[battle on SHIRLEY FROST discusses the difference between…]

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battle on SHIRLEY FROST discusses the difference between child care and child control.

THE family is the basic institutions of socialisation in our society, even when children spend a large portion of their time at school.

Whereas in the younger age groups, the responsibility of parents is mainly seen as care, the older the child gets, the more assertive she gets, the more the responsibility is seer as control.

Virtues

Although the upbringing of children is less harsh than it was even 50 years ago, and children are seen as having individual rights and protection against exploitation and abuse, parents are still expected to transmit to their children the virtues of cleanliness, tidiness, politeness, obedience and respect for authority:

This is also the overriding ethos of the school.

Whereas in the early stages of a child's life, the state is reluctant to act as a substitute for parents (for instance in providing day care), this reluctance is less evident later on when the issue becomes control. Parents are expected to both care for and control their children, but the issue of care seems to fade from view, the older the child gets.

But parents also have less and less influence on their children, as time goes by. The peer group, school, the media, the environment all shape children's identity.

Nevertheless parents are still held responsible for what children do, or don't do.

There are two approaches to child care and control prevalent today, the liberal and the authoritarian.

For a while in the 1960s, liberalism was on the ascendant. Now we are in a period of recession, liberalism is being thrown out of the window.

The police force typifies authoritarianism, and their approach suggests the liberal ism was only ever a thin smear. The talk is now of capital punishment, compulsory work schemes, detention camps, military training.

The country was shocked to learn that 9 or 10 year olds were at the riots. They should not have been. In the 20s and 30s, during a similar economic slump they were frequently seen at demonstrations of unemployed workers, and were batoned by police.

In trying to identify the causes of the riots (as if unemployment, social decay, racism and police harassment were not enough) parents were blamed.

References were made to the divorce rate, and that old chestnut the broken home' (nothing like hitting a parent when she is down), endorsed by no less a champion of women and children, Erin Pizzey!

Working mothers are also thrown into the mellee.

In short, the family is not doing its job, and parents must be brought into line.

Parents will be fined for their children's offences; parents must impose discipline in the home; parents must set an example.

We the parents must act now or the state machinery will do it with gusto.

All this seems pretty extreme, but it explains why control is more important to nanturl is man imanatant to the State than care.

For instance there is no legislation which lays on local authorities a general duty to provide for the wel fare of the child over five except residential care. The concept is even more remote such teres as where a ain such terms as frequently used to commit a child into 'care' - a euphemism for control.

For the teenager the most that is on offer is recreation, which is subsumed under education. The youth service is seen principally as an educational provision, when its aim is containment.

Resources

But even this is pitifully inadequate when put against the needs of young people themselves. For none of the facilities offered to children over five are consciously geared to care, although undoubtedly many of the workers in the field are very caring people. But they don't on the whole expect to substitute for parents.

In fact there is within the play movement a strong tendency away from control or even care in the usual sense, in that freedom from any interference by adults is the goal and the ideal. Yet 1 believe that the school-age child continues to need an environment in which care is an important feature, albeit of a different kind from that needed for younger children.

When it comes to talking shant nara far the teenager the concept hardly has any Including policies for women in the 20p plus postage rom 28 Middle Lane, Lon meaning for most people.

We can show that we care by giving them a place of their own.

The youth service has never been given all the resources it needs to fully meet the needs of young people. This has to change because in its absence, they often have no alternative but the street, where the lack of interesting activities creates apathy or the temptation to 'make something happen' which inevitably leads to conflict with the local community and the police.

Youth centres, or their equivalent should .. be open directly after school and during the school holidays.

The bulk of children attending playschemes are aged up to 9 or 10, after this they tend to vote with their feet if the situation is not to their liking. This means the scheme has to be attractive enough for them to want to come.

To ignore this is to leave them to the uncertainties of the street.

Hysteria

Schemes which provide a warm and welcoming atmosphere with interesting activities achieve this. Children attending Gingerbread Corner, the scheme set up by Croydon Gingerbread, were heard to say 'You mean someone wants us?' when attending for the first time.

This must strike a chord the heart of every workoperators for the Liberalcontrolled Liverpool City Council have been on strike ever since July 6.

The strike is about regrading and bringing typists' paltry wages into line with wages of other local government workers.

The women have been ri- council buildings.

Wild daily strike commince meetings and weekly mass meetings.

Unfortunately, national ing parent, and contrasts strongly with the Inner London Education Authority playcentres, on which many working parents depend and are undoubtedly useful, but which operate in a much more impersonal way.

We need to take as much care of the over-fives as we do with the under fives and plan accordingly. They need contact with people outside the family and to feel that they count for something in the community.

The break up of communities means that there is often a rift between generations which needs to be healed. The opportunity their orin ete ironment wil enable them to have a model which is democratic - which I would suggest as an alternative to the simply liberal oI blatantly authoritarian.

We need a dialogue between adults and children which takes account of rights on both sides. We need to create a community of interests between families and between parents and other adults and to win progressive minded people over to our idea that child care provision is neither the curtailment of freedom, nor the need only of young children.

There is an alternative to the present hysteria being waged in the media and elsewhere about control and about parents' responsibility to exercise it at all costs. NALGO leadership is not shifting very fast to aid the women. The only concrete recommendation so far is to go to ACAS! All that ACAS has done is say the strike must not be escalated while arbitration is in progress.

This is not the kind of help the women need.

Liverpool NALGO have called on their national leadership to recall the national delegates' meeting.

Messages of support to Liverpool Typists' Strike Committee, c/o NALGO Branch Office, Duchy Chambers, 24 Sir Thomas Street., Liverpool 1.

20p.

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typists 400 typists and machine

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