TOM Wareing's views on parental care (Advertiser, November 21) accurately describes the importance of the dual role model of a mother and father in a child's development.

It is, however, not just single-parent families where the problem exists.

Successive governments have created a society where home ownership and the value of house prices, plus excessive materialism, is at the core of the human bonding ritual (marriage or living together).

House prices in Britain are very high on a worldwide comparison. There are many families where both parents work long hours to pay for their house and the other material trappings and their children spend more time being cared for by other people than they spend with both parents.

Leading psychologists say this can create a feeling of insecurity within the child's mind that causes a need for it to resort to extreme measures to gain attention.

Crime, violence and other unruly behaviour are extreme ways of seeking attention.

Society tends to ignore this as being true and looks for the blame elsewhere.

Providing cheap, Government-sponsored child care, at all levels of a child's development, provided by well-trained professional teams at the times of day to meet parental needs will help, in the short term, to put back the love and guidance that many modern children are deprived of.

Down-sizing the working day by hour reduction and increased holidays will help increase the time available for parents to fulfil their parental duties to their children, in the medium to long term.

Robin King

Huband Close

Redditch