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AKMA SUHANA BINTI ABDUL MANAF (AM2011008204)

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SITI NOR FAIZAH BINTI ABU BAKAR (AM2011008246)

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[Articles & Essays] [Overview Overprotection]

Paranoid Parenting

by Frank Furedi, published in March, 2001 by Allen Lane, ISBN 0713994886.

Introduction

Tony is giving up teaching. Although he would not use the words, it was 'parental paranoia' that drove him out of the West Sussex primary school where he had taught for three years. During his teacher training, Tony had anticipated that he might be stretched by the challenge of dealing with rowdy children. But he was not prepared for the task of coping with 'difficult' anxious parents. The most taxing moments of his working life were to be spent dealing with 'worried mums'. He sighs as he tells of the mother who insisted on driving behind her son's coach to France to ensure that he arrived safely. He wearily recalls how a school trip to the seaside, planned for a class of 5-year-olds was cancelled because two parents were concerned that the trip would involve their children in a 45-minute journey in a private car. Would the cars be roadworthy? Who would accompany a child to the lavatory? Who would ensure correct fitting seat belts? Were these normally non-smoking cars, or would the children be made victims of passive smoking? The planned pirate's day on the beach ended up being confined to the school field - sea, sand and adventure confined to their imagination and many of its education aims undermined. Exasperated by 'problems - all in the minds of parents', Tony sought, and found, a career outside teaching.

Of course, it is normal for parents to be concerned about the well-being of their children. Parental anxiety is nothing new. A brief inspection of the pages of The Nursery World from the 1920's and 1930's shows that our grandparents were haunted by many of the doubts, worries and preoccupations that torment fathers and mothers today. A frequently revised topic was: 'Is my child's development normal? Child tantrums, shyness, aggression, jealousy, thumb-sucking, nail-biting, refusal to sleep, were regularly raised in letters from concerned parents. Many begged an answer to what the publication's agony aunt called 'a problem as old as parenthood itself - that of how to get to obey us'.

It might seem that not much has changed. But the superficial similarities betray some big differences, in the past, parental anxiety focused on the problems within the family. Infant health - physical, psychological and moral - was an important preoccupation as was preparing children for the outside world - school, career, marriage. And of course, the older generation was often anxious about their children falling in with bad company and generally 'getting up to no good'. But the concerns raised by our grandparents were voiced in a different tone from today.

Reading the worries of parents published in the 1920s, the overall impression is something like this: 'Family life is fine, but there is just this one little thing that we need to sort out.' Today the discussions in parenting magazines suggests that family life is far from fine, that most parents feel out of control and that everything is up for question. Instead of a specific concern, parents seem to be suffering a more general loss of confidence.

The parents who write in magazines today do not give the impression that they are troubled by one aspect of child-rearing. Many seem overwhelmed by the sheer scale of troublesome issues confronting them. These days it seems that every little issue - how to toilet-train a child, when you can leave them home alone, whether to force them to eat their greens - is made into a bigger problem by an overall crisis of parental nerve. This suggests that there must have been some major changes in the way that adults negotiate the task of looking after youngsters. The clearest symptom of this trend is the public panic about child safety.

In recent years, no issue has come under close scrutiny than the question of children's safety. It has become so highly charged that a single incident can spark a major public debate and demands for new regulations. For example, the tragic murder of an English teenage girl while visiting France on an organized school exchange led to a major review of the safety of school trips - despite the fact that the incident was clearly a one-off event. There is no evidence of any increase in attacks on foreign (or French) students in France, and it is unlikely that such an attack will take place again regardless of whether the authorities take new precautionary measures or not. Such measures may make parents feel better, but a murderer intent on getting into a dormitory will probably do so as easily in France as he would in England. Thankfully, such outrages happen rarely - not because of security measures recommended by educational establishments, but because only a tiny number of people are motivated to commit such atrocities. In truth, a 15-year-old girl is probably far safer in a dormitory in St Gerbais than in her 18-year-old boyfriend's Ford Fiesta on the M25 [freeway].

Public concern with safety has reached obsessive proportions. The remote possibility that children might choke on small toys in packets of cereals, chocolates and crisps has provoked demands to ban them. There is no evidence that any child has ever choked to death - but the theoretical possibility that one just might do so one day in undeniable, and that is sufficient to justify the call for a ban. Baby walkers, which have been used for years to allow infants to whiz about before they can walk alone, have been condemned because of the possibility that children may topple over or fall down the stairs. Admittedly this danger is more 'real' than that of death by Pokemon-card ingestion, but it is still triggered by the potential risk that something might happen, and not by specific evidence that it has.

Once in place, parental paranoia easily attaches itself to any new experience concerning children. Take in vitro fertilization (IVF) - for many the only root to parenthood. Rather than celebrating the potential of IVF to create wanted children, researches have recently warned about hypothetical dangers to the children being given life. There have been warnings that IVF could induce changes in children's genetic make-up and impair their mental development. There has been speculation about whether sperm that have to be assisted to fertilize an egg will produce babies as healthy as sperm that can swim on their own. Psychologists muse about whether people who become parents by artificial means after years of infertility will be able to relate, in an emotionally stable manner, to their much-wanted children. It has even been suggested that IVF children will be loved too much and may not be able to live up to their parents' hopes for them. It is only a matter of time before the fertile imagination succeeds in turning IVF into a child safety issue.

The internet has a remarkable potential to enhance young people's lives by providing educational opportunities. Yet it is widely seen as another new technology that poses new dangers to children. Much of the discussion about the World Wide Web has focused on how to protect young people from the perils, to prevent innocents stumbling across 'adult' sites or into the clutches of paedophiles. 'The Internet can be a big and dangerous place for children, but for the price of a phone call, it needn't be', promises a newspaper advertisement for an Internet provider specializing in protecting children in cyberspace. Such manipulative marketing schemes are confident that they can convert parental paranoia into hard cash.

Sadly, virtual reality provides infinite space for the exercise of the anxious imagination, an unknown world where our fear of invisible strangers can run riot. Since children are often more adept at negotiating the net, parental control is forced to confront uncomfortable new challenges. 'You don't know what's out there', a group of fathers confided in me. One raised the spectre of paedophile rings lurking in the shadows online, ready to pounce on his unsuspecting teenagers by e-mail. Nobody I talked to had actually heard of any child being damaged, but nevertheless they regarded the Internet as a really big problem. As one parents' guide to the Internet warns: 'You might think you have taken adequate steps to protect your child, but please be aware that a determined child might nonetheless be able to circumvent any protective software or security measure. And apparently there are other risks to worry about. A London conference on parenting in April 2000 was informed by Dr Jane Healy, and American educational psychologist, that computers can also damage children's brain development.

Old-fashioned television is often indicted for its negative impact on children. Parents complain that television is teaching their children to be violent shopaholics. They protest that video games distract children form reading or riding a bike. Even parents who rely on the VCR to keep their children busy feel guilty about their pragmatic embrace of the electronic baby-sitter. The experts encourage these concerns. One American study warns that the impact of the media on children 'should be eliciting serious concern, not just from parents and educators but from physicians, public health advocates, and politicians as well'. Parents are encouraged to blame television because, in a world where they already feel pretty powerless, yet another outside influence on their children is experienced as a threat to their authority.

