LHell, it is well known, is paved with good intentions. There is no doubt that Aurore Bergé, Minister of Solidarity and Families, had the best intentions in announcing a plan to “support parents and build with them a new public policy” of the “parenthood”. Welcome announcement as the urban riots at the end of June and beginning of July reminded us of what social workers and children’s judges have known for a long time: the disintegration of the family institution is a powerful factor in school failure and juvenile delinquency.
As the minister recalled, 60% of young people incriminated come from single-parent families, the number of which continues to grow (one in ten in 1981, one in four in 2022). In 82% of cases, this parent is a mother, much more exposed to poor housing and insecurity. That so many of these women, living in overcrowded housing and neighborhoods exposed to all forms of trafficking, manage to properly educate their children, with meager, hard-earned salaries in jobs with often “atypical” hours, is a miracle.
However, the flagship measure of the minister’s plan consists of attributing full responsibility for the delinquency of their children to parents who do not perform miracles. This is where we arrive in hell. Notwithstanding their living and working conditions, they will be punished with exemplary penalties: community service, civil and criminal fines, etc.
Even accompanied by a few carrots, the stick thus brandished is a bad answer to a real question: that of the institution of youth. In the original, but forgotten, meaning of the word “teacher”. He is only a tutor long enough to teach his students to do without any guardianship, that is to say, to live as a free and responsible adult.
Invisible work
The school, whose primary mission is to educate, is obviously not the only institution responsible for the education of rising generations. This is primarily the responsibility of the family. Fulfilling it requires constant attention and effort from parents during the extraordinarily long time that separates man from birth to adulthood.
Accomplished outside the market, this work is “invisible”, it has neither measure nor price and is absent from the statistical images of our societies. But it weighs on parents even more heavily as the aging of the population often adds the burden of dependent elderly parents.
This invisible work is essential to the market economy and the social state. A country can survive one or two months of general strike; he could not tolerate his children being left without care or food for a week. Already in a very poor state, our health system could no longer survive without the family work of supporting patients.
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