Save me from parental choice

Eventually, they are old enough for school, and this is where the big guns of parental choice really start to make their presence felt. Will you send precious (or Pearl or Hunter) to the public school down the road, or to the prestigious prep school where all the girls at mother’s group are sending their children? What about Montessori, Catholic, Jewish or fundamentalist Christian? Or will you home school, having decided other children are just far too dangerous for your little genius?

And will you start after-school coaching and when? How young is too young for Suzuki method or Kumon? And if you choose not to send them - because they already kick up something fierce about swimming lessons and ballet and little athletics and they do have rather nasty black circles under their eyes - will they be disadvantaged? Are they - oh, horror of horrors - in danger of being Left Behind?

And, even if you do choose the nice little public school down the road, the pressure is only off till Year 4, then you must decide if they will sit for the Opportunity Class Test. And, if they sit it but don’t get in, then you must decide if they stay at the nice little public or will you cushion their (your) disappointment by sending them to that prestigious private school you can’t really afford?

By Year 6 the pressure to establish once and for all whether you are a good or a bad parent has reached crisis point. Do you choose single sex or co-ed, public or private, comprehensive or specialist? Again, you must decide whether your child should sit the Selective Schools Test or not, and or any number of private school scholarship examinations and Selective Class tests for various public high schools. Imagine the shame if your child fails to pass any of those - particularly when you’ve blown all that money on James An College coaching. So maybe it is easier just to send them to the private school you hated so much when you were a girl. At least you can pass muster as a good parent at middle class dinner parties and, of course, school reunions.

But parental choice hasn’t finished with you yet. Will your child go on exchange or not? Should they learn another language? What about the piano lessons they hate? And should they really be hanging out with all those boys? When can they go out on their own in the evening? What time should they have to come home? Is it really true that all the other Year 8 parents let their children stay out till 2am?

If you suspect drugs or cigarettes, should you search their room? If you find their diary should you read it? If they swear at you, slam doors, hit their little sister should you toss them out? If they exist on chips, burgers and coke should you stop their pocket money? Should you give them pocket money or make them earn it? To mobile or not to mobile, to ear pierce or not to ear pierce (quickly moving on to tongue pierce or not to tongue pierce), to bare midriff, to grow hair long or shave off, to goatee or not to goatee? The list is endless, and this is without even mentioning angst over subject choice, both for the School Certificate (so not-important anymore, Mum) and the (cross yourself quickly) HSC.

Even once that is all over, the choices go on. When should you let the boyfriend (or girlfriend) stay over? When do you let them have a glass of that white at home? When do you let them have a party at home?

Now that I look back at it all, with one girl heading off to university and the other about to sit her school certificate, it seems to me that all that angst was for nothing. I could have made a whole lot of totally different choices (we chose drug relief at childbirth, cobbled together childcare, public over private, co-ed over single sex and let them get their ears pierced at 13) and they would have turned out just the same. Maybe the choices we make have very little to do with our children, and everything to do with how we want the world to see us.