So the domain of reality TV has finally hit home, literally. Now we can watch other parents deal with their children’s issues in the hit rated show ‘Super Nanny’. Nearly two million Australian viewers watch the superhero whip American families into shape, while network ratings soar. It’s a real bread and circus affair. (Not since medieval times and public stonings has the viewer had such voyeuristic advantages as in these days of reality TV.)
One thing is for sure; the program has definitely put parenting square into the public domain and has been the catalyst for countless debates and dinner table conversations. In a culture of increasing public disinterest in families and children, finally, stage left, in walks someone who puts families in the leading role.
On a positive note, ‘Super Nanny’ is perhaps the thin end of the wedge that is bringing the subject of families and parenting into popular culture. And people who would never consider watching or reading anything about raising children, are now irresistibly drawn to the subject. There are parents I know who admit to never opening a book or reading so much as an article on parenting, but who also admit to feeling out of their depth and out of control with their kids. Unfortunately, this is the norm. To these people, and to the larger public, Super Nanny Jo Frost brings some solutions and insights. Some simple remedies she offers, like ‘don’t let your children graze all day on sweets or they won’t eat dinner’ and ‘tell your child it is unacceptable to run out into the road’ and ‘don’t let your child hit you’, give isolated parents a public permission to set guidelines and limits for their children. It allows them to reclaim their authority – because, if anything, this is what has been stolen from them.
Parents’ authority today is completely undermined by the corporate agenda. In a culture dominated by consumerism, violent media, junk food and propaganda, the messages to parents are more about what to buy for your kids, than what is really good for them (see end note about the new Star Wars movie, for example). It’s a climate of getting more, doing more, buying more, and getting away with more — the ultimate social permissiveness. Is it then any wonder that parents who are increasingly isolated from community, whose authority is constantly subjugated by those messages, find themselves just going along with that cultural flow? So messages like Jo’s that counteract that climate are a welcome respite, especially in the mainstream. Now, at least, everyone is talking about it.
It would be remiss not to commend some of her positive points. Jo Frost does not endorse physical punishment, and reprimands parents for yelling at or threatening children. She encourages getting down to a child’s eye level so as not to intimidate them, and keeping the voice calm and low. She also gets the fathers involved. All these things are invaluable messages to popular culture. It is a step in the right direction — albeit a baby step. And albeit mixed with some pretty simplistic and sometimes reptilian techniques.
Unfortunately, the role played by the families in ‘Super Nanny’ is excruciatingly clichéd — children acting out as the archetypal tyrants and parents playing the worn out helpless martyrs. I cringe to think of the subconscious effect this imagery might have on the public attitude towards families. And unfortunately Jo Frost’s discipline style is a throwback to the seventies, with little regard for exploring the deeper reasons or needs behind a child’s behaviour.
It is a startling example of how the media interprets human life — how it squeezes and presses it into one, flat, linear, uni-dimensional plane of black and white, good and bad.
And true to media-manufactured archetypal cliché, when there is an unresolvable drama, we need to send in the superhero. ‘Super Nanny’ is the classic deus ex machina (Latin for a god from a machine ) lowered to the stage by her wire cable to save the day. After 45 minutes, everyone is hugging and crying, mummy and daddy love each other again, children are glowing, the problems are solved and our heroine drives off into the sunset in her black cab to save yet another desperately unhappy family.
The Sydney Morning Herald recently dedicated an entire four-page lift-out to ‘Super Nanny’, complete with several ‘expert’ opinions of her discipline style — all of which, of course, disagreeing with each other. The piece began by saying ‘parents had lost the parenting compass’ when it came to raising children’ and that they desperately needed help to get back on course.
I think this comment in itself exposes the sort of naive thinking towards parents that undermines families today, and is indicative of a modern culture so alienated from itself that most non-parents have never even held a baby in their life. The comment implies several things, all of which deserve critical examination:
- That child rearing is the responsibility of parents alone, and no one and nothing else has anything to do with it.
- That the compass setting should be on ‘well-behaved children’.
- That a ‘well-behaved child’ means you are a good parent.
- That parents are helpless and need a hero.
With this one-dimensional thinking as the perspective, and ‘well-behaved’ as the outcome, ‘Super Nanny’ wins on all counts. First, she swoops in, and sets those crazy compasses right. ‘Who’s in control here?’ she asks. Then, by shame, blame and coercion, she sets about pointing all those naughty children in the right direction. Children are tamed and behaviour is modified. There, done. Love and happiness is restored — or is it? Are these families really transformed, or are we witnessing a counterfeit quick-fix?
The human heart is much more complex than what can be addressed by a naughty mat. And while some behaviours might be thwarted by coercive, authoritarian discipline, there are other more positive behaviours and ways of being that never blossom in children under such a system. So while a ‘good’ child may be made, a whole, independent, confident, empathetic, intelligent and soulful child may remain undiscovered. And the sad thing is that while one successfully creates the ‘good’ child, the other possibility is never considered, or missed.
Simplistic solutions fail to address the deeper causes of inappropriate behaviour — the history behind a child’s need to act out with regard to evidence-based bonding principles. It also fails to address the impact of society’s ills on children.
Progressive parents are seeking more than just tamed toddlers, more than just fitting the familial square peg into society’s round hole. They are seeking connection and bonding, and a relationship with their children that fosters self-esteem, intelligence and love. They are forging new ground in an undiscovered land, in a climate that is at odds with family. To do this requires an ability to find the need lurking beneath any inappropriate behaviour, and address that need in a way that is inclusive of both the parents’ and the child’s need. No small feat.
