It was the email from my friend and publicist, Penny Stevens of Awarehouse Communications, that began a train of exchanges between me and a number of business friends about the nanny state.
Penny lit the spark with her comment that she was rapidly becoming a very grumpy old woman over the encroachment of the nanny state into all facets of our life, including personal, business and political.
And most pointedly, the upbringing of children.
She recounted the restrictions put in place at her grandson’s school in the UK.
Private photographs taken by parents and other relatives at school events are banned.
Why?
In case they find their way onto the internet and onto the computer screens of paedophiles.
##!*
And then she quickly moved onto the mollycoddling of today’s children.
More ##!*
The truth is, Penny is a very fiery lady and above is just the gist of what she said. I can't repeat what she actually said.
But her view is shared by many people.
Me? I have no children. So I have no biases for or against children.
I confess to not being attracted to babies.
But I’m utterly enchanted and captivated by the innocence of toddlers to 5 year olds and their reality check on life. On their ability to tell it like it is without the restrictions and constraints of political correctness.
And I’m mesmerised by spunky teenagers who are suddenly aware of their sexuality, interacting with each other. Observing them testing their boundaries is totally absorbing.
I also admit to not having a bad experience with a child or a teenager, even though I frequently come into contact with both.
Well, only once.
It was a two year old who accompanied her parents to a meeting at my office in Balmain.
She’d just had lunch. And was jumping up and down with excitement at being at a ‘big people’s’ meeting.
Her jumping up and down was creating a milkshake inside her tummy, which just had to explode, all over our boardroom table.
All I could do was stare. I was in shock and awe from the sheer spontaneity, velocity and volume of the explosion.
I was saved by my elegantly dressed secretary, Sharon Cook, who arrived, mop and bucket in hand, explaining to all of us that her son, Julian, does the same thing at home.
Sharon always put everyone at ease. You want to be in her lifeboat when catastrophe strikes.
I first became aware of children being protected from the world at large in the early 80’s, when I overheard a co-worker mention she doesn’t let her 14 year old daughter walk to school because she might be kidnapped.
I thought this was outrageous and had to be a one-off.
You see, when you don’t have children, neither do most of your friends. Birds of a feather do flock together.
And I have very little in common with parents. So I’m usually a decade behind everyone else’s knowledge of parenting techniques.
But then I noticed I was reading snippets here and there of parents and journalists discussing the perils of ‘stranger danger’.
As parenting escalated to competition status, even I became aware of the intense rivalry between mothers about who was rearing the most gifted, talented, brilliant child.
Mothers are applauded or condemned on the basis of whether they give birth naturally, breastfeed their child until it’s at least 16 years old, and begin their child’s education not at the age of 2 hours, but in the womb.
Competition has swiftly moved from the workplace to the child’s nursery.
And there appears to be nothing more ferocious, or as competitive, as an ambitious mother who wants her children to be the best – at everything. Her dedication to achieving her results has no boundaries.
The current terms permeating lifestyle articles are ‘helicopter parents’ who constantly hover over their children; ‘hyper parents’; ‘curling parents’ who walk in front of their children, removing all obstacles; ‘education mothers’ who devote every waking second to steering their children through the school system; to the current, all encompassing, ‘age of the managed child’.
And I’m totally bemused by the concept of organising ‘play dates’ for a child.
Play dates?!
What an absurd concept. It’s no different to and just as stifling and restrictive as arranged marriages. It’s a Victorian era concept, not 21st century.
What ever happened to going out onto the street and mixing it up and interacting freely with all the children in your neighbourhood?
Wow! Are these kids in trouble?!
I gleaned the above terms from a recent article in Sunday Life magazine titled ‘Growth Industry’ by Carl Honore, author of ‘In Praise of Slow’.
Although I admit to being aware of most of them from reading lifestyle articles by social historians like Hugh McKay and lifestyle journalists such as Mia Freedman and titbits from Maggie Alderson’s comments about her daughter and her friends.
But I found Carl Honore’s ‘Growth Industry” article disturbing.
Because he’s telling a real story about his son and children his son’s age.
And it’s alarming.
Parents have hijacked childhood. Today’s children in middle class homes are over protected, over managed and over parented. Adult anxiety and intervention in the lives of their children are unprecedented.
For instance, some pregnant women spend time every day ‘pumping WombSongSerenades’ into their pregnant belly in the hope of stimulating the brain of their unborn infant.
Children have PDA’s to keep track of their extracurricular activities. Piano lessons, baseball matches, Spanish lessons, basketball practice, soccer, tennis, swimming, karate and after school tutoring.
At 10 years of age, the son of one of Carl’s friends is expected to learn how to ‘manage his time’.
The following really alarms me.
Carl’s son, who is 7, like two thirds of his friends, has never walked to the park alone.
Mobile phones now double as tracking devices. If a child drifts out of the designated ‘safe zone’, their parents get an instant text message alerting them to the transgression of their precious asset.
Day-care centres and nurseries now install webcam so parents can check on their children at any time of the day from anywhere in the world.
And holiday camps now relay daily video clips of their charges to inboxes back home.
Help! Help! I’m suffocating!
As Carl aptly admits, “we’re raising the most wired, pampered and monitored generation in history”.
