Work and Families Bill

I strongly support particularly the amendment to allow parents flexibility in providing for their child up to the end of childhood. I recall, in 1999, sitting in a Centrepoint hostel with a 16 year-old and a 17 year-old girl and hearing from them that their mother was with a new partner and that they had been pushed out of their home. Where a mother is trying to build a new relationship and wants to hold on to her new partner and her children and perhaps is also struggling to keep a job, it may be helpful if she has this possibility of flexibility. It is a particular concern of mine after meeting many homeless young people aged 16 to 20. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, referred to the sculpting of an infant’s brain by its relationship to its mother. That process re-emerges in adolescence. It is an opportunity to deal with some of the problems, but adolescence is also a time of revolt. In adolescence, children move from the close attachment that one hopes they formed in early childhood with their peers and towards a special person of their own. It is natural and normal for children to revolt in that period. It requires such sensitivity on the part of the parent, who continues to love their child and to demonstrate that they are there for them. But they also have to let them gradually stand on their own two feet. I strongly support the amendment and look forward to the Minister’s response.