On the rising generation...

I got into a "discussion" with Lewis quite some time ago about the newest generation of young mothers. It must have been before I had any children of my own, and I was talking about how their kids were destined to become benefit sponging hooligans. Lewis disagreed with me (he has a tendency to do that, which I love!). In his opinion, this new generation of parents were doing their best for their children and trying to make up for the "bad" parenting they had received.

At the time, I must confess, I thought he was completely nuts. Now I am meeting a lot of young mothers, and I can see where he was coming from.

What makes a good mother, anyway? If it's working hard to provide the necessities of life for your offspring, the ladies at the Castledyke School gates aren't cutting the mustard. They are, for the most part, on benefits. A lot of them are single mothers and don't work at all. But I don't work, either. And with the cost of childcare and the average wage in this area, if you have more than one child you can't afford to work!

What these women are doing is trying to give their children advantages that they never had. They make sure their kids come to school in clean and tidy uniforms. They make sure they're there on time. They are taking an interest in what the kids are learning.

I've been really impressed with the women who go back to school when their kids start. They do extra training and get NVQ's (national vocational qualifications). They do their best to drag themselves up the socio-economic ladder.

I've made a friend who I will call "Alice" recently. She has twin boys who are 11 and one daughter who is three--just a few months older than Dylan. She is a total chav. She's on benefits and has recently split up with her partner of 15 years--they've been together for about that long. She left school at 16 when she got pregnant. And you know what? She is a good mother!

I've never met her boys, but I know she worries about them. She talks about them having problems at school, about punishing them when they make trouble. She worries about them getting bullied. She kicked her partner out because he was getting drunk and neglecting the children when she left the house. And I KNOW she does a great job with her daughter. She took her to play groups, worried about her language development and worked with her constantly on animal sounds, numbers, etc. when she started falling behind. She taught herself to read (having left school with the reading level of what sounds to me like about a 1st grader) by reading the Harry Potter books to her sons. They helped each other learn to read. She is pulling herself up by her bootstraps, and taking her children with her.

Her kids don't have the best in life. They don't have their dad around a whole lot. They are on benefits. They live in a council house on one of the roughest estates in town. But their mother cares about them, and wants them to be more than she is. And I believe that they will be, because of her.

There are so many people like "Alice" out there. And I wonder if I have been judging them unfairly for years. I can only hope that I can be half the mother that she is.