http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tough-love-the-good-parents-guide-1817010.html
Tough love: The good parents' guide
Firm rules and clear bounds are better for honing children's life skills than a more relaxed approach, says a liberal think tank
By Rachel Shields
Sunday, 8 November 2009
A generation of liberal parents has striven towards a utopian ideal: raising their children in a non-confrontational household, unfettered by strict rules. But a new study of 9,000 households found that children whose parents favoured this laissez-faire style of parenting were less likely to develop vital life skills - such as empathy, self-control and application - by the age of five than those whose parents took a traditional "tough love" approach.
While the "tough love" approach to parenting - defined as combining warmth with firm rules and clear boundaries - was thought to have gone out of fashion in the 1950s, researchers found that children with this upbringing were a third more likely to have well-developed "soft" skills than those with more relaxed parents.
In a blow to the huge numbers of parents who are divorced or remarried, the study also found that children with married parents were twice as likely to develop good skills as those living with stepfamilies or single parents. More time is now being devoted to cultivating soft skills in schools, with employers complaining in recent years that graduates and school leavers might have good exam grades but are lacking in social skills such as teamwork.
The Building Character report, produced by the Demos think tank using data collected as part of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), found that parenting style is the most important factor in determining child character development, cancelling any differences in development between children from richer and poorer families.
"This report is right that parenting ability outstrips every single other factor in increasing social mobility and attainment - more than class, ethnicity or disability," said Iain Wright, Minster for Children, Schools and Families. "This provides a strong rationale for all of Government to do everything it can to help families to achieve their goals and aspirations."
Some point out that reports such as these merely add to the pressure many feel to be perfect parents, rather than providing useful advice. Justine Roberts, founder of the Mumsnet website, said: "Our members will hear of another piece of research telling us how to do it with a heavy heart. Mums are always told what to do, often with contradictory suggestions."
The study, which compared parenting styles with child character development, found that 13 per cent of parents take a tough-love approach; 10 per cent are authoritarian - favouring rule-based parenting with little regard for children's feelings; 8 per cent take a laissez-faire approach, while 10 per cent were disengaged, and described as lacking in warmth and discipline. It is important to note that 59 per cent of parents did not fall squarely within any of these categories, a fact reflected across the country, and with the couples interviewed for this piece.
Researchers found that tough-love parenting is less frequent in low-income households, with only 9.8 per cent of the poorest parents subscribing to it. Twelve per cent of parents in the lowest-income quintile were found to be disengaged. "The factors that get in the way of more effective parenting are found more frequently in families living in disadvantaged conditions," said Professor Stephen Scott, director for research for the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners. "These include a stressful lifestyle interrupted by events such as serious physical illness, domestic violence, poor housing and medical disorders such as depression and drug misuse."
The report recommended that the early years programme Sure Start should focus less on childcare and more on parent-child interaction, that health visitors should be given an early years role, and that parenting programmes and support should be focused on disadvantaged children, rather than be universally available.
These suggestions were welcomed by David Willetts, the Conservative Party's spokesman for families, who said: "We want to re-focus Sure Start. With so many pulls on public resources, it makes sense to focus on families that really need it."
However, these suggestions have been criticised by parenting professionals, who fear that focusing services would discourage parents from seeking help.
"We would caution against having a standardised check by health visitors to identify failing parents who need extra support," said Jeremy Todd, chief executive of Parentline Plus. "All parents should have access to family support and policy-makers must endeavour to foster a culture where support for parents and seeking help is not stigmatised, but is mainstream, accessible and affordable."
The case for: 'There are times when we have to say no'
Juliet Bellagambi, 38, a charity worker, and her husband Filippo Bellagambi, an administrator, have a son José, aged seven. They live in London
"We have things that are set, like having dinner together every night. José goes to school and Scouts and we are out at work so it is an opportunity to smile at each other, and see how our days have gone. It is more like a conversation than an interrogation.
"José is well behaved, but there are times when he wants to stay up or something, and we have to say no. The school said he should do half an hour of homework every day. Because I'm a working mother I don't get in until 5pm, so we don't make him do it straight away. But after he's had tea and a rest he will do it. You do need a balance."
The case against: 'I don't worry about how strict I am'
Alison Gurney, 31, a childminder, and Chris Gurney, 29, a lettings agent, are parents of Sam, three, and Lewis, one. They live in Cambridge
Chris says: "I don't worry about how strict I am, or my style of parenting, because they seem to be turning out OK. From when they are born, everybody has advice, and you take it on board but by the same token you know what works for your own child. Most parents muddle through; there is no right way to bring up children.
