PT:How did you come to write a book about parenting?
TC: I was a journalist originally and then had two children. I wanted to use those skills of research to make myself a better parent, so I became a parenting writer. I want my children to grow up in a better world and to be healthy.
PT:Did it come from your desire to find out more about parenting well, or was it a sense of ‘I think I’ve figured some stuff out and I want to help other people’?
TC: Both. Every parent faces challenges along the way and wants to find out the best way to tackle them. Once you learn, or you have access to the people who can help you, you want to share that, because as parents we’re all going through very similar types of things. We may not realise how our parenting is impacting our children, and sometimes we have to ask ourselves some hard questions. Sometimes we have to learn to be empathetic and stop putting our egos first. We need to actually look at how our children are. We need to appreciate that our children are God-given, and they have God-given talents.
These days, parents believe that they can create their children like lumps of clay. Like trying to teach your baby to read at 12 months, putting them in front of a baby Einstein video to make them a genius, or playing them Mozart so they become musical. It’s all become a bit too much and we’ve got a bit carried away with it. Children start to believe that they’re loved conditionally – not for who they are, but for what they can achieve. We’re parenting in a toxic environment and there are a lot of pressures on children in terms of competition, how they look, social networks, and lots of comparison. Parents now think they’re like personal trainers – they think it’s their job to maximise and make their children good at things, and make sure they get the best of everything. We think we’re giving constructive criticism but the child just feels criticised.
Parents believe they can create their children like lumps of clay
PT:Was this your motivation for writing the book?
TC: The book is all about tiger parenting. Or in other words, you might think you are doing the very best for your child in a harsh world, but actually we can undermine their well-being. We’re seeing rising levels of depression, anxiety and self-harm among children and young people – it’s terrifying. On top of all the other stuff, sexualisation etc. We need our children to be happy. Stressed children don’t learn; we can pressure them all we like but it’s not doing them any good.
PT:Do you think ‘tiger parenting’ comes from an insecurity in the parent, or from culture, or pressure from other parents? Or is it a combination of factors?
TC: It’s a perfect storm. You’ve got globalisation, competition for jobs and recession. We used to think that if we brought our children up well and they got good grades then they could go to university and get a good job. That has now been snatched away, so parents are worried. You also have things like school league tables, which were invented about 20 years ago, and they have gradually taken over the education system; schools are desperate to get themselves up school league tables. What happens is that children become less like children and more like fodder, they become foot soldiers caught up in the system. Above that you’ve got the government, because of the PISA world ranking tables. There was a lot of panic when the UK started to drop down. As a country we tend to think of ourselves as quite intellectual – the home of Shakespeare, Dickens and the Industrial Revolution – so when the government started seeing that the UK was actually very low in measures of reading, maths and science, there was a panic and the feeling that we must do better if we want to maintain our position as an economic super power. There’s a lot of pressure from above and that’s what a few recent education policies have been about: a drive to get these children up to standard.
It’s like the Pink Floyd video [for ‘Another brick in the wall (part 2)’] – these children are not meat to be put through the grinder. These children are emotional human beings with different abilities and different talents. What we’re getting is children who might feel like they are succeeding at a very limited range of subjects like english, maths and science, but you also get a lot of children who feel like they’re failing. And once they feel they’re failing, it’s very hard to reverse that. We have to value other things outside of a very narrow definition of academic success. Not all of our children can be doctors, lawyers, bankers and accountants. We have to encourage entrepreneurship, individuality and creativity. We also have to help our children realise that there are many more different types of intelligence. There is a variety and there is no ‘one way’ that you have to be.
PT:There’s a term ‘snow plough’ parenting which is similar to tiger parenting, meaning parents who are so desperate for their children to succeed that they actually do their homework for them. What kind of result does that approach bring do you think?
TC: You don’t fool anybody while doing their homework. The teacher will know very well what the child is capable of and you’re not fooling anybody if you turn in a piece of work that’s way above what they usually do. Parents, particularly if their child isn’t doing very well in class, see it as some way of settling the score, ‘He’s not doing very well in English, but if I write this story then I’ll show them!’ It’s just not going to work. It takes away the child’s capabilities and the child starts to rely on the parent to do their work for them. This causes rows because the parent feels they’ve shown the child how to do the work but the child feels so under-confident. Homework is one of the biggest clashing points at home. The kids are getting more homework and the parents are getting more worried. The kids are losing confidence and the parents are getting more panicked. I meet a lot of parents, and it’s amazing how many children have cried doing homework and how many parents have lost their temper.
Not all of our children can be doctors, lawyers, bankers and accountants. We have to encourage entrepreneurship, individuality and creativity
PT:Parents might be living with the tension of wanting to protect their children, but also giving them a healthy amount of exposure to culture. What should the balance be?
TC: There’s so much toxic stuff out there, there’s no way you can protect your child from everything. When I had children I just thought, ‘Oh you know, I won’t have the TV on and they won’t see the sexy videos…I won’t have magazines with unrealistic body shapes around.’ Pretty soon you realise that it’s like a noxious gas – you can press all the towels you want to the doorframe but it still comes creeping in. They’re going to go out there and by the time they are five or six they’re going to be influenced or they are going to come across it. You have to give them a gas mask. They can filter it out for themselves and you have to show them what to look out for in a really age-appropriate way. Then, when they see it they can say, ‘Yeah, I know what that is…ok…I can reject that.’
Parents are in denial about pornography. I talk to them and they say, ‘Oh no, it’s fine! It didn’t do me any harm’ And I think ‘Have you seen it? Go on it, have a look…Can you imagine seeing it through the eyes of your child?’ It’s funny because they don’t spend the 30 seconds it takes to find the most disgusting stuff. I’m not a prude but it is not about sexuality or women expressing their sexuality. Originally when I started to talk about pornography people said that I was a prude and that I just didn’t get it, and that I was against letting my children express their sexuality. But, it’s not sexuality - it’s violence. It’s misogyny for money. It’s horrifying.
If you don’t talk to your child, porn will be their first sex education. That’s something you do not want. We all feel slightly sick about it. I talked to my child about it. I didn’t enjoy it but you just have to. You have to have an on-going conversation. I think the most important thing that we can say as parents is, ‘Whatever you have seen, whatever you’ve done - just talk to me about it and I will not be angry with you’. They need to realise that we’re always there for them and it’s not their fault. They don’t necessarily go and find it, it comes and finds them through links and spam. Most of it is accidental. Kids don’t want to see this stuff. There’s this idea that kids are just trying to get round the filters but if you look at the research actually a lot of kids don’t want to get round the filters. Maybe once they become hooked on it and they become addicted they do, but certainly not in the early stages.
If you leave it, someone else will get to them first. You certainly don’t want pornography getting to them before you’ve had a chance to show them that it’s just acting, it’s for money, it’s not what sex is, and it is not what people do to express emotion. Sex is about getting close to someone, it’s about an emotional and spiritual bond. Obviously no one wants to be talking to them about pornography but what can we do? We have to warn them. We have to tell them that they can reject it and not take it on board.
Listen to Tanith on Premier Christian Radio's Inspirational Breakfast.