The nursery is the new Jerusalem: Marx and Engels have given way to Charlie and Lola
Last Saturday, I was due to attend a garden party being hosted by one of my oldest friends, but I did not have time. After picking up four-year-old Sasha from swimming I had to take her to a party, then pick her up from that party and take her to another, then take three-year-old Ludo to a party, then pick them both up and bring them home.
I have no doubt that this pattern — or something like it — was repeated up and down the country. If a Martian landed in Britain on a Saturday afternoon, knowing nothing about us in advance, he would conclude that we live in a world in which children occupy the highest social tier, with adults acting as their indentured servants. And he would be right.
This phenomenon is not confined to Britain. Joseph Epstein, a retired American academic, has coined the word ‘Kindergarchy’ to describe this phenomenon. ‘Children have gone from background to foreground figures in domestic life, with more and more attention centered on them, their upbringing, their small accomplishments, their right relationship with parents and grandparents,’ he wrote in a recent issue of the Weekly Standard.
So what? I can hear people saying. Surely a society in which children are mollycoddled is better than one in which they’re neglected? Would Professor Epstein prefer it if they were sent off to work in blacking factories at the age of 12? I accept that the Kindergarchy is difficult to criticise. Indeed, that is why it has become so deeply entrenched. The reason so many middle-class parents devote so much time to their children is because it is such an uncontroversial outlet for their desire to do good. My mother and father were social activists, constantly striving to improve the lot of the worst off, but their behaviour only made sense within the context of a left-wing ideology that has been largely discredited. This process of disillusionment began in the mid-1970s, but it accelerated under New Labour and we have now reached the point where an entire generation has abandoned politics and instead concentrates on creating a better world in the nursery. Marx and Engels have given way to Charlie and Lola.
The corollary of this is a loss of faith in the very idea of progress. Even if the desire to make the world a better place was as strong as ever, people are no longer confident that they can make a difference by engaging in charity work or political action. On the contrary, most educated people have become deeply sceptical about whether it is possible to improve our society at all. There is a general sense, both here and in America, that the world is going to the dogs and all you can do is look after your own.
This becomes clear if you try to engage an overattentive parent in a discussion about the Kindergarchy. The argument you hear again and again is that the world is a more dangerous place than it was when we were children. It was all very well for our parents to leave us to our own devices, but our neighbourhoods today are teeming with knife-wielding hoodies. Not only that, but there are more dangerous drivers on the road, fewer bobbies on the beat, etc, etc. The general view seems to be that without constant parental supervision our children will end up dead.
Such extraordinary pessimism is completely wrong-headed — our city streets are no more dangerous today than they were 25 years ago — but even if it had some basis in reality, that would be no reason to pamper our children. If the world they will inherit is so brutal and cut-throat, then we should strive to toughen them up, not create an artificially risk-free environment in which to raise them.
In his essay in the Weekly Standard, Epstein complained of having to teach children who were products of overprotective parents. ‘So often in my literature classes students told me what they “felt” about a novel, or a particular character in a novel,’ he wrote. ‘I tried, ever so gently, to tell them that no one cared what they felt; the trick was to discover not one’s feelings but what the author had put into the book, its moral weight and its resultant power. In essay courses, many of these same students turned in papers upon which I wished to — but did not — write: “D-. Too much love in the home.”’
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