There was an article in the Sunday paper suggesting that youth crime has "skyrocketed" by 140 percent. The Assistant Police Commissioner was saying this - and also questioning the role of parents in all this. He is reported as saying that around ten percent of offenders account for fifty percent of the crime. They are in other words "recidivists". Why? A small number of them have over two hundred offences on their charge sheets. Where do they find the time and the energy to commit so many offences that actually get that far? It is highly unlikely that these are the only offences they have committed.
The Assistant Police Commissioner is saying that what happens at home matters.
He asks, “Where are their parents? Where are their guardians? What responsibility have they got? They’re the ones who are failing and they’re the ones who need to step up and accept their own responsibility so that we have a safer community – and not always point the finger to other people to solve their problems. If you want to be a parent, then you actually need to accept that responsibility and have some accountability for your kids.”
That all sounds perfectly reasonable but these young offenders often come from single parent homes or homes where neither parent works, where drugs and alcohol and petty crime among the adults is also common. They can also come from homes where both parents work and really take very little interest in their children due to time restraints and not enough knowledge about how to parent effectively.
Ideas about parenting have changed too. If Dad gives you a "good walloping" he is likely to be charged with assault. If Mum won't buy you the brand of footwear you want then you can accuse her of being "neglectful". This of course assumes that you have both "Mum" and "Dad" and not a step-parent, "uncle", or two Mums or two Dads. Families have changed and there are plenty of children and young people who resent the structure of their own families.
I was talking to a young woman who was deliberately conceived out of wedlock and then grew up with "two mothers". She also grew up being told all this was normal and acceptable "but I never invited other kids home and I found I was sometimes not invited because parents did not approve of my family set up."
Her birth mother "Mum" died when she was fourteen. Her "other Mum" died a little over a year ago. She found her father and they have met but he lives in another country and she felt no connection with him. "I am supposed to feel sad I am an orphan but it's a relief in many ways. I don't have to worry about how they might influence any children I might have."
It would have been easy for her to go off the rails but she is an intelligent and able person who is now in a steady relationship with someone I know well. I hope it works out for them because parenting does matter and they know this better than most.
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