"I think parenting classes and advice should be targeted, as there are some people that are more in need of them than others. Treats occasionally are fine, but we don't give in to them all the time. No means no. I'm probably weaker than my wife, though, and more prone to giving in, because she goes shopping with them more often."
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/chasing-the-dead-genealogy-and-the-art-of-recruitment-1776697.html
Chasing the dead: genealogy and the art of recruitment
By Dan Waddell
Monday, 24 August 2009
Ask most lay people what they know about the Mormon Church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints to give them their official title, and the chances are the first subject they will mention is polygamy, despite the practice of taking more than one wife being officially renounced around 120 years ago.
They might also mention the odd famous Mormon, like The Osmond family, or The Killers, whose image seems to belie a religion that forbids alcohol and caffeine. Then there's Mitt Romney, failed challenger to Senator John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and whose Mormon faith was believed to have hampered his cause.
The occasional celebrity aside, it's staggering to think how little we know about what is the fastest growing church on the planet, with a global membership of more than ten million followers. The church itself does little to dispel the air of secrecy that surrounds it, quietly going about its professed business of saving souls.
What few people know is that the Latter-Day Saints aren't only interested in the living - they also seek to recruit the dead. Even fewer know that this belief, a church doctrine no less, has fuelled the present genealogical boom, which has seen unprecedented numbers of us casting back through time in search of our family roots.
The Mormons are morally obligated to track down as many of their ancestors as possible and convert them to their faith vicariously in a temple ceremony, a ritual they know as proxy baptism but is also known as Baptising the Dead.
To help their members in their ancestral quests, the church has spent millions of dollars sending teams of men and women across the world to access as many records as possible, from behind the veil of communist China to the remote islands of the Pacific, as well as being granted access to the archives of other churches and faiths. Never in the history of organized religion has a doctrinal belief produced such an ambitious, elaborate and expensive undertaking
The result of this mass pursuit is the closest we will get to a catalogue of the dead; billions of birth, death, marriage, baptism and burial records, stretching back hundreds of years, making it the most exhaustive and complete archive extant. Its official name is the International Genealogical Index and the good news for genealogists is that it's all available online, regardless of one's faith, and it's all free. Millions of us are able to go to www.familysearch.org, type in a name and kickstart our search, or help locate that elusive missing ancestor.
Seeing the success of the IGI, rival websites have sprung up, seeking to challenge its superiority, but few of them are free at the point of use, and few of them have the same worldwide reach. However, their presence means that an unprecedented amount of records and indexes are available at the click of a button. Never has it been so easy to find out so much about our ancestry from the comfort of our home, and for that we have to thank the Mormons and their belief in claiming the dead.
The practice is not without controversy. Most of us are happy to make use of the genealogical resources provided by the LDS church while being unaware about their real purpose. Yet when people of other faiths are made aware that these records may be used to convert their ancestors to Mormonism by proxy baptism, the response is different. The religious right in the US are hardly President Obama's natural supporters, but when it was revealed last year that his deceased mother had been converted by proxy baptism, they rose in anger, seizing the chance to denounce an organization they see as no better than a cult.
Closer to home, two Irish Catholic bishops wrote to the national library in Dublin recently registering their disquiet that official records were being handed to Mormon researchers and subsequently "misused", meaning that dead Catholics were being converted to Mormonism.
Jewish groups have been even more vociferous in their condemnation. Controversy first reared when it was discovered that many Holocaust victims had received proxy baptisms. As a consequence, the LDS church, somewhat chastened by the row, agreed to remove the name of the baptized victims from their records and agreed to refrain from baptizing deceased Jews unless they were direct ancestors of LDS members.
The public response from the LDS to most criticism of is one of quiet bewilderment. They quote bible scripture to justify proxy baptism, and point out they believe that in the afterlife people have the free will to accept or reject the church's approach.
"We believe that baptism by immersion is an earthly ordinance that can't be performed after this life so it is necessary to accomplish this ordinance for those who never had the opportunity while in mortality," a spokesman for the LDS church said. "If one of my posterity desired to baptise me a Catholic or Baptist after my death, I would view their action as a true act of love and devotion. Why would I take any offense?"