Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

The myth of Billy Elliot

The state's increasing preoccupation with how we raise our children risks penalising the poorest parents

Two mums were trying to count up the different types of parenting courses they'd been on. There had been "Happy Parenting", then there was "Healthy Living", another on "community parenting", then another on childhood illness, another on first aid, another on crafts. Both mums were enthusiastic about everything they'd learned on these courses run by a Sure Start project in Sunderland. "On the 10-week course on children's behaviour, I talked about my childhood and what's different with my child. It helped me a lot to help my child and what he's going through," said one of the mums.
In one of Sunderland's windswept estates, an extraordinary paradox comes sharply into focus. This is a region that, in the late 20th century, saw the most spectacular failure of the state. While the economic lifeblood - the shipbuilding and coalmining - of the city of Sunderland drained away, the state insisted it could do nothing. "You can't buck the market," intoned Margaret Thatcher, laying the responsibility on faceless anonymous global economic forces.
After 20 years of the state in retreat, abdicating power and responsibility over the circumstances of people's lives in places such as Sunderland, now it's on the advance again. The state is carving out new territory where it will exert its authority and attempt to reshape society - penetrating deep into one of the hitherto most private aspects of people's lives: how to parent. The state has a new role as it prescribes what to feed your children, how to deal with toddler tantrums, how to play with your children, how to read with them, how to deal with rebellious teenagers. Some of these programmes are voluntary (Sure Start), some compulsory (such as parenting orders). Together, they amount to an ambitious attempt to reform how some sections of society raise their children.
For a generation that grew up with pit closures, redundancies and a dearth of good jobs, it must seem pretty odd to find themselves the object of such intense effort to improve their parenting skills: plenty of workshops on offer on how to be a good dad, rather fewer on how to find a decent job.
This paradox of the state retreating from the management of the economy while extending its reach into the heart of family life is not just a British phenomenon. In the land where the concept of the "small state" was elevated to the highest political principle, the Republicans are unrolling a huge parenting programme. The old adage, "the personal is political", has taken on a whole new meaning, and it leaves me with a distinctly queasy feeling.
Columnists are paid to know what they think, but on this one I feel pretty confused. So I'll be listening closely to how the children's minister, Margaret Hodge, plots her way through this territory in a speech this week. Why has the government got so interested in parenting and what can it do? Why no ban on smacking but a veritable blizzard of advice on everything from breastfeeding to nursery rhymes?
Let's leave aside the tricky issue of whether it actually works over the long term - can the state teach parents to be better parents? - because there's not much conclusive research on this yet. On the plus side, some parents love the parenting programmes in Sure Start; even the parenting courses imposed with parenting orders can end up being popular with parents.
But I think the queasiness comes on two aspects. First, the thrust of government policy comes perilously close to reflecting a Daily Mail agenda that poor parents can't parent. What the right always does is to make the structural effects of disadvantage, deprivation and alienation the personal responsibility of poor parents. If there is crime or low educational achievement, it's the fault of inadequate parenting rather than the result of political and economic failure.
New Labour wouldn't make that mistake. But, crucially, it follows a similar logic of putting the responsibility on to parents to break cycles of deprivation through the sheer force of their parenting skills. It won't raise benefit levels to ensure parents and their children are not living in poverty, it won't intervene in the economy to ensure jobs, but it will offer courses on how to play with your child.
The bigger picture of the structures of inequality and how they corrode the social fabric of communities and families fades from view. What comes into focus instead is the burden on individuals to succeed against all the odds. The few Billy Elliots who triumph offer a myth of social mobility (which can be used to legitimise inequality). "Equality of opportunity" replaces equality as the key political principle of New Labour - hence Charles Clarke's riposte to Prince Charles last week. Meanwhile, no one stops to ask what happens to Billy Elliot's schoolmates, who are still hanging around outside the chippy of a winter evening looking for trouble instead of jobs.
My second cause for concern is a broader cultural complaint about how our vision of childhood is being narrowed into a race to prepare for the labour market, in which the single most important duty of the good parent is to ensure their child accumulates as many appropriate skills as quickly as possible.
Parenting then becomes a technology in which "outcomes" are constantly analysed, while those aspects of child hood that are harder to measure, such as the quality of loving attention and emotional resilience, are marginalised.
What rightly concerns New Labour - and Margaret Hodge is wont to produce a graph from her handbag to illustrate the point - is that by 22 months, differences in language skills are already irrevocably setting toddlers on different educational and life trajectories. But it's the inference drawn from this that is disturbing. As one prominent Labour backbencher put it: "The more you can get these toddlers out of their home into more stimulating environments, the better." We could just go the whole hog and take poor people's children away altogether. If they were with nice middle-class families, they'd have a much bigger vocabulary.
Given this obsession with achievement and success, the focus falls on inadequate poor parents, while inadequate middle-class parents get off scot-free. Provided your children are not committing crimes and not failing their exams, the government is not much concerned with how you parent. No government minister is going to stand up and say that professional dual-income families are depriving their children of time and attention; that, while the weight of middle-class aspiration ensures these children still achieve, it is at the cost of the emotional and mental well-being of those children.
Behind the government's preoccupation with parenting are, undeniably, some good intentions. But that doesn't help in resolving these bigger questions about why the state is expanding its role and what exactly it hopes to achieve. Perhaps Hodge will come up with some answers this week.
abdicate - zrzekać się, rezygnować
accumulate - gromadzić, kumulować
achievement - osiągnięcie
appropriate - odpowiedni, właściwy
backbencher - poseł zwykły
blizzard - zadymka, zamieć śnieżna
buck - unikać
burden - brzemię
carve out - wycinać
chippy - drażliwy
closure- zamknięcie
columnist - felietonista
conclusive - rozstrzygający, decydujący
corrode - korodować
craft - rękodzieło, rzemiosło
crucially- w sposób krytyczny, decydująco
dearth - niedostatek, brak
deprive of - deprywować, pozbawiać
distinctly- wyraźnie
elevate to - wynosić do (godności)
estate - osiedle, przedmieścia
exert - wywierać wpływ; stosować, używać (siły, władzy, itp.)
extend - rozszerzać
extraordinary - nadzwyczajny
failure - niepowodzenie
first aid - pierwsza pomoc
focus - skupiać, skupienie (uwagi)
get off scot-free - ujść bezkarnie
go the whole hog- iść na całego
hang around - pałętać się, łazić, snuć
hence - dlatego; od tej chwili
hitherto - dotychczas
impose - narzucać, nakazywać
inadequate - nieadekwatny
inequality - nierówność
inference - zakłócenie; wtrącanie się
irrevocably - nieodwołalnie
legitimise - legitymizować
narrowed - zawężony
outcome - wynik, rezultat
penalising - penalizacja
perilously - niebezpiecznie
pit - wyrobisko, kopalnia, wykop
plot - spiskować, knuć
preoccupation - troska, zainteresowanie, zaabsorbowanie
provided - pod warunkiem
queasiness - mdłości
queasy - powodujący mdłości
rebellious - buntowniczy, zbuntowany
redundancy - bezrobocie
reflect - odzwierciedlać
research - badania
resilience - prężność, elastyczność
retreat- odwrót; wycofywać się
sheer - zupełny, całkowity
smack - dawać klapsa
spectacular- spektakularny
tantrum - histeria, napad złości
thrust - napaść, atak
toddler- małe dziecko, dziecko uczące się chodzić
trajectory - trajektoria
unroll - rozwijać, odwijać
veritable - rzeczywisty, istny
well-being - dobrobyt
windswept - nieosłonięty od wiatru, chłostany wiatrem


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