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 A WORD FROM THE EDITOR
Are our children happier? 
Sunday February 7,2010 By Martin TownsendAS SANDY Denny once so beautifully sang: “who knows where the time goes?” My eldest son turns 16 this weekend and I have never felt so strongly the suffocating panic of years passing by too quickly.
It’s a cliché, I know, to say that it seems like only yesterday that he was a baby but it does; the time in between has simply disappeared without trace. Actually I was fine up until last Monday when I happened to remark to the man who runs our local stationers that January had “dragged on” a bit. “You can’t say that,” he pleaded with me and there was the light of genuine passion in his eyes. “You have to want the days to drag. I will each season to go on and on because once they’re gone, they’re gone for ever.” His son has just celebrated his 16th birthday so I can only suppose his fear of time passing infected me. Suffice to say that I walked out of his shop in a bit of a daze and then cycled home very, very slowly, taking careful note of the raggedness of the clouds and the faces of the people passing by. I didn’t want to waste my waking hours, you see. It must be hard to be 16 these days. Sometimes I kid myself that times don’t really change and that there’s no such thing as the “good old days”. Reading some accounts recently of the parlous state of children sent into evacuation in 1940, riddled with lice, tormented by scabies, unwashed and completely ignorant of any sort of basic hygiene, it’s easy to dismiss the myth of Britain’s sunny past and to conclude that it’s a lot easier for young people now but it isn’t. Our children are certainly healthier and have the advantage of a level of state education that simply did not exist when my parents were young but are they happier and, in the round, better educated? I would like to think, as most parents would, that my children are but huge numbers of children assuredly are not.
One of the key battlegrounds in the forthcoming election is the whole issue of “family”, a vague concept, let’s face it, under which hides the key question: how can we make parents more responsible and children happier and better behaved? The Tories seem to think that the answer lies in encouraging couples to stay married, which is definitely a step in the right direction. New Labour, which has done more than any other party to devalue and destroy that sacred institution, thinks it can put things right by micro-managing our lives and swaddling us with welfare benefits. But then Gordon Brown and his cronies don’t really want happy, well-balanced people; they just want zombies who’ll vote for them. When I look at my three children, however, and in particular my 16-year-old, who is obviously much in my thoughts at the moment, I wonder if the key to a happy family and contented children is a little simpler than either party imagines. Isn’t it simply about parents being parents and allowing their children to be children, preferably for as long as possible? Never mind the quality of the parent, just fulfil the role and the quality will surely follow. The truth is that I have a sinking feeling about my son being 16 because I haven’t been 16 for 33 years and have no intention of pretending that I am. I accepted adulthood, finally, the moment he was born. The arrival of a child is when your own childish things get put away but how many parents accept that? I see men in their 50s and early 60s still trying to wear the same trainers and sportswear as their children and grandchildren, shouting the odds from football terraces or (sigh) “clubbing it” alongside younger men and women in an effort to hang on to some shred of youth. It doesn’t matter whether they are married or not, all sense of responsibility has been tossed out of the window because they have not accepted that their role is to be parents, to set an example to their children, not try to go drinking with them. This weekend 15 or 20 of my son’s friends will descend on the house to eat pizza, ogle the new iPhone we have bought him and then get the bus up to the Westfield shopping centre to hang out in Topman and Hollister. Me, I will stick around just long enough to acknowledge their embarrassed hellos when my son says: “This is my dad,” and then I’ll be his father and get right out of their way. 
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