Latest news with #RhiannonLucyCosslett
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Parenting is shaped by societal expectations and support structures
Regarding the letter (We're too obsessed with 'child-centred' parenting – in Spain, the happy family comes first, 23 May), the issue isn't just about parenting styles, it's about broader societal expectations. I'm a British woman raising my two young children in Portugal, which I would describe as family-oriented. Here, children are naturally integrated into everyday life, and the sense of solidarity that Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett refers to (19 May) is the norm. A cornerstone of this community-based approach is high-quality, accessible childcare. Nurseries are staffed by experienced professionals and are affordable, if not free. Here, it's normal for babies to attend nursery full-time from the age of six months. By contrast, when I told peers in the UK that my children attended nursery full-time from 12 months, I was met with thinly veiled disapproval. The individualistic approach to parenting in the UK is ingrained. In Portugal, accessible childcare significantly eases the load on parents. Instead of debating parenting styles, perhaps we should focus on the social frameworks that support or strain WeeksLisbon, Portugal
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Parenting is shaped by societal expectations and support structures
Regarding the letter (We're too obsessed with 'child-centred' parenting – in Spain, the happy family comes first, 23 May), the issue isn't just about parenting styles, it's about broader societal expectations. I'm a British woman raising my two young children in Portugal, which I would describe as family-oriented. Here, children are naturally integrated into everyday life, and the sense of solidarity that Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett refers to (19 May) is the norm. A cornerstone of this community-based approach is high-quality, accessible childcare. Nurseries are staffed by experienced professionals and are affordable, if not free. Here, it's normal for babies to attend nursery full-time from the age of six months. By contrast, when I told peers in the UK that my children attended nursery full-time from 12 months, I was met with thinly veiled disapproval. The individualistic approach to parenting in the UK is ingrained. In Portugal, accessible childcare significantly eases the load on parents. Instead of debating parenting styles, perhaps we should focus on the social frameworks that support or strain WeeksLisbon, Portugal Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
We're too obsessed with ‘child-centred' parenting – in Spain, the happy family comes first
I'm in complete agreement with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (Modern parenting rejects abusive ways of punishing children. Will England listen?, 19 May) in condemning the use of physical and verbal violence on children. However, I part company with Cosslett in her view that taking an enlightened position on this issue is co-terminus with a 'child-centred' parenting style. It is possible to be non-violent without subscribing to a child-centred approach. It can be argued that such child-centredness is itself an overreaction to past parenting approaches, and can lead to as many problems as it seeks to solve. I have been privileged to be given a ringside seat to two very different parenting styles as a member of a 'blended' family, with grandchildren being brought up in this country by committed child-centred parents, and grandchildren being brought up in Spain with a parenting style I would call 'family centred'. And if you think this is the same thing, you would be mistaken. Children in Spain learn from the moment they are born that they are members of a family first and foremost. The parenting style reflects the preeminence of the group, not the individual child. In my (admittedly subjective) experience, children brought up in a family-centred culture are far less likely to be attention seeking, are less demanding of their parents, and evince greater emotional security, subject to less parental over-involvement. I see less aggression and frustration being expressed by Spanish parents with their kids than that shown by English ones. I do wish we could all learn to lift our heads up and look at how other cultures parent their children. We could find plenty of examples that beat our child-centred approach hands and address supplied
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
We're too obsessed with ‘child-centred' parenting – in Spain, the happy family comes first
I'm in complete agreement with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (Modern parenting rejects abusive ways of punishing children. Will England listen?, 19 May) in condemning the use of physical and verbal violence on children. However, I part company with Cosslett in her view that taking an enlightened position on this issue is co-terminus with a 'child-centred' parenting style. It is possible to be non-violent without subscribing to a child-centred approach. It can be argued that such child-centredness is itself an overreaction to past parenting approaches, and can lead to as many problems as it seeks to solve. I have been privileged to be given a ringside seat to two very different parenting styles as a member of a 'blended' family, with grandchildren being brought up in this country by committed child-centred parents, and grandchildren being brought up in Spain with a parenting style I would call 'family centred'. And if you think this is the same thing, you would be mistaken. Children in Spain learn from the moment they are born that they are members of a family first and foremost. The parenting style reflects the preeminence of the group, not the individual child. In my (admittedly subjective) experience, children brought up in a family-centred culture are far less likely to be attention seeking, are less demanding of their parents, and evince greater emotional security, subject to less parental over-involvement. I see less aggression and frustration being expressed by Spanish parents with their kids than that shown by English ones. I do wish we could all learn to lift our heads up and look at how other cultures parent their children. We could find plenty of examples that beat our child-centred approach hands and address supplied Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
17-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Cruel legacy of Ireland's mother and baby homes
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett's article on the enduring pain caused by the church-run mother-and-baby homes in Ireland was a powerful read, leaving me full of anger and indignation (Ireland's mother-and-baby homes are a stain on the Catholic church – but this latest refusal to atone is a new low, 13 April). The stories resonated with me too. These 'homes' played a role in the Dublin childhoods of my aunt and mother. My aunt's experiences were heartbreaking: in the late 1960s, she was effectively imprisoned in a home for 'fallen women', her baby taken from her for adoption almost immediately after birth. It's a loss that stayed with her for the rest of her life. My mother's experiences reflected the general poverty and cruelty of Irish society in the late 1940s. Desperately hungry and neglected, brutalised by her brother who'd returned from the second world war with PTSD, she ran away from home and presented herself at a Magdalene laundry. Although she was subjected to a demeaning medical examination to see if she was pregnant (she wasn't) and made to work long hours, the laundry provided her with a better standard of living than she'd hitherto known – regular meals, a bed free of vermin and, paradoxically, given the reputation of the laundries, freedom from physical violence. Her life must have been truly miserable if a laundry was preferable to her family home. Ireland was such a cruel place that my mother escaped to England aged just 16. Her experiences, I'm sure, are why my family never holidayed in the 'old country' or wore shamrocks on Saint Patrick's Day. Name and address supplied The intergenerational damage done by the Catholic church lives on. Remember that church leaders attributed imbecilic behaviour and muteness to children born outside wedlock. To be such a child meant that your chances of living a decent life after being in any institution of shame (mother-and-baby home, industrial school, Magdalene laundry, mental health institution) was zero. No employer would hire you and your chances of marriage were low. And your chances of looking at the world through the bars of a prison cell or mental institution were a lot higher unless you could keep your secret – an impossibility in a country made up of hundreds of small insular towns. And, of course, the men got off scot-free, with no blemish on their reputations. They thrived, while sowing their oats. Not so the young, single and vulnerable girls during a time of reproductive health ignorance. Their families, overwhelmed with the church's currency of shame, threw them to the wolves. Why do you think more Irish women emigrated to the UK than Irish men? And the good nuns have the gall to say 'It wasn't me'.Rosemary C AdaserNortholt, London Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is right about the Magdalene laundries being a stain on the church. But it was families who sent their daughters to those places. My father remembered illegitimate children in 1950s Mayo being given to families to work on their farms, effectively as slave labour. The dysfunction and evil in Ireland was across the board. It's too easy to pin it all on priests and nuns, as if they were separate from wider society. What sort of families did they come from to need to be so abusive? Not happy and healthy McLoughlinLondon Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett's article was sobering, and raised my anger at how women and children were treated by the religious orders mentioned. But I am struck once again by the fact that there is no mention of the men – the fathers of all these children. These were not virgin births, after all. Do we ever hear men's voices in protest and regret?Terry PrendergastHarefield, London Do you have a photograph you'd like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers' best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
