Yes, to all Emma's post above.

"Too many are starting school unable to hold a knife and fork, unused to eating at a table, unable to use the lavatory properly.
These children will not be living in absolute poverty.
The majority will be living in homes with televisions, computers and PlayStations."

And there's the rub. It's genuinely not 'poverty' that generates this, it's a form of neglect, born of willful apathy, or willful ignorance. I tend to blame the State for inducing it, in as much as the State has become Uber-Parent and therefore directly responsible for you failing to wipe your own fucking arse! IMO this country could probably suffer a wee bit more Anarchy for healthy balance (I will for now withhold my control-state conspiricy theories..*smile*).

Anyhoo, asides apart.. Maybe FolkieDave will resign my direct personal experience to 'mere anecdotes', but having grown-up in the Seventies on a rough council housing estate, where the 'scummy mummy' (gotta love the vernacular!) was already prevalent even then, and having immediate family still just down the road myself who now live quite surrounded by these kinds of 'non-parenting' families, it is a very real problem in the UK today.

According to R4's Women's Hour (a highly sane and moderate voice in the UK media - at least I tend to think so), there are now increasing numbers of children who are going to school who are literally incapable of controlling their own bodily functions because their parents have failed to even teach them how to use the loo (meaning they never bothered taking them out of nappies), has now become a problem for teachers. That's just far, far too much for teachers to be expected to take on.