New York lauches controversial parenting programme

How would you like to get £50 for taking your child to the dentist every six months? How about £25 for ensuring your child's attendance record was 95% or above? That's the amount being offered to poorer families in New York as part of a programme encouraging better parenting.

The $53m Opportunity NYC programme has been set up and financed privately. But if it proves successful it could eventually be funded by local government. Other incentives include £100 for taking your child to the doctor, £25 for getting a library card for your child and £200 for graduating from high school – an amount which is split between the parent and child.

'The incentives of using capitalism have worked at other levels and nobody complains about that, says New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg. 'What is clear is that these people aren’t doing what we’d like them to do. And so, if the only way you can get them to do it is by paying them, is that better or worse than not having them do it at all?'

Critics of the scheme say that parents shouldn't be paid for raising their children. 'You give tax incentives to people to do voluntary economic transactions,' says Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute. 'That is quite different from the moral imperative of raising your children. It should not be optional to take your child to a doctor’s exam or oversee a child’s homework.'

But the big change is in the number and use of electronic gadgets designed to help parents. 60% have alarms, 20% sensors and 12% video monitors. And in what seems like a final, despairing effort to grab a good night’s kip, 10% have downloaded music which replicates the sound of being in the womb to try and lull their baby to sleep!

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