Rachel Johnson

Even middle-class children are suffering from neglect

Rachel Johnson says that working mothers, divorce, Polish nannies and an obsession with extra-curricular activities mean that our children are seeingless of their parents than at any time in the last 100 years

issue 14 June 2008

And when did you last see your children? Before you both left at the crack for the office? When they were already in bed? Or do you only see them — let’s be brutally realistic here, given our divorce rate — at alternate weekends?

So we don’t need to ask any more who tucks them up at night, takes them to school, listens to their Homeric summaries of Harry Potter books, buys them Start-rites, takes them to the dentist, finds out they’re upset, do we?

Because it’s not you two, the parents, who gave them life.

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