home  parent resources  research  discussion  vision  mission  join/contact

 the mission of Parent.org

"If you have bad kids you are a bad parent, if you have good kids you are lucky" anon

To change the political framework so that successful parenting underpins every government action

Parents need to feel valued.  When was the last time you saw or heard a message from government endorsing parents?  While government actively promotes joining the military, becoming a teacher, undertaking tertiary education, giving up smoking, losing weight, they don't have anything to say to parents.  Parenting is not important enough to acknowledge.

Twenty years ago the government took business out of a failure-focused environment, where the more a business failed the more the government supported it, to a success-focused one.  During the same twenty years the parenting environment has increasingly become focused on failure.  Virtually all the government resources for families, throught Child, Youth and Family, now goes to supporting failure, not promoting success.  If you are obliged to seek parent education you have failed.  If government agencies are taking an interest in your family you have failed.  Imagine if this was reversed - people encouraged to look on parenting as a challenge that they could succeed in.

The government is exacerbating this problem by promoting skills and expansion in the early childhood education sector.  The message behind this is leave parenting to the experts and go back to work.  No one should be more expert at raising a child than the child's parents, but there is no interest in giving them skills or setting standards. 

Parent.org will take this message to our political and governmental sector, and seek out research that illustrates both the economic and the social advantages in a success-focused parenting environment.

Parents need to have access to skills and a desire to acquire them.  Currently, much of parent education is associated with failure or inadequacy or correcting a problem.  This is sad as it stops people proactively engaging in learning that would make life easier for themselves as well as having a better outcome for their children.  Government could encourage parent education by:

• Making parent education tax deductible.  In the commerical sector training is tax deductible but it is not in the parenting sector.  The simple measure of making parent education tax deductible gives it an elevated status and send a clear message that the government wants our parents to be skilled.  By offering this concession the government will be creating a whole new market and reap tax income from the providers.  This has been resoundingly rejected in a letter to Parents Centre from Dr. Cullen shortly before he agreed to tax cuts for foreign film makers.

• Funding parent education.  If the government had long term vision they would fund parent education because doing so would reduce the long term need for high levels of policing, prisons, and social welfare. 

• Introducing a parenting stream into the school curriculum.  This is taking a whole of society view and really acknowledging the value that good parenting gives society. Although fewer couples are having children, most still do.  As this is the most important role that most people will undertake, we should be looking for ways to prepare our youth as much as possible, and making them keen to succeed. 

A concern is often raised that any government-funded parenting program is prescriptive.  This is a red herring.  There is no right and wrong way to raise children, but there are many good ideas and plenty of information on child development that is more useful in the heads of parents than in academics and policy makers where it currently resides.  A smart government would create the environment for parent education to flourish in, rather than have it seen as something to be ashamed of.

Parent.org will engage with government to look for ways to propagate parenting theories, skills and child development education to the nation's parents with incentives to encourage them to look on this training as being valuable.

Parents need to be resourced.  Raising families puts a tremendous strain on household finances, particularly for those who have made the choice to dedicate themselves to the role rather than returning to the workforce.  While our welfare system considers the number of people in a household  our tax system doesn't.  It makes no distinction between an income supporting one person and an income supporting a family of five (or more).  Things we want to encourage, such as children participating in sports and cultural activities, are beyond the reach of many family budgets.  The money we don't spend today helping parents raise motivated, well socialised children is money we will be spending many times over in a decade or so on legal services, police and welfare.  The tax system is the obvious way to financially recognised the cost of families and it is merely a matter of thinking creatively. 

A tax free allowance could be set in place, meaning that parents don't start paying tax until the money needed to support their family is earned.  This approach can easily harmonise with a progressive tax scale the would suit socialists or a flat tax scale for those on the right.

Income splitting is a way of acknowledging the work of full time parents.  A working parents income is split 50:50 with the non-working parent and each pays tax on the 50%.  As well as reducing the tax bill it gives a sense of worth to the non-working parent who, as far as the government is concerned, ceases to exist.

Parent.org will engage in government over the issue of family income, ensuring that families have sufficient resources to ensure good outcomes for their children