Children don’t choose their parents, culture or environment. Every child deserves a fair start in life. The first five years of life are vital in shaping the character, well-being, skills, self-esteem, security, sociability, education and development of a child. It affects their health, wealth and relationships for the rest of their life. The biggest influence on a child’s development is their parents’ love, security, discipline, compassion, boundaries, intelligence, personality, skills, attitudes, wealth, time, work, care, ability to help them learn, developmental level, self-mastery and social skills. No amount of state intervention could replace good parenting. Nevertheless, we can do our best by maximising the availability of high-quality parenting knowledge, training and support to parents and by providing nursery education and schooling which is high quality for all. We need to have wise, adaptive social services which detect substandard parenting at the earliest possible stage so as to intervene with effective measures to give the child the best possible start.