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The Kitchen Round Table

a thought piece from Parent.org

The key to the future

Welcome to The Kitchen Round Table. You have received this because you are on a database of people we consider interested in this area of thought. Unsubscription details are at the bottom. KRT is a short political thought piece from Parent.org, an organisation dedicated to giving parents a voice.

Why should parents have a voice?

Simply put - so we all can have a future. As Ian Grant, founder of Parents Inc, often states - “Parents are the key to everything.”

This simple idea has bypassed government thinking. They are looking to the business sector and a big capital fund to provide our long term economic security, and the education and health sector to improve good outcomes for children. There is a sense of urgency in this strategy. We must do this or that – we must be more productive - we must save for our retirement.

This approach to the future is wishful thinking, or perhaps wishing tinkering might be closer to the truth. There is no economic practice or policy that can guarantee our long term economic security. No productivity gains can be made that cannot be lost overnight. Any retirement savings the current generation of workers can make relies completely on future economic strength to maintain or improve its value.

The only thing that can protect our future is the certainty that the next generation of adults are better equipped than us to operate a society and an economy.

We need more people able to contribute positively to society and fewer who drain it. The government is increasingly looking to the education sector to raise a more productive citizen. Education can certainly produce smarter citizens but will those citizens have emotional security, values, feel connected to their community, have the sense of empathy and the ability to love that comes from being nurtured in a loving family?

Sam Morgan didn't praise the education system for his entrepreneurial success – he praised his parents. When parents succeed their children engage strongly with education, contribute to society by starting enterprises or becoming diligent workers, making positive contributions to their communities, enjoying stable relationships and strong families and perpetuating this cycle. When parents fail they cost us through channeling tax dollars to Police, prison services, remedial education and health services.

Government currently treats parents as a cost.

Consider the focus of government's relationship with parents. It's all about failure. Billions of dollars are put into parents who fail, but virtually nothing is allocated to ensure that those about to become parents have the skills, knowledge and resources that would make succeeding easier than failing. We are opening new prisons, we are recruiting more police but we are not asking ourselves how we can turn this tap off when the answer is simple - invest in parenting.

Imagine if government viewed parents as an investment.

As they do with business, sports, culture and the arts, government would take the approach that by ensuring that the parenting environment inspires success, that skills and knowledge were accessible and connected with success rather than failure, parents would be more likely to raise children who could, as adults, give society a substantial return on that investment.

It doesn't take much.

The barriers to this approach are more psychological than anything else. Dr. Cullen, with his retirement scheme, has shown us that our politicians do have the courage to think beyond the next election cycle. If we could start putting money into ensuring parenting success in a few short years that investment would start to pay dividends as we reduced the cost of parental failure. We took our business environment through a similar transformation from protecting failure to focusing on success – we can do the same with parents.

The Kitchen Round Table will come to you every few weeks, building on this idea of creating a better environment for our parents to operate in, so if you want some fresh thinking about social and economic issues look out for your next KRT.

Parent.org is a national lobby group promoting this common sense approach to building a better society. We are a-political, non religious, non-prescriptive. We simply believe that by creating an environment the encourages successful parenting New Zealand will become a better place for everyone.

Next edition – To smack or not to smack - that isn't the question?

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