"Good parenting and responsibility is not an optional extra in life, it's necessary for a good society", argued federal ALP leader Mark Latham in supporting plans by the Western Australian Labor government to issue "parental responsibility orders" that threaten fines of up to $3000 for parents of children caught repeatedly wagging school.
On January 26, Latham said that if he were prime minister, he would divert federal funds to support "parental responsibility orders" like those planned by the WA government.
While the mainstream press has depicted Prime Minister John Howard as disagreeing with Latham on this issue, there are more similarities in their perspectives than differences.
Only a few months ago, Howard made comments to Sydney's Sun-Herald lambasting parents' lack of control over their children, connecting this to an "epidemic of gun violence in certain parts of Sydney". Howard told the November 1 Sun-Herald "that 12 and 13 year olds are out on the streets, with gangs and roaming around at all hours".
Despite the supposed difference of opinion, Howard and Latham agree that failed parenting is the cause of delinquency among youth.
Under the Howard government, this argument has accompanied the fervent implementation of the neoliberal agenda to dismantle public services. Right now Medicare and public education are in Howard's sights. He wants to force more and more working-class parents to take out private health insurance and to send their children to private schools. Parents who are struggling are just a reflection of their own inadequacies and their abandonment of "traditional family values", according to Howard.
Rather than challenging the neoliberal agenda so aggressively pursued by Howard's Coalition government, and which is making the lives of working-class parents harder every day, Latham's "solution" is to force parents, under pain of huge fines, to undergo counselling.
Critics of Latham's proposal have labelled it the "big stick" approach, with Andrew McCallum of the Australian Council of Social Service warning against a punitive approach which is likely to target many poorer families.
In this social and economic climate the pressures on working-class parents are enormous. They are under enormous social pressure to bringing up children with "good morals and standards", who succeed at school and are driven to achieve in a fiercely competitive society. At the same time, economic conditions and government policies are making it increasing difficult to achieve this.
Young people face an alienating school experience, and massive youth unemployment. They are under enormous pressure from corporate advertising to own the latest consumer products. There is very little for young people to do in their diminishing free time, with the few remaining public spaces and facilities being stripped back by governments.
Working parents are expected to provide children with financial security — in a situation where nobody but the rich feels economically secure — and to provide them with the emotional support they need to cope with an unjust and stressful society.
Given all this, working-class parents, primarily mothers who continue to shoulder the majority of work associated with running a household and raising children, often manage pretty well in the face of adversity. Despite such impressive efforts they are criticised by governments and the corporate media at every turn in an effort to deflect attention from failed government policies.
Only by convincing an increasing proportion of the working class that the blame for the bourgeoning social crisis lies with "dysfunctional" families, and mothers in particular, can Australian capitalism deepen its neoliberal drive.
Jo Williams
From Green Left Weekly, February 4, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.