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<title> Parental responsibility of today </title>
Our parents are, whether we want it or not, a big part of our life from the day we are born and the way we are brought up is often the root to many of our actions. The article "Locking out violence" (Ginia Bellafante, TIME Magazine July 24, 1995) is about parental responsibility and violence on television. The article raises other issues about parents and their responsibilities and in this essay I will discuss some of these. I will mainly stick to Swedish conditions because that is naturally what I am most familiar with since I was brought up here.
	According to many people, having a baby is the biggest thing that can happen to a human being and even the meaning of life. Bringing a defenceless child into the world is of course also connected with a lot of responsibility and the very first time the mother is the most important person in the baby's life since she is breast-feeding. Earlier the main responsibility for the child continued to be the mother's but luckily, for everyone, this has begun to change and today many fathers use their parental leave. This is good because it gives the father time to get to know the child and vice versa. 
	The school start symbolises a new phase and is therefore an important event for both the child and the parents, although many children leave the home earlier in order to attend day care centres and playschools. In school the child meets a lot of new people, not least the teacher, who influence him/her and the parents' role becomes less important but they should still have the main responsibility for their child's development. There are parents who think that the teacher is some kind of "stand-in" parent, which I think is to give the teacher a role he is not meant to have. The teacher should of course become involved in the children's lives, but his main function is to be a good educator. When it comes to the relationship between parents and school we also have the type of parents who defend their child tooth and nail. If there are problems in the class, for example with bullying, they cannot imagine their little baby has done something wrong, even if it is a fact, and they often get angry with the teacher if he suggests something like that. Both of these types of parents are extreme and it is of course best to be neither of them. 
	An important part of parental responsibility is to set limits. That is not easy, especially not when the child becomes a teenager and, in some cases, revolts to everything that the parents represent. The teenager is, in spite of his/her striving for being an independent person, perhaps even more in need of strict limits than the younger child is. This is of course due to the fact that you as a teenager often meet temptations like alcohol and drugs and it is not always easy to know how to relate to these things. Parents are sometimes afraid to set limits because they are afraid that the child will turn away from them. My experience though, is that teenagers want to have rules but they also want to know the reasons for them. I would also like to point out that it is in most cases too late to start to set limits when the child gets thirteen, if you up till then have let him/her do whatever he/she wants. Consequently the best thing a parent can do is to show his/her standpoint early and then be consistent; otherwise the child will get confused.	
	 	"If you hold a bird too loosely it flies away, but if you hold it too tightly it will die." This proverb is very appropriate to use in order to describe parenting and it is can also represent the conclusion that should be drawn from what I have been discussing. The main responsibility for a child is always the parents'; both inside and outside of school and not only when the child is small but also when the child becomes a teenager. This does not mean the child should not have a life of his/her own. What it means is that if a child cannot depend on his/her parents, who is he/she then supposed to trust?
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