Prosecutors urge parent training

More than half of problem children come from troubled homes, according to a Beijing court.

The Haidian District People's Court analyzed 100 of its 155 crime cases from last year involving minors. It found that 51 percent of the cases involved children from families troubled by divorce or other problems.

You Tao, chief judge of the court's juvenile judicial tribunal, called for parent education.

"Parents are obligated to teach their children to behave properly, and their negligence of parenting leads to most of our cases," You said.

It is necessary and important to require parents to be trained on how to bring up and communicate with their children, "as minors' offenses can be attributed to (parents') negligent manners most of the time," said Wang Leilei, a Beijing prosecutor who has dealt with many crimes involving minors.

Some parents care little about their children after a divorce, and even less so about the education of or communication with their children, which harms the children's development and can easily lead to offenses by minors, Wang said.

She also said parents' indulgence sometimes contributes to their children going astray and falling into crime.

"After all, children demand communication and guidance instead of excessive material goods," she said. "In a case I handled, a child came from a rich and harmonious family, but he still stole with others."

She suggested that the government, and especially legislators, should make educating parents a priority, adding that parents should be blamed when their children do something wrong.

Zhang Wenjuan, deputy director of the Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center, said that parent education has become popular overseas.

In Western countries such as the United States, parents receive basic training and education when their children have troubles, Zhang said.

Some countries will intervene in problematic families, asking parents to learn how to protect children from danger and investigating whether the parents are qualified to be guardians, she said.

"If parents cannot be educated and ignore the oversight, they'll lose the right to be parents," she said, adding that some may even face punishment in more serious cases.

"We can learn from these countries, providing similar training when people marry or a couple gives birth to a baby," she said.

Contact the writers at caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn and wangxu@chinadaily.com.cn