Thibaut Hue with AFP // Photo credit: Geoffroy Van der Hasselt / AFP
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6:29 p.m., December 10, 2023
The Minister of Solidarity and Families Aurore Bergé announced the establishment of “work of general interest for failing parents” and the creation of a commission which will make “concrete proposals” to “meet the challenges of parenthood” .
A commission intended to “meet the challenges of parenthood”
“With the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice, we will set up community service for defaulting parents, the payment of a financial contribution for parents of children guilty of damage to a victims’ association and a fine for parents who do not appear at hearings which concern their children,” declared the minister in an interview with the Tribune Dimanche.
She also announced the creation, from Monday, of “a scientific commission, co-chaired by (child psychiatrist) Serge Hefez and Hélène Roques (author of “Sauvons nos enfants”)”, with “demographers, magistrates, child psychiatrists, philosophers. They will have “six months to make concrete proposals to me”, intended to “meet the challenges of parenting today”, declares the minister.
The weekly specifies that the main avenues for reflection should concern options for supporting overwhelmed parents, resolving family conflicts, dealing with violence and young people’s addictions. The duo, volunteers, will be surrounded by doctors, magistrates and sociologists, the researcher Irène Théry, the child psychiatrist David Cohen and even the judge Alice Grunenwald, adds the newspaper.
“What does it mean to be parents?”
“I have one certainty: we cannot do without parents, nor do without them, nor against them,” says Aurore Bergé, who begins on Monday “a parenting tour of France”, with a first stage close to ‘Angers. “There is clearly an issue of authority to be restored, it is neither corny nor reactionary to say it. We can clearly see that parents can be overwhelmed, disoriented in the face of new risks: sedentary lifestyle, growing importance of screens too. And all social circles are affected”, declares the minister, who wants to “give parents back the place they deserve”. They “cannot be forgotten by our public policies”.
She denies wanting to “provide instructions, because there is none”. “On the other hand, we can support those who feel alone when faced with moments of change, of anxiety, those who see their authority challenged by pseudo-experts who deploy on TikTok,” she specifies. Referring to “these mothers going out into the street in the evening to collect their children and put them back on the right path” during the riots at the end of June, Aurore Bergé believes that “we cannot be interested in parenthood only in the face of crises.
“What does it mean to be parents? And where is the second parent, often the father? Fathers cannot be reduced to alimony. Society has ended up accommodating the fact that women alone take on certain missions with children,” she notes.