Parenting

Thursday

Joanna Rossiter

Home truths | 9 May 2019

As any parent of young children will tell you, toddler groups exist as much for the adults as for the kids, and my local meet-up is no exception. We knock back coffee and compete to see who has had the least sleep while the children run riot on trikes. The small talk always winds its way round to nursery: which ones are good, which ones are near work, how much they charge per hour. You’d be forgiven for wondering why any of us chose to have children, such is the zeal with which we plot our escape. ‘They just installed CCTV,’ enthused one mother to me recently. ‘So I’ll be

Thursday

James Walton

The end is in sight

Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to be held up as a git. The series, billed as ‘a radical experiment in social mobility’, gets a group of seven- and eight-year-old children from different backgrounds to work together in a real-life office setting — which in Thursday’s first episode was, rather unexpectedly, Hello! magazine. The editor-in-chief Rosie Nixon began by announcing, in the tones of one making a brave stance against prevailing social attitudes: ‘I do feel passionately about diversity.’ And this, of course, was also the brave stance taken by the programme itself and its on-hand experts,

Thursday

Mark Mason

Off the agenda

God save us from committees. They’re an increasingly outdated way of getting things done. But there’s a certain sort of person who loves them. What’s worse, they want you to love them too. Anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes as the parent of a school-age child will be familiar with the emails. ‘Joyce has now served as treasurer of the committee for seven consecutive years, and really does want a break. Please can someone volunteer to take over? It’ll only take a few hours of your time each month — and it can be great fun!’ Yeah, right. Then comes the emotional blackmail. ‘I’m sure your child loves

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 14 February 2019

Q. I have learned through a third party that a friend, who is feeling particularly insecure these days, has not been invited to the forthcoming book launch of one of our long-standing mutual friends. I don’t want to portray him as some kind of victim, but is there a way I can tactfully find out if, best-case scenario, his failure to receive an e-invitation was, as it so often is, a mistake by the publishers’ intern? Or if, worst-case scenario, he has been ruthlessly excluded on financial grounds for no longer being an ‘influencer’? This author is paying for his launch himself and it is in a private house. — Name and

Thursday

Cosmo Landesman

Problem children

There was a time when middle-class liberals used to complain that the English were a nation of child haters. They packed them off to boarding school as soon as possible and banned them from the dinner table as soon as they got back. Why-oh-why, they asked, can’t the English just relax and enjoy the presence of children like the French did? Well, they’ve got their wish. That old, much-mocked Victorian proverb — children should be seen and not heard — has been replaced by a new dictum in child-centric Britain: children must be seen, heard, celebrated, praised and obeyed all of the time. Once children were expected to fit themselves

Thursday

Toby Young

This junk study proves nothing about helicopter parenting

An academic paper by a group of child psychologists caused a stir earlier this week. ‘Helicopter parenting is bad for children,’ was how the Times reported it, and other news outlets summarised it in the same way. Here was proof, apparently, that wrapping your children in cotton wool and limiting their exposure to risk is bad for their emotional development and can lead to problems at school, as well as difficulties in later life. A few years ago, when I was in the first flush of fatherhood, I would have leapt on this study as confirmation that my laissez-faire attitude to parenting was more effective than the more hands-on approach

Thursday

Constance Watson

Join the club

I’m bored.’ ‘Read a book.’ This sequence more or less summarises my childhood (along with ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘Eat some fruit.’) At the time, such instruction was loathsome and it never ceased to amaze me that the grown-ups didn’t seem to grasp the fact that I had obviously considered, and rejected, the idea of picking up a book. They never appeared to be sympathetic to my boredom, in spite of my heartiest attempts to reflect the ennui that was oozing from my every pore. In fact, boredom was positively encouraged by our parents — it was the mother of invention. Those were the days. For many of today’s parents, boredom is

Eleanor Doughty

Why pay for the privilege?

In downstairs loos of houses of a certain sort, the old school photograph is a constant. When you’ve seen a few of these slightly yellowing portraits, you’ve seen them all. But this trend might soon reach its end. If you listen carefully in particular enclaves, you’ll hear faint whisperings about a new way of doing things. Maybe, just maybe, public school isn’t quite for everyone any more. Say goodbye to the old school pictures; the toffs are going native. Last year, in a Viscount’s kitchen, I spotted an invitation to a school fair — at the local primary. A few weeks later, an Old Harrovian whose family has a 300-year

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 17 August 2017

Q. Mary, I am what you would probably call a Sloane Ranger. I have great numbers of close friends and I’ve always attended confirmations, weddings, christenings and funerals without even thinking about whether it was convenient. But at my age a lot of friends’ parents are going downhill fast, and I now work. Many funerals will be out of London and require a whole day off to attend. I just can’t do it every week but neither can I let down my close friends. — S.C., London SW11 A. You won’t be the only person who is needed at work and can’t be in two places at once. But you

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 27 July 2017

Q. My children are very lucky in that we have bought them all flats. However, they are now renting out these properties with Airbnb, then coming to stay with us at home, just when we thought they had flown the nest. They are more than welcome at weekends but during the week my ancient husband and I like to have a quiet time. How can we put a stop to this without our much-loved children (all in their thirties) feeling that they are unwelcome in their ‘own’ home? — Name and address withheld A. Their entitlement syndrome is certainly a tribute to your parenting, but for their sake you must

Wednesday

Brian Boutwell

Do parents really matter?

