Editorial: Hair-brained idea has us talking

OPINION: Hands up who thinks ACT's bad boy, David Garrett, might actually be on to something, with his most recent foot-in-mouth calls – about parenting?

No, no, calm down, people. I'm not supporting his sterilisation silliness – paying bad parents to have their naughty bits snipped so they don't keep perpetuating rotten parenting, producing unwanted, unloved children who too often turn into little criminal monsters. Although, put like that, hmmm ...

No. Because the weight of public opinion is still against this. Just about everyone in New Zealand has taken a deep, outraged breath about Mr Garrett's suggestion and let fly with the Nazi Germany comparisons.

It's a pity all those wonderful sound-bites have obscured what matters.

That's the grown-up debate that society's got to keep having, about how to best support good parenting; and about how to ensure all our children are wanted and nurtured and loved, so they grow up to be successful adults.

Because that's not happening now in God's Own Country, people. Every few days, there's another sickening case of child abuse or family violence reported.

Children belted and beaten, broken, sexually abused, neglected, and it mostly happens at the hands of the very people who are supposed to love and care for them.

Maybe we hear about these cases more often now than we used to because the anti-family violence campaigns are working.

Maybe people are finally realising that it's not OK. Maybe that's right, but it doesn't alter the fact that these kiddies are being hurt in the first place.

Parenting is the hardest, most tiring, difficult, deeply challenging job in the world. It's probably also the most important thing any human can do.

But because of the structure of our tiny nuclear families and our highly mobile populations, too many of us come to it inexperienced, unprepared, and untaught. There's no licence to sit, no qualification to get, no rules – just you and a baby, for whom you are utterly and absolutely responsible.

It's fascinating. Somewhere along the line we've decided as a society that it's everyone's God-given right to reproduce, no matter what the circumstances.

We've made abortions difficult to get; we've set up systems to support heartbreakingly young mothers – babies having babies – and we've got a welfare system that can be craftily abused to make living on the DPB and popping out babies, a career choice.

Every right carries an equal weight of responsibility. So, instead of yapping about Nazi Germany, how about we talk about good parenting and how best to support it?

ONE MORE THING

On a cheerier note, we've got another fabulous weekend of activities lined up in Manawatu. Billy cart racing at Woodville, motor racing, polo, the Jets' basketball season opener, Ethkick10 at Celaeno Park, Summer Shakespeare at the Esplanade, Shannon's fundraising fair for Haiti, and a family concert at Bulls.

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