Letters

21 June 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

A child’s purpose

Sir: Rachel Johnson (‘When did you last see your children?’, 14 June) paints a thoroughly depressing picture of modern parenting. I urge anyone contemplating breeding to bear in mind these few simple truths. First, having a child is the biggest responsibility you ever undertake and should be the most rewarding one. Second, the most precious thing you can give your child is time: time doing simple things like baking, gardening, walking in the park, playing cards, doing jigsaws, where conversation flows naturally, provided, of course, you have turned off all the intrusive gadgets reminding you of the other pressures in your life. Third, parents have a huge task to educate their children with a set of moral and cultural values. Babies are inoculated against all sorts of diseases but also need to be inoculated against prejudice and meanness of spirit. Your children should influence you in every political, environmental and social decision.

A child’s early precious years soon pass and then they are ready to join the wider world of school. For the busy parents Ms Johnson describes, boarding school represents the best opportunity for their offspring to belong to a strong and safe community where experts will provide the opportunities, challenges, continuity and care that children need. But please do not be in a hurry for your child to grow up. As Herzen says movingly on the death of his son in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia: ‘His life was what it was. Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it’s been sung? The dance when it’s been danced?’

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