Government should teach parents how to raise children, says top public health expert
Children are being neglected by schools and bad parents, says Professor John Ashton
ALL parents should be given lessons on how to bring up their children, Britain’s top public health expert has claimed.
He also urged them to talk to their kids over the breakfast table about sex to prevent them from turning to online porn.
Prof John Ashton, outgoing president of the Faculty of Public Health, said bad parents and “sweat shop” schools are failing youngsters and the state should step in to stop long term damage.
He said parents need to be taught how to tackle common issues such as anxiety, anorexia and obesity.
One in ten kids have a mental health problem and Prof Ashton claimed a major cause was a poor relationship with their parents.
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He told The Times: “We’ve done remarkably well in terms of producing live, healthy, babies over the past 60, 70 years but, by the time children are leaving school, between 10 and 15 per cent of them are in trouble emotionally or mentally, and [suffer from] things like obesity, eating disorders, anxiety and stress.”
But he added: “We then set about neglecting them. I can’t imagine a sensible farmer doing this with livestock.”
He said: “We’ve still got the Victorian prudery legacy. If you don’t answer children’s questions openly when they’re small, they won’t ask you things when they get to puberty.
“In Holland, families will talk around the breakfast table about things everyone here would blush about.
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