Spock-marked

Governments might, like those of America and Canada, produce cheap brochures explaining to parents how to bring up honest, unanxious, kindly, non-bed-wetting, co-operative children. And that in rich countries with high literacy levels such advice has its effect can hardly be doubted by anyone who has had recent contact in universities with the first Spock-marked generation of middle-class children trained in habits of autonomy from an early age. ('No, darling, it's up to you. At two and a half you are old enough to choose yourself whether to wear trousers or a skirt.')