Before we go any further, let's be clear about one thing: not all childhoods are created equal. You don't find many children being project-managed in the refugee camps of Sudan or the shantytowns of Latin America. Even in the developed world, millions of youngsters, especially in poorer families, are more likely to suffer from underparenting than overparenting. Let's be honest: most helicopter-parents hail from the middle class. But that does not mean this cultural shift only affects the well-to-do. When it comes to social change, the middle classes often set the tone, and over time their hang-ups and foibles trickle up and down the social ladder. Or at the very least they make everyone else feel guilty for failing to keep pace.
Look around and it's clear that children are already the target of more adult anxiety and intervention than at any time in history. A pregnant friend in New York e-mails to say that she spends one hour every evening pumping WombSong Serenades into her bump in the hope of stimulating her unborn infant’s brain. On the other side of the world, ambitious parents are enrolling their children in an "Early MBA" program in Shanghai. Every Sunday morning, the pupils learn the value of team-building, problem-solving and assertiveness. Some are barely out of diapers.
Over-scheduled children
Many children now keep the kind of schedule that would make a CEO queasy. Infants are shuttled from baby yoga to baby aerobics to baby sign language lessons. In Corte Madera, California, Gail Penner bought a Palm Pilot for her son John's birthday to help him keep track of his extracurricular activities – piano, baseball, Spanish, basketball, soccer, tennis, swimming and karate. "He's so busy he needs to learn how to manage his time," she says. John is ten.
Even when children do have spare time, we are often too afraid to let them out of our sight. The average distance from home British kids are permitted to wander by themselves has fallen nearly 90 percent since the 1970s. My son, like more than two-thirds of his peers, has never walked to the park alone.
Tracking your kids
Technology helps us keep tabs on children like never before. GPS devices embedded in their jackets and school bags turn children into little red blips on our computer screens at home and at work. Mobile phones increasingly double as tracking devices: if a child drifts out of the designated "safe zone," Mom and Dad get an instant text message. Daycare centres and nursery schools are installing webcams so parents can view real-time footage of their toddlers from anywhere in the world. Even summer camp is no longer a refuge from the prying eyes of the twenty-first-century parent, with photos and video clips relayed from remote lakes and forests to in-boxes back home or uploaded to the Web. "People used to be happy leaving their kids with us for a week or two without hearing any news apart from maybe a postcard or the odd phone call," says one veteran camp counsellor in Colorado. "Now, we get parents freaking out if their kid doesn't appear on the website every day. Or if he does appear and isn't smiling."
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Excerpted from Under Pressure by Carl Honoré Copyright © 2008 by Carl Honoré. Excerpted by permission of Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
