- The Observer, Sunday October 22 2000
British parents are feeling disillusioned. According to research, only 4 per cent of parents say that child-rearing lives up to their expectations. Almost half of all parents in the survey of 600 families would have delayed having children if they had known the realities of parenting.
Unhappy parents are as likely to be middle-class couples as single mothers, according to Home Start, the parenting charity which carried out the study. 'We all bang on about parenting being the most important job,' said Brian Waller of Home Start. 'But we all fall far short of recognising the difficulties that parents have.'
One in five parents said no one warned them of exhaustion in the years after a birth, nor that parenting can wreck relationships. No personal time and suddenly shouldering huge responsibility were other surprises.
'After I had my first baby I was terribly isolated and felt I had no friends,' said Lindsay Jones from Loughborough, Leicestershire, a retail project manager until she gave up work in 1995. 'It went on for months, it was awful. I just didn't expect it to be like that.
'I had trouble sleeping. The baby was crying into the night. I was exhausted all the time. It got worse when our second child was born. I looked after the babies properly but everything else went to pieces. It's seen as shameful if you can't cope, but it was all so unexpected.'
Karen Scott, from Oban, Argyll, said: 'Even though I had been a nurse for seven years before I had children, I just wasn't prepared for the actual reality. No sleep. No social life. No time. Nothing. Being a parent was a complete shock to the system.'
Evidence of parental trauma comes as the Government invests £500 million in parenting classes. Parents of under-fours in 60 trial areas have already been offered 'Sure Start' training in how to get a baby to sleep and how to cope with difficult children.
Since 1998, interest in the 'child-free' movement has exploded in the UK and US. No Kidding, a group for adults who say childbearing is 'over-rated' now has chapters in 47 American cities and launched its first UK branch in Manchester last year.
