It takes quite a lot to shock me these days. I’m very old, you see, and very tired. And very misanthropic, a natural pessimist, lazy and an introvert. Being shocked takes energy, interest and all sorts of other resources I lack and don’t see being replenished any time soon.
But – I have to admit – I currently am. Shocked.
A survey of 1,000 primary school parents and 1,000 teachers carried out on behalf of early years development charity Kindred found that nearly half of parents believe children do not need to know how books work (that is, that covers open and pages turn rather than needing to be tapped or swiped) before they start school.
Twenty-four per cent do not think they need to be toilet trained by then. Teachers report that indeed, about a quarter of children are starting school unable to use the loo. They also report that some lack the core strength to sit upright – likely because of excessive screen time at home – and cannot climb stairs, and that many are unable to listen to or follow simple instructions.
Now, of course, there have always been children born to parents who, for reasons of (usually mental) ill health, family breakdown and other forms of crisis, simply cannot give them what they need.
I could write a book – might, one day – about what my mother saw as an outreach doctor specialising in family planning, trying to help women trapped in abusive relationships and other appalling situations. They were without the social capital to escape, or to access in the usual ways any form of contraception that would have prevented the babies that further entrenched them and their other children in poverty and despair.
That’s a terrible thing and it did, and I’m sure does, inevitably ensure that there will always be a stratum of children who need extra, parental-type help when they arrive at school (and on through the years). Which, incidentally, most – primary school especially – teachers accept absolutely as a sad but necessary part of the job.
But nearly half your class turning up essentially not knowing what a book is?
A quarter still needing nappies or a potty? These are insanely high figures, impossible to attribute entirely to desperate family situations or, as they have been in the recent past, to the problems caused by Covid and homeschooling.
You might shave a few percentage points off them still with the latter, if you are feeling very generous, and maybe if you are feeling even more generous an additional few if you factor in the cost of living crisis that will be forcing more parents to work longer hours.
But that still leaves an undeniably large chunk that you fear can only be attributed to a great dereliction of parental duty. The kind of chunk that makes you want to ask many searching questions. Such as: do you love your children? Do you like them? Do you feel any responsibility to them at all as people? Did you just want a cute baby and then things got boring and difficult? Did you put any thought into the decision to have them at all? Did you actually-factually want them? Were you aware that you don’t have to have them?
If you have any kind of understanding at all of the hard graft that is involved in raising another human being, one that is ideally happy, civilised, capable of sitting upright and negotiating stairs from an early age and then ready to take on all kinds of complicated challenges, and you think “Christ, that all sounds a bit much. I’d like to keep my own rich and rewarding life more thoroughly intact, thanks” – that’s absolutely fine. Go forth and don’t multiply!
There are myriad forms of contraception available – I can send you one of Mum’s photocopied pictorial guides that she’s still got stashed in the meds cupboard if you like, though you won’t get her patented look of disgust whenever she talks about men’s bits, which I really do think helps.
Don’t, in other words, be a selfish idiot. Don’t believe the curated infants on Instagram in all their swaddled cuteness. Babies arrive like a bomb in your life (after first exploding your vagina – I wish I could show you Mum’s look for this too) and for years and years and years after that it is hard, hard work to raise them right. Raising them wrongly is easy. But it’s not fair and we all know that.
It should be widely and loudly acknowledged that for all its joys, parenting is a real and unrelenting job. And if, when you look into your future and envisage any little darlings you have walking around at the age of four or five in nappies and staring at their phones, please do them, the teachers and all of us the very great favour of renewing your pill, ring, injection, coil, patch, condom collection, convent or monastic vows and carry on enjoying your life without responsibility for anyone else’s.
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