Proper parenting would have prevented these riots

rioting carousel



If we want to prevent such vandalism happening again, we must understand the importance of ensuring all children grow up feeling loved, safe, understanding what they should and shouldn't do, and feeling like they have a future. Ask any new parent and they will say that they want a better life for their child, for them to do well at school and have a good job. But often the pressures of life, such as unemployment, lone parenting, poor housing, poverty, and mental or physical illness can get in the way.

This is not about the government telling parents what they should be doing, this is about society as a whole preventing another generation of children from feeling so cut off from society and lacking any senswe e of what's right or wrong that they feel the need to go out and ransack their own neighbourhood. And yes, many are asking where are their parents in all of this – rather than pointing the finger of blame let's see this as an opportunity to promote support to families, the building blocks for a strong society.

It's not just the government which can ill afford to allow more children to be so lacking in boundaries and feeling powerless. All of society will be paying the price of these riots for months if not years to come. There are the immediate costs of the clean up, justice and insurance, but also the potential future price of criminality, unemployment, and benefits resulting from a generation of children who have been raised without the emotional and behavioural skills to make a decent life for themselves.

If these children think that this is normal, acceptable behaviour and the role they should be playing in society, then we have failed them. And unless society as a whole pulls out all the stops now to change this, we will probably have failed their children and grandchildren as well.

Since the coalition government came into power we have seen report after report saying pretty much the same thing – it's the early years that matter most, support should be universal with more intensive support for those most in need.

Well, there we go. Ensure every parent receives parenting support during pregnancy and the early years, give every community a children's centre that they can turn to when they need some help and advice, provide intensive support through the Family Nurse Partnership to every pregnant teenager to give their child a much better start in life and the job's almost done. It's all there, we know it works, now we just have to actually buy the ticket.

So yes, Mr Cameron, you may be prepared to tackle the symptoms through more robust policing and bringing the rioters to justice, but are you prepared to tackle the cause and invest in the families that need help now and ensure this never happens again?

Rachel Tonkin works for Parenting UK