A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a Father’s Day piece that described a typical Sunday in my life. Essentially, it involved being an indentured slave to my four young children. Several people pointed out that I was guilty of “Helicopter Parenting” -- an American term for supervising your children’s lives too closely -- and recommended a book on the subject by Carl Honoré, a Canadian intellectual.
I was initially a bit suspicious because Honoré is one of the leading advocates of the Slow Movement, but ‘Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting’ is quite convincing. According to Honoré, we have entered the age of the “Managed Child” in which middle class parents spend too much time meddling in their children’s lives. “The average distance from home British kids are permitted to wander by themselves has fallen nearly 90 per cent since the 1970s,” he points out. He believes children would be much better off if left to their own devices. (To read more, click here.)