And in doing this, parents are reclaiming their authority — an authority to know what is right for their family and to implement such knowledge as a socially recognised authority. Perhaps this is why we cannot altogether throw the nanny out with the bath water, because in one way the program is giving parents permission to take authority back. When Jo Frost scoops up all those bags of treats and videos and chucks them in the bin, we cannot help but applaud. Yes! The corporate agenda does not win in this household! So the real question becomes, then, what kind of authority do we want to claim? That is where our deux ex machina leaves off, and we ourselves step in with a new kind of authority.
Shows like ‘Super Nanny’ are obliged not to address the complexities of the human heart and psyche. The lateral, logical, behavioural formulas Ms. Frost provides to the chaos of love, fall painfully short. When the imperative to meet our children with something that brings forth love and connection is asserted, her cable is snapped; she’s tumbling to the stage, rendered impotent, and we are left without a hero to save us. Damn. Now it is our turn to be the god.
And while the Sydney Morning Herald so blithely says we’ve lost the compass, I would like to pose that the parental compass is set just fine, thank you very much. Almost every parent I know has their compass set on love. And almost every parent I know has their compass set beyond the point of where their own parents left off. It is the natural course of evolution. They want to be better parents than their parents were, and connect with their children better than they themselves were connected with. Therein lies the challenge — how to follow a compass setting that takes one into unforged territory, down the road less travelled?
‘Super Nanny’ reinforces the idea that our compass is lost and that children are to be tamed and socialised, that they are by nature unruly and undeserving of our respect. Articles about the show even go so far as to label children ‘brats’ and ‘terrors’. The program suggests that we need to go back to those good ol’ days of authoritarian parenting – see how well it works? In just 24 hours Jo Frost turns a glass-smashing, face-spitting insolent child into a happy, helpful cherub. But, of course, we cannot do it without the help of some outside authority. And all the while, the public — nearly two million a week to be exact — sits in the colosseum and jeers.
It is society’s compass that is out of whack — not parents. Our children bear the symptoms of a society completely off the map. For the first time in history, there is a generation of children who is assaulted with unprecedented levels of violent media, aggressive marketing campaigns, toxins, chemicals, parental absence, pharmaceutical manipulation, war, corporatocracy, environmental destruction, medicalisation, educational decay, and isolation. And Channel Nine wants to come along with an English nanny and a naughty mat and make it all better. Give me a break.
Good parenting is done by a society — not just a person. A recent series of US Public Agenda surveys has found parents worried about their ability to raise independent, self-disciplined children in the current social climate. There is a broad sense, among both parents and the general public, that American society is inhospitable for raising children. In Easier Said Than Done (http://www.publicagenda.org/research/research_reports_details.cfm?list=15), three-quarters of parents say it’s ‘a lot harder’ to raise kids than it was during their youth and nearly half say protecting their child from negative social influences is a bigger concern than finding enough family time or keeping up with the bills.
Historically, the deus ex machina was often played as a king or godly figure upon whose wisdom and grace the people depended, thus reinforcing the idea that the people were helpless without him — an effective political tool. The playwrights of such dramas were often, in fact, on the king’s payroll for this very reason. Not much has changed since then. Only now such propaganda weaves itself throughout the entire fabric of daily life. Gods from machines are served up daily, from the pharmaceuticals that are going to save our sex life, to the botox that will save our face. Counterfeits for the real thing.
In the same way ‘Super Nanny’ serves the propaganda machine. It shows parents how to tame their children with simplistic behavioural techniques and form them into compliant individuals who will grow up either rejecting external authority, or submitting to it. It’s a clever device for building a particular kind of society, and making round pegs fit into square holes.
But from another, more empowering perspective, it is an opportunity to put parenting on the table, and a reason to begin intelligent debate and discovery into the kind of parents we want to be and the kind of world we want to help create. ‘Super Nanny’ presents an invitation to throw the deus ex machina away and find our own authority.
In effect, what we often see in ‘Super Nanny’ are the two sides to one coin – fear. Being permissive (the parents’ role) and being traditionally authoritarian (the nanny’s role) are both strategies born of fear. One is to fear the loss of the child’s love (permissiveness), the other is to fear the loss of power and respect (authoritarianism). It is an old paradigm and based on love’s counterfeit — control.
Identifying what is fear-based parenting is the first step towards discovering love, thereby claiming our true authority. And with true authority our God-self is revealed, and transformation can happen. It’s a journey we take alone — and imperfectly, with wrong turns and detours, without a superhero to save us. And it is a journey worthy of the highest respect and regard — outside of the media’s desire to make us look mundane and clichéd — for we are the change-makers, the pioneers of the human heart and the explorers of the unknown.
On an end note, (and speaking of a society without a compass!) Young Media Australia (www.youngmedia.org.au) announced that the movie Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith , which is now showing all across Australia, is not suitable for children under the age of 15 years. The movie is a much darker, more violent movie than earlier movies in the Star Wars series, and is likely to be very disturbing to young children and adolescents.
Although its official OFLC rating is M, this may well be overlooked by many families with children under 15, who have been led to believe that the film might be suitable for them due to the extensive merchandising that has preceded the movie’s release. For example, the supermarkets are filled with Star Wars merchandise and products. Kellogg’s alone has Star Wars images on its packets of Fruit Loops, Coco Pops, Frosties, Milo, Crispix, Miniwheats and Rice Bubbles . And there is a whole aisle in the Kmart toy section dedicated to Star Wars.
A special thank you to Lisa Reagan (founder of Families for Natural Living (www.familiesfornaturalliving.org) and contributing editor to byronchild, for inspiration and insight for this editorial.