Parents mistrust the Internet and television because of a more general unease about having to cope with external influences that bear upon their children. Many of these influences - television advertising, consumerism, the Internet - are portrayed as part of a complex new world that is causing parental insecurity. But adult over-reaction to new technology is a symptom, and not the cause of the problem. Many parents now feel so insecure and fearful of what they do not understand that virtually anything can be turned into a potential childcare crisis.

Fear of children's safety has come to dominate the parenting landscape. In 1998 the advocacy group Families for Freedom interviewed 200 parents. The results make frightening reading. Most of these parents paint a picture of a world that is hostile territory for their children. They routinely use words like 'scared' and 'frightened' to describe their feelings about their children, particularly where they are outdoors. When the marketing organization System Three surveyed public opinion on the safety of children in Scotland for the BBC in 1998, the results suggested an overwhelming sense that children were far less safe than 20 years ago. Although the incidence of child murder by a stranger in Scotland is very low and has shown no change in the past 20 years, 76 per cent of respondents thought that there had been an increase in such tragedies, while 38 per cent believed that the increase had been 'dramatic'. A large majority - 83 per cent - also thought that more children were now being knocked down by traffic on the roads of Scotland. In fact the incidence of road injuries to children had decreased by 60 per cent during the previous 20 years. The gap between adult perceptions and the reality of the risks faced by children is confirmed by other studies in the Anglo-American world. A survey of US paediatricians carried out in 1995 claimed that parental anxieties tended to be significantly out of proportion to many real risks. The discrepancy between actual and imagined risks was particularly striking in relation to the dramatic issues of child welfare, such as abduction, environmental poisons and cancer.

A culture of fear has led parents to restrict their children's independent outdoor activities. In 1971, eight out of ten 8-year-olds were allowed to walk to school alone. Now it is fewer than one in ten. At age 11 almost every child used to walk, now it is down to 55 per cent and falling. A report published by the Children's Play Council in 1997 argued that children had become virtual prisoners in their own homes.

Paranoid parenting does not only restrict children's freedom to play. It also diminishes the creative aspect of play. There is considerable evidence that children are more creative when their parents are not around to monitor their behaviour. A study by Dale Grubb and Alicia Snyder concludes that adult supervision turns play into a structured activity and that this weakens youngsters' drive to experiment. Unfortunately, the concept of unsupervised children's activity - what used to be called play - is now defined by child professionals as a risk. Restricting children's outdoor activity has predictable consequences for their development, and a sedentary lifestyle is inevitably bad for their health. Research has linked the decline in British children's fitness to the decrease in the amount of time they spend walking and cycling. The First National Travel Survey reported a fall of about 20 per cent in the annual distance walked and 27 per cent in the distance cycled by children between 1985 and 1993. An average British schoolgirl now walks for less than seven minutes a day. Deprived of the opportunity to burn calories by racing around outside, children grow fat. A study published in the British Medical Journal in September found an alarming proportion of pre-school children to be overweight and even obese. Among those aged 2, 15.8 per cent were considered overweight and 6 per cent obese. By the time they reached 5, 18.7 were deemed overweight and 7.2 per cent obese.

The precautionary approach to parenting

Parental paranoia today is more than simply a worse version of past anxieties. For instance, a common target of child-rearing manuals before the Second World War was the over-protective parent, and guilt-ridden parents worried that they might be 'smothering' their children. But how many times do we hear parents criticized for being over-protective today? Indeed, many of the traits associated with the classic over-protective father or mother are likely to be praised by today's child experts as responsible parenting. Parents are continually urged to do even more to protect their children.

Researchers advise parents to supervise children, not only outdoors, but even when they watch television. The term 'coviewing' has been coined to describe the practice of hands-on parents playing the role of a 'media value filter and a media educator'. Other researchers further, claim that parental supervision inoculates children from many of the dangers they face. They contend that 'parental monitoring has been inversely associated with antisocial behaviour, drug use, tobacco use and early sexual activity'. There is obviously some truth in this. The more time a child spends in the company of his or her parents the less time is available for smoking, drinking and sex. But to equate the amount of parental supervision directly with behavioural outcomes tells parents that the more time they manage to spend with their children, the better their offspring will be. This raises the question of where to draw the line. How do parents decide how much monitoring is reasonably required, as opposed to optimally possible?

Unfortunately, parental supervision is today always interpreted as a positive virtue so parents can never spend too much time supervising their youngsters. Child-rearing experts occasionally concede that it is simply impossible to keep children and young teenagers under constant adult supervision. But even then they insist that alternative, indirect, forms of child surveillance are employed. One American expert argues that if a child has to be left under 'self-care', then parents must do whatever they can to supervise in absentia, by liaising with a trusted adult who knows what the youngster is up to. The message is clear: if you are going to shirk your responsibility towards your child even for a few hours, you must at least make sure that somebody else is doing your job for you.

Parents are not just advised to supervise their children. In Britain, such advice contains the implicit threat of legal sanction. Although in England and Wales there is no statutory age at which it is illegal to leave your children unattended, a parent who is deemed to neglect, abandon or expose her children to danger can be liable to prosecution. According to Carolyn Hamilton of the Children's Legal Centre, the general view taken by child protection professionals is that a parent should not leave children under 12 alone for more than 20-30 minutes. What a shock this would have been to the parents of 'latch-key' youngsters in the 1970s. At that time debate about the children of working mothers returning from school to empty homes focused on whether it was right for women to have jobs which deprived their children of a welcoming smile and the smell of home baking. The issue was not seen as one of child safety and certainly not abandonment. Yet today's legal experts advise that, while parents are unlikely to face prosecution for a 30-minute absence, the parent of an 11-year-old left alone for three to four hours might face legal action. Even though very few parents are prosecuted in these circumstances, the strict guidelines convey a clear message about what society expects of parents. And that expectation is founded on the premise that parents can never do too much to protect their children.

Twenty or thirty years ago, authors of child-rearing manuals had their own way of making parents feel guilty. But they would have reacted with disbelief to the proposition that it was wrong to leave children under 12 alone for more than 20-30 minutes. Fortunately, there are still some societies where the over-protective parent is not promoted as role model. Children in Norway and Finland 'enjoy being at home without their parents from about seven onwards' records Priscilla Alderson, a Reader in Childhood Studies at the Institute of Education in London. According to Alderson, Finnish children start school at 7 years, and sometimes go home at 11 a.m. where they play with friends until their parents arrive home in the late afternoon. In Anglo-American societies, where a paranoid parenting style prevails, such practices would be condemned as child abuse.

The view that children cannot survive without the constant presence of a responsible adult is continually reinforced by public campaigns designed to frighten parents. 'Only use baby-sitters who are over 16 and responsible enough to look after your children' warned the NSPCC during its August Safe Open Spaces campaign. Even the time-honoured practice of using 14- or 15-year-olds eager to earn some pocket money through helping parents and dads look after their children is now dismissed as an act of gross irresponsibility.

