A generation of parents who can't read or cook

Paea Hohepa tells of an 11-year-old who stole P from his drunk mother to buy food. Picture / Alan Gibson

On benefit days, mothers attending the parenting course at Rotorua's Apumoana Marae used to turn up with a supermarket pottle of savoury mince for lunch.

On the other days, when the money was spent, their food was more basic. They didn't think to make lunches themselves - they didn't know how.

"They don't know how to cook mince," says Merlene Tahata, regional president of the Maori Women's Welfare League, which runs the course. "Their mothers were out at work and always brought home takeaways. There are still families that have takeaways more than they have a home-cooked meal.

"When they see us in the garden pulling off beans or pulling up carrots, they say, 'What are those, Nan?' They say, 'We get ours from the supermarket.' "

It's no wonder children are neglected when their parents have grown up in families that failed to teach them such basic life skills. As the NZ Council of Christian Social Services put it in a report yesterday: "We are dealing not just with the result of recent events, but with the consequences of 20, 30 or more years."

In South Auckland, Manukau Community Foundation manager Janis McArdle says primary schools are struggling because their pupils' parents cannot help them to read - they can't read themselves.

"There seems to be a whole chunk of people who went through the South Auckland schools in the late 80s and early 90s when the schools were at rock bottom who are around 30 now and whose literacy is appalling.

"They are the parents now. They have 7 or 8-year-olds at school and they are struggling to help them do their homework."

In Rotorua, Mana Social Services director Maxine Rennie says many parents don't even feel competent to help with their children's sports.

"They don't have an interest in sports, they don't have an interest in going to school to see what their children are doing, because they have never had that themselves and they feel inadequate if they do."

In the Ford Block, which inspired Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors, the consequences are tragic.

Paea Hohepa, whose bedroom window was hit by an airgun pellet, kept her garage set up as a bedroom for years for a boy who needed somewhere to sleep when his parents got blind drunk at home.

"He was 11 when he started coming. I'd leave a plate of food out for him and said, 'You come here any time you like.' He has now put himself through university. His father turned on him and said, 'You are just a no-hoper.' That was the booze and drugs. He has proved him wrong."

Another 11-year-old used to steal P from his mother when she was drunk and sell it to feed him and his sisters.

"I saw him walking back from New World with his groceries," Mrs Hohepa says.

Police sergeant Jim Harvey says parents "seem to live an independent life from the family. The parents will go out. The kids will be babysat by a local fun parlour or swimming pool."

In effect, the parents feel as ignorant and powerless in parenting as they do in cooking. Mrs Tahata tells of parents who come to Apumoana with babies whose ears have gone scabby, but they have failed to seek help.

"They are too shy to go to the doctor. The service is still there from Plunket, but our people don't know how to access it.

"With the immunisation programme, they are just not bothered. They can't see the relevance of having their children immunised, or they are too scared because they have to hold the baby when the needle goes in."

Western Heights Primary School principal Brent Griffin says a first step would be to take family services to the families. He would like to see family care centres at every school.

When parents take their children to school or preschool, he would like them to be able to see a Plunket or public nurse, a dental nurse, a social worker, a budget adviser, a drug and alcohol counsellor or a kaumatua, and state agencies such as Work and Income and Child, Youth and Family.

"For example, get Work and Income to help with school uniforms. Families will come in who are entitled to a Work and Income allowance but they have to go to the middle of town to get it paid. They need to have offices that are smaller and more community-oriented."

If parents get used to coming to the school for such services, they may also feel empowered to take an interest in their children's education, he says.

"We have to be more available to people. At the moment we are not."

The Maori Women's Welfare League has helped about 180 families to establish backyard gardens and is now working with community groups in Kawerau and Ruatoki to establish community gardens there.

"Until such time as Maori accept total responsibility that they have a problem, and Maori come together to discuss the problem, it is no use saying, 'What is the Government going to do about it?"' says league regional manager Gloria Hughes.

"It is our problem. I believe that Maoridom has the resources and the skills to pull it around. If they put as much energy into looking at the wellbeing of Maori families today as they put into fighting for the Treaty of Waitangi, we'll have a better society."