Last year, the Financial Times reported from the village of Ichinono in Japan. In common with a lot of Japanese villages, Ichinono’s population is small, old and vanishing: just 53 people, most of them over retirement age. In Japan as …
Big Tech has stolen our children
“Internet addiction” has lived a strange life since the Nineties. In 1995, a New York psychiatrist introduced the term, not to describe a real affliction of internet users, but to parody certain diagnostic tendencies in his field. Then other people, …
Bad therapy is stunting our kids
The vast majority of therapists today are women. So, too, are the vast majority of their clients. But the earliest ones were almost all men. And, whatever we think of him now, Sigmund Freud’s ideas on infant development were more …
The tragedy of Britain’s school-refusers
Harry Hocking was just 14 when he texted his mother to tell her he was in desperate trouble and needed help. On the way to school, he had become frozen with anxiety and unable to breathe or walk. Such was …
We need to free Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg has never been a party animal. In a 2021 podcast, she said she had never been in a bar, spending “all my waking hours when I am not in school constantly working and being an activist”. She also …
What I’ve learnt about motherhood
Life as a mum is rarely dull. Yesterday I begged my daughter to go back to sleep and my sons to get up; watched Moana with one child and Succession with another; poured Calpol for the youngest and wine for …
The NHS cult of natural birth
One of the riskiest things you can do in an NHS hospital is have a baby. Two thirds of NHS maternity units are not “safe enough” for women giving birth, according to the Care Quality Commission, while a quarter deliver …
The sordid lessons of Kinderläden
Every Leftist project that has bettered people’s lives was born from the radical imagination: the eight-hour work day, the now-disappeared family wage, the end of the transatlantic slave trade. The Left is always the first to point out that states …
The perils of home DNA tests
One of the greatest threats to familial harmony in the 21st century is the home DNA test. Stories of psychological devastation abound, from finding out your father isn’t your real father to discovering the imminence of a terrible disease. Perhaps …
Should we let the kids be cats?
“Creative” activities for little children tend to fall into two categories: unconstrained mess-making, and strict conformity to a pre-prepared template. The former encompasses the kind of smear and splatter “art” adoring parents pin to the fridge, while the latter looks …
Why Gen Z prefers dogs to babies
The last time I travelled on the London Underground, I had our Labrador, Saffy, with me. Britain is a nation of dog lovers, but I was still surprised by how many strangers cooed over her. It was startling, in fact, …
Why doesn’t King Charles like me?
I have a bone to pick with Charles III. Some years ago, while he was still a lowly Prince of Wales, he granted an audience to some Rhodes scholars from Oxford at a time when I was teaching there. “Who …
Momfluencers won’t absolve your guilt
Maternal guilt is a bottomless resource. Enter the momfluencer. She’s like an influencer — but her particular genius is to target the most vulnerable, the most guilt-ridden the most exhausted consumer. New mothers. The genius of the momfluencer is to …
The case for getting naked
One of the few skills I’ve retained from my teen years in the public school system of mid-Nineties America is the ability to get undressed in front of people without ever actually being naked. It is an art form particular …
The forgotten victims of online child abuse
It took two days before Carly Peters found out why she got “the knock”, and when she did, she was physically sick. It’s been two years since Natalie Smith’s knock and still she struggles when her six-year-old daughter asks: “Where’s …