Feral Families: The lowdown on the Channel 4 documentary

Can alternative parenting techniques raise happier children?
Unusual upbringing: Feral Families focuses on parents who take a rules-free approach to their kids
Channel 4
Aime Grant Cumberbatch26 October 2017

The title of this documentary is something of a misnomer, if you’re expecting a show about children raised by wolves, rabbits, armadillos etc, then you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Here Channel 4 is looking at families who take an unusual approach to parenting – whether that’s through lax home-schooling or by allowing their kids to make the rules.

Here’s everything you need to know about the documentary?

What’s it about?

The show focuses on parents who have not just rewritten the rulebook, but allowed their children to scribble all over it in multi-coloured crayon, promptly set fire to it and throw it out the window. Just kidding. Kind of.

These are families for whom less control is more – their children are given lots of independence and allowed to make big grown up decisions for themselves.

In some cases this leads to the frightening , Jenna’s toddler playing with knives for example, and in others the comical, as one boy Finlay decides he wants to swap his home education for school, much to his parent's disappointment.

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1/10

Who are the families involved?

Starring in the documentary are The Rawnsleys who allow their children to cut and die their hair, swear, eat what they want and not attend school.

There’s also the Hairsines who have their own ‘unschooling’ parenting technique which translates into an absence of bedtimes and no tellings off.

When’s it on?

Feral Families airs Thursday, October 26 at 9pm on Channel 4.

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