JUST CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCKS

From: Worlds apart - poll finds parents out of touch(Julian Glover, The Guardian, February 24th, 2007)

The gulf between parents and risk-taking teenagers is revealed in a unique Guardian/ICM poll which explores the realities of growing up in Britain today.

Teenagers drink, smoke, take more drugs and lose their virginity earlier than many of their parents believe, according to the results of the study. It shows that many parents are in the dark about the way their children cope with pressures that are often very different from those they faced in their own childhood.

Researchers questioned more than 500 11-16-year-olds about their lives - asking them to fill in confidential forms about issues such as alcohol and drug use, sex and the internet. Their parents, who gave permission for the research, gave separate answers about what they believed their children had experienced.

The gap between what teenagers have done and what their parents think they have done is striking. Of children who have tried drugs, 65% of parents think that they have not, or do not know. Of children who smoke, 52% are unaware.

Of children who say that they have looked at pornography online, 60% of their parents think that they have not done so, or did not know either way. The poll shows that 15% of children say that they have talked about sex online. Only 3% say they have met a stranger they encountered on the internet - but of those, only 1% of parents are aware of the meeting.

Most 16-year-olds, and almost half of 15-year-olds who have lost their virginity say they have had unprotected sex - but 83% of their parents think they have not, or do not know. Parents of children who have lost their virginity - 29% of 15-year-olds and 49% of 16-year-olds say they have - often do not know about it. Only half of parents of children who have had sex were aware.

Partly in response to a controversial UNICEF report and presumably partly in response to problems too glaring to ignore, the British press seems to be going through a period of introspective fixation on the issues of marriage, family cohesion and youthful dysfunction. One senses it is all a bit like African poverty in that everybody can easily be stirred to a white-hot heat of concern about the problem, but nobody can come up with much more by way of solutions than anodyne measures like tax breaks, lots of counseling and hounding everybody’s favourite whipping boy, the deadbeat dad. But it’s obviously a field day for sociologists and other members of the helping professions, and we imagine the available grant money is soaring. This study reveals the astounding news that parents don’t always know when their children misbehave, presumably because the kids aren’t telling them. Not like the good old days when delinquent kids gave a running account of their misdeeds to their parents.

One senses the authors of this report and perhaps The Guardian think parental ignorance is a far more serious problem than what the kids are actually doing. Undoubtedly there is some link, but isn’t the sub-text a somewhat dated assumption that they would share the alarm and would or could do anything about it if they did know?