Frank Field, Graham Allen, Iain Duncan
Smith and the relentless rise of
‘parent training’
Ellie Lee
Director, Centre for Parenting
Culture Studies
Prior research: Infant feeding
Themes informing policy and maternity services:
• Increasing breastfeeding rates as a way to address
health and social inequality
• Decision to breastfeed and practice of breastfeeding
marker for an approved parenting style
• Breastfeeding maximises ‘attachment’ and ‘bonding’
(and bottle feeding, especially with formula milk,
associated with impaired bonding)
• Breastfeeding (especially for many months and even
years) can solve large social problems because is good
for the brain (IQ and EI)
‘Why Love Matters’
‘Breastfeeding itself inactivates the mother’s own stress response; her amygdala
expresses less CRF [Corticotropin Releasing Hormone], presumably removing anxious,
fearful feelings; whilst the prolactin generating by breastfeeding provides a feeling of
tranquility. The breastfeeding state of mind facilities her ability to calm her baby and to
manage his stress…..
……She is then potentially more able to inhibit her baby’s stress response and to ensure
that his cortisol levels remain low. This is achieved through her presence, her feeding
and her touch. The baby is protected from stress and discomfort and his brain responds
by growing more cortisol neurons. A brain well stocked with cortisol receptors through
this early experience will be better able to mop up this stress hormone when it is released
in the future. This furnishes the baby’s brain with the capacity to stop producing cortisol
when it has helped deal with a source of stress. The stress response will be quickly
turned off when it is no longer needed…
[If this does not happen] ….a reactive stress response will have been set up’.
Sue Gerhardt, Why Love Matters, How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain (Chapter title,
Melancholy Baby, How early experience can alter brain chemistry)
Some points about contemporary
parenting culture more generally……
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Claim that ‘the science says……’ is a central theme in any example
of child rearing practices
There are more and more instances where claims are made that
evidence from brain science explains why a particular way of
parenting is best e.g. feeding, sleeping, discipline, pregnancy
behaviours
Parenting is now routinely represented as a skill-set that can be
both taught and learned through reference to scientific evidence
about how to parent well
The idea that there is a ‘science of parenting’ underpins the work of
the ‘parenting expert’ or ‘parenting practitioner’ (or lactation
consultant)
Politics is powerfully informed by these notions
The social construction of the ‘parenting problem’ in this way has
(and is having) important effects for ‘pre-political’ institutions
Focus on policy:
Policy statements under the Coalition
The Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances
‘In June this year [2010] the Government announced that Frank Field
MP has been appointed to lead and independent review into poverty
and life chances. The main aims of the Review are:
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Explore how a child’s home environment affects their chances of
being ready to take full advantage of school
Generate a broader debate about the extent and nature of poverty in
the UK
Recommend potential action by government and other institutions to
reduce poverty and enhance life chances for the least
disadvantaged, consistent with the Government’s fiscal strategy
Examine the case for reforms to the poverty measures, in particular
for the inclusion of non-financial elements’
Policy statements under the
Coalition
The Early Intervention Commission
‘In July this year [2010] the Government announced that Graham Allen MP had
been appointed to lead an independent review into early intervention.
The review will focus on:
• the identification of best practice in the field of early intervention
• the dissemination and delivery of best practice
• new ways to fund early intervention in the future.
The review defines early intervention as those programmes which ensure
that babies, children, and young people build a strong bedrock of social
and emotional capabilities to fulfill their potential and help break
intergenerational transfers of disadvantage and underachievement. We
are focusing on those early interventions that build the ability to improve
outcomes for their target group in a cost effective way’.
Joined up thinking
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Public Health
‘Starting well, through early intervention and prevention, is a key priority for the
Government…..increased numbers of health visitors, working with children’s centres and GPs,
will lead and deliver the Healthy Child programme, alongside the evidence-based Family Nurse
Partnership (FNP) programme. These services, working with partners, will support families to
build community capacity as part of the Big Society. Supporting parents with parenting
programmes has a positive impact on both parents’ and children’s wellbeing and mental health.
