Parents need a helping hand with family values and authority

This paper is an expanded version of the article which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 January 2004.

On Australia Day this year, Mark Latham, Labor's Federal Opposition Leader, made an innovative proposal. He suggested that the parents of difficult or delinquent children be steered into classes in parent education. Some others who should have known better, condemned this proposal without weighing it carefully.

Mark Latham has a point. Parents in 2004 need a great deal of support. In this article I want to develop some of the arguments for such a proposal.

Schools ask me from time to time to run a class for parents on educating their kids. Sometimes I start these workshops with a statement: I get wild with my son [daughter] when...
Every parent jumps to answer that one. At a Workshop in Parramatta the first answer was 'he kicks a football in the house'. In Ipswich it was 'scratches his balls in public.'

Parenting is a tough job, and hugely important. Yet there are no qualifications for parenthood. It is a job that is thrust on many of us; God gave us the means of making children, with no keys or passports required for the job. And most people get no training for it. I believe parents would like some ideas about parenting.

But let's look at the key issue of how kids are guided these days. Some years ago I wrote Fathers, Sons and Lovers about how males grow up in a country town.
I found that boys were held in check by webs of authority which had 6 key points. First was fathers. Boys were afraid of fathers and respected their fathers. A father could wallop you behind the house. Equally, he could give a few words of praise that a boy treasured.
Fathers were supported by other men in the community their brothers, friends, mates from the sports they played.
Fathers were supported too by churches: everyone I interviewed from a country town Belonged to a church.
Schools too, worked with parents to keep children in check. Schools had tremendous authority. Teachers were looked up to as crucial members of the town community. A boy or girl dare not say anything but a respectful greeting to a teacher if they saw him or her inside or outside school..
Police supported fathers: the country cop knew the fathers of the town and worked with them to keep children in check. Some of the Penrith boys I interviewed said they had been 'kicked up the bum' by the town's cop. And they meant this literally.
Finally, sportacted to channel children's restless energy, especially that of boys.
The web of authority worked because all its components reinforced each other. Children, for the most part, dare not play up. The consequences were too severe.
Today that web of authority is so much weakened it seems like a long-lost dream. Let's take some of the pieces in turn:

Parents can't provide the authoritative parenting described by Amato and Booth (see West,2002:37 in What is the Matter with Boys? Choice Books). More about them in a moment.

Schools are wary of saying the wrong thing: my teacher education students are terrified about saying almost anything but the blandest praise about Aborigines or immigrants, for fear that someone might attack them. Any time a principal publicly suspends or expels a child, the lunatic fringe of the media ridicule the school. Schools don't know how to deal with rebellious adolescents. Only recently the NSW Department of Education decided that children need an ID card so that if found 'jigging' school, they can be made to return to the classroom.

Schools find it really difficult to contain children's energy, and there aren't nearly enough incentives to attract and keep good teachers in teaching. The NSW Enquiry on Male Teacher Numbers found that the people leaving teaching fastest were males under 35. The need for boys to have males engaged in their education has been demonstrated both in terms of better fathering, and the need for men in schools (Fathers' Support Service,2003; Meeting the Challenge: Summary Report. Guiding Principles from the Boys' Education Lighthouse Schools Program Stage One [Canberra: Government Printer 2003]).

Churchmen simply don't have the authority they once had, partly because of disturbing patterns of child abuse. Similarly, young people are insolent to the lifesavers I talk to, and disobey their directions.

There is a profusion of private authority figures, such as the lamentable bouncers who have their way in hotels and clubs, often to the detriment of the public. State police struggle to maintain their authority. Small boys sometimes sneer at police, or taunt them with comments that are just short of insolent. And with many children growing up in a pluralistic society, there is a massive authority gap.

Thus children look around for confident guidance, and there is little of it. Consequently they buck their parents' authority, asserting their need for stability in their world of wobbly values and an Australian society that encourages gambling, drunkenness and drug-taking.

Look at the ads on television for Lotto or alcohol: it all seems very desirable for an adolescent. Travel in a train or bus and almost every day you will see children arguing with parents. To simplify somewhat, parents today talk too much and act too little.

