ABSTRACT
We have clearly established that many aspects of contemporary life are governed by fears and anxieties in relation to childhood abuse. In addition to concerns regarding abuse, many also fear disasters, diseases, medicines, environmental catastrophes, stray asteroids, wars, food, the internet, children walking to school, unsupervised children’s activity (once known as play) and childhood obesity: ‘you don’t know if you dare do anything any more, and I’m just not sure where it’s all leading to be honest’ (playgroup worker). As we’ve already seen in the case of Father Christmas, it isn’t only professionals who are fearful; Furedi (2001) tracked changes in parental attitudes through advice columns in Nursery World over an 80-year period and identified what he termed ‘paranoid parenting’. Whereas parents may previously have worried about a particular aspect of their child’s behaviour, they now seemed overwhelmed by the sheer weight of issues which contribute to the public panic about child safety. He cited examples: how the remote possibility that a child might choke to death on a small toy in a packet of cereals has led to demands to ban them; and how baby walkers on sale for many years have been withdrawn, in case children topple down the stairs. It has been noted that Dr Spock’s (author of the post-war Bible of parenting guides) widow has recently remarked that Dr Spock would have been ‘horrified by today’s avalanche of advice’ to parents (McDermott 2007). Fears are about nothing and everything and are underpinned by a sense of powerlessness; they appear from somewhere ‘out there’ and never ‘in here’: ‘I think it evolved from that case from Newcastle, up North, that massive Child Protection thing. [Cleveland?] Yes’! The fears of paranoid parents of very young children conjoin with those of practitioners in early years settings, and as a result: ‘We don’t trust each other . . . more and more of us are feeling less trustworthy [sic] towards other people’ (playgroup manager).
