Committed to finding ways out of the coercion/self-sacrifice mire of conventional parenting. We are variously critical rationalists, libertarians, home educators, attachment-parents, but we take our ideas where we find them.
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This is a UK government initiative which has been vaguely bothering me for some time. Social workers et al have been seconded to the "Sure Start" programme within which they try to make sure that the start of children's lives is going along on the lines that they deem fit. Quite why it should be assumed that parents are better off paying money in tax to let the State oversee their children's development rather than doing it themselves (ie parenting) remains oblique to me at this time.
A pregnant friend of mine has begun attending aqua-natal classes at a local swimming pool. She say they are tremendous fun (especially the moments when the ladies need to go in a new direction - like trying to turn a flotilla of tankers, she says: there's a three second pause while everyone shifts their centre of gravity). But the strange thing is that they are sponsored by Sure Start. The classes cost only £2 a time (less than just going swimming) and there is NOT ONE woman there who wouldn't come if there was a privately-run aquanatal class, instead the only one on offer entails a massive injection of everyone's tax money and layer upon layer of bureacracy.
Hmmm. Funny old world. Maybe there's a gap in the market for the NCT to fill.
We believe in solving problems within families peaceably and not by coercion or by the systematic justification of the use of force (including by withholding active help when a child is suffering) on the grounds that "parents should discipline their kids".
The only kind of discipline we believe in within the parent/ child relationship is self-discipline born of good ideas about oneself and the world.
"But if I stop locking my child indoors, she will steal all the family silver, rush outside, take drugs, get run over by a bus and never play the violin again!"
Did we say it was easy? Depending on how reliant you already are on forcing people to get on with you on your own terms, yes, changing to a more civilised family dynamic might be bloody hard. That doesn't make it either impossible or wrong.
Call us idealists if you want. Call us pie-in-the-sky egotistical pompous arrogant showy-offy idiots if you please. We're still committed to finding ways out of the coercion/self-sacrifice mire of conventional parenting, like it says on that sidebar, and we still think it's a job not only worth doing but with multiple rewards and benefits along the way. Those who aren't interested need not apply.
