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The Forum > Article Comments > Nanny State no substitute for parental responsibility > Comments

Nanny State no substitute for parental responsibility : Comments

By Jeremy Sammut, published 28/10/2008

Outsourcing parental responsibilities to the Nanny State is ultimately self-defeating.

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Jeremy assumes that low income people can exercise choice. After being belittled by Centrelink who will cut off your payments for 8 or 12 weeks if you make a mistake there is no spare cash because benefits are designed to keep you in frugal comfort, if you are in the private rental market - grinding poverty.

Jeremy might like to cost fresh fruit and vegetables and contrast this to the price of processed food. Then look at the additives in chips that encourage over indulging and the nutrition value. Jeremy might be aware that humans are designed to eat more carbohydrates than they need to compensate for a diet deficient in protein.

A parent has to have strong self esteem to rise above the wheedling and harping of persistent children. Nothing in the life a mother on social security encourages or reinforces self esteem - so she is far less likely to say "NO". And if life is hard treating yourself with a snack is very cheap reward that delivers immediate gratification.

If we want to stop obesity levels in children we need to stop advertising sugar and fat laden snacks on children's TV programs.

I had hoped this article might have been about something like the foolhardiness of trying to impose Net filters over all internet traffic in Australia. A task that is technically unfeasible, would lower traffic speeds, perhaps to unusable levels, that smacks of political censorship.
Posted by billie, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 9:22:49 AM
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Jeremy should stick to history and ageing. Where's his qualifications to pontificate on the problems that so many well meaning and very responsible parents are having in raising their children as they would like to be able to do?

Multinational marketing aimed unfairly and squarely at young children does come between parents and their best efforts to help their children eat what's "good for them" rather than what's "good to eat". It undermines parents who try to guide their children to age -appropriate choices of entertainment, only to find the cereal packets,fast food outlets, competitions, TV ads are urging them to see the latest violent M movie. And more.

Parenting is a demanding task made more difficult by marketers who advertise to kids with little apparent concern for the consequences for healthy child development or for society as a whole. In the words of US media commentator Robert W McChesney, advertisers "just pick children up by the ankles and shake them till all the money drops out of their pockets (and their parents) and then they let them go".
Posted by beb, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 9:31:33 AM
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From the tone of this article it would appear that Jeremy regards "the poor" simply as a demographic - one as unknown and exotic as "The Inuit".

Billy's post shows much more knowledge of the subjects about whom the author seems to have garnered generalist assumptions but little or no actual knowledge!

"The poor" are not a generic sub-species of generalised habits. Their stories are many and diverse but, as Billie points out, they all share the problem of trying to bring up children in a society where fresh fruit costs more than sweetened, calorific choices, where "fresh" veggies are anything but, where brown, unprocessed bread costs more than white, processed pap and where multi-media advertising combined with peer-pressure exerts a great influence.

Parents who have not been well educated themselves in nutrition and health are unlikely to be able to enforce the precepts of nutritionists, paediatricians, et.al to whom they have little or no access and whose messages are usually preached to the converted and are not heard by the very people they need to target.

Doubt the power of advertising? I'm willing to wager that a blitz campaign combining FREE education; flooding target areas with print propaganda; television saturation on a scale which is now reserved for corporation giants like fast-food outlets; and schools campaigns all aimed at community health would have a great effect.

But that would all cost rather a lot of money, wouldn't it? Its much cheaper to make token protests at parental irresponsibility, write didactic and sporadic articles, and decry those pesky poor people who are such a nuisance to society. Salves the conscience a little too.
Posted by Romany, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 11:22:25 AM
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Well said Jeremy, it’s not rocket science, my children are overweight but it’s not my fault I am not responsible or accountable for my actions as a parent because I don’t know what’s making them fat?

Don’t stop at restricting/banning fatty food advertising there are lots of other ‘bad’ ads that would benefit the community with removal.

Oh nanny state come to my help, perhaps my children need to be ‘relocated’ into a state controlled environment while I get ‘re-educated’

If you as a parent can’t be held responsible or accountable for the health of you own children, don’t have kids!
Posted by DVD, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 2:25:41 PM
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DVD - I'm not advocating a nanny state either, but I do think that various Governmental Departments whose existence is brought about for specific agenda should be more in touch.

Its simplistic to expect that everyone approaches parenthood from exactly the same place. Education, social mileau, the way in which one's own family impacted upon one, sophistication of thought - all these contribute to the way individual families behave. Misguided or ignorant persons do not KNOW they are misguided or ignorant. Not even "The Poor" deliberately act towards their children with malicious intent to shorten their lives or make them unhealthy and obese.

