Carol Sarler writes in The Times:

The University College study found that nearly half of children between 8 and 11 are never allowed to leave the house alone. Anxious, upright parents, among them those perfectly prepared to rail against the intrusion of CCTV or identity cards in their own lives, are buying into the equally new notion that it is part of their job to run 24/7 surveillance on their own children.

Privacy, it has been decided, is no longer a luxury that children can be afforded. I do not believe that my mother would have dreamt of reading my diary; I know that I did not read my daughter’s. Yet I recently heard the mother of a 14-year-old patting herself on the back for having cracked her daughter’s e-mail password, such that all the girl’s mail, in and out, is covertly copied to her mother’s PC. “Well,” she said, to much nodding agreement, “These days . . . you can’t be too careful, can you?”

Yes, you can. I further think that the biggest difference between “these days” and better days is not an increase in risk but a huge increase in artificially stimulated alarm, boosted by prurient gawping at the occasional, albeit dreadful, tales of a Sarah or a Madeleine, whose agonies handily provide an excuse to impose a constant, intrusive and ultimately counter-productive adult presence upon children who deserve better.

This entry was posted by andrew on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 23:45 and is filed under (In)security, Anti, General, UK News Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.