IT'S tough being a parent in 2007 when you are made to feel responsible for all the problems in society.

Parents are flung, usually quite voluntarily, into caring for this other human and being responsible for his or her welfare for at least the next 16 years - in reality, forever.

Not only are you usually a complete novice at it, but there is only limited preparation for the practical stuff and the best "teaching" of all is by example from your own parents.

But then, the main lesson that many people will learn from them is that they have no intention of bringing up their own children the same way.

This parenting you do is a balancing act between getting nutrition, discipline and development just right or totally wrong. And underpinning it all is a love that drives you to delight or despair, often alternately.

The law helps the extreme cases, but, for the mainstream family trying to enforce discipline, parents often feel it is not helping at all.

All the rights appear to have been given to the children, who are too immature to use them properly. And the abuse of them can leave adults feeling impotent when it comes to normal tasks like ensuring they attend school or preventing them from buying alcohol.

So, is any of this fair on today's poor parents?

Sorry, but yes, it is.

Like everything else now, life has to be made as effort-free as possible. But parenting was never meant to be like that.

It challenges adults in their own development, stretches their virtues and highlights their shortcomings.

Parenting teaches us something every day, and whether we can learn from this and use this knowledge to improve the way we deal with our children is up to us.

Few parents have it easy. And even the ones put through the wringer for what seems like years by trucculent, uncaring teens somehow find a way through to re-discovering their children once more.

But few parents would swap even the darkest days for those rare moments of blinding love or revelation with our offspring. So, parenting continues.

Clever fella, that God, don't you think?