There must be many reasons for this – not least the motor car, which makes walking along almost any pavement hazardous for a toddler who may, in a moment’s inattention, step off the curb
There is also the issue of stranger danger – we all saw, in this country at least, repeated cctv footage of just how easy it can be to walk away with a toddler from a shopping centre
And so children ride around in their palanquins like little mini caesars. And today’s models come equipped with trays & hooks so that all sorts of comforts are at hand to keep the little blighter quiet – they can drink whenever they like & disturbing numbers of children have buns, crisps, biscuits or chocolate laid out on their tray
And yet children of that age always used to seem to need to let off a tremendous amount of steam - a fact which used to puzzle me. At an age when you would have thought that they needed all their energy for growth & development, any toddler used to walk at least twice as far as the accompanying adult and, when space allowed, took great delight in running round in circles
I wonder if the new research, which showed that a child’s tendency to excess weight is well established by the time they reach school age, looked at whether this was in any way related to whether the family had a garden.
As Hogben wrote in the 1930s Planning for Human Survival,
5 children in a house surrounded by its own garden in a locality where there is
little traffic are far less trouble than one child in a London flat … Every mother of 4 knows that a garden surrounded by a wall is worth all the labour saving devices yet invented … You may provide crèches, school feeding, family allowances, holidays with pay for expectant mothers, & 1001 other inducements. If you do not give people space you will not make parenthood endurable
