United Kingdom: Why do we hate our children?

last updated 8 January 2015

Jenny McCartney

The Telegraph

Britain treats its kids like pests, said Jenny McCartney. We see them as frequently annoying and sometimes frightening. A recent survey found that nearly half of respondents agreed that children today were “feral” and “like animals.” How many times have we all seen a small child trying to ask her mother a question only to be told to “shut up” and then dragged roughly down the street? Uncharitable attitudes are hardly limited to the working class. Middle-class parents commonly refer to their children as a chore to be managed, the “hours spent with them dutifully ticked off in a mental box” and labeled “quality time.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

It’s no wonder that our kids grow into resentful, even threatening teenagers with no respect for authority. Handle them callously enough and they will certainly “take on the mannerisms of the nuisances they are already assumed to be.” This is not merely a parenting problem. Our society has demonstrated that it doesn’t prioritize children: Just look at our “overstretched and fraying maternity wards,” and our stingy scrimping on postnatal help for mothers. It all adds up to an “essential contempt for childhood.”

Explore More

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox