Posted on 08/11/2011 2:28:13 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Amelia Gentleman asks Tottenham residents and community leaders if bad parenting is at the root of the lawlessness
"Parents are fearful about how they chastise their children," Clasford Stirling, a veteran youth worker, who runs the football club at Broadwater Farm community centre in Tottenham, said. "There's been an erosion of authority for a long time. Parents move very gingerly not to upset their own kids – that's the reality."
Broadwater Farm estate is again at the centre of the unrest in London. Mark Duggan, whose death last week sparked London's riots, was brought up here, and sent one of his sons to Stirling's football classes. On Wednesday, Stirling was making arrangements for his wake.
Struggling to make sense of the violence that has turned buildings on Tottenham High Road into smouldering piles of rubble, Stirling wondered whether weakened parental authority might have something to do with it.
A chorus of establishment voices responded to pictures of school-age children looting late at night by reaching to blame the parents. MPs were urging them to make sure they knew where their children were, David Cameron was talking again about a broken Britain, and London's mayor said adults and teachers needed to be given back the right to impose authority.
Stirling's analysis is more nuanced – citing poverty, unemployment, failings of the education system, police harassment, among other triggers – but he believes parents have become afraid to discipline their own children, and warns this is at least part of the problem that has erupted across cities this week.
"Bad behaviour and criminality has been glamorised on the streets. Teachers are scared to punish children. The modern child isn't frightened of their parents. They don't care if the police lock them up," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
"Responsibility has been taken away from parents. People here will call social services if they hear you disciplining your children. Children hear about Childline at school. It's all very well trying to be liberal, but parents need to be given back their right to parent,"
Hmm, maybe there really is something to the whole civilization thing after all, and having a culture that insists on order rather than disorder.
That is a very good point. You can’t parent children, if you cannot discipline them.
But I like how one parent handled his kid’s threats to call social services. The father told the son that, “The moment I am not allowed to discipline you will be the moment I am done being a parent and you are allowed to be fully responsible for yourself, including providing for yourself.”
HAHAHA!
She’s dumb.
The entire Liberal edifice collapses as soon as you stop moving leftward. It’s both a ratchet and a racket. They can’t, literally CAN NOT, go back and say “oppsies” we were wrong about this, because the entire worldview depends on both the inevitability and infallibility of Liberal dogma.
Questioning any part of it, opens the door to other questions, and this they simply can not allow.
I had one student who threatened to call DCFS. His mom said, "Fine, they take you away, not me." She then proceeded to tell the kid who all the foster parents were in the area. He straightened right up.
BFL
And that won't happen unless you have a dominant culture...something that progressive liberalism will not allow.
My daughter told her son. 12 yrs old now, 10 when this happened, something similar when he threatened to notify the school he as “abusing “ him (she refused to allow him to spend the night at a friends and refused to buy him another video game for one of his many play stations or whatever they are called.
She said the first time DYFS shows up at the door will be the last because he was going with them to a foster home. She then took him upstairs and made him pack his own bag to keep in the closet for when he left the home.
She claims there was a marked change in his attitude and he made no more threats of this kind.
In my day I would have had the kid across my knee or whacked him on the backs of his legs with a wooden spoon a few times. If that sounds harsh today then you don’t even want to know what my parents would have done had one of us threatened them with ANYTHING for ANY reason.
When you were asked to do something in my family by mom or dad, the word no did not exist as an answer and any wise ass responses brought immediate retribution. WE also were given NOTHING (allowances, etc) without having to do some sort of work around the home first.
I recall getting suspended from school (HS) for smoking in the boys room, which I was NOT doing. The suspension was for 1 day. There was NO question in the minds of my folks that I was guilty because the school said I was. They tacked on 7 days of my staying inside to the one day suspension from the school.
The later 1950’s were a different and far better time.
The reason Liberals are like that is because they truly believe what they are doing it good and holy and pure. So to admit that their ideology was flawed would be to admit what they believe to be holy and good is actually evil.
And that’s about as common as a Muslim suddenly converting to Judaism.
“Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.” —Thomas Sowell
Precisely. I expect Amelia Gentleman to be stoned for deviationism, heresy and whatever else they can throw at her. After a quick show trial, she will be off to the reeducation camps.
Questioning any part of it, opens the door to other questions, and this they simply can not allow.
F. A. Hayek - is that you? I guess reports of your death were exaggerated!You sound exactly like Hayek's description of Naziism in The Road to Serfdom (Link to the Readers' Digest Condensed Version in PDF).
When the ‘parents’ became enslaved to the government for child allowances, housing, food and other welfare - they ceded their own and their children’s self worth and respect.
The ‘work’ ethic, discipline and self-control is lost in these communities. The only ‘Authority’ are nameless, faceless bureaucrats.
Sounds all too familiar
In the sixties, the movie “Mary Poppins” depicted a father demolished by the magical heroine.
“My life was calm. Well-ordered. Exemplary. Then came this person with chaos in her wake.”
By such charming devices, a generation was taught contempt for its fathers and the civilization they created out of their antiquated virtues — responsibility, punctuality, thrift, organization, hierarchy, respect for authority.
Message of Mary Poppins: Don’t put your tuppence in the bank, kiddies. Throw it to the birds. In a few years the birds will compound into devouring millions, raining crap and disease and demands on your heads.
Straw man argument here. Being a liberal is evil, and evil can only beget evil.
Perhaps I missed the part of the article that dealt with teaching young girls that having children is bad morally, bad economically for themselves and the children and bad for the new mother’s parent(s). Also, where was the call for changes in the tax and welfare laws to discourage single voluntary parenting and to encourage fathers to accept their responsibility? Was that just too much of a stretch for this lefty rag? A start needs to be made now for any possible result in ten years time.
“Being liberal is fine, but”
No. That’s the problem. Forget the but. Being liberal is the first step to hell on earth.
No one is allowed to pull on that loose(or any) thread because it will unravel rather quickly.
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