Meeting of the Parliament 10 January 2023
I am delighted to follow Bill Kidd, who gave an excellent speech in support of Fulton MacGregor’s motion.
Parenting is likely to be the most important role that many of us will ever have in our lives. I have no hesitation in supporting any effort or initiative, whether it is public or private, to maintain and strengthen the role of parents and the central place of the family as the fundamental unit of society.
It is a wonderful gift and blessing to be a parent and to be able to see one’s child grow, develop new skills and, ultimately, become self-sufficient, wherever that is possible. It fills the parent with no small measure of pride in their child—which is something that is actually quite difficult to explain.
Members should make no mistake: a child needs the loving example of their parents, as Bill Kidd said. No effort should be spared in encouraging separated parents to work together for the good of their children. The enduring love of a family is like nothing else in all the world.
It is a huge responsibility to be a parent, and there is no formal training for what is one of the greatest roles that a person might ever be called on to play. In the first few years after a tiny helpless person, who depends wholly on their parent, enters one’s life, one’s mindset must be reframed around the child’s needs. Make no mistake: that can sometimes feel overwhelming. I know that feeling; I think that every parent does.
For people who have more than one child, having the time and money to send them to all the activities that they become involved with, helping them with their school work, and giving them the love and support that they need, is a full-time job. Those responsibilities usually come at a point in life when time and money both feel like scare resources. It is quite a job of co-ordination, so every parent who is honest with themselves will tell of times when they feel overwhelmed, when the pressure is on and it feels like there is nowhere to turn.
What can we, as parliamentarians, do to support parents in such situations? Do we remove responsibility? Do we transfer a child’s upbringing to an agency or to a system that is determined by a faceless bureaucratic state, or do we empower parents—as we have been hearing, including by supporting separated parents—to fulfil the responsibilities that they have for their children to make them feel like the gift that they are? The answer is clear, as has been said by previous speakers: we must empower parents.
Every public policy and every piece of proposed legislation should be made to pass the test of family friendliness—we must ask whether it supports the family.
Children must never feel, when they are growing up, that they are a burden on their parents. If they do, they will likely experience issues with their personal confidence, which will impact on their relationships and the direction of their lives. Therefore, every effort that we make to support good parenting—which is highlighted in Fulton MacGregor’s motion—is, to me, a solid gold social good.
Families in Scotland are gloriously diverse; every family is unique and has circumstances that are fashioned around the people who are in them.