Parenting classes should be encouraged for all families, not a tarnished few

Every parent, particularly of young children, will be familiar with the tyranny imposed by so-called parenting experts. By far the majority of these tend to be amateurs with no medical or scientific qualifications, but a plausibly posh accent that allows them to make lots of money out of exploiting the anxieties and fears of young, and especially first-time, parents.

Together with television executives who realised that those anxieties and fears would make for arresting popular entertainment, these experts are part of a nanny and supernanny phenomenon that has raised fears of a nanny – and supernanny – state. It shouldn’t be the business of government, so this argument goes, to tell parents how to raise their children. After all, nobody knows a child as well as his or her mother and father.

That is why the recommendation this week by John Ashton, the outgoing president of the Faculty of Public Health, that parenting classes should play a vital role in preventing mental health problems, is likely to be met with scepticism or even cynicism. Given the Prime Minister in January allotted £70m, a very large sum of public money, to counselling for 300,000 families at risk of breaking up, others may add, with good reason, that enough is already being done in this controversial area.

Such responses would be wrong and naïve. In fact, parenting classes ought to be encouraged further still, despite their limited take-up so far. As long as classes aren’t excessively prescriptive or patronising, they can be an invaluable source of information and support. What really justifies such intervention is not in fact those alleged problem families targeted by government, but the now universally accepted and overwhelming evidence of the importance of early years learning, and infant neurological development, in improving life chances.

The first five years in particular of a child’s life are vital. Intellectual vibrancy, phonic stimulation, and huge emotional support – love, in other words – in these early days can set a pattern that will bring health and happiness for years. If parenting classes can help convey that message, and assist parents of whatever background in improving their young child’s development, they should be supported, while those fraudulent supernannies are ignored.