Past generations put food before luxuries - modern parents should do the same: Yorkshire Post Letters

RE Marcus Rashford’s idea of dishing out free school meals during the holidays (Tom Richmond, The Yorkshire Post, November 14).

Growing up in the 50s, I was informed by some elders that my generation was lucky, which was true because we missed the travails of the war.

For all that, my family didn’t have a bathroom, a car or a telephone and we didn’t have a television until I was 12 years old.

Despite the ‘poverty’ of those times, my sister and I were always well fed without any recourse to charity (food banks were non-existent anyway).

I make these points because, although not advocating a return to the austere life of the 50s, 60s and 70s, it is remarkable that some modern parents have an expectation of luxuries that are more important than feeding their children.

We now discover that, because of lockdown, many young children have lost the skills of holding a knife and fork and going to the toilet. As Nick Ferrari said on LBC: “If people can’t be bothered to bring up their children properly, they shouldn’t be having them.”

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