Today's parenting style sees safety and caution as intrinsic virtues. Paranoid parenting involves more than exaggerating the dangers facing children. It is driven by the constant expectation that something really bad is likely to happen to your youngster.

Jacqueline Lang, Headmistress of Walthamstow Hall School in Sevenoaks, Kent, has characterized today's parenting style as 'the worst-case scenario approach'. Lang caught the public imagination in 1997 when she remarked to the local media that 'some girls in her school did not own a raincoat because they were ferried everywhere by car'. She identified one of the fundamental principles of paranoid parenting: the fear of taking risks. Her students' parents were simply too scared to allow their girls to walk to school. Children who are strangers to the outdoors do not need raincoats.

Apprehension about child safety, and a morbid expectation that something terrible can happen any moment, mean that many risks that are well worth taking because of their stimulating effect on a child's development are simply avoided. Child-rearing today is not so much about managing the risks of everyday life, but avoiding them altogether. As child psychologist Jennie Linden argues, the adult 'preoccupation with risk can create too much emphasis on removing every conceivable source of even minor risk'. The characteristic feature of such an obsession is, according to Linden, 'to speculate excessively on what can go wrong rather than on what children may learn.' It is this precautionary approach which defines the parenting culture of contemporary society.

Parents have always been concerned about protecting their children form harm. Asking 'What can go wrong?' is a sensible way of dealing with the many new experiences children encounter. To weigh up probabilities before doing something is an informed way of managing risk. But asking what can go wrong is very different from acting on the assumption that things will go wrong. Such a fatalistic outlook reduces the power of parents to make informed, intelligent judgements. A more appropriate approach might be to follow an assessment of what can go wrong with two other questions - 'Does it matter?' and 'What might the child learn from the experience?' The precautionary approach continually encourages adults to adopt the same one-dimensional response: Beware!

It is tempting to interpret the precautionary approach to child-rearing as the irrational reaction of individual mothers and fathers. Child professionals sometimes point the finger at over-anxious parents and advise them to be more sensible about managing the risks their children face. Jacqueline Lang, who is exceptionally sensitive to the consequences of trying to 'inoculate' children against the risks thrown up by life, blames 'a generation of timid parents' for 'stifling the sense of adventure' of Britain's children. However, it is a mistake to reduce the problem to the personalities of some parents. How individual adults relate to their infants at any time is inseparable from the parenting style encouraged by our culture and society.

Parents today face strong social pressures to adopt a precautionary approach towards child-rearing. Intimidating public campaigns endlessly remind them about the many risks their children face. It is difficult to retain a sense of perspective when the safety of children has become a permanent item of news.

The erosion of adult solidarity

Christina Hardyment, in her excellent study on baby-care advice past and present, is struck by the intensity of parental paranoia today. She senses a climate of permanent panic that invites a guilt-ridden style of parenting. The loss of small children's freedom is one consequence. Children's freedom has never been restricted as it is today. A study by Dr Mayer Hillman of the Policy Studies Institute indicates that while 80 per cent of 7- and 8-year-olds went to school by themselves in 1970, fewer than 10 per cent are now allowed to do so. In the past, not even the archetypal over-anxious parent would have taken the precautionary approach that is now seen as the norm. Even though children have never been safer or healthier, at no time has so much concern and energy been devoted to protecting youngsters from harm.

A Glasgow researcher, Stuart Waiton, has produced compelling evidence that counters the fear that children are at greater risk than in previous times. According to Waiton, between 1988 and 1999 the number of children murdered between the ages of and 16 decreased in England and Wales from 4 per million to 3 per million. The total murdered under the age of 5 dropped from 12 per million to 9 per million. Cases of abduction in which the offender was found guilty dropped from 26 to 8 over the same period.

Although surveys confirm that paranoid parenting is widespread, there has been little attempt to understand its causes. The most common explanation is that it is all the fault of the sensationalist media. Panics about children's safety are interpreted as 'media-led' and television is accused of making parents unnecessarily apprehensive. 'Increasingly, we are bombarded by the news media with spectacular accounts of violence, illness and health concerns, as well as varied opinions about appropriate diets and child rearing practices', concluded the authors of one study of parental worries in the United States. They certainly have a point. Research into the British media's reporting of the horrific murder of 2-year-old Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys shows that it had a major impact on parents. In a survey of 1,000 parents taken a year later, 97 percent cited the possible abduction of their children as their greatest fear. The Times reported that many of these parents revealed that 'video images of the two-year-old being taken by his killers were still fresh in their minds'.

So yes, the media helps shape adults' perception of the risks faced by children. But it is far too simplistic to blame the media for the problems of parenting. Parents do not need high-profile media horror stories to provoke their insecurities. They worry about all manner of everyday things, all of the time. They can be anxious about Mary's weight on Monday, Tim's refusal to eat vegetables on Tuesday, the poor state of Mary's and Tim's education on Wednesday, and so on. A heightened sense of insecurity can attach itself to relatively mundane experiences such as whether a child is too fat or too thin. The media does not cause paranoid parenting. Its main role is to amplify society's concerns, to give shape to our fears. Confusing the messenger with the bad news is an understandable reaction, but not one that will help illuminate the issues at stake.

So what is the bad news? In the chapters that follow, it should become clear that a variety of influences help to shape contemporary anxieties about parenting. But if one thing above all others has created the conditions for today's parenting crisis, it is the breakdown of adult solidarity.

Adult solidarity is one of those used to take for granted. Most of the time, in most places, adult solidarity is practised by people who have never heard of the term. In most communities throughout the world adults assume a modicum of public responsibility for the welfare of children even if they have no ties to them. When the local newsagent or butcher scolds a child for dropping a chewing-gum wrapper on the road, they are actively assisting that boy's parents in the process of socialization. When a pensioner reprimands a young girl for crossing the road when the light is red, he is backing up her parents' attempt to teach, her the ways of the world. These displays of public responsibility teach children that certain behaviour is expected by the entire community, and not just by their mum and dad.

It has long been recognized that the socialization of children relies on a wide network of responsible adults. Parents cannot be expected to act as 24-hour-a-day chaperones. Across cultures and throughout history, mothers and fathers have acted on the assumption that if their children got into trouble, other adults - often strangers - would help out. In many societies adults feel duty-bound to reprimand other people's children who misbehave in public.

As every parent knows, in Britain today, fathers and mothers cannot rely on other adults to take responsibility for looking after their children. British adults are hesitant to engage with other people's youngsters. This reluctance to assume responsibility for the welfare of the young is not simply a matter of selfishness or indifference. Many adults fear that their action would be misunderstood and resented, perhaps even misinterpreted as abuse. Adults feel uncomfortable in the presence of children. They don't want to get involved and, even when confronted by a child in distress, are uncertain about how to behave.