However, Government agencies which are responsible for health, pediatrics and, most importantly, education, in order to perform their functions at least adequately, should have a better knowledge of the factors which contribute to the problems in society - allied to realistic strategies to bring about favourable outcomes.

Yes, in a perfect world parents would all have equal and informed knowledge of how to bring up perfect children. But the world is not perfect. Government initiatives, rather than simply telling one what is wrong, should exist to identify and realistically to be able to strategise solutions for those who, unlike you, are unable (for whatever cause)to do so for themselves.
Posted by Romany, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 3:14:20 PM
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The problem with the banning of junk food ads, apart from the issue of identifying what is and what is not junk food - pies, sausages, chips, chocolate and ice cream,for example, could all legitimately claim to be served in some of Australia's best reataurants - is that all parents are treated as equally culpable. The latest State of Victoria's Children report, compiled by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, shows that about 7% of Victorian children are obese. That is, about 93% are not. The Local Government Areas in which the bulk of the obese 7% live are known, though not identified in the public report.

Instead of intervening in the lives of most families and interfering with legal commercial activities, why would government not ensure the supply of fresh food at reasonable prices in the LGAs where obesity is most common? This would involve actually doing something rather than looking like doing something.

One final point: there is an unhealthy element of determinism in this so-called obesity epidemic. My son is 20, a fit 183 cms tall and finishing the second year of his university degree. For most of the first five years of his life, he lived on peanut butter sandwiches and chips. Like most kids, he grew out of it. I worry that at a time when we are healthier and living longer than ever before, we are inventing a crisis where none exists and interfering in individual lives in an unwarranted and dangerous way.
Posted by Senior Victorian, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 3:35:14 PM
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Well said, Senior Victorian!
If you can't be held responsible for the food choices you make, for yourself or for your children, why bother calling yourself an adult at all? Surely there cannot be much else in daily routine that could be more basic.
I'm sure that for very many people, the decisions to buy hot chips or frozen foods rather than basic fruit and veg is made with convenience or taste, rather than price comparisons, uppermost in mind.
Posted by floatinglili, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 4:00:56 PM
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Now working with school-age children, the challenge of feeding the family a healthy selection of foods (never easy) has just intensified.

There is definately a relationship between time available and what goes into the lunchbox / on the dinner menu.

Most days, the temptation to have a revolving cupboard door stocked with convenience foods, is discouraged by a rather strict school policy on what is appropriate for the lunchbox, and a healthy menu at tuck.

Pressure to conform is exerted directly on the children. Therefore, my harshest critic is my child telling me "you can't give me (insert frowned-upon food item) at school".

A healthy tuck comes with a steep price tag. If the government believed intervention was necessary, subsidising a healthy school lunch menu to keep prices down, might be a great start.

At the end of the school day: hungry kids, tired mommy, there are new challenges and by dinnertime, tacos are looking like a gourmet dinner rather than a quick fix.

In my experience, the best way to avoid the easy temptation of junk food is not to purchase it. I've found it better to give the one "no" in the supermarket, then to have to suffer with childish demands throughout the week once it hits the pantry.

The failure of my will power at the point of purchase (whether gainfully employed or not, as a result of a weak regard for self or just to satisfy the craving for salt/sugar) means a deterioration of standards all week.

I don't believe the answer is to remove advertising from the TV, but to remove the children from the TV. This is proving more difficult than controlling the diet as the after-school hours provide precious moments to do the laundry, pay the bills, etc., at the expense of spending time with the kids playing, reading, swimming.

In the end, giving mothers flexible hours, or enabling mothers to stay at home longer, combined with nutritional guidance for mothers (or the person responsible for the shopping and food preparation) in the form of healthy lunchbox ideas etc., might be more effective.
Posted by katieO, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 5:03:47 PM
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Jeremy Jeremy Jeremy
What a load of loaded rubbish!
Linking emotional terms substitutes ineffectively for both truth and compassion. Where is your evidence that low socioeconomic families are responsible for the obesity epidemic? What do you actually see is the problem with restricting fast food advertising in childrens viewing time? By the way, low socioeconomic families are not the only families who allow their children to view television!
Posted by Sofisu, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 5:12:20 PM
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How disappointing. I thought this article was all about that ridiculous and expensive notion of censoring the internet.

Instead we get some silly article how it is only 'poor people' who choose poor quality food causing 'poor kids' to be obese and therefore curtailing advertising of junk food aimed squarely at children has no value.

Precisely how did the argument: poor nutritional choices are made by lousy parents become credible? With the obvious inference that poor parents make lousy parents.

