Bringing up baby

For my 19-month-old son Santo, living in Rome meant that a typical morning went something like this: get up, get dressed, get hoisted up and down by a hydraulic car lift in our local garage (the mechanic Paolo was one of his good friends), stop for a sugary cornetto for breakfast, help the barman make a café for Mama, sit on a random selection of parked motorini (motorbikes), hang out at our friend Emiliano’s alimentari sticking grubby hands on legs of prosciutto while being fed hunks of parmigiano, get kissed passionately by a wide variety of complete strangers.

I am fairly certain that this is not the routine spoonfed to increasingly fear-driven parents by modern British childcare experts. In fact, it would probably have had me cautioned by child-protection services in this country. For a strange thing has occurred. Somewhere in the past 15 years, the Brits have become more neurotic than Italians, the most child-centric race on the planet, when it comes to raising their offspring.