Parenting does not have a large impact on how children turn out. An incendiary claim, to be sure, but if you can bear with me until the close of this article I think I might be able to persuade you — or at the very least chip away at your certainty about parental influence. First, what if later today the phone were to ring and the voice at the other end informed you that you have an identical twin. You would have lived your entire life up to that point not realising that you had a clone. The bearer of this news says arrangements have been made to reunite you

Thursday

Toby Young

The bawdy and beautiful game

I can barely contain my excitement. The Easter break is nearly upon us and I will soon be heading off to an exotic locale where I can cast off my work-soiled garments and rediscover earthly pleasures. I will spend my time eating, drinking and singing, sure in the knowledge that no one will judge me because I’ll be surrounded by members of my elite metropolitan tribe. I’m talking, of course, about Pride Park, home of Derby County FC, where I’ll be travelling to an away game on Friday with 1,000 fellow QPR fans. This fixture clashes with a private party being thrown for my friend Barry Isaacson, once the most

Thursday

Mark Palmer

They can’t handle the truth

Every now and again I ask my daughter, who is a primary school teacher, if she is free for a curry after work. And almost always she replies that she can’t, as she has a ‘parents’ night’. Now, either she has become lazy in her excuses for not wanting to see me, or her school organises a great number of parents’ nights. Hoping it might be the latter, I consulted a friend called Lucy, a teacher at a primary near Guildford in Surrey. She said it was quite normal to have at least one parents’ night per term, plus two or even three ‘parents’ workshops’. These workshops are dedicated to

Thursday

Charlotte Moore

The don’ts of ‘parenting’

In the American way, the child psychologist Alison Gopnik’s new book has an attractive sound-bitey title dragging a flat-footed subtitle in its wake: ‘What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children’.  And what this new(ish) science tells us is that we parents — or at least, our American counterparts — are doing it all wrong. Gopnik’s ‘carpenter’ is the parent who has a preconceived idea of how the child should turn out. A door is made according to a set of rules; if they are followed, it will be fit for purpose. The carpenter parent will raise the child ‘by the book’,

Wednesday

Toby Young

Why I’d like to be a more dangerous dad

According to figures obtained by BBC Breakfast last week, more than 500 people were arrested in England and Wales in 2014–15 for leaving children unattended. In the majority of cases, the children concerned were aged ten or under, but some parents got into trouble for leaving their 15-year-olds home alone. It’s hard not to conclude that the police are being a bit heavy-handed, trying to take on responsibility for something that properly belongs to parents. As regular readers will know, Caroline and I have four children aged 12 and under and we don’t see eye to eye about this. Her level of anxiety about the various disasters that might befall

Monday

Fraser Nelson

No, Prime Minister, we don’t need state parenting lessons. Just ask Scotland

David Cameron has strong views about the family; often ones that ought to remain inside his head. He quite is keen on marriage and good parenting, but how to make this into a government policy? He offers some thoughts in his speech today. His words: ‘In the end, getting parenting and the early years right isn’t just about the hardest-to-reach families; it’s about everyone. We all have to work at it. And if you don’t have a strong support network – if you don’t know other mums or dads – having your first child can be enormously isolating… Of course [kids] don’t come with a manual, but is it right

Thursday

Charlotte Moore

Toxic fun with Mum and Dad

In 2008, when Taylor Wilson was 14, he created a working nuclear fusion reactor, ‘a miniature sun on earth’. At 17 he entered his home-made radiation detector for inspecting cargo at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair; his project was entitled ‘Countering Nuclear Terrorism: Novel Active and Passive Techniques for Detecting Nuclear Threats’. In a field of 1,500 entries, it swept the board. Winning the war against terror isn’t Taylor’s only ambition. He plans to provide affordable, sustainable energy for the whole planet, not to mention beating cancer. Aged 11, he watched his beloved grandmother withering from lung cancer, and became convinced that it was up to him to

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 4 June 2015

First test The driving test celebrated its 80th anniversary. The first person to take the test, R.E.L. Beene of Kensington, passed. Here is some of the advice given to candidates on a Pathé newsreel: — ‘Don’t flick your cigarette ash outside. It’s very confusing.’ (The driver behind would have been looking for hand signals.) — ‘Never drive on the crown of the road.’ — ‘Don’t look down at the gear lever while you change gear.’ — ‘Don’t be nervous. The examination is not an inquisition but a series of very reasonable tests.’ Old story The chief medical officer and British Pregnancy Advisory Service argued over whether women should be advised

Thursday

Jane Ridley

Songs of innocence and experience

We live in an age of generational turmoil. Baby-boom parents are accused of clinging on to jobs and houses which they should be freeing up for their children. Twentysomethings who can’t afford to leave home and can’t get jobs are attacked as aimless and immature. Both sides of the generational divide should take comfort from this timely, thoughtful work by Steven Mintz, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. In Mintz’s view, no one is to blame for these changes, neither the selfish baby boomers nor their Peter Pan offspring. What is happening is a shift in the nature of adulthood, and to understand this we need

Tuesday

Steerpike

Nick Clegg’s self-pitying guide to parenting

‘I’m like any parent,’ says Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister, privy councillor and universally derided leader of the Liberal Democrats). Speaking to the Radio Times, as any old parent might do, Average Dad Nick pleaded with his offspring: ‘The first, most visceral instinct you have as a parent is you want to protect your children, and politics is a very rough business you know. It’s absolutely not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned, so I wouldn’t likely recommend to my children to go into politics.’ Pity. Mr S was getting rather misty eyed at the prospect of young Miguel or Antonio seeking high office in order to restore the family name. Who will