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terug

A tryant is born

A tyrant is born

   35 the grown-ups who held the reins    own young, even when they are
 of power. “Remember, the world being a danger to themselves and
 doesn’t revolve around you,” my90 others, because they are under the
 mother would chide, and I think of impression that it will do untold
 her words often these days as I psychological damage. “Because I
40 look at my own daughter. say so,” is no longer an acceptable
4     “The joys of parents are secret, clincher; instead, subtle arguments
 and so are their griefs and fears,”95 must be used to persuade little
 wrote Francis Bacon in the 17th Matthew to stop pouring sand into
 century. For almost 400 years, to Alice’s ear.
45 confess that you found parenthood8     Of course, we now have our off-
 intolerable or had awful children spring much later. In the Fifties,
The business of bringing whom you couldn’t handle was100 the gap between school and
up children used to be more shameful than unemploy- motherhood was just a
taken for granted, then ment or debt. few years. Liberty was a holiday
along came something550     Not any more. The shattered in between. Today, the maternity
called parenting. Allison whispers about tantrums or wards of Britain are bulging with
Pearson reports sleepless nights are growing into a105 elderly women who are about the
  chorus of exasperation. In age my grandmother was when
1     IT IS a commonplace that “Family Values”, a Modern Times my mother had me. Women in
 each generation thinks it has55 BBC2 documentary, two couples their late thirties and early forties
 invented sex, but it has taken owned up to being driven bonkers have grown so used to their
 my own generation to push by their kids. They charge through110 independent life that the sudden
5 that belief to its logical con- their parents’ pleasant homes like wrenching away of freedom feels
 clusion: we are the first parents. a herd of stubborn ponies. Amalia like having a leg cut off.
 Now, older readers may cite60 and John, who both had strict9     We place more importance on
 evidence to the contrary: our own upbringings, say they wanted children than ever before and yet
 mothers and fathers, for example. something more relaxed for their115 we spend less time with them. To
10 But I’m not sure that our parents own infants: the result has been resolve this painful contradiction,
 or their parents really qualify as chaos and attention deficit we have developed advanced
 parents in any sense that is65 disorder. categories of being – the New
 meaningful to my contemporaries.6     But why do modern parents Mother, who puts in eight hours at
2     Photographic records suggest face these kinds of problems?120 the office and then further
15 that they brought us home from There are a number of answers. exhausts herself at weekends
 the hospital, they fed us toast and Firstly, the move from adult- doing “quality time” with the kids,
 Marmite, they cleaned out the70 centred families to child-centred and the New Man who tries to do
 guinea-pigs, they provided food, ones has been the source of the same.
 stories, affection, complicated punishing stress. As Kate Figes10125     The New Man and the New
20 lessons in table manners, occa- points out in her timely and Mother are products of cultural
 sional smacks, caravan holidays in gloriously sane new book, Life hopefulness, but children are not
 Devon and so on. But there was75 After Birth (What Even Your susceptible to social and political
 little or no self-consciousness Friends Won’t Tell You About pressure. They remind us of the
 about their role: they did not waste Motherhood), technology was130 fact that we cannot always
25 time fretting about the meaning or liberating womankind from engineer the world according to
 the consequences of their actions. domestic tasks just as a new our requirements. We have made
3     These mothers and fathers80 wave of childcare theories came our children the kings and queens
 were not laboratory assistants in in to swamp her: theories such of the castle: little wonder if they
 the new science of “parenting”; as Carl Rogers’s “unconditional135 take us prisoner and throw away
30 for the most part, they were happy positive regard”, which stipulates the key.
 if the kids were bathed and in bed that children must still feel valued 
 before Call My Bluff was on TV.85 even when behaving badly. 
 Children could be both seen and7     Like Figes, I have seen moth- ‘The Weekly Telegraph’,
 heard, in moderation, but it was ers who are afraid to chastise their March 4, 1998