Take the following scene in a primary school in Bristol during the spring of 2000. The teachers have organized a group of 7-year-olds to go outside the schoolyard to count the cars that pass by. Little Henry is bored and proceeds to poke his head through the railings that separate the schoolyard from the street. He gets his head stuck. The teachers are at a loss to know what to do. A crowd gathers around the trapped child. One teacher finds a jar of cream and applies some of it on the railing to help Henry wriggle out of his predicament. It doesn't work. Parents begin to arrive to pick up the children. The teachers are standing around. Not one of them has attempted to pull Henry out. Not one of them has put an arm around the distressed boy in an act of reassurance. They are afraid of touching the child. Finally, Henry's mum arrives. She takes one look at her son, grabs hold of him, gives him a yank and he is out. Henry's 80-minute ordeal is over.

The story was recounted to me in horror by a young teacher, as a statement about the world we live in. When I asked why she hadn't done something to help little Henry, she said that she had already been reprimanded a year earlier for being 'too physical' with one of her pupils.

When we live in a society that warns off teachers, traditionally seen as being in loco parentis, it is hardly surprising that strangers hesitate before becoming involved with other people's children. If a teacher is not allowed to cuddle a crying child for fear of the action being misinterpreted, no wonder that passers-by will turn their backs on a weeping infant.

Awkward adults uncomfortable in the company of children represent a serious problem for parents. Mothers and fathers feel that they are on their own. Worse, many parents are convinced that it is best if other adults don't interfere in their children's affairs. Parents regard other people not as allies, but as potentially predatory on their young ones. Clumsy adults inept at relating to children and anxious parents concerned about 'stranger-danger' are two sides of the same coin.

This breakdown in adult solidarity breeds parental paranoia. The fear of the 'other person' is the most tangible expression of parental insecurity. A 1998 survey carried out by Families for Freedom noted that 89.5 per cent of the respondents had a general sense of foreboding about the safety of their children. This general sense of alarm became more focused when other adults were brought into the equation. It was said by 76 per cent that they were 'very worried' about their children's safety in relation to 'other people'. The other person is the stranger. Research carried out by Mary Joshi and Morag Maclean in 1995 found that more parents gave 'stranger-danger' as a reason for using cars for school journeys than any other reason.

Perhaps that is why parents in Britain are more likely to drive their children to school than in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe where the distance between home and school may be far greater. In societies where neighbours and other adults assume a degree of responsibility for keeping an eye on children, attitudes towards their safety are far less obsessive. A comparative study of children's independent mobility concluded that there is far less parental supervision in Germany than the UK. According to the authors, one reason why German parents are more likely to allow children out on their own is because they expect other adults to keep an eye on them; in turn, German children reported feeling that they were watched over by the adult world. This culture of collaboration creates a sense of security for German parents. The expectation that other adults will do the right thing helps them to take a more relaxed attitude towards letting their children out of the door than might be the case in Britain. One consequence of the erosion of adult solidarity in Britain is that the distance that children are allowed to stray from home has been reduced to one-ninth of what it was in 1970.

A poisonous atmosphere for parenting

The finger points not only at other adults; British parents themselves have also come under suspicion. The public is frequently warned that children are at risk from their own parents. Parents who find it difficult to deal with the pressures of everyday life have been portrayed as potential abusers. In May 2000, the NSPCC launched its Full Stop campaign. Shocking pictures on billboards show a loving mother playing with her baby. The caption reads: 'Later she wanted to hold a pillow over his face.' Another picture highlights a loving father cuddling his baby. The words 'that night he felt like slamming her against the cot' serve as a chilling reminder not to be deceived by appearances. The NSPCC justified its scaremongering tactics on the grounds that it was telling parents that it is normal to snap under pressure, and that they need to learn to handle the strain. But this alleged link between parental incompetence and abusive behaviour has disturbing implications for every father and mother. If anyone can snap and smash the head of their baby against the wall, whom can you trust?

It is easy for a mother or a father to lose control and lash out at their youngster. Regrettably most of us have done it on more than one occasion. Snapping under pressure is a normal is unfortunate fact of life. But when we snap we don't go on to smash our baby's head against the wall. It may be normal for parents to snap, but it is wrong for the NSPCC to suggest that this temporary loss of control 'normally' leads to abuse. The implication that parenting under pressure is an invitation to abuse is an insult to the integrity of millions of hardworking mothers and fathers. It also helps to create a poisonous atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust.

A booklet Protecting our Children: A Guide for Parents, sponsored by Labour MP Dan Norris and with a foreword by Prime Minister Tony Blair, explains that anybody might be a paedophile. 'They live in our communities, in our families and may even be someone we know and love', the booklet informs the reader. 'How can seemingly kind and even respectable people abuse children' it asks?' Anyone reading this book is invited to look at people 'we know and love' with a newly suspicious eye. If it is indeed the case that anyone and everyone in our communities and our families should be treated with caution, then trust and collaboration between adults become impossible.

Family life, once idealized as a haven from a heartless world, is now widely depicted as a site of domestic violence and abuse. Child protection professionals and press commentators are always warning of the dangers that children face from their 'normal' parents. If victimization within the family is pandemic then clearly we are obliged to mistrust even those closest to us. The focus of anxiety can no longer be the alien stranger or criminal, but our closest family relations, neighbours, friends, lovers and workmates. Such a suspicious attitude towards everyday life redefines how people are expected to relate to those closest to them. This culture of fear places parents in a difficult position. Every year some 120,000 parents experience the nightmare of being wrongly accused of child abuse.' Since normal parents are now portrayed as potential abusers, it is not surprising that so many face investigation on the basis of hearsay and rumour.

Scare campaigns that target parents represent a body blow to the authority of every mother and father. Here and there, public figures still pay lip service to the 'great job' performed by parents. But the ceaseless reminders of parental failure take their toll. Campaigns which claim that it is normal for parents to snap and abuse permeate the public imagination, and incite us to be suspicious of our neighbours. When even nice mothers and fathers are potential monsters it is difficult to regard parents in a positive light. Everyone now feels entitled to speculate about what Mary's dad is up to. Under this pressure, parents will openly criticize other mothers and fathers - sometimes in front of the children. A society that expects parents to teach children to avoid strangers and to regard them with dread is storing up big problems for the future. When parents instruct children about stranger-danger these days, they are also communicating a negative statement about the adult world - and, by implication, about themselves.

The code of mistrust

If family life is seen as essentially rotten to the core, which other institution could possibly be perceived as good? If parents, brothers and sisters cannot be entirely trusted, how can we have faith in the integrity of more distant acquaintances? This is the message conveyed on a daily basis through television and popular culture. Not a day goes by without another sordid tale of some professional abusing the trust that has been placed in him or her. The suspicion of abuse that hangs over the family has spread like a disease to infect other institutions from schools to Scout and Guide groups. Where once there would have been an assumption of goodwill, dangers are now seen to lurk.

An editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine claims that sport is 'the last refuge of child abuse'. 'I know it is going on from hundreds of interviews with athletes but it is difficult to get any statistical evidence', writes Celia Brackenridge. Many sporting bodies have issued guidelines about how to spot potential abusers working in their midst. In December 1998 the Amateur Swimming Association, in conjunction with the NSPCC, set up a helpline for children on the grounds that their sport might be targeted by paedophiles like the Olympic swimming coach jailed for child sex abuse. In 1999, the England and Wales Cricket Board issued child protection guidelines. At least one commentator blamed the collapse of English cricket on paedophiles who made parents reluctant to allow unsupervised children to play the game.

Paedophiles have also become an issue with the St John Ambulance service, after three of its officers were jailed for the long-term abuse of cadets in 1998. The British Scout Association has been implicated in sex scandals. After a Coventry Scoutmaster was jailed for indecency offences against two boys and a Hampshire Scoutmaster was sentenced to six years for sexually abusing eight boys, the Association adopted a policy to 'safeguard the welfare of all members by protecting them from physical, sexual and emotional harm.

Even religious organizations have been implicated in this, climate of fear. In Australia, Roman Catholic bishops have sought to ban their priests from having any private contact with children. Guidelines drawn up with the approval of the Vatican mean that confessionals have to be fitted with glass viewing panels. Priests are also banned from seeing any child alone with the door closed. Closed doors and private interaction are no longer acceptable to a society fed on a constant diet of mistrust. It is as if by definition the closed door is an invitation to abuse.

Any one-to-one contact between adults and children has effectively been stigmatized. A guideline published by the Salvation Army advises its members to ensure that 'an adult is not left alone with a child or a young person where there is little or no opportunity for the activity to be observed by others'. It adds that this 'may mean groups working within the same large room or working in an adjoining room with the door left open'. Salvation Army members were far from happy with this rule since many of their activities involve musical practice. Since band members play different instruments at various levels of proficiency, a lot of the training took place one-to-one in separate rooms. Nevertheless, the new order dictates that doors should be left open - and, presumably, ears closed.

A guideline issued by the British Home Office to voluntary organizations recommends that activities 'which involve a single child working with an adult' should 'take place in a room which can be observed easily by others in nearby areas, even if this is achieved simply by leaving doors open'. Scout Association guidelines warn scout leaders to avoid one-to-one situations and contact sports. Guidelines issued by the England and Wales Cricket Board tell coaches not to work with a child 'completely unobserved', and suggest that 'parents should take on the responsibility for their children in the changing rooms'.

The return of the medieval chaperone in Britain provides eloquent testimony to the regulation of adult contact with children. In one case a rector at a village church was forced to disband a choir because of new guidelines on child protection. Up to 20 child choristers met weekly for rehearsals and sang every Sunday at St Michael's Church in Northchapel, West Sussex. The Rev. Gerald Kirkham had to stop recruiting because, under the new code, at least two adult chaperones were needed at choir practice.

Mistrust of adults, especially of men, has had a destructive impact on working relations between adults and children. Many adults have become wary of volunteering for this sort of work. The British Scout Association faces a shortage of volunteer leaders. 'If a man says he wants to work with young boys, people jump to one conclusion', reported Jo Tupper, a spokeswoman for the Scout Association. A similar pattern is evident in primary education. Research carried out by Mary Thornton of Hertfordshire University suggests that men are turning away from primary school teaching because of fears that they will be labelled 'perverts'. Thornton claimed that men on teacher training programmes 'felt they had no idea how to deal with physical contact'. Some of the trainees asked, for example, whether they 'should cuddle a distressed child'. When physical contact with children comes with a health warning, teachers face a continual dilemma over how to handle routine issues in the classroom. In August 1998, the Local Government Association even went so far as to advise teachers not to put sun cream on pupils because it could lead to accusations of child abuse. Lord Puttnam, the inaugural chairman of the General Teaching Council has warned that when teachers are regarded as potential rapists and paedophiles their authority is seriously undermined.

In November 1999, it was reported that 'Teachers, fearful of accusations of any kind of inappropriate touching, are increasingly wary of direct contact with the children in their charge, even if tears are involved.' One school in Glasgow has responded to this 'affectionphobic culture' by introducing special massage classes for children. The idea is that pupils will stay fully clothed and standing upright while they take turns to massage each other's heads, backs and shoulders. While the teacher reads a story, they will also take turns to massage each other's forearms with plain, unscented oil.' A new ritual for an age that dreads physical contact between adult and child.

Fear of adults victimizing children is fuelled by a child protection industry obsessed with the issue of abuse. The NSPCC's Safe Open Spaces for Children, launched in August 1999, advised parents never to have their children 'kiss or hug an adult if they don't want to'. The justification for this proposal was that it would make children confident about refusing the advances of a stranger. From time immemorial, parents have pleaded with their children to kiss or hug grandmothers and aunts. The call to ban this innocent practice is symptomatic of the intense professional mistrust of adult behaviour towards children.

All this hysteria about physical contact actually does little to protect children. By casting the net so wide and expecting child abuse to be a normal occurrence, there is a danger of trivializing this dreadful deed. A climate of suspicion will not deter the child abuser, but it will undermine the confidence of all parents. And at the end of the day, confident parents are best placed to educate their children to deal with risks and danger.

The flight from children

From voluntary organizations to primary education, well-meaning adults are being put off from playing a valuable role in instructing and inspiring young children. At a conference organized by Playlink and Portsmouth City Council in November 1999, the delegates were enthusiastic professionals committed to improving children's lives through outdoor play. But several of the play workers felt that their role was diminished by bureaucratic rules designed to regulate their contact with children. One play worker complained that she often could not do 'what's right' by the children, because if she did not follow the rules it would threaten her career prospects.

Those who work with children are automatically undermined by new conventions that control their behaviour. If it is assumed that professional carers need to be told how to relate to the children in their charge, why should parents - or children - trust them? But it is not only professional carers or volunteers who are affected by this climate of paranoia. Suspicion towards them reflects and reinforces a more general distrust of adults. It is assumed that none of us can be expected to respect the line between childhood and adulthood: that we need to be told what almost all of us know by instinct - children are vulnerable people who need protection. This means comforting a distraught child with a cuddle just as much as it means not abusing those young people who have put their trust in you.

The negative image of adulthood enshrined in the new conventions has far-reaching implications. The healthy development of any community depends on the quality of the bond that links different generations. When those bonds are subjected to such intense suspicion, the ensuing confusion can threaten the very future of a community. After all, relations of warmth and affection are inherent in family relationships, and even in relations between children and other caters. If an adult touching a child comes to be regarded with anxiety, how can these relations be sustained?

Is it any surprise that many adults are literally scared of badly behaved children. Take the following scene on the lawn of one of Britain's leading universities. Over 200 law lecturers and students are waiting for an official photograph to be taken. A young girl cycles up to the group and plonks herself down in front of the group and refuses to move. She is asked politely to move, but still refuses to do so. Not a single adult in this large group dares to intervene, reprimand the young girl or physically move her on. Afterwards, the lecturers justify their paralysis on the grounds that they feared accusations of assault or abuse if they had attempted to move her out of the way. In this stand-off the young girl emerges as the winner. Twenty minutes later, bored with her easy victory over the disoriented adults, the girl leaves of her own accord.

