By now my frequent readers, as few as they are, will have come to the conclusion that I am an old reactionary troglodyte who finds it impossible to engage with modern society. This is possibly true – yet there are some things I think we did better in the past, than we do now. One of them is parenting,

It has been distressing in recent times to witness the debates in the press about access to children for separating partners. We hear of children murdered by one partner merely to deprive the other. We hear of children pushed and pulled between households without seemingly any concern for their welfare.

There has been a burgeoning increase in the number of single parent families. Most of these families are nurtured by a single mother. In many such families fathers have abrogated parental responsibilities and the family is left without male role models.

This poses a particular problem for boys which is exacerbated by the fact most primary school teachers are female.  The boys in such families make their way into adolescence without significant male role models.

We despair for such children.

Many of our modern communities are suffering from youth crimes. Our remote indigenous communities are frequently failing their children resulting in awful consequences for the young people ensconced in them.

As I have said many times before these are symptoms of parenting failures and the degradation of traditional family life.

My experience as a young person was so different to this. We were a tight-knit family who mostly cared for each other and valued our family ties..

Both my father and mother had only basic primary school education, but they were both in their different ways wonderful parents..

Yet my father was proficient at many things. He extended and renovated the family home. One of his hobbies was making gun stocks. People used to bring their clocks to him to fix. He helped us repair our first motorcycles and cars. He loved the outdoors and was never happier than when in the bush. He used to rob wild bee hives. There was often in the outside laundry a muslin bag full of honeycomb dripping into a bucket. And despite his lack of formal education he read a lot. When I got to university studying engineering he used to ask me questions about fluid dynamics and how the various types of governors worked.

My mother played the piano. She had had a few lessons when she was young, but was largely self-taught. Whilst she could read music she played readily by ear. She held in her head a huge range of popular songs from the 1930’s and 1940’s. We had frequent gatherings of the extended family which usually ended up with mum playing the piano while the rest of us sang. But she also had more than a smattering of knowledge of classical music. When I was young and heard something nice on the radio I’d ask her what the music was and she’d say, “Oh, that’s Bach’s Air on the G String” or “That’s Liszt’s Liebestraume”. I can remember when quite young mum and dad taking me to a travelling production of Rigoletto. Once we went to a performance by a travelling Polish Concert Pianist whose name I have forgotten. At this stage we didn’t own a car, so the outing normally required us to walk a couple of miles to the venue. Music has been a large part of my life ever since.

My mother was a great cook and managed the household economy very well. Whilst my father earned only a labourer’s wage, we wanted for nothing. She sewed a bit and made my school uniform shirts. When she had a few shillings to spare she would buy some little luxury item and store it in the cupboard. “That’s for Christmas,” she would say.

Being an old-fashioned (and undervalued) housewife, she was always there when I got home from school and invariably asked how the day had gone. There was always the opportunity if I wanted to avail myself of it, to talk through the issues of the day.

My sister married early and left home when I was quite young. My three brothers, however, were all at home until I left for University. We did a lot of things together. Most weekends would find us on the Burdekin River camping and fishing. My brothers were keen and very competent shooters and we ate lots of wild ducks in the season. What we caught and shot were a welcome supplement to the family larder. My father always drilled into us anything you shoot or catch you have to eat! Particularly he would admonish us not to shoot anything for mere sport (unless it was feral pests like wild pigs or foxes}.

But more than anything else the family was a place of belonging. My father and mother didn’t always see eye to eye but they didn’t argue in front of us and anger and aggression were seldom seen. (Except for when my parents played cribbage as they regularly did and when my mother would beat my father he would throw down his cards and in mock anger call her an ‘old witch’!) I, and I am sure my siblings as well, knew whatever happened they would be there to support us. They seemed never happier than when we all came together for some occasion or other. I felt it was somehow a privilege to belong to the “Scott family”.

It is comforting to feel supported and wanted. You knew you could take a few risks in life when you had this substantial support platform behind you.

But more than this your behaviour was continuously monitored and corrected when necessary. And all the while you had great role models to display the behaviour that was expected from you.

Some of the things that seemed so commonplace were important for the formation of the family. For example we all sat down together at meal times and talked about what was happening with each of us.

We took this ritual for granted. It was only in latter years when I was a director on the board of the Beacon Foundation I realised this was not as common as I thought. In the latter years of my engagement with the organisation they had begun to focus on trying to help disadvantaged indigenous children.

At one stage we ran a series of workshops for teenage girls from this cohort. These workshops were designed to help the girls with such things as their appearance, personal hygiene and interpersonal skills. I was asked to help at the workshops with a segment on understanding human behaviour. (I was the only male presenter, the other half dozen or so being well-qualified females.)

The highlight of the course was the finale where the girls had to attend a formal dinner with their teachers and other dignitaries. In order for the girls to make the best impression my female colleagues resolved to teach the girls a little etiquette so that they might not be entirely overwhelmed by the event.

What they reported to me later was that hardly any of these girls had eaten at a table before and most of them had to be taught the basics of how to use cutlery!

Now I am not being critical of the girls and their lack of table manners, these are things of little import. What I am most distressed about is that they never had the experience of sitting down with their parents and siblings in a family oriented setting! In our formative years, traditionally we learnt a lot from character shaping influences at the dinner table!

Nor am I suggesting that this deficiency in family life is an exclusive province of indigenous people, I am sure there are many other children being deprived of such  important learning environments that in many ways helped affirm our place in society.

It is pleasing that my children and those of my sister and married brothers all seem to have maintained this sense of family. But it is concerning to see that so many young people don’t have the benefit of this stabilising and supportive influence.

Now, as a father, I understand the joy of family realises as much benefit to the parents of a close-knit family as it does to the children. The Buddha is reputed to have said that:

Iif you carried your parents around on your shoulders for the rest of their lives you could not repay your debt to them.

While this is not a sentiment I could entirely agree with. But surely in a well-integrated family gratitude to parents is a proper response.I am sure I have gained as much from my relationship with my children as ever they have. Indeed having my children by me has helped me weather some of the tougher times in my life. My expectation, rather than for gratitude, is that as they grew older we should have a close, adult relationship. Sure, I like to help them when I can – but they help me in many ways too (and even more so now that I am ageing and more decrepit).

I am certain being a member of such a caring family facilitated my own personal growth particularly as a teenager and into early adulthood.

Unfortunately it is harder to maintain such relationships now.

One of the factors acting against families is our mobility – we are far more mobile than we used to be. In pursuit of employment, a mate or adventure, our children move away from us. Propinquity facilitates continued connection which enhances relationships.

In my youth many of my peers remained their whole lives in the town that I was born in –Charters Towers. They were married, had children and found employment in their home town. When they had children there was always familial support, particularly from grandparents and other close family members to help them with the challenges of child-rearing.

Because a family provides its members with some social support, young people can be more careful about what other groups they choose to belong to. Our social needs can be strong drivers and when a young person is isolated they will often align with inappropriate groups just to assuage their need to belong.

No doubt we are predisposed genetically to love our children. Those parents who are well-adjusted, will indeed love their children unconditionally. Such love is a hugely beneficial gift that nurtures more than anything the process of our becoming. A good family environment provides not only this but a mostly pleasant social experience and a resilient support mechanism. That is why I find the decline of the family such a cause of concern.

Now I am not suggesting that the days of my own youth were particularly idyllic. We still had domestic violence, youth crime and so on but the incidence seemed much less than today. What’s more in my youth I don’t know of anyone who suffered from anorexia. bulimia, ADHD and so on.

As a eresult of all this I can’t help but believe the family matters and we should do more to nurture competent parenting.