You first have to be able to afford a conscious upbringing

We all have prejudices, and most of us are not aware of them. Fortunately, things have started to change in recent years: More and more people are taking a stand against racism or sexism, including when it comes to bringing up children. Anti-racist children's books are filling the shelves of more and more daycare centres, and more and more little girls are learning early on that they can be anything, not just princesses.

There is one form of discrimination that we modern, enlightened parents, who very consciously do many things differently, do not have on our radar: Classism, i.e. the devaluation of people who actually or in their own perception belong to a lower social class.

Want an example? If two children are playing in a playground and one has blonde curly hair and a yellow merino jacket, and one has an undercut with shaved highlights on the sides and is wearing a Paw Patrol jacket - which child do we naturally assign to which social milieu? And which child would we rather invite home to play with us?

A new set of social codes

As much as we like to tell ourselves that we make no distinction between children, there is a long tradition in our society of wanting to read people's social background from their appearance and behaviour. As early as the 1960s, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote that we all endeavour to mark our status by mastering certain social codes, which always signify a downward demarcation. In concrete terms, this means that if you want to feel better, you need people from whom you can stand out - because they are poorer or less educated, because they have less taste or fewer privileges.

Attachment-orientated parents like to elevate themselves above those who are not so good at it. With parenting. The diet. The wooden toys.

In recent years, so-called attachment-orientated parenting, which focuses on loving support at eye level and parenting without punishments, has brought with it a new set of social codes that are now often used consciously or unconsciously for social demarcation. Parenting without scolding is not just a question of pedagogical attitude, but also a distinguishing feature that allows me as a mother or father to elevate myself above others who don't manage this. With education. With nutrition. The educationally valuable wooden toys.

Education-oriented parents stay in their bubble

Don't get me wrong: I am a great advocate of attachment-orientated support for children. For me, there is nothing more important than treating people of all ages with appreciation and respect. But precisely because it is so important to me to treat children well, I am very concerned that attachment-oriented interaction is often used today as a demarcation strategy by well-heeled upper-class parents who use it to signal to each other: We are different from the masses and we are better than them.

It's easier to be patient if I can treat myself to some household help to take the pressure off.

I don't deny the good intentions behind it. Of course, parents who are attentive to their children want to do something good for them. What I criticise is that attachment-oriented parents in particular like to keep to themselves, in their privileged bubbles, where they can then complain together that not everyone is as attentive to their children as they are. The mum on the tram the other day, for example: How she nagged her child! That could have been solved more peacefully!

You could have, of course. But it's easier to be patient if I can treat myself to a household help to relieve the burden than if, let's say, I myself am the household help of another family. In concrete terms, this means that what many good, loving, caring parents are massively lacking today is an awareness of how much their own privileges contribute to feeling superior to others in terms of loving parenting - and an honest approach to how much money and education help them to play the bonding-oriented affiliation game.

Money can solve many a problem

Loving parenthood is no longer just a matter of attitude, it is now also firmly linked to certain consumer choices. For healthy barefoot shoes and a particularly safe rear-facing child seat. A woven baby sling and a co-sleeper. For handmade dolls made of fabric, wool-silk shirts and felted fruit for the wooden shop. For the expensive private kindergarten with the special educational concept and, of course, for the public school where there are no grades.

A mindful family life is always the result of a lot of luck, the right educational background and a well-filled wallet.

At this point, it is perhaps important to mention that classism among families also makes me so angry because I myself belong to this privileged circle that can make everything so much easier for their children. We live in a large house with a garden and a room for each child, and I myself am constantly making my life as a mother easier with shortcuts that you have to be able to afford: We have groceries delivered regularly, have household help and a babysitter. And after one of our children had learning difficulties at public school, he now goes to an expensive private Montessori school where he can learn at his own pace.

The world of merino woollen jackets

That's the thing about privileges: you can simply buy your way out of many a problem. And make life so much easier for yourself. And precisely because I keep realising this myself in my everyday life, I can no longer stand the self-righteousness with which parents often talk about other parents. As if a mindful, decelerated, attentive family life is simply a question of the right attitude. And not always the result of being very lucky to be able to accompany children under particularly favourable conditions. With the right educational background and a well-filled wallet for all the nice things that mark us out as part of the community.

The example of my friend Sarah shows very well what an immense difference all these highly visible characteristics of which social group you belong to can make. She is a typical mother from the socio-ecological milieu, well-educated and financially well-positioned, with the cargo bike typical of her social bubble, in which she likes to transport her three-year-old twins, naturally dressed in style in woollen jackets and hats in natural colours.

She has often been approached by other mums who look like her while shopping or at the playground: Would her children also attend the Montessori kindergarten? Would she like to come along to the Waldorf bazaar at the weekend? Would they like to spend an afternoon together at the adventure playground?

New contacts thanks to discounter slush pants

Then, a few weeks ago, her cargo bike broke down, the weather was bad and so was her mood. So Sarah quickly packed her twins into inherited mud trousers from the discount store and took them out on foot every day to jump puddles. And suddenly came into contact with completely different parents whose children were also wearing cheap mud trousers and who didn't see her as part of the Montessori Waldorf world, but asked her if they wanted to go to the indoor playground together.

Many of the parents spoke broken German, some wore a headscarf, but the parents were no less loving towards their children. Just differently. Sarah had the feeling that she had suddenly landed in a completely different world in her own city - and only because she and her children looked a little different than usual.

An extreme example? Perhaps. But what it shows is that we are not doing ourselves any favours by upholding classist codes - for example, by forbidding our children to wear shirts with Disney prints because they «somehow look ghetto» to us. Because what does this attribution mean? Basically, it means nothing other than that we associate certain items of clothing, hairstyles, toys and hobbies with poor, often also migrant milieus. From which we apparently want to differentiate ourselves. But why is that?

We have to overcome our prejudices

Anyone who is serious about discrimination-sensitive, approachable parenting shouldn't want to distance themselves from an ominous «bottom» - not even out of that obscure fear of relegation that so often afflicts middle-class parents in particular. After all, setting an example to children of being open-minded people does not go hand in hand with devaluing apparently lower social classes.

We should no longer use our children as tools of our self-aggrandisement by making them look and play according to our self-image as parents.

Instead, I would like to see us free the good, right and important attachment-orientated ideas such as turning towards the child, active listening, understanding and responding to needs and refraining from punishment from the elitist self-image according to which only people with the right clothes, the right toys and the right diet are allowed to be part of the club, and consciously open up our parenthood to very different social codes.

Steps against classism

A first step towards this can be to stop using our children as tools of our self-aggrandisement by insisting that they look, play and act in a way that corresponds to our self-image as parents. Instead, we should allow our children to love Princess Elsa dresses and flashing plastic toys just as much as short hairstyles with shaved-in stars and Paw Patrol anoraks. Because you can't recognise a child who is growing up with a strong bond by their woollen jacket. It's the fact that its parents allow it to find its own taste, beyond all classist categorisations.

However, the second step in combating classism is a political one: there simply needs to be more money for families, especially for the less well-off. Social benefits are needed for families living in poverty, not in the form of vouchers, but in the form of money in their bank accounts. This is what will relieve the burden on parents and enable them to actually treat their children more gently. Because the idea that poor parents would rather spend their money on flat-screen TVs and cigarettes than give it to their children is another classicist cliché that we urgently need to overcome.

Wanting to treat children with love is not a question of social background. Being able to do so sometimes is.