I once wrote an article about the life of Modern Spoilt Child and discovered that there was no limit on what parents might do to give their kids a good time. I talked to parents who would have booked the ballroom at Claridge’s and had it covered in artificial turf, in order to please a football-crazy sprog; mums who had organised mobile phones, or, in one case, pedigree Siamese kittens instead of party bags for Little One’s birthday friends, and a dad who had hired Chelsea town hall and booked the Grenadier Guards to march up and down within it, for the personal pleasure of a one-year-old.
Of course, scoffing at children whose lives are decorated with ponies, mini-cinemas, maids and the like is easy. Families of sheikhs or film stars will always lead a slightly unreal existence. You only have to think of Liz Taylor’s kids, or those pictures of Madonna’s children in Vogue this summer, to figure that the blessed inheritors of A-list celebrity genes will never find themselves having a birthday party at Mcdonald’s.
But these days we are all treating our children like little princesses, and it’s ruining them. Thus runs the argument of Canadian-based psychologist Dr Maggie Mamen, who thinks we all spoil our sprogs so outrageously she has even invented a condition for it and written a book about it.
Yes, indulgent parents, there is now such a thing as “pampered child syndrome”. Forget attention deficit disorder, childhood depression and all the other neo-medical names used to explain why children can be unhappy or anxious. According to Mamen, we are missing the point. These are nothing more than “designer diagnoses”. The problems spring from being downright spoilt.
Pampered child syndrome, argues Mamen, whose very name implies maternal expertise, has produced a “generation of children who believe they are entitled to the same rights as adults, but are not ready to accept grown-up responsibilities — children who are ‘loved too much’.” Effectively, she says, we have forgotten how to “strike an effective balance between caring for and nurturing children while at the same time maintaining authority and demanding respect”.
How simple she makes it sound; and how her thesis might chime with many readers. My own parents, who are very loving, still cannot help raising their eyebrows when I give my brood a choice between macaroni or spaghetti for supper. “You spoil them,” they say. Why? It’s good to give them choices, I say. Children have no real choice about what happens to them for the first 10 years of their lives, so if choosing macaroni over spaghetti makes them feel better, why not? Is the choice of pasta really a “grown-up responsibility”?
Yet “get what you are given (and be grateful for it)” is my parent’s preferred route and, I suspect, Dr Mamen’s. It’s for the best. Learning life the hard way will, according to Mamen, teach children “how to be resilient and responsible, or how to build up a range of internal resources to manage stress, loss, failure or disappointment”.
Really? “It sounds like complete drivel,” says Professor Lord Robert Winston, clinical physician and fertility expert whose familiarity with childhood disorders and how the modern child is raised has been well documented in the BBC’s Child of Our Time series.
“What is her evidence? Pampered child syndrome is not borne out by any data I have ever read. There has been lots of work on child behaviour, which is borne out by serious medical research. Behavioural disorders and pampering children are, in my view, completely unrelated.”
Furthermore, suggests Winston, if you issue edicts about loving children too much, “you run the risk of making people feel guilty about their relationships”. And does pampering a child make it less able to cope with the pitfalls of adult life?
“On the contrary, giving your children treats is formative. There is lots of evidence to show that children who are not given treats and loving attention by their parents grow up with low self-esteem and develop depression in later life. I don’t think there is such a thing as spoiling a child with too much love. Children need love. You can, of course, always spoil children by not being rational, but I don’t think that’s what she’s saying.”
“You can’t give a child too much love. Absolutely,” agrees Joan Bakewell, mother, grandmother and sage of modern-day ethics. Yet Bakewell sounds as if she has a bit more time for Mamen’s theory than Winston. “But love doesn’t equal indulgence. Love means applying yourself to give your children proper frontiers in life. Good behaviour. Good manners. Respect for others and the ability to get a lot of pleasure in the good things of life. And that’s a positive thing.
“Buying them off with sweets and toys in order to keep them quiet is not love. And it does seem to be the case that people nowadays do that. You see them on those nannying programmes, mothers saying, ‘I’ve given you all this, now shut up’. It takes a lot of patience to bring up children, and if you have a career you might not have the time and patience for your children. People have busy lives.”
Which is why Mamen’s book will probably soar up the best-seller list. In her view we probably are all guilty of pampering our children too much, and will read her sage words with a sinking heart.
Most children in this country are brought up by working parents, who bust their guts during the week in order to pay for decent childcare. All of which means that during the weekends the last thing we are going to do with our precious family moments, is send our children off to learn “creative problem-solving strategies” by giving them a tough time “maintaining authority and demanding respect”.
Do we pamper them? Of course we do. We want to give them fairy wings, Superman outfits and ice skates. We want to show them a world where there will always be a ticket for the game or a place on the London Eye. They have their whole future ahead in which to live with the irritants and stresses of adult life; why not ensure their childhood is full of diversion, entertainment and the surety of constant affection. And, frankly, what on earth is the point of having children if you can’t love them “too much”?
