In Lord of the Flies, what is the author trying to say about parenting?

I think this question can be answered by linking the
response in to a much larger theme which is that of the innate savagery inside all
humans. Let us remember that one of the characteristics of this excellent novel is the
complete absence of adults until the very end. The children are left alone by
themselves, stranded on an island, and thus Golding presents us with a group of humans
free from the restrictions of values and civilisation. The way in which the boys
gradually (some quicker than others) lose any pretense of being civilised and fall into
anarchy presents a very powerful message of the way that the savage instinct is
something that is very fundamental and essential to our human psyches. The message of
the novel seems to be that in the conflict of civilisation vs. savagery, savagery is by
far the strongest force when humans are removed from society as humans show themselves
to be innately evil and corrupt. This is clearly something that Ralph realises at the
very end of the novel, from perhaps its most important
quote:

Ralph
wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air
of a true, wise friend called
Piggy.

Ralph himself has
experienced the truth of the innate evil of humanity first hand, observing the way that
boys have savagely turned upon each other and
killed.

Thinking about parenting then, it is clear that
civilisation plays an incredibly important role in trying to keep us from following our
savage innate instincts. Parenting is one aspect of this role of civilisation, as
parents bring up their children to follow the norms and values of society rather than
respond to their inner, more selfish and more violent desires.