The toughest job in the world (From The Northern Echo)

The toughest job in the world

6:25pm Friday 3rd February 2012 in Sharon's View By Sharon Griffiths

KATE SILVERTON: On the cover of Hello! magazine with her baby

RIGHT. So it’s all the parents’ fault. It always is. Charlie Taylor, the Government’s behaviour tsar, (No, I didn’t know we had one either. Apparently he’s a London headmaster and rated very highly) has said that last summer’s riots were all down to feckless parenting.

Parents who spend little or no time with their children, no conversation, shared meals or even much basic care means that many children are pretty well much left to fend for themselves when they’re barely out of the infants’ class.

Seems fair enough – even though plenty of otherwise decent and respectable people also got caught up in the general free-for-all.

Parents have the most important job in the world. Bringing up the next generation is a tremendous task. The amazing thing is not how many make a complete dog’s breakfast of it, but how many children grow up to be decent, healthy, hard working responsible adults, who also remember their manners, wash behind their ears and are kind to old ladies.

Meanwhile, TV journalist Kate Silverton, a former champion swimmer, reporter from Afghanistan and Iraq, and not exactly a weedy piece of womanhood, is now, after four failed IVF attempts, at the age of 41, the mother of ten-week-old Clemency.

“Motherhood is the most wonderful awe-inspiring thing – but the part people don’t tell you is how tough it is,” she says.

It’s hard enough when you really want to make a good job of it, when you read the books, seek advice, follow your instincts, always think what’s best for your kids and try your hardest. Even when you do all that, you – or your child – can still come horribly unstuck.

Teaching parentcraft in schools isn’t going to make much difference. As many children already leave unable to read and write properly, the chances of them having mastered parenthood seem pretty slim. But we need to do something because when some children have bad parents, we all end up paying the price.

Parents are undervalued. It’s relatively easy to become a parent.

To be a good parent is a much trickier achievement and getting harder all the time – as Kate Silverton has already discovered.

And if she thinks it’s tough when her baby’s ten weeks old, then she ain’t seen nothing yet...

Women drivers

WOMEN are better at parking, says new research. We are more likely to take our time about it, but in the end we park more neatly, unlike flashy, slapdash men.

My pet hate, when I’m manoeuvring the car into a particularly tricky spot, is the old man in the cap.

You know the one. You’ve never met him before. He doesn’t know you. But you’re a woman and he’s a man and he thinks he knows better than you how to park a car.

He doesn’t.

He stands just where he blocks your view in the mirrors and waves his arms with great energy.

He also says things like “left hand down a bit”. And bangs on the roof if you get within – oh – five yards of another car.

And when finally, despite him, you’ve managed to park quite neatly, he invariably knocks on the window and says “Well done, pet” before walking away very pleased with himself.

One day you will find an old man in a cap in a car park with very neat tyre marks over his toes. I plead guilty in advance.

Anything but an airhead

KATIE Price was on the winning side at a debate at Cambridge University on the theme that “the only limit to female success is female ambition”.

Don’t scoff. Even the bright girls at Cambridge could learn a lot from Katie Price, who is certainly not the airhead she tries to make out.

With some help from her surgeon, she’s made the most of what she’s got and now has a multi-million pound business empire.

Maybe her greatest assets are not the ones you think – but her business brain and her determination, which are even more phenomenal.

I wonder if she’d like to run a bank...

Time to take charge of our money

NOW they’re giving away meerkats to persuade us to buy insurance. When it comes to important financial decisions, our greatest influence is a cuddly toy. Desperate.

Why are we such babies when it comes to money?

That’s the way a lot of institutions like it, of course. If we think that finance is for grown-ups, we just carry on playing with our fluffy toys and do nothing about it.

If we’re not bothered what they’re up to, they can get up to all sorts of things with our money and we don’t even notice until it’s too late.

That’s why bankers get away with earning huge fortunes even when they don’t do their jobs properly. It’s why the country’s in a mess, why your adult children can’t buy a house, why your pay’s been frozen, your savings are vanishing and your pensions are worthless.

If we took as much interest in finance as we do in football, the bankers wouldn’t be able to get away with it and we’d all be better off. Cuddly toys are for babies.

Money’s for grown-ups.

Time we grew up. Simples.

It simply doesn’t compare, Gwyneth

GWYNETH Paltrow has been telling us how important it is that she is at home for her children Apple and Moses and how she loves to cook for her husband, Chris Martin, when he comes home. I’m sure it could be – especially when you’re married to the man from Coldplay and live in a £6m house. In the meantime, the rest of us will just have to carry on juggling.

A beauty boost in tough times

TIMES are hard but nail salons are booming. At first it seems daft. Why waste money you haven’t got on fripperies you don’t need?

On the other hand – or both hands if we’re talking nails – a manicure is pretty cheap in the scheme of things and will give you a terrific boost. As will a cheap and cheerful lipstick, the brighter the better.

Years ago when we were sending shoe boxes to part of war-torn Europe, the former Yugoslavia maybe, organisers actually encouraged us to pop a lipstick or nail polish into the box of pretty basic essentials.

They knew the psychological boost in truly grim times, of being able to feel frivolously feminine and put a brave face on to the world.

Fred Goodwin

SO, former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, Fred Goodwin, under whose charge the bank nearly collapsed and had to be bailed out with £45bn of taxpayers’ money, has had his knighthood taken away. Which seems a bit pointless really.

Now, if they’d found a way of getting some more of his £342,000-ayear pension back into the public coffers, that would have been much more useful.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
I AGREE with you that boys get a hard time of it in today’s world. Your page featured the adventures of teenage roundthe- world sailor Laura Dekker and TV presenter Helen Skelton.

Girls are encouraged to be as adventurous as they wish, but boys are too often forced to fit into an educational system that favours girls.

One of the solutions would be to return to segregated teaching for boys and girls in which they can each learn in the manner best suited to them. This might also encourage more men into teaching.

Don Barton by email.