Parents who attend my workshops are afraid to discipline their children. Physical punishment is abhorred. While I would never support physical violence, it is understandable that a small slap might be one way or providing the authoritative parenting that is so much wanted by both parents and children. Of course there are others: sending a child to his or her room; or depriving them of a coveted treat. The point is that parents are so afraid that they give in to their children much of the time- anything to avoid a confrontation, because they lack the confidence to stand their ground.

The exceptions show us what can be done. HSC success has been enjoyed by many Chinese and Korean students. But this is the merest tip of the iceberg. Confucian principles reinforce parental authority: sons should respect their parents; parents have a duty to bring up their children strictly and urge them to learn; people must look after parents in their old age. No wonder Chinese and Korean children are wonderful kids to teach: they beg to learn!

Reviews of literature on educational research emphasise the same thing: if we want something to happen, we have to work through organisational culture. Chinese families show us how it is done.

The needs of mothers and fathers seem different. Mothers are better provided with social networks: mothers' clubs, playgroups, and similar; and, Kraemer suggests, they might be better provided with the ability to connect with other mothers. Fathers tend to be more task-focused and work-oriented. Yet US experience shows that fathers' groups can work well to create common bonds which help fathers learn:

Similarly, fathers dealt with by the Fathers' Support Service in Parramatta work through their helplessness and despair. They develop confidence and self-esteem. They learn that kids can be managed in a number of ways: through humour, authoritativeness, flexibility. Friendships form in the group and help the fathers work through hard times and the Family Court battle zone.

arguing with parents. To simplify somewhat, parents today talk too much and act too little.
Parents who attend my workshops are afraid to discipline their children. Physical punishment is abhorred. While I would never support physical violence, it is understandable that a small slap might one way or providing the authoritative parenting that is so much wanted by both parents and children.

Of course there are others: sending a child to his or her room; or depriving them of a coveted treat. The point is that parents are so afraid that they give in to their children much of the time - anything to avoid a confrontation, because they lack the confidence to stand their ground.

Divorced fathers need to concentrate on their children's welfare, rather than sink into depression, lamenting the time they once were able to have with children. These parents can smile afterwards at their hard times when days were long or nights were sleepless. But nearly all the parents I talk to want encouragement, constructive criticism, and support, They want someone to listen to their problems. They want someone to give them creative ideas for dealing with sons who slam doors, grunt at them or yell. Adolescent boys are one of God's most trying creatures, except for an adolescent girl who is upset because of she is in (or out of) love. Then there are the daughters who run up telephone bills or burst into tears because of something someone said about their figure.

Adolescence is a difficult time for all of us. Kids are at risk from suicide- young Australian males 16-25 have the third highest suicide rate in the western world. Our kids are often overweight in a time that relentlessly praises physical beauty, strong muscles, curvaceous thighs and flat tummies. So we have to give kids more help by supporting those who can help kids best. The research I have analysed states strongly that those people are their parents. Fathers are hugely important. And so are mothers.

I'd like to see some more things to help us use kids' energy productively.

One, find ways to get more men into teaching and keep them there. For example, dramatically increase teachers' salaries so that a man can keep a family on a teacher's wage. Some of the independent schools use 'gap' students who are taking a year off from UK studies as ersatz teachers. They are young, fit and energetic and adolescents love being around them. Why can't the State schools use this idea?

Two, use kids' energy more positively. Adolescence is a time in which boys and girls' bodies are growing. Sebastian Kramer, writing in the British Medical Journal, shows that boys' bodies are surging with testosterone and boys easily get frustrated if they can't burn off their energy. Yet we shove them into desks and try to make them stay there! No wonder males who find school such a bore don't want to spend the rest of their lives in classrooms as teachers. Not surprisingly, the Boys' Lighthouse program has found that boys - and girls- like programs that get them out of desks- dancing, singing,talking, making videos, jumping. Anything but "sit down- shut up-write this down" all day. (Meeting the Challenge, 2003).

Three, ask kids how they want to learn, Listen to them, and do some of the things they suggest. That would be a novelty.

And of course Mark Latham has a point. Parents need all the help they can get. I know I did!