the times | Wednesday April 13 2022 31
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Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826It takes a country to raise a thriving child
A Netflix show about toddlers confronting the world alone is gripping but parenting is complex and challenging now
Louise Casey, the social policy and
behaviour expert who has worked for
five prime ministers, says it doesn’t
always need to be a mother or father
who offers advice and guidance, but
children desperately need adult role
models and positive authority figures
to help them not just to survive but
to thrive.
There are lessons to be learnt from
Japanese parenting. With an ageing
population, they have grasped that it
requires the help of extended families,
friends, teachers, doctors, career
advisers, university tutors and mentors
to send a child on their way and
provide them with values and self-
confidence. Children are nurtured and
prioritised rather than mollycoddled.
In Japan, paediatric services and
nursery provision are better funded
than in Britain. My friend in Tokyo
spends £120 a month on full-time
care for her toddler, which includes a
nutritious lunch. They make an
effort to ensure that their
neighbourhoods are child friendly;
65 per cent of primary school pupils
and almost all secondary school
children go to school on their own
every day, and they are taught to say
hello to everyone along the way
instead of shunning adults for fear of
stranger danger.
Never mind crossing the road aged
three, Britain could learn from this.
Parents can’t do their job alone: it
takes a country to raise a child.mollycoddled; life is harder for most
children than a decade ago. Some
parents now say they are sleeping
outside their children’s bedrooms to
check they are not self-harming. The
NHS Child and Adolescent Mental
Health Services (CAMHS) is so
swamped by demand that it is at
breaking point, with waiting times of
more than two years for young
people at risk of suicide.
Teenagers are also grappling with
social media, body image, sexualharassment, a toxic political
environment and culture wars. They
can’t navigate it all on their own,
they need someone to listen to them.
Parents shouldn’t be tidying their
daughter’s room or completing their
son’s Ucas application, but their
18-year-olds may need help working
out what the changes for student
loans mean for them and weighing
up whether it’s better to do an
apprenticeship. In their early 20s,
their offspring may be trying to
juggle soaring rents and heating
bills, while searching for jobs. In their
30s, they may be struggling to fund
childcare and balance careers.
Parental worries never stop.parents, researchers and production
staff spend hours ensuring there are
no dangers lurking round the corner;
shop assistants and neighbours are all
warned there is a toddler on the loose,
and the camera crew may be hidden
but they aren’t going to allow the
child to be abducted.
Benign neglect is a lovely idea but
it often doesn’t work in practice. It’s
like insisting all pregnant mothers
should have a natural birth, pop out
their offspring and let them swim
away in the wild. The world is
complicated now, parenting has
become more challenging.
After the pandemic, in particular,
children face more difficulties in a
less certain world overshadowed by a
war. Of course they need to learn
independence but they also require
some support when possible to gain
confidence. There are parents like
the Beckhams, intent on curating
everything in their children’s perfect
lives, including a $15 million wedding,
but most are just trying to help their
offspring to muddle through.
Some children are now going to
primary school for the first time
barely having socialised, struggling
to converse despite their parents’
best intentions. Many teenagers are
facing mental health problems after
two years of lockdowns, virtual
classes, disrupted exams and
compromised futures. This is not
because they have been tooA
three-year-old is
navigating a five-lane
highway on his way to
buy groceries. He is alone
and waving a flag. “Can
he go all the way without getting hit
by any cars?” his mother asks.
Old Enough is Netflix’s latest
offering, based on the Japanese
programme Hajimete no Otsukai (My
First Errand), which has been running
for 30 years and is still the nation’s
favourite reality show. A fifth of the
country tunes in to watch toddlers
take on the world by themselves. It’s
compulsive viewing: the child returns
triumphant, more self-assured and
confident after their solo adventure
to buy fishcakes and flowers half a
mile away. The mother says “I’m so
pleased”, with a proud smile.
This is a modern-day fairy tale, my
Japanese friend explained, like Little
Red Riding Hood or Hansel and
Gretel: children are left in the big,
bad adult woods and despite a few
scares they survive. The Netflix
version is enchanting in a slightly
nerve-racking way. The moral of the
story is stop helicoptering your kids,
don’t over-parent them or they won’t
learn resilience.
It’s back to the halcyon 1970s and
playing in the streets. I remember
walking home from school with my
younger sister every day, aged seven
and five. Never mind that I once
persuaded her to cross a busy road to
the sweet shop for a Curly Wurly, she
hit the bonnet of a speeding car and
ended up in hospital with a broken leg;
it was a good learning experience.
My generation of parents are always
being told to stop hovering over our
children, baking them cupcakes for
school, finishing their homework,
worrying whether they are going to
fall from a tree. No one wants to be
labelled a pushy parent or tigermother on WhatsApp class groups.
Richard Williams may have drilled his
tennis prodigy daughters, Venus and
Serena, for 10,000 hours on LA’s local
courts until they won grand slams,
but these days we’re encouraged to
be free-range, laid-back parents.
But what you don’t see in My First
Errand is how these small children are
set up to succeed. They choose only
the most robust volunteers; theBenign neglect is a
lovely idea but it often
doesn’t work out well
Children are nurtured
and prioritised rather
than mollycoddled
Alice
Thomson@alicettimes