Should those poor kids have been there?

My wife will not let our 11-year-old daughter take the dog for a walk around the large field adjoining our house in case a paedophile jumps out of one of the hawthorn bushes with a bag of sweets or a beguiling promise of puppies. For every yellowhammer singing its insipid chorus, the missus thinks there’s at least one nonce crouched down in the undergrowth beneath, waiting, waiting. We live six miles from the nearest town and two from the nearest village. From the age of six I spent all of my holidays out, playing, and would not be heard of from dawn until dusk. Quite often I would walk a mile or so along reasonably busy roads to Darlington railway station and spend the day on the platforms watching the trains, until, by the age of eight, trains had lost much of their allure.

Such a thing today would be unthink-able, I suppose. Several years ago a report estimated that today’s children forfeited three years of freedom because of parental restrictions, contingent upon real, exaggerated or imagined threats to their wellbeing. It is perhaps one reason why kids today are so hideously fat: no exercise, they don’t get out. At least if a paedo tried to grab one of them they might lose a few pounds trying to run away.

We argue about the dog walk in the field thing, my wife and I. My happiest moments as an 11-year-old were out on afternoon-long walks, by myself or with the dog, and nobody ever tried to bugger me. Perhaps I was not attractive enough. Either way, I feel sorry for my daughter and the strictly limited independence she yearns for. And yet I do not know another middle-class parent who would take my side.