Support groups

In my earlier rather depressing job description of parenthood I pointed out the lack of any form of trade union representation to argue for parental rights and needs. Of course, by its very nature, parents do their job out of love, and voluntarily sacrifice many material things to be able to care for their children. However, there is also little doubt that governments have frequently taken advantage of this absence of cohesion of parents as a group, in order to be able to dictate to them about the financial aspects of child-rearing. The health professional can begin to fight for parents and can offer a great deal of support as well as representing parental views. However, the emergence of self-help groups has to be one of the most encouraging and stimulating developments in recent years.

The majority of these groups are focused on some particular aspect of parenthood. This may be crying, hyper-activity, asthma, eczema, the disabled, and so on - but they are a very real and valuable step towards parents understanding their problems more, feeling less isolated and being much more involved with professional decisions that may affect their children.

As well as self-help groups there are many other groups and organisations that give parents a voice and can offer support, reassurance, help and guidance. It is no secret that one of the chief advantages of mother and toddler groups, and pre-school playgroups, is the support that these groups offer the parents - not just the children.

A fascinating piece of research done in the 1970s looked at some of the characteristics of American parents.1 These characteristics applied to almost every parent, irrespective of social class, ethnicity, education, or religion. Even though over 20 years have passed, the chances are that they apply to you as well. They certainly apply to me. These were a selection:

• We have no real idea as to what a 'good parent' is
• We get virtually no parenting training
• Our view of parenthood is somewhat romantic
• We expect to be able to solve problems that the professionals can't
• We have complete responsibility for our children, but only partial authority
• We expect extremely high standards of ourselves as parents
• We often have to work with incomplete or conflicting information when trying to resolve situations with our children
• The standards we set for our children are even higher than those we set ourselves. We want them to be happier, and more successful, than we ever were.

We certainly mean well. Nevertheless, we simply have to accept that many of these beliefs are incompatible. We are bound to get stressed. The function of this book is to look at some of the stresses that inevitably arise from parenthood,, to give practical guidance as to how you can lessen their impact, to show you who can help, and how you can help yourself. But -1 might as well admit it straight away - this book's title is more than a little optimistic. There is no way that parenting will ever be completely stress free. But I do believe that stresses really can be diminished to a remarkable extent, so that the pleasures of being a parent totally overwhelm them. And you will believe it too. Read on.



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