Mad mothering, rule one: your child always comes before you

Back on the topic of over obsessive parents... my current obsession!

By Janic Turner, on Judith Warner, author of 'Perfect Madness'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article522229.ece


" But then these days children laugh in your face at jelly and games in the garden. Parents are required to rent a bowling alley or swimming pool. And to please the birthday prince or princess they do it, raising the bar ever higher: my 9-year-old was recently taken to a restaurant in a white stretch limousine.

And Scene 1 woman clearly believed that nurturing her child so magnificently means she need not give a damn about anyone else. It is now a valid excuse to cancel Sunday lunch on the day because your toddler is taking an unscheduled nap. Or to ring another mother and say 6-year-old Cecily won’t be coming to a longarranged tea because “she doesn’t feel like it”. Or to book expensive football coaching, then, when a child whines that he doesn’t want to go, say “OK, darling, never mind”.

We give our children power and choices when they need leadership and rules. We arrest their biological development from solipsism to sociability. What a generation of manipulative, selfish, sod-you quitters and deal-breakers we are breeding. I’m forever seeing a child riding in the passenger seat while the second parent, usually the mother, is exiled from adult conversation in the back. "