It should really come as no surprise that some children have begun to play off this general distrust of adults to make life difficult for those they don't like. Most children are enterprising creatures, for whom adult insecurities provide an opportunity to exercise their power. Every year hundreds of teachers face false allegations of abuse. A teacher wept openly at the April 2000 conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers as he recounted his three months of agony after being falsely accused of punching a 12-year-old pupil. Other teachers recounted cases of false accusation and demanded that school staff should not be treated as guilty until proven innocent. It is tempting to blame malicious children for making life hell for some of their teachers. But it is not really their fault. They are merely manipulating a dirty-minded world created by obsessive adults.

The distrust of adult motives has encouraged a flight from children: a distancing between the generations. In some cases it has led to an avoidance of physical contact, in others the reluctance to take responsibility. The flight from children expresses adult confusions about how to relate to younger generations. Elderly people in particular are often unclear about what is expected of them in dealing with children. An 82-year-old man with numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren provides a classic illustration of this dilemma:

"I was in a shop and this woman came in who the wife knew, with her little granddaughter. I was eating a sweet, and this little girl looked up at me, so I said, 'would you like a sweetie, duck?' She got all scared and jumped back. And I said, 'well that's the best thing you want to do. Never take a sweetie off nobody'. She done right, but it made me feel cheap, like. It made me feel awful really, to think I was offering a little girl a sweet. And I love kiddies. In the paper you hear there's horrible people about and it's awful, but it made me feel right cheap."

This octogenarian has internalized the new mood of suspicion towards adult motives. His mental retreat from following his well-meaning instincts towards the young girl is part of a general pattern. Sadly, this flight from children means that adult collaboration in raising the young rests on a fragile foundation. Parents of course cannot flee from their children. They are left to deal with the damage caused by the erosion of adult solidarity. They are truly on their own. The decline of adult solidarity means that parents must pay the cost for society's estrangement from its children.

Parents on their own

More than ever parents are on their own. According to Professor John Adams of University College, London, we live in an age of hypermobility, where the car has facilitated a new level of social dispersal. Adams believes that hypermobility has led to the increased anonymity of individual households, a decline of conviviality towards our neighbours, a less child-friendly environment and the emergence of parental anxieties towards children's outdoor safety. His concerns are echoed by numerous studies that confirm a palpable sense of social isolation. A survey published by the Royal Mail in 1999 revealed that people now live further away from relatives - though the majority still live within an hour's journey. A quarter of respondents aged under 35 rarely or never spoke to their neighbours. Nearly a third of these respondents said that they would only offer to help neighbours if it was absolutely necessary, and did not want to know them any better. This indifference towards the fate of neighbours underlines the absence of communal affinity. We often live in neighbourhoods without neighbours. The absence of an obvious network of support has important implications for the way that adults negotiate the task of child-rearing.

The theme of social isolation is a familiar one to most parents. Mothers and fathers complain about an uneasy sense that they are 'on their own'. Many mothers, especially those who work, are preoccupied with what could go wrong with their childcare arrangements. When there are no relatives near, and you are not on first-name terms with your neighbours, who is to pick up your child when your meeting runs late? Who can stay home and nurse a child off school for two weeks with chickenpox? The absence of an obvious back-up, the tenuous quality of friendship networks and the difficulty of gaining access to quality childcare all helps to create the feeling that life is one long struggle, increasing tensions within the household.

The fragmentation of family relations and the diminished sense of community have inevitably helped to make parents feel insecure. Not knowing where to turn in case of trouble can produce an intense sense of vulnerability - especially among lone parents who feel that they are literally on their own. The isolation of parents is not simply physical. The erosion of adult solidarity transforms parenting into an intensely lonely affair, with only the state to turn to. A climate of suspicion serves to distance mothers and fathers from the world of adults. In turn, this predicament invites parents to be anxious and over-react - not just to the danger they see posed by strangers, but to every problem to do with their youngsters' development. As we shall see, paranoid parenting now embraces almost every aspect of child-rearing.

[Articles & Essays] [Overview Overprotection]

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What Are Overprotective Parents
Overprotective parents show guarding behavior that is excessive considering the child's developmental stage and the actual risk level in their environment.
Overprotective parents' single-minded focus is to keep their children safe, not only physically but also emotionally.

These parents obsess with their children's physical safety, even though they usually live in a relatively safe environment.

The levels of protection exceed the much lower level of actual risk.

They are also preoccupied with preserving their kids' emotional wellness by helping them remove all obstacles and cushion the blow of everyday life.

Why Are Parents Overprotective
Some parents are overprotective because they want to do everything within their power to safeguard their children from harm and to help them succeed in life.
This intensive parenting approach is often chosen by parents in a loving but misguided attempt to improve their child's outcome.

Parents are instinctively protective.

Parents love and care about their children, and want to raise them to be healthy, happy, and successful.

They want to protect their kids' well-being by preventing illnesses, hurtful feelings, and failure.

But when a mom or dad helps a little too much, steps in to save the day every time something goes slightly awry or shields the child from all the negativities of the world, they become overprotective parents.

What Causes Parents To Be Overprotective

Parental Anxiety

Overprotective parents are often anxious parents who are preoccupied with dangers.

Parents who suffer from anxiety or panic disorder are prone to show overparenting behavior.

Hyperbolic News Media

Overprotection exists in every generation.

However, there is a trend toward intensive parenting in recent years.

In particular, the Millennials are infamous for having overprotective a helicopter mom or dad.

We are living in an era where we are constantly bombarded by information.

The prevalence of the internet and smartphone usage means media needs to use creative ways to compete for our attention.

Sensational news does the job.

Hyperbolic news media leads parents to believe that the world around them is far more dangerous than it actually is.

It makes every assault against a child seem like a personal threat.

Therefore, even though our society is, on the whole, safer than any previous generation in history, it doesn't feel that way.

Perceived Child Vulnerability

Parents of children with chronic illness or physical disabilities often exhibit overprotective and controlling behavior.

These parents, especially the mothers, believe that their children are more vulnerable or susceptible, and require more protection.

Parental Post-Traumatic Symptoms After Disaster

Overprotection can arise following natural or man-made disasters, especially if the parent develops Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

For example, if a family has escaped their burning home in a large fire, the parents may develop fear of future fires and form overprotective behavior.

Is It Good To Be Overprotective

Having protective parents is good for infant survival. It is also beneficial if the living experience contains high risks.

Research shows that when parents protect their children from an extreme community, such as urban environments where gun-related violence, gangs, and drugs are common, the family functioning is better.

Parents' brains are wired to protect their offspring.

But when taken to the extremes and the level of risks do not match the extent of protection, overprotection will do more harm than good.

Signs Of Overprotective Parents

Overprotective parenting can take many forms. Here are some signs of overprotective parents.

Saves the Day... Every Day

Of course, no one wants to see their children fail.

But overprotective parents cannot stand to let their children experience any failure or disappointments.

They swoop in to save the day every time their children face the slightest challenge.

