Bad parents in all social classes - NPSC head

New head of the National Parenting Support Commission (NPSC) Kaysia Kerr is moving to debunk the myth that poor people make worse parents.

According to Kerr, her experience as an educator, with particular focus on parent support to the disabled community, has allowed her to interact with all classes of society and she understands that bad parents are not found only in the lower economic strata.

"I want to dispel that notion immediately. One of my biggest concerns is that we are being too general as a society and might be perpetuating that misnomer that the issues with parenting are limited to a certain strata, we couldn't be more wrong," said Kerr.

"The truth is, whichever class, we have parents who need support in effective parent teaching," added Kerr, who recently replaced Andre Miller after he had acted as head of the NPSC for approximately a year.

"We have children across all strata who are neglected. I have had the opportunity to interact and teach across the strata. I have taught in schools where only the really rich children attended, and even through that, I could see the challenges that children face.

"While they were able to afford the fineries, certainly the basic needs of children are love and to feel cared for and we could see definitely what the impact of those deficits had on the children."

REDUCE CHALLENGES

The educator told The Sunday Gleaner that her aim was to reduce those challenges which exist in all forms with a renewed focus on an island wide approach.

"We did have maladaptive behaviours and these were children from the upper strata, so we want to be careful with that.

"Another part of that conversation is that, we have found parents who are among the strata who are in dire circumstances and those parents really do a good job. They really inculcate those good values and attitudes in their children that money can't buy. So we want to dispel that notion that parenting issues is a class thing," said Kerr.

jodi-ann.gilpin@gleanerjm.com