Rock-and-roll kids....

Has "Super Dad" Ozzy Osbourne bitten off more than he can chew, asksKathryn Holmquist

Parenting is the new rock and roll. You spend the first two years rocking, and the next 20 rolling with the punches. Nobody knows how to do it totally right. Every time I sit down to write this column, I say to myself: "What, am I crazy? What do I know?"

I've often imagined that if there were TV cameras in my house I'd last two minutes as a parenting columnist. But now my confidence is back.

I've seen The Osbournes, MTV's latest reality series. Billed as "the next generation of family-oriented sitcom", The Osbournes is a fly-on-the-wall view of the daily family life of Black Sabbath survivor Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon and their two foul-mouthed teenage children, Kelly (17) and Jack (16). It makes The Simpsons look like bible class.

Yet George Dubya has been so impressed by Ozzy's fathering skills that he's invited Ozzy and his family to the White House.

Reality check. Now a man who used to bite the heads off bats for a living has become a parenting role model for the leader of the free world, I'm going to stop being so hard on myself.

In their foyer, the rock-and-roll Osbournes have a painting of Sodom and Gomorrah and a statue of the devil raping a maiden. Their lifestyle is so lavishly self-indulgent that Kelly has two en-suite bathrooms in her private bedroom/sitting room. Why two? She doesn't like having to share with visiting friends.

Jack (16) has been "busted" more than once for smoking marijuana and both Jack and Kelly come home drunk occasionally. But hey, as Ozzy says: "Every kid screws up. They're not in the army."

It must be terrible having a father who's so liberal. When your father has made a career of hedonism, anarchy and demonic possession, how do you rebel? As for your manic mother... Ozzy once attempted to strangle Sharon on stage. Watching The Osbournes, you almost understand why.

Shining through this chaos - where there are no family dinners, just family take-aways - comes an abiding sense of family loyalty. And you begin to realise, as you watch them swearing at each other, that the Osbournes are the new family role-models for one simple reason: they're together and they care. The parents are enthusiastically present and aware. They're always sniping at each other, but at least they're interacting.

When Ozzy and Sharon fail to control their children, they just keep trying. Ozzy knows he has no right to preach, so he doesn't. When he warns Kelly to be home by sunset, she comes home hours later "crazy drunk". When he grounds her, she sneaks out and nearly ODs on alcohol. All this leaves Ozzy to conclude that "being a parent is the most difficult job on the face of the earth. You hate to say things that will upset your kids, but then sometimes you have to because you can't let them run around wild."

That's the nub of it. Today's parents are afraid to upset their children - I'm as guilty of it as anyone. Like Ozzy, many of us are reacting against our authoritarian upbringings. Yet if we're going to set limits, you can't avoid upsetting our children.

Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne also admit to most parents' greatest fear - that their own children will make the same mistakes they did. Ozzy's approach is to be "brutally honest". As Kelly and Jack head out for an evening's fun, Ozzy's parting line is: "If you have sex, wear protection and don't take drugs."

His children aren't going to follow his advice if they're anything like their father. When Ozzy was 17, the only way to get him to do something was to tell him to do the opposite. "What right do I have to say anything when I've come home in police cars and ambulances?" asks Ozzy.

He's right. The worst kind of father is the one who says "do as I say, not as I do". Such authoritarianism is bound to instil rebellion. So Ozzy is trapped by his well-chronicled history. He can advise his children not to do certain things, but why should they listen? Where does his credibility come from?

Sharon sees her main job to be picking the kids up and dusting them off when they "f**k up". She reckons that misbehaving is "part of being a kid". Her method is not to lay down the law, but to explain why certain behaviours are damaging. While Ozzy shouts "use a condom" as the kids go out the door, Sharon is more circumspect. She's tried to teach Kelly that young love is mere infatuation and that you should love your own body and hang on to your virginity, because your body is the greatest gift you can give someone.

Sharon and Ozzy are more typical as parents than most of us like to think, but they are making a major mistake: selling out family life to make money. Ozzy and Sharon have accumulated vast wealth from having acted out their unrestrained adolescences in public; now they're encouraging their children to do the same thing - on MTV. Like parent, like child. The Osbournes may not want their children to make the same mistakes, but they can't resist pushing them in that direction.