In certain areas of England, around a quarter of children have suffered tooth decay as young as aged five. To combat this, Labour Health Minister Stephen Kinnock is rolling out a new programme. Supervised toothbrushing will be rolled out in schools and nurseries, along with 23 million free toothbrushes distributed to up to 600,000 children.
This is, in a sense, an admirable initiative. It’s deeply concerning that so many children, namely in poverty, are experiencing such failure of basic care. However, where the Labour Party are laying responsibility for said failure is perniciously misguided. The party’s official X account gloated that the culprit for these children’s poor health was “14 years of Conservative neglect.”
Any child whose milk teeth are rotting … are first and foremost victims of inadequate parenting
I appreciate X is the political playground — any opportunity to take a swipe at your opponent, however low-hanging the fruit, is taken. Still, a red flag flutters when the state implicitly assumes responsibility for the welfare of the nation’s children while erasing the role of their parents. At a push, Labour could have claimed Tory cuts to NHS dentistry were partly to blame for unprecedented levels of tooth decay (although, there is data to suggest that the health of children’s teeth actually improved under the previous government), but even that is swerving the real cause. While dental check-ups are an important part of maintaining healthy teeth and gums, fundamentally the best way to avoid decay is to limit sugar intake and brush regularly with fluoride toothpaste. Any child whose milk teeth are rotting because these — very basic — foundations are not being taught are first and foremost victims of inadequate parenting.
The reality is a lot of social problems have poor parenting at their root. This is entirely obvious and yet massively taboo to acknowledge — just typing the words makes me feel like I’m asking for Helen Lovejoy or “Karen” memes to be sent my way. Politically, criticising parents or suggesting they should take more responsible for their children’s welfare or behavioural problems is unspoken electoral suicide. Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to education. Teachers or the “system” become scapegoats for problems like the rise in childhood mental health issues or SEND children (i.e. children with learning difficulties). Since the disastrous school closures during the COVID pandemic, ill-defined “anxiety” has been conveniently used to explain away the rise of disrespect, falling discipline standards and screen addiction affecting children’s behaviour.
Yet it’s been almost half a decade since things got back to normal and there’s been enough time for schools to get their house back in order. The real issue, as the teacher Laura Hudgens has argued, is that the sensible restrictions on screen time and standards of routine and discipline — both things which were massively relaxed by parents to placate their children during the lockdown — haven’t been reinstated. Her article was sent to me by a teacher friend on behalf of her fellow staff, who had welcomed it for summarising how they all (secretly) felt: it is time the red pen was turned on mum and dad.
We must be honest about whether we as a society are more interested in helping the child or condemning the parent
Bring back shame is the (muttered) mantra of many in response to the decline in parental responsibility. Well, while I concede our culture of pathological empathy is causing more harm than good, walking the line between small-c christian kindness (“judge, lest ye be judged”) and enforcing a sense of pull-your-socks-up (or brush-your-kids-teeth) is particularly difficult when poverty is seen to be a factor. Also, let’s not forget that when people say “bad parenting”, what they often mean is “bad mothering”. A while ago, amid a trend of people going to their local supermarkets in pyjamas and slippers, mothers were particularly pilloried and held up as an example of all-round cultural decay. While I do find this an inexcusably slovenly practice and agree it sets an appalling example to kids, let’s ignore the glee that underpins shaming, and that is often mixed with a heavy dose of classism and sexism. We must be honest about whether we as a society are more interested in helping the child or condemning the parent.
Any of us who did grow up in a small village will recall a family who were notorious for being “that family”, whose children wore dirty clothes, always seemed to have lice and were casually left out of the birthday party invite distribution. I remember “that” family very vividly in my own village. The Campbells (let’s call them), made up of a single mother, three sons and a daughter, all who showed up at school each day with a breakfast of Monster Munch crisps and bottles of Irn Bru. They were all clinically obese and their teeth, unsurprisingly, were rotten.
On one hand, I look back at the mother and see a woman who, as we’d say in Scotland, had clearly had a “tough paper round”. Barely thirty, unemployed with four tearaway children in a tiny flat above a chip shop and no man in the picture, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume she herself didn’t grow up with a white picket fence around her house and fresh vegetables in the fridge. I cringe when I remember the mockery and judgement she and her children had reigned down on them. Then again, it’s hard to think of an excuse — regardless of upbringing — a parent could have for plying their children with fizzy drinks before eight in the morning. At what point do these efforts of empathy towards parents in deprived areas become the bigotry of small expectations — another form of classism?
It seems we are in something of a vicious circle: wanting officials to stop enforcing parental responsibility while outsourcing more and more of our common sense to the state. Journalist and mum-of-two Ella Whelan wrote of her irritation at an NHS campaign encouraging parents to cuddle and play with their babies because it insinuated the average British parent was a neglectful idiot. I sympathise with her sentiment but evidently, in a country where 600,000 children are not being taught at home how to brush their teeth, what seems like basic “well, duh” parenting practices to most of us aren’t being upheld.
This is a national disgrace and the government only worsens things by treating actual parents like a middleman they can cut out. On top of everything else, it places more strain on educators already stretched with the amount of nurture they are expected to deliver on top of meeting learning targets. (Many disdainful comments in response to Labour’s post have said things along the line of: “What’s next – teachers being expected to potty train kids!” As someone who works part-time in a nursery, I beg, don’t give them any more ideas).
The old adage about the difference between catching a fish for a man and teaching him how to fish so he can feed himself for a lifetime rings relevant here. By all means, let the state give the nation’s children 23 million free toothbrushes if they need it, but it’s very wrong to shy away from the fact that it should be parents and primary caregivers alone who should be teaching this sort of life skill.