And asks. “Is this a good or a bad thing?”
Before I scream out my answer, let me tell you about my childhood.
I grew up on the streets of New York City and after that, Pennsylvania. And after that, a small town in southern Virginia. All in the USA. The home of rapists, muggers, thugs, murderers, kidnappers, thrill killers, et al.
Without exception, everywhere I lived, I walked to school. Often on my own. I picked my own friends. And went outside and played without parental supervision.
And just so we're on the same train, I lived in working class neighbourhoods. My world was one of families who struggled financially. Moms stayed at home to look after the kids and dads went to work in the factories.
In New York I played with the boys in my neighbourhood.
And they were tough.
I got into skirmishes, often got injured while playing, organised my own ferocious pay back, defied teachers who were tyrants and revelled in my proudest achievement, reducing my school bully into a screaming, crying wuss.
Once we left New York City, I didn’t have a gaggle of friends. We didn’t live in a neighbourhood with many children. And I discovered I was fussy about who I associated with.
In Pennsylvania, I walked blocks and blocks to visit my special friends. I often rode my bicycle, on my own, to secluded areas, to camp out and read my latest Nancy Drew mystery.
I climbed giant trees. I played in the local playground. I taught myself not only how to swing standing up, but to swing so high, I could wrap the bars.
Even I admit that was a bit scary and not something I’d recommend to someone else.
My play time was often on my own, sometimes with other kids. But it was always away from the prying eyes and supervision of my parents.
At the age of 9, I took the allowance I’d saved up and hopped a bus into town to buy my parents and sister presents. I did have to convince my parents that I understood the dangers of talking to strangers. But once I convinced them I understood the consequences and was trustworthy, I did it often.
That progressed to me and my friends going into town every Saturday to go to the movies. No chaperones. Just the bus driver wishing us a good time and telling us to behave ourselves. When the afternoon movies finished, we walked everywhere on our own before we caught a bus back home in time for dinner.
Stranger danger wasn’t a term used then. But every parent instilled into their children the dangers of talking to strangers. That we weren’t to get into a car with a stranger, or go with them anywhere for any reason. And we understood the ramifications of that and adhered to those rules.
And I don’t have a single friend who was lured away by an evil stranger.
And you know what? On some of my solitary journeys, I got lost. There were no tracking devices and I had to find my own way back home. Sometimes, I had to rely on a grown up, a total stranger, to help me find the way.
By mixing it up in the hurly burly of life, I learned how to be responsible. How to look after myself. How to pick my friends according to my own values. How to figure things out for myself and solve my own problems. How to judge the sincerity of a stranger.
And best of all. I became self reliant, trustworthy, confident, a good problem solver and a very good friend to others.
I also learned nothing in life is free. That everything you do has a consequence and everything comes at a price. You can’t be both active and a layabout at the same time. You can’t have an all day Saturday job for pocket money and go to the swimming pool with your friends on Saturday afternoon.
And I experienced the greatest gift a parent can give to a child.
The freedom to develop my personality and my own values outside of the shadow of my parents. At my own pace, in my own direction, in an environment with boundaries, but not with my parents breathing down my neck, monitoring and checking up on every minute of my life.
And equally important, I experienced the freedom to make mistakes and discover for myself the impact of the consequences of those mistakes on my life and those of others.
What has this got to do with being a Guerrilla From The Bush?
Everything.
These wired to the apron strings of their parents, over pampered, over monitored children are tomorrow’s leaders.
What kind of person can lead a business or a country who has never walked to the park on their own?
What kind of person can make a judgement about others when their parents have hijacked their social skills by selecting children for approved play dates?
How can a person recognise real danger when everything and everyone outside their personal space is considered dangerous?
How can they show compassion for the differences in people when they’ve never been exposed to people who are truly different to them?
How can they understand and deal with rejection, disappointment or failure when their presumed brilliance at everything is constantly reinforced at the home front?
How do they go forth and conquer the world when they’ve been monitored and pampered to death and stripped of their coat of armour that protects them from the hurly burly of life?
Away from the cocoon, how do they learn to dig deep down into their soul and find the grit to keep going when the going gets tough?
Can they become the future Thomas Edison’s? Will they have what it takes to try 10,000 experiments before a light bulb lights up their world?
Do you get my gist?
My instincts tell me tomorrow’s leaders will be no better than today’s George Bush.
Pampered show ponies who have never had to do the hard yards. Who can’t make decisions. Don’t have vision. And quickly rise to their own level of incompetence because they’ve never been tested until it’s too late.
And who are devoid of the basic street smarts that characterised the Harry Truman’s, Winston Churchill’s, Bob Ansett Sr’s and Weary Dunlop’s of previous generations.
You know what?
I’m old enough to hope that I won’t be around in 40 years time to witness the straight jackets the public will be confined to. Because freedom as I know it will be a thing of the past. And the nanny state will reign supreme.
As my fiery friend Penny Stevens says, ##!*!
I’d love you to post your comments. Your expertise and wealth of experience is wasted if you don’t share it with others.
Take care,
CAROL
Carol Jones
Director
Interface Pty Ltd
Ilford NSW 2850 Australia
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