Media Release from Parent.org

For immediate release
15/06/05

The road to failure is paved with good intentions

In saying that she is putting all her parental eggs in an information campaign as opposed to supporting repeal of section 59 of the crimes act, the anti-smacking law, the Prime Minister is ignoring our recent history, suggests parenting lobby group spokesperson, Steve Gore. “She conveniently ignores the fact that our current economic success only came about because her predecessors dismantled a business environment that was focused on failure and created a success focused environment for business to operate in.”

The lobby group, which urges government to do the same thing for parents, points out that in the pre 1984 New Zealand economy there was little interest in skills and up to date knowledge. “In a failure focused environment groups don’t look for information to help themselves. They sometimes take on a victim mentality and blame others for their failure and deliberately ignore advice. In the good old days business simply went to government and got subsidies and tariffs to prop up poor business performance.

“The same thing is happening today with parents. While the government has, in the SKIPs initiative, created an excellent resource of information for parents their target market is unlikely to be interested in taking up the information as they feel unvalued, disrespected, and mistrustful of government.

Parent.org points out that one only has to turn on the nightly news to hear a raft of business success and innovation and in the same bulletin the latest tragic consequence of parental failure. While business have dozens of government agencies mandated to help them succeed parents have only Child Youth and Family, the Police, and the Family Courts, and their mandate is to support failure, not promote success. Business has several government Ministers fighting for their cause, parents have no one at the Cabinet table. Skills, knowledge and education in the business sector is tax deductible. For parents to gain skills they must dive into the family budget, or rely on government to step in, and that takes the guise of being reminded of what a failure they are.

The most blatant example of the impact of this environmental perspective can be seen in the child obesity issue. This issue belongs to parents but schools are being given both the resources and the encouragement to deal with it. For schools, being part of reducing child obesity is a measure of success, and they are excelling at teaching children good eating habits and engaging them in activity. For parents, being reminded of yet another failure is another layer of guilt to add to all their other reported inadequacies. The two groups have a totally different response to the same situation because one operates from a perspective of success and the other from failure

“We are not at all anti-education,” stated Mr. Gore, “but if the government has any expectation of their education being up taken by the parents that need it most then they first must put a lot of time, resources and energy into changing the environment. When parents feel valued and respected they will willingly seek out information because being a better parent is something they will want for themselves – until then, the information government makes available will be a nice little extra for those that mostly don’t need it anyway. If the government is serious about reducing child abuse and neglect then it must have a population who feels that raising a good child is the most important thing they can do, and that the government and the rest of society is 100% behind them with support, not condemnation.”

Ends

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