Family Issues are Parenting Issues

In the discussion of “family” issues, the voice and role of parents is often excluded. Too often parents are dismissed or ignored.

“Ignoring parents in family issues is like ignoring entrepreneurs in discussion of business issues” says Glenn Cheriton, president of the Canadian Equal Parenting Council (CEPC), a national voice for parents and equality.

“Parents raise families. Governments don’t raise families, they raise taxes.” says Cheriton.

 Without the viewpoint of parents, who do successfully the vast majority of child-raising, discussion of issues is one sided and incomplete. The “professionals” and “experts” have their own agendas and financial interests which profit from anti-parent stereotyping. At the same time professionals and their associations seek to avoid any independent responsibility for the outcomes of their involvement.

Courts, child and family services and other state agencies often treat parents as unpaid employees with unlimited work hours and “no rights, only responsibilities.” Parents are stereotyped unfairly as “deadbeat dads” or “lazy welfare moms”. Sometimes a single horrific case of child neglect is generalized to blame and shame all parents. Child abuse in government run organizations is too often covered up and paid caregivers avoid responsibility.

Often, governments refer to professionals in law and social agencies as the only “stakeholders”, while neglecting or refusing equal status or consultations with parents.

In the native residential school system, children were taken from parents by state agencies and others acting with state authority, ostensibly for the “children’s best interests” but the hidden agenda was removing the cultural influence of the parents. The financial interests of government, Indian agencies and church organizations were not revealed until later, and parents’ views were ignored.

Parents are the only sustainable family or child-raising system. Government-run systems may be necessary in a small minority of cases, but these require huge inputs of tax dollars and show outcomes for children which are significantly inferior to untrained and unsupported parents.

The mission of CEPC is to represent the views of parents, to empower parents to best raise their children, to promote equal treatment of, and respect for parents, while promoting due process and clear standards in any state involvement in removing children from their parents.

Media can call the Canadian Equal Parenting Council on issues involving children for a viewpoint to balance the opinions of those who earn their living from government and quasi-government “child and family” industries.

Glenn Cheriton, co-President, CEPC