We have, for very obvious reasons, been highly supportive of the Government’s plan to promulgate a National Parenting Policy that hopefully would bring parenting into the formal education system.

Which is why we have made serious note of Education Minister Andrew Holness’s announcement to this newspaper suggesting that he, as the one tasked with driving the policy, will have to draw brakes, so to speak, while he courts the various stakeholders.

On the surface of it, Mr Holness has a point that the policy would have to be sold to parents. He fears that many parents won’t like to face the bald truth upon which the policy is built — that too many of them have abdicated their responsibility to their children.

“One of the things that I have been very cautious in doing is in putting out the National Parenting Policy because there are some very important things we must say, but they may not be politically acceptable to half of the people, so we have to keep building to the point where they come to the understanding that you can’t come to the next level until you do this,” the minister tells us.

We know well, from hard experience, the danger of pushing through a policy that has not achieved broad-based support from the people who will be most affected by it, so no problem there.

The fear that we have, however, is that if Mr Holness and his Government are to wait until enough parents agree on the fundamentals of such a policy, we will never get to the point where we will be able to promulgate one.

Worse, we will never be able to implement a parenting policy that is dependent on the ability to not offend any parent, with the truth or otherwise.

The only reason we are even talking about introducing a parenting policy is the widespread lack of proper parenting. In both the researched and anecdotal evidence, it is clear that many of our children are being left to their own devices.

The many children on the streets instead of being in school, the large numbers who do no homework after school, the many who are in school but are failing because of no parental supervision, the unacceptably high number of children who die in fires when left at home alone, not to mention the abandoned ones, tell the stark and sordid story of broken homes without adequate parenting.

The process of arriving at an acceptable parenting policy is going to be long and tortuous. That is the very reason why the minister cannot afford to tarry. He must press along.

Given the nature of a matter such as parenting, even when a policy is formulated, it will continue to be a work in progress. Parents must be made to face the harsh truth. Mollycoddling to suit political ends will certainly not do.

Our unsolicited advice to Minister Holness is that he should not be weary in well doing, for in due season he shall reap, if he faints not.