gentlemen I'm very pleased that Frank agrees with us so much um please give two minutes so I'll get started that oh I will I'll I'll make it even briefer I think the uh if I may say the real problem that I see is that people do not make a distinction between self-esteem and self-respect and self-esteem is something that people feel that they are intitled to and it's a kind of human right whereas self-respect is something uh that you earn and is other regarding and on the whole I think we have instilled and I'm of course speaking Gro Modo uh we have instilled too uh too great an idea that people should be filled with self-esteem when actually what people need is self-respect and that is where our our um our child raring is I think uh rather deficient not in every case okay now you've all voted I can come out for it no um so so I just want to say very quickly I want to say a word for the Youth um our teens they volunteer more than any other sector in society nine out of 10 believe school workor is important they're not all hoodied terrifying knife wielding rap music kind of singers um you know I had a TV in my room um I very rarely at a family meal and when I did they were hideous I mean you know it was just a control freakery thing by my dad um so I think um we should all relax a bit I think if your child is going through a thing it's probably only a phase I think parenting is horses for courses and above all I think we should maintain a sense of humor most of parenting although it's very hard work uh when it's when you're kept up late at night is quite a using possibly with the exception of violin practice and [Applause] headlice well I agree with so much of uh what everybody said including the opposition um the the chilling and also I think it's important to have a sense of humor about uh about parenting which is uh partly one reason I really like Justine's book I actually think uh just to be able to laugh at our own mistakes but I wanted to end with one anecdote which which relates to the last two questions about how do we how can we not be tiger moms given the state of things and this is from the United States but one of the more touching emails I uh I've had a lot like this but I remember this one because it said she wrote me and she said I may sound totally different from you but I think I'm a tiger mom I am Irish polish I am a single mom I am a cop and I work two jobs and I don't get home till 8:30 p.m. so I couldn't possibly do math and violin and piano with my kids but I think that I'm a tiger mom and the reason for that is because when I drag myself home at 8:30 I tell my daughters let me see those homework assignments I look at the tests I say why did you miss those who are your friends know you can't go out with those people know you can't date that guy and she said I was known as the meanest mom in the neighborhood and it was a bad neighborhood and I did this I did this because I myself got pregnant at 15 and I suffered through a lot of misery and I didn't want that for my girls and I'm proud because I broke the cycle both my daughters went to college I was a tiger mom and I broke the cycle so I think that's just to the point of oh is it all about ourselves or is it for our kids I think parents maybe not always but parents can sometimes make a huge difference and when you make that difference I think that's when you get the kind of feeling that I have as an adult will you look back when you were a kid you're cranky why are you so mean but as an adult you look back and you think oh my God I have a great life now and I owe my parents everything so I think we should owe I think we should assume strength rather than fragility in our children and I think that we in the west totally agreeing with Justine without going to the extreme of Asia they have all maybe more problems than we do but without going to that extreme I think that we in the West can ask a little more of our children and that they will not only respond to that challenge but thrive thank [Applause] you we're still waiting for the very Speedy um tellers to come in with the result of the vote so um while we're waiting that I just wanted to raise the question of the lady up at the top I feel rather guilty about that she was asking whether we should be worried that at a time of economic stringency we're going to end up with um less money available to teach skills to children and um I think that matters a great deal partly because of some research that I came across last week um which is done by a famous Nobel Prize wi winning Economist James Heckman in America and he was quoting a famous study done 40 years ago amongst um deprived three and four year- olds which took kids who didn't have an order and structure in their lives and taught them to do the kind of things that tiger parents do and a lot of middle- class parents do automatically which is to all plan what you're going to do do it and then review it and it's quite a simple program but it's very intense 40 years later the children who had been through that program who were children with below average IQs from very deprived backgrounds were earning more had more chance of owning their own home were less likely to be pregnant or obese um and can't remember the other characters had had committed far fewer crimes than the control group of children who hadn't had that kind of practice now that is exactly the kind of um thing that the sh Start program was originally meant to do in Britain and of course there's now going to be a lot less money available for that kind of program so I'd just like to ask the panel whether they're worried that it may not be the middle classes the kind of people who are represented here tonight um who are really going to be troubled about the fine distinctions between tiger parenting and authoritative parenting on the other but are a whole lot of kids going to suffer if we don't have that kind of training available Amy I wondered what your view was um well I I don't know Britain system too much but that was in a way part of my anecdote about the the Irish polish single mom I mean that's kind of what I was to trying to drive home that um some people just don't have a choice you know they don't have the same amount of choices and um if you're not going to get it from society um you kind of have to do it yourself and the the I just don't know your system well enough for me the parallel is the American story it's that first generation of immigrants among I've had so many mean mean emails but among the very supportive emails it's surprising I they're disproportionate from first generation immigrants kids so kids from you know my mom was from my parents are from Ghana from Nigeria from Jamaica from Haiti no money um uh but these we're even luckier in some ways than the kids you're talking about because they came with sort of Education in their heads you know but still no money no resources and these are I found these are where the tiger parents are concentrated in some ways because they really have no choice you know they they want their children to be able to survive uh have a better life and uh there's not a lot of luxury nobody they can hire they got to do it themselves Theodore are you worried about the cuts um well I'm not worried about the cuts I'm worried about the Deep Corruption of our public administration um that sounds like quite a tangent because the vast majority of what passes for public expenditure has no connection with any ostensible purpose as I know from working in the National Health Service and therefore when the cuts come I can assure you that it will not be to those parts of the uh organization uh that are not needed it'll be to those parts of the organization that are needed and uh if you count that as being worried well then I'm worried thank you I think I'll count that as worry at a very deep level um Justine I actually think there is um you know it when you're talking about people who um are stuck in the lower echelons and have very little ambition um how you're going to get those children out of those echelons then I do think actually parenting that is where I think parenting really does matter um when you haven't got the peer groups around you haven't got um you know the the the sort of learned history of parents teaching parents hurt a parent and that's where I think government does need to intervene I think if you look at um kids who are failing from families who are you know in poor soci anomic classes and having very little um success generationally um then you know you find that one of the things is they they just don't praise their kids at all there's a lot of negative Vibes and just having a class which says this is the value of being positive and not negative um you know could be incredibly helpful so I don't think it takes a lot of money but I think it would be very useful Frank a final word before we discover the result yeah I think all the evidence shows that parenting classes sh start any of these programs simply don't work and I don't think there's any uh magical reason for that the reason for that is that there are things in life that you have to learn but cannot be taught right you have to learn how to have good relationships but at the end of the day that's not something that something that somebody else can teach you and the problem that we have in our society is not that there aren't enough sh Start programs or parenting classes because I think they are they really are about socializing parents rather than children that's really what their objective is the real problem is that we don't provide people from poorer backgrounds with stimulating educational opportunities that if you go into some schools in this country it's like you know sort of a dead end as far as the children are concerned that right from the very beginning there's an assumption that they're going to fail in life and instead of trying to solve uh a wide social and cultural problem with the parent which is entirely inappropriate we we should look at the wider Community setting and see what we can do there to create a better opportunities for children to be stimulated and challenged in the way that's not the case at the moment thank you very much and now now I'd just like to um announce the final result which I think is rather astonishing I'd like to remind you that before the debate 149 people voted for the motion 325 are against and the don't knows amounted to 194 well Minds have really been changed because now it's 35 for the motion 280 against and only 59 don't [Applause] knows so i' just like to say thank you all for coming and to the panel for being such a lively group

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 224,935

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Id: 1UesrrHVLa0

Length: 89min 1sec (5341 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2014