Parenting is now a science. That’s official. Gone are the days where parents just muddled through or maybe read a book on how to raise happy children and logged on to Mumsnet for advice. Science, neuroscience in particular, is everywhere. Crime rates, drug and alcohol abuse, failing at school are all in existence because something went wrong with the brain in the early years. And why did something go wrong in the early years? Well, because of Mum and Dad, of course. Sort parenting out and all problems will sort themselves out. We won’t have any more problems in society if the parents get it right. That is what the current political debate suggests.

As part of the scientific parenting agenda, the Rt. Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP said recently in the Sunday Times that children from ‘broken homes,’

“…are probably going to school with a brain the size of a child of one, as opposed to the brain it should be at the age of three. They are the ones who often arrive in their nurseries unable to speak and have no language at all, have no social skills and are often quite violent.”

His comments are based on research by the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas, which found that neglect in early childhood could affect brain size. The Child Trauma Academy has conducted research on over 1000 neglected children and finds that brain development and density is reduced if there is global neglect (taken to mean deprivation of a range of vital experiences).

It does say that brain size is affected, but the level of neglect has to be extreme. Unfortunately Mr. Duncan Smith forgot to mention that the study in question looked at 'extreme extremes': at children in Romanian orphanages who, before the madness of Mr and Mrs Ceausescu came to a violent end in December 1989, were kept in cages, tied to their beds and treated worse than animals over a prolonged period of time. The question we have to ask is the extent to which data based upon these horrific cases should be imported directly and applied to 'Broken Britain.'

Mr Duncan Smith also writes in the Telegraph that,

“Neuroscientists have been able to show us that children brought up in families where there is abuse and neglect, will by the age of three have smaller brains than their equivalent, functional counterparts.”

Two things. First, this evidence is most likely to come from studies of children under 'extreme extreme' neglect. Secondly, what is this all about brain size anyway? Women have smaller brains than men, right?

At a seminar on the “Changing Parenting Culture” in the British Library last month, Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology and Author, said that about ten years ago, there was a critical mass of people that said parenting is not suitable for policy. Back then it was acknowledged that there is a broad range of influences on childhood development beyond the effects of parenting, for example communities, schools and social background. Now this has changed. The credo is ‘Sort out parenting, and all problems such as crime will go away’. According to Mr Furedi this displays “a level of naivety along policy makers that is breathtaking.” To define parenting as the single factor of a child’s outcome is simply wrong and “it makes intergenerational relations very difficult”. Politics and society have now constructed parents in an individual way, they are atomised and not seen as a part of a bigger picture.

I agree with Professor of Anthropology Rayna Rapp, from New York, who said at her recent lecture on the medicalisation of childhood differences at the BIOS Centre at the LSE that using science to blame parents (mothers, in particular) “is a very, very old trope that we should be cautious about.”

We don’t need a ‘science of parenting’ but effective crackdown on drugs and alcohol abuse in society and families, more and better paid jobs for those with low skills, and eradication of poverty – all of which Iain Duncan Smith has written very effectively upon in the past. However, there is no such thing as 'perfect parenting.' And parents are not the only ones to blame if something goes wrong. Sorry, politicians. I am afraid you will still have to deal with child poverty, substance abuse in society, the recession and unemployment. There, that’s a job for you.