The Healthy Child Progarmme also includes breastfeeding support and a range of proven
preventive services’ (Healthy Lives, Healthy People: Our strategy for public health in England,
2011)
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Education and the Pupil Premium
Sure Start for 2 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds
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Political consensus
eg Seeing through the new Labour project; early intervention as a consensual political project
Labour says, ‘It’s all a really good idea but you have to fund it’
eg Demos and CSJ arguing just the same thing
eg Wider areas of support e.g. pro-breastfeeding campaigns, campaigns / initiatives around
parental mental health
Key proposals
Frank Field’s report, The Foundation Years: Preventing poor children
becoming poor adults has been published
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Establishing a new programme of early years education ‘The
Foundation Years’ covering the period conception to five
Use money that would previously have been spend on benefits for
children on the Foundation Years programme
‘Parents are the key drivers in determining their children’s life chances.
It is not so much who parents are – what their jobs are – by what
parents do – how they nurture their children – which the evidence
shows, determines a child’s life’s race….schools should teach
parenting and life skills throughout the whole of their school life. Pupils
will begin to learn how they can advance the lives of their children when
they start a family’.
Key proposals
Graham Allen’s report out in February but a press work done already
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Regular assessment of all pre-school children focussing on their
social and emotional development
A national parenting programme
Numbering school year groups from birth
All parents need to know how to, ‘recognise and respond to a baby’s
cues, attune with infants and stimulate them from the very start, and
how to foster empathy…If we can invest a little early in the life cycle to
help mums and babies, and young people, then I think you’ll find that
money is recouped over and over again’.
Major themes
• Both Field and Allen have found, and
recommended, entirely what was to be expected
ie their thinking has not been modified
• Set out in Early Intervention: Good Parents,
Great Kids, Better Citizens (Duncan Smith/Allen)
• Publication from the Centre for Social Justice
(2008)
• Starting point for the Early Intervention
Commission
A clear focus on ‘the [expanding]
bottom’…..the ‘growing dysfunctional base’
‘As the fabric of society crumbles at the bottom what is left
behind is an underclass where life is characterised by
dependency, addiction, debt and family breakdown….What
exercises me, perhaps more than anything else, is the very
scale of these problems, the creeping expansion of this
underclass…the norm is dysfunctional….the dysfunctional
norm is spreading….this is why Rhys Jones was gunned
down whilst walking across Croxteth on the way home from
football practice, this is why we are seeing a spate of fatal
knifings and murderous beatings’ (IDS, p9)
A clear focus on ‘the [expanding]
bottom’…..the ‘growing dysfunctional base’
‘There is evidence that people in the dysfunctional
base have their children earlier and faster than
average, building up a massive social and financial
problems unless it is addressed soon’ (p22)
‘There remain the problems of what social
scientists call the existing ‘stock’: the children and
young people who are already presenting with
severe difficulties, as well as the ‘flow’: those at
risk who are yet to be born’ (p24).
A focus with implications
for all of us
‘The transmission of parenting skills from
generation to generation has changed
considerably and while the middle classes
can read the guide books, those with lower
educational and social skills are finding
parenting skills squeezed out as extended
families reduce and more one-parent
households have smaller knowledge bases
on which to draw’ (p23).
‘The evidence says’….
‘The research we draw on for this pamphlet indicates that
what happens inside the family, when a child is very young
indeed, strongly determines how they will react to people
outside the home, how ready they will be to learn and
ultimately what kind of citizen they will become’ (IDS, p12).
‘We believe that there are grounds for optimism: without
claiming to have found a ‘magic bullet’ we have seen
evidence that a new approach, tackling the precursors of
social problems in the earliest years of children’s lives,
could make a significant difference’ (p22).