They clean their kid's messy rooms and pick up everything after them.

They pack their kid's backpacks every night to make sure nothing is forgotten.

They do their kid's homework or science projects to ensure they will get A's.

They step in and rescue their kid from a poor grade or injured ego.

They would do anything to keep their child from failure, even if it means breaking the rules (or laws).

Micromanagement

Overprotective parents are anxious about their kids' every move.

So they hover and control their children's actions and environments.

They rule over every aspect of their kids' lives.

Examples of overprotective micromanaging include:

They decide what extracurricular activities their child will take on because they know better.

They don't allow their child to veer off and pursue interests they deem risky.

They plan their child's daily schedule and supervise all activities.

They make all decisions for the child without allowing them to think through the options themselves.

They rarely take the child's perspective or preference into consideration.

They only let their child hang out with the "right" friends.

Hypersensitive and Reactive

Overprotective parents are hypersensitive and they often overreact to anything related to their children.

They are overly cautious over activities their child engages in.

They remind their child about safety and danger constantly.

They complain about their child's bad grades and fight with the school to change it.

They are enraged and demand a review when their child is rejected from an opportunity.

They intervene if their child is not receiving the special treatment they feel entitled to.

They go overboard with consolation when their child fails.

Effects of Overprotective Parents

There are many reasons parents shouldn't be overprotective.

The psychological effects of overprotective parents can be significant.

The most notable one is that it hurts their children's growth and development into well-adjusted, independent adults.

Here are the different ways this harm manifests.

Worry and Anxiety

Worry is a recurrent, dysfunctional and rigid form of negative thinking that is often a primary sign of generalized anxiety disorder.

Studies have consistently found that overprotected children are more prone to worry and anxiety.

Overprotective parents may overparent their children because of their own bias toward threats, increased perception of danger, and elevated sensitivity to their child's distress.

Lack of Coping Skills

Parental overprotection can undermine a child's development of independent coping skills.

To learn effective coping strategies, children must learn to adapt to difficult situations.

Some exposure to risks and challenging experiences allow children's coping mechanisms to mature.

These are resilient life skills that will weather future unhappiness, adversities, failures, and heartbreaks.

However, overprotected children are not afforded those opportunities.

They are put in a bubble away from the real world and shielded from the hurtful realities.

Children who are accustomed to having their parents make their plans and clean up their messes are unprepared to deal with what life may throw their way.

They crumble easily under pressure from minor challenges and major obstacles alike.

Social Anxiety and Phobia

Overprotectiveness conveys to the child a sense that the world is dangerous.

It reinforces avoidance and keeps children from engaging in social situations restricting the opportunities to build friendships and learn social skills.

Children raised with overprotective parenting tend to have less competent social skills.

These children are also more likely to suffer from social anxiety or social phobia, which is characterized by fear and avoidance of social situations.

This condition is usually accompanied by an excessive preoccupation with fears of rejection, criticism, or embarrassment.

Fearful of Failure

Overprotective parents go out of their way to make sure their children don't fail.

They rescue their children quickly and provide them with unnecessary assistance, often without being asked.

A child from an overprotective family is afraid to make mistakes.

Fearing failure, hurt, or rejection, they are reluctant to get out of their comfort zone to try something new.

The child may shy away from opportunities. Instead of navigating hardships and solving problems on their own, these children become dependent on their parents.

Their unwillingness to spread their wings and fly prevents them from becoming competent individuals.

Depression & Psychological Wellbeing

Parental overprotection is associated with prescription medication use for depression and the recreational consumption of pain pills in college students.

Low Self-esteem & Self-motivation

Besides higher occurrence of anxiety and depression, overprotected children also have lower self-esteem and confidence in their ability to solve everyday problems.

A person's sense of self or self-esteem is largely based on how other people treat them in interactions.

Constantly monitored and protected children are given the message they are not capable, or good enough to manage life by themselves.

Without the chance to prove to themselves that they can take responsibility, these children cannot take full credit for their accomplishments to develop a sense of autonomy and competence.

As a result, they lack resilience, self-efficacy, and self-motivation that are essential to face the world on their own.

Bullying Target

Overprotective parenting is associated with high degrees of bullying experienced by the child in school.

Overprotected children are often treated as younger than their age.

Indecisive

Children from overprotective households are indecisive.

Kids need the opportunities to practice decision-making, but overprotected children are never allowed to make their own choices in life.

Without practice or preparation, they grow up not knowing how to make major decisions.

These children either do not know how to make such a decision or they are afraid of making the wrong one.

They have learned to be dependent on their parents to make all the choices for them.

For example, a college student who perceives their parents as overprotective experiences more career indecision than those who have found their parents more encouraging of their independence in childhood.

Entitlement & Maladaptive Narcissism

Studies have shown that parental overprotection is associated with narcissism in young adulthood.

The extreme levels of responsiveness, help, and intervention from protective parents teach their children that they are exceptionally important.

Psychologists have found that when parental responsiveness is not given at age-appropriate levels, the child, or adult child, is more likely to develop pathologically narcissistic traits.

Functional Somatic Symptoms

Overprotected adolescents are more likely to develop Functional Somatic Symptoms (FSS).

The most prevalent FSS in children and teenagers are pain, fatigue, and gastrointestinal problems.

Delinquency

One of the most damaging aspects of overprotection is when it is combined with low care ( emotional neglect) parenting.

When overprotective parents exert high control and low emotional responsiveness, they are authoritarian parents.

Overprotective and Other Parenting Styles

All good parents are protective parents, but not all protective parents are overprotective.

Overprotective parents are sometimes called helicopter parents because they hover over their children at all times.

Overprotective parents who are low in parental care and warmth are controlling parents or authoritarian parents.

These four parenting types have some overlap in characteristics, and therefore people sometimes use them interchangeably.

But they may mean different things depending on who you talk to.

Among the four parenting styles, authoritarian parenting is the only clearly defined psychology construct. It is characterized by high control and low warmth.

The overprotective, helicopter, and controlling parenting styles are not well defined, but they have one thing in common - high control.

Other than the control part, these terms are not precisely established or consistently studied in psychology.

The word "overprotective" implies the parents aim to protect while the word "controlling" implies the parents aim to control.

So these two parenting types may have some fundamental differences in terms of intention.

Overprotective parents are anxious about their children's health and safety.

They use control to achieve their goals of safekeeping.

But controlling parents are authoritarian parents.

They just want to control without a good cause.

Regardless of the terms, to not impede children's development, parents should avoid smothering their children and foster a healthy sense of competence in them.

Adopting a warm, responsive, and high-standard parenting style (i.e. authoritative parenting) is the best thing parents can do to protect their children in the long term.

Final Thoughts On Overprotective Parents

If a parent finds it hard to let go of control, they may be also a controlling parent - find out the characteristics of controlling parenting.

To raise resilient children, parents provide a safe haven in times of stress as well as during periods of calm.

Set boundaries but also allow for adaptability.

Only when kids have the opportunities to interact effectively with the outside world can they develop into capable, resilient, and socially responsive future generations.

