There is no doubt that many parents find relief in attending groups where others are experiencing similar problems with regard to adolescent behavior. But benefit to parents has not been shown as crucial to young people’s desistance from crime. The PO seems increasingly atypical given the widening availability of the advice that many parents crave. On receiving orders many claim they have long wanted help suggesting that even more could take the voluntary route given the chance. What remains at issue, then, is why the government seems intent on wagging its finger at parents and placing them on the ‘naughty step’ when most will willingly accept whatever help is offered in relation to their offspring. The government utilized a disproportionately heavy legal instrument created to address a numerically small problem of non-compliant parents. The PO was introduce in s. 8 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and rolled out in 2000. The PO assumes that parents are unable to perform the function of exercising control over their children. The PO is a civil order and applies where a child safety order has been made or a child has received an antisocial behavior order or sex offender order or has been convicted of an offense. The purpose of this article is to examine the ideology and functioning of the PO. It questions the need for mandated parental training which is unlikely to prevent offending by children aged over 10 years. Figures, tables and references