Enough excuses: it IS lazy parents’ fault if their kids start school in nappies. The woke brigade needs to stop infantilising low-income families by claiming they’re not capable of being responsible: CLARE FOGES

Whose job is it to toilet train a child? Mummy, Daddy, the state, society or the potty fairy? According to the BBC, the answer is anyone but the parents. That is certainly the impression one gets on reading an investigation published on the corporation’s news site earlier this month entitled, ‘Why are so many four-year-olds not potty-trained before school?’

It is a subject worthy of investigation. Earlier this year a teachers’ survey revealed that about one in four children are not toilet-trained when they start school: around 187,000 children every year.

The toll on the teachers is significant. To their list of roles – educator, carer, soother, social worker – they must now add Pampers monitor. According to the chief executive of children’s charity Kindred Squared, teachers are ‘losing, on average across the country, a day a week of teaching time to dealing with potty-training issues’.

Why is this happening? The BBC report is certain on one thing: it’s not the parents’ fault. No, we absolutely, categorically cannot blame the child’s mother and father for failing to toilet-train, say the Beeb. We should sooner blame billionaires, Brexit and austerity before pointing a finger at the actual parents.

Everyone the BBC interviewed for this in-depth report seems to agree. ‘It’s not the parent, it’s not being lazy,’ says one mother.

‘I just genuinely don’t think it’s the parents’ fault,’ says another. ‘We need to be really careful that we’re not just jumping to blaming parents,’ says a parenting expert. Why not? Because ‘it comes down to income’.

Deprived parents cannot afford a fancy book to tell them how to potty-train, apparently. Or they’re just too busy. Or too over-stretched and over-stressed to sit their child on the toilet and coo ‘Clever girl!’ Of course, some parents will struggle with children who have complex physical and neurological needs but, that aside, the report is full of reasons that sound remarkably like excuses.

A century ago the poorest in society didn’t even have indoor toilets, let alone potty-training books and a welter of advice on social media. Teaching children meant chivvying them through autumn showers and winter frosts to sit on a freezing outdoor lavvie.

There is nothing about being poor that prevents you from potty- training your child. Indeed, surely those with the least money have the most incentive to move on from nappies. For almost nine years now I have spent at least £60 a month on the things (my children are eight, seven, five and two), and I am very glad to be shot of the expense.

Enough with the excuses. It is mothers and fathers too addicted to their phones, too lazy and too irresponsible to bother with the arduous business of toilet-training.

The fact that the BBC won’t spell out the obvious, points to a wider problem in today’s society: an utter terror of speaking about personal responsibility. For years, a well-meaning army of people have created a language within a language that is designed to absolve people of any responsibility for their actions – particularly those on lower incomes.

They are ‘vulnerable’ to obesity, ‘at risk of’ school absenteeism, ‘in danger of’ slipping through the cracks.

They are subjects of fate, helpless victims of circumstance. It allows the well-meaning to talk about social issues without doing the awkward thing of suggesting that even the poorest in society have at least some agency for their own decisions and behaviour.

But by giving people a free pass, you do not do them any favours long-term. You infantilise them.

And once irresponsibility is normalised, a culture is created in which, naturally, it is the job of the state to step in.

Nowadays the state is not just defender of the realm but proxy parent. Look at the various initiatives designed to help children who have been neglected at home: supervised toothbrushing programmes in the most deprived areas, free breakfast clubs because parents can’t be bothered to scrape some butter across a piece of toast.

As for potty-training, up to 20 councils are planning to send guides on the subject to parents next spring, lest the good people of Rotherham, Suffolk, north Lincolnshire and various other places forget that this is a basic parental duty.

Having run the toilet-training gauntlet four times, I get why some parents are daunted. We have used all methods, from staying indoors for days at a time to bribing with chocolate buttons (one for a number one, two for a number two).

By the fourth we plonked a potty downstairs and she just got on with it. My only take-out is that if you try, try and try again you will get there in the end.

I would suggest that schools try stick rather than carrot. They should make clear to parents – unless their son or daughter has genuine special needs – that children must be toilet trained before they are allowed through the school gates.

This is not only fair to the teachers but to the children themselves, who won’t suffer the humiliation of being unable to do what their classmates can.

The BBC may be unwilling to point out the bleeding obvious because of the dictum to ‘be kind’, but too often that translates as ‘be cowardly’ – with those let down being the children whose parents are never held to account.