For the sake of the children

Abstract

Charities need to be adroit if they want to use the media to get coverage for serious issues, writes Millar, chair of the Family and Parenting Institute, but more important is "trying to unpick the increasingly tangled relationship that is developing between parents, the media and public policy makers as the very private act of parenting becomes a very public business." There is a deluge of parenting magazines, most newspapers have their dedicated sections and there are many TV programmes - in fact only radio appears to be lagging behind. "However when it comes to angels versus demons [children], or good guys versus the baddies in the case of the adults, the picture is much less rosy and the role of the media more murky."