The evidence says parenting causes dysfunction and
therefore poverty because of how it affects the brain
‘George Hosking…..brought home to me the sheer predictability of
children’s early years for their future outcomes. He has produces
compelling evidence that if a child is born into a home where they are
nurtured, where conversation takes place, where someone reads to
them (even at an age where they cannot understand) then, quite
simply, their brain develops properly. Their social skills develop and
they go off to nursery school able to learn from the next phase of their
education. However, if they do not have that kind of environment, if
they are not stimulated, if they sit in front of the television interminably,
if there is constant anger and shouting,……..then the evidence we
present shows that such a child will arrive at nursery school unable to
communicate or relate properly to others than in a violent or otherwise
dysfunctional way’. (IDS, p12)
The evidence says parenting causes dysfunction and
therefore poverty because of how it affects the brain
‘Dysfunctional families become incubators for the generational transfer
of mental and physical ill-health and chaotic lifestyles that inhibit
children’s ability to lead a fulfilled life. These damaging effects can be
explained neurologically, biologically and behaviourally.’ (p29)
‘Neuroscience can now explain why early conditions are so
crucial: effectively, our brains are largely formed by what we
experience in early life….scientific discoveries suggest it is nurture
rather than nature that plays the lead role in creating the human
personality…It has been said that ‘the greatest gift for a baby is
maternal responsiveness’. The more positive stimuli a baby is given,
the more brain cells and synapses it will be able to develop.’ (p57)
Evidence based policy to reduce poverty
means teaching parenting to ‘the stock’ to save
‘the flow’ (and their brains)
‘The Early-Intervention policy pragmatism started to meet
scientific and evidence-based analysis as around this time
more and more work was becoming evident to me and
many others on what happens to children’s brains between
the years on 0-3. An evidence base was beginning to
accumulate on the fantastic ability of the brain to
expand in the very early years….[and] it seemed ever
more obvious that if we could equip the parents or
parent to optimise (usually) maternal responsiveness
and their impact on their 0-3 year-old children, we
would be laying secure and strong foundations…..’(GA
p17)
Evidence based policy to reduce poverty
means teaching parenting to ‘the stock’ to save
‘the flow’ (and their brains)
‘The large human brain and therefore human head
size requires the baby be born earlier than other
mammals in order that it can be physically
delivered. The brain then grows outside the womb,
over the 0-3 year period….It is in that delicate and
vulnerable period that out lives can be made or
not. It is there that private competences and
public policy must ensure that parents
administer the best three years of emotional
and cognitive ‘intensive care’ to every child. ’
(GA p17)
Evidence based policy to reduce poverty
means teaching parenting to ‘the stock’ to save
‘the flow’ (and their brains)
‘Too often the public sector machines are prescribed an agenda which is
exclusively about fire-fighting and picking up the pieces…..This is of course a
colossal waste of both financial resources and well as equally precious human
potential - the 16-year old failure, banged up in a secure unit, at a cost of
£230,000 a year often for want of a few hundred pounds worth of help to
his mother on parenting skills 16 years earlier.’ (GA p15)
‘….primary head teachers who could spot the ‘difficult kids’ on day one at
school…..[which made me realise] we had to go back even further….Clearly we
had to delve back further, to think of ways of getting a child’s parents or parent
to give the child the emotional and social wherewithal to get the best from
school well before entry into primary school….Therefore ideas around
intensive health visiting and intensive pre-natal care started to take
shape, even going back beyond the time of pregnancy to the preconception, teenage years of potential mothers and fathers……I began to
form the idea of a virtuous circle of interventions covering a generation
aged from 0-18 and over again to the next generation.’ (GA p16)
Questions / areas
• A new phrenology …. assertion, speculation,
pseudo-science
• A new relationship between public policy and
(pre)-family life: emotion as a political problem
• A further erosion of the integrity of the concept
‘education’
• Contradictions: teaching Latin and parenting?
Under parenting and over parenting?