It takes generations to produce a Karen Matthews or a mother of Baby P. It takes generations of feckless mothers who somewhere along the line lose a grip on the fine thread which binds mothers and their children together. It takes generations of absent or voiolent or drug or drink-addled fathers. It takes poverty and the disintegration of society and community and the disappearance of any moral or ethical stop to an individual's feeling that all they have to do is to look after their own needs, whatever they may be, and whether or not the fulfilment of those needs means that the welfare and happiness of others is destroyed.
"Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." Er, no. It's not. That's the greatest lie of all. And a horribly popular one at the moment.
Ask a talent show contestant why they should win and they'll say "Because I really want it. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. I was born for this." As if that means that a lack of talent should be swept aside. Never mind what other people think, no matter if I have no aptitude for this, no talent, not enough talent; if I want it, I should have it. I believe in myself, therefore you should too. People are applauded for self-belief and admonished for lack of confidence. A lack of confidence sometimes stems from the ability to reflect - not always a bad thing.
Every time we tell a child how well they're doing when they're not really, every time we give them something they haven't earned, every time we gloss over errors and omissions we reinforce this idea that everyone is special, everyone is entitled to everything they desire. And if in years to come that means pizza and beer and 60 a day and taping a carrier bag to your baby's backside so that you don't have to change a nappy then, well, that's the extreme end of self-fuflfilment, but so be it.
Apparently the social service psychological profile commissioned on Karen Matthews worried about her "inability to prioritise the needs of her children over her own". No kidding. Despite this, though, they took the children off the at-risk register.
I once knew a woman very much like Karen Matthews. She had lots of children by different men. One of her children was fourteen and pregnant by a boy who was in jail. She was shacked up with a nineteen year old with whom she partied as her children shambled around the house making their own arrangements and trying to sleep through the heavy rock music which shuddered through the home all day and night. The kids were dirty and unkempt and on the at-risk register. They never had breakfast because Mum was in bed sleeping it off when they left for school on their own, making their own way in. Teachers were asked to 'keep an eye' on them. Apparently now there's a 47 page dossier issued to schools advising them what to 'keep an eye' out for (which of course all teachers have the time to read and inwardly digest). Back then we had to rely on common sense. One of her children was in my class and used to come in at 7.30, when I arrived, to sit with me and help prepare my resources for the day. He looked very proud when I said to the class as I used my flashcards "and Billy helped me with these". When his mother came in for a parents evening and sat opposite me, her hand clenched on the inner thigh of her unlovely toyboy, she gurned at me and said "He fancies you, does Billy." She couldn't imagine any other attachment between a female and a male, even a teacher and a child.
I've looked up that boy on social networking sites. He'd be in his late twenties by now. I doubt he'd have much of a chance of living a normal life. I doubt that if he's had children that he's a model Dad. But then I don't suppose she had the model Mum. I don't suppose she went home to a house redolent with the smells of childhood; no cakes baking, no fresh laundry, no sausages on the stove. Things don't go that awry in a generation.
So what do you do about it? That's the thorny one. In my teacher training I learned that whereas the link between any particular race and achievement has largely been broken, as has the link betwen gender and achievement (actually that one's reversed, but that's another issue), the most stubborn statistic in education is that your educational results result depend more than anything upon what your Dad does for a living. And if your parents do nothing, if they see no value whatsoever in education, well, basically, you're f***ed. (But God help you as a teacher if you suggest that loafing around all day smoking weed and watching daytime TV may not be the parental role model to end all parental role models, because you are stepping over the line.)
It's an interesting situation we find ourselves in right now. For decades professional wisdom has had it that a child is always best off with its mother, even if that mother is dependent upon drink or hard drugs, in an abusive relationship which she puts above the wellbeing of her child, feckless or helpless and unable to care for a child because of mental frailty. Almost regardless of anything social workers have bent over backwards to keep the child with the mother. Because there is a perception that because this adult person bore and gave birth to this small person they therefore always, always, have the child's best interests at heart.
And now the media is howling because the authorities have failed to remove children from mothers who lack this central mechanism, this instinct which entitles them to special regard. So now they bleat and the public bays for the removal of children from such mothers. There will be soon be an outcry in the other direction when women go to the papers with stories of children taken away from them with no reason.
Well I'm a hard woman, and I'm afraid that I think this rot has to stop. I'm really glad I don't have to come up with a solution and justify it and that I can just say something inflammatory and back away.
So here's an idea. If a woman "fails to successfully prioritise her children's needs over her own" why not leave her to her own priorities, whether that be her heroin habit, her toyboy with an extensive collection of child pornography, her violent partner, her drink or her idleness and greed? If we think that a mother is respected as a mother because she guards her child against all dangers, a lioness baring her teeth against an unfriendly world, then if she is not, why don't we stop thinking that her children's needs are best served by being with her? Give her help, give her guidance, try to see her do the right thing, but if she doesn't, change tack and look out for the child. Why not actually follow through on the assertion that a child's needs are paramount, and if they are not paramount to the mother, then the mother should relinquish her role as mother?
Let's divert some of the resources which are ploughed into keeping useless families limping along and put them into building up a really good care system, where care actually means what it says, and cares for children, rather than corralling them until they're sixteen and turning them out into an uncaring world unsocialised, institutionalised and unrecovered from their tragic beginnings. Let's spend money on turning all children's homes into places where children thrive and get over the horror and neglect which they were rescued from. Let's build up the bank of loving foster homes and adopters. Let's value people who love children and want to ensure that they have a launch pad into a happy adulthood over those who give birth to children and then carry on with their own selfish lives. Let's break the chain.
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