Let's leave totally aside that 5 apples cost more than 2 packets of tim tams and it's the apples that have become the occasional treat, not the chips and bikkies.

Surely, education in nutrition, especially of children, as Katie pointed out, is very effective. Looking at the effect of advertising is part of that.
Posted by Anansi, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 8:30:58 PM
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What a load of crap! that poor people are the causes for the obesity's
in the currant food consumptions in today's world. Genetically, the vast majority of humans sercombe to the levels of sugar in today's diet. You cant fatten my children if you tried. Like my self, they are free to eat what they like and its there metabolism's that are high through us not sitting on our bottoms. Parental responsibilities play an important roll in the phisycal out comes of there children's well being, and with today's work-load and demands, many haven't got the time to display the recreational advantages that the human body needs on a daily biases.

True, some don't understand the nutritional guide lines, which are clearly illustrated on packaged foods, and when my partner observe a little lumpiness showing, we find the time, even if that night, to make sure they burn it off.

To put it simply!

Get off your fat ares,s and move!:)

EVO
Posted by EVO, Wednesday, 29 October 2008 12:00:18 AM
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EVO your post says a lot about your absorption in your self body image. I imagine you blame poor people for being fat, shabbily dressed and reliant on Centrelink benefits if they haven't got a low paid, insecure, dangerous job. If your income is over $30,000 per year you are not poor and if it's under $150,000 you're not wealthy. Money provides a certain amount of choice in the food you can buy, recreation activities you can participate in, the health insurance you take out, the school fees you can afford as well as where you live.

The article didn't say that poor people cause obesity and it was probably commissioned by the food companies that want to be able to continue advertising on children's TV.
Posted by billie, Wednesday, 29 October 2008 7:14:53 AM
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Jerry
One wonders what’s the difference between indigenous and demographic poverty? Wasn’t it the CIS who claimed intellectual ownership of “indigenous (parental) intervention” yet the latter is ‘nanny state’?

Several years of getting my hands dirty picking up after ‘capitalism will solve everything’ and ‘Social Darwinism’ proves to me ideological (all) solves nothing only exacerbates. We need to get away from the sterility of ideology and its manipulation for political supremacy. If you’re overboard at sea who cares who made the life raft all that counts is that is helps you survive.

Jerry, might I respectfully suggest you take off your suit and ideology, spend time amongst those you purport to understand enough to comment on? I mean front line face to face stuff get to know these people and their problems and needs.
Where it counts family by family the one size fits no-one there is more at play than sanitized, aggregated stats and ideological dogma manipulation for political supremacy.

When in SA I helped set up cooking classes for single mums. Most had no idea how to feed themselves properly let alone their toddler.
Was it their fault? Not that I could see most came from families where I.Q.’s, parental care or even real world understanding were all in short supply.

Psychological research proves that approximately 40% of the person is genetic and 60% is environment. These above children had little chance of a meaningful life and their children the same. Most not surprisingly believed daytime TV was life included the puffing in ads. Judgement/discernment is taught … the question is if not in the home where?

People and their failings don’t fall into discrete statistical categories or even exist of contiguous traits. The answers are neither ideological nor simple(same thing?)
Perhaps toning down of ads down, make them more realistic less full of sophisticated manipulation for the vulnerable? How are any PERSON's rights being infringed by such a process? BTW Implications aren't facts just impressions.
Hence in some areas the LOWEST common denomenator or good needs to be enforced.
Posted by examinator, Wednesday, 29 October 2008 9:56:18 AM
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As a single mum, I don't think we are all ignorant when it comes to the diets of our children. Mine was raised on a strict diet due to problems with dairy, additives and excessive sugar although now must learn from his own mistakes. I did meet working married mothers who fed their children lollies for breakfast and chips for lunch. It is a pity that there is such an availability of fattening foods, makes self denial more difficult. Lack of physical activity at home and work doesn't help.

You never know, Jeremy could be right. After all, just think about all those countries that can't afford welfare for the poor- they don't seem to have problems with overweight children! <tongue in cheek>
Posted by Rosie Williams, Thursday, 30 October 2008 5:23:07 PM
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Billy! not at all. My image that you say,( or vanity ) is about common sense not looks. With children, its monkey see monkey do, and my post stands with its contents.

Rosie Williams. Australia being the rich country it is, its so easy to fall into the fast-food addiction. I know every time I smell frying food, my mouth salivates for the yearning just to take a little nibble. So to combat this, I do the pinch test. If I grab more than an inch, I swoop to the obvious. Nutritional\exercise.

And whether people like to except or it not, its there choice.

EVO
Posted by EVO, Thursday, 30 October 2008 6:24:48 PM
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