References

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Overprotective Parents - Causes, Signs and Effects

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Overprotective parents show excessive guarding behavior when the actual risk level in their environment is low. Find out their signs and effects.

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Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality. He is regarded as one of the most influential - and controversial - minds of the 20th century.

Sigismund (later changed to Sigmund) Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor in the Czech Republic). His father was a merchant. The family moved to Leipzig and then settled in Vienna, where Freud was educated. Freud's family were Jewish but he was himself non-practising.

In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital. He collaborated with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by the recall of painful experiences under hypnosis. In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot. On his return to Vienna the following year, Freud set up in private practice, specialising in nervous and brain disorders. The same year he married Martha Bernays, with whom he had six children.

Freud developed the theory that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them. In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. In 1900, his major work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was published in which Freud analysed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences.

In 1902, Freud was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. Although the medical establishment disagreed with many of his theories, a group of pupils and followers began to gather around Freud. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded with Carl Jung, a close associate of Freud's, as the president. Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.

After World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history, art, literature and anthropology. In 1923, he published 'The Ego and the Id', which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the 'id, the 'ego' and the 'superego'.

In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London with his wife and daughter Anna.

Freud had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw in 1923, and underwent more than 30 operations. He died of cancer on 23 September 1939.

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Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality. He is regarded as one of the most influential - and controversial - minds of the 20th century.

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Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and a theory explaining human behavior.

Freud believed that events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our personality. For example, anxiety originating from traumatic experiences in a person's past is hidden from consciousness and may cause problems during adulthood (neuroses).

Thus, when we explain our behavior to ourselves or others (conscious mental activity), we rarely give a true account of our motivation. This is not because we are deliberately lying. While human beings are great deceivers of others; they are even more adept at self-deception.

Freud's life work was dominated by his attempts to penetrate this often subtle and elaborate camouflage that obscures the hidden structure and processes of personality.

His lexicon has become embedded within the vocabulary of Western society. Words he introduced through his theories are now used by everyday people, such as anal (personality), libido, denial, repression, cathartic, Freudian slip, and neurotic.

Who is Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1856, in what is now Příbor, Czech Republic (then part of the Austrian Empire), is hailed as the father of psychoanalysis. He was the eldest of eight children in a Jewish family.

Freud initially wanted to become a law professional but later developed an interest in medicine. He entered the University of Vienna in 1873, graduating with an MD in 1881. His primary interests included neurology and neuropathology. He was particularly interested in the condition of hysteria and its psychological causes.

In 1885, Freud received a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who used hypnosis to treat women suffering from what was then called "hysteria." This experience sparked Freud's interest in the unconscious mind, a theme that would recur throughout his career.

In 1886, Freud returned to Vienna, married Martha Bernays, and set up a private practice to treat nervous disorders. His work during this time led to his revolutionary concepts of the human mind and the development of the psychoanalytic method.

Freud introduced several influential concepts, including the Oedipus complex, dream analysis, and the structural model of the psyche divided into the id, ego, and superego. He published numerous works throughout his career, the most notable being " The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900), " The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" (1901), and " Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality " (1905).

Despite controversy and opposition, Freud continued to develop his theories and expand the field of psychoanalysis. He was deeply affected by the outbreak of World War I and later by the rise of the Nazis in Germany. In 1938, due to the Nazi threat, he emigrated to London with his wife and youngest daughter.

Freud died in London on September 23, 1939, but his influence on psychology, literature, and culture remains profound and pervasive.

He radically changed our understanding of the human mind, emphasizing the power of unconscious processes and pioneering therapeutic techniques that continue to be used today.

Sigmund Freud's Theories & Contributions

1. Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud is best known for developing psychoanalysis, a therapeutic technique for treating mental health disorders by exploring unconscious thoughts and feelings.

2. Unconscious Mind: Freud (1900, 1905) developed a topographical model of the mind, describing the features of the mind's structure and function. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.

3. Personality: Freud proposed a tripartite model of the human mind, composed of the id, ego, and superego. The id represents primal desires, the ego balances the id and reality, and the superego represents societal norms and morals.
The id, ego, and superego have most commonly been conceptualized as three essential parts of the human personality.

4. Psychosexual Development: Freud's controversial theory of psychosexual development suggests that early childhood experiences and stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) shape our adult personality and behavior.

His theory of psychosexual stages of development is predicated by the concept that childhood experiences create the adult personality and that problems in early life would come back to haunt the individual as a mental illness.

5. Dream Analysis: Freud believed dreams were a window into the unconscious mind and developed methods for analyzing dream content for repressed thoughts and desires.

Dreams represent unfulfilled wishes from the id, trying to break through to the conscious. But because these desires are often unacceptable, they are disguised or censored using such defenses as symbolism.

Freud believed that by undoing the dreamwork, the analyst could study the manifest content (what they dreamt) and interpret the latent content ( what it meant) by understanding the symbols.

6. Defense Mechanisms: Freud proposed several defense mechanisms, like repression and projection, which the ego employs to handle the tension and conflicts among the id, superego, and the demands of reality.

Sigmund Freud's Patients

Sigmund Freud's clinical work with several patients led to major breakthroughs in psychoanalysis and a deeper understanding of the human mind. Here are summaries of some of his most notable cases:

1. Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim): Known as the 'birth of psychoanalysis,' Anna O. was a patient of Freud's colleague Josef Breuer. However, her case heavily influenced Freud's thinking.

She suffered from various symptoms, including hallucinations and paralysis, which Freud interpreted as signs of hysteria caused by repressed traumatic memories. The "talking cure" method with Anna O. would later evolve into Freudian psychoanalysis.

2. Dora (Ida Bauer): Dora, a pseudonym Freud used, was a teenager suffering from what he diagnosed as hysteria. Her symptoms included aphonia (loss of voice) and a cough.

Freud suggested her issues were due to suppressed sexual desires, particularly those resulting from a complex series of relationships in her family. The Dora case is famous for the subject's abrupt termination of therapy, and for the criticisms Freud received regarding his handling of the case.

3. Little Hans (Herbert Graf): Little Hans, a five-year-old boy, feared horses. Freud never met Hans but used information from the boy's father to diagnose him.

He proposed that Little Hans' horse phobia was symbolic of a deeper fear related to the Oedipus Complex - unconscious feelings of affection for his mother and rivalry with his father. The case of Little Hans is often used as an example of Freud's theory of the Oedipal Complex in children.

4. Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer): Rat Man came to Freud suffering from obsessive thoughts and fears related to rats, a condition known as obsessional neurosis.

Freud connected his symptoms to suppressed guilt and repressed sexual desires. The treatment of Rat Man further expanded Freud's work on understanding the role of internal conflicts and unconscious processes in mental health disorders.

5. Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff): Wolf Man was a wealthy Russian aristocrat who came to Freud with various symptoms, including a recurring dream about wolves.

Freud's analysis, focusing on childhood memories and dreams, led him to identify the presence of repressed memories and the influence of the Oedipus Complex. Wolf Man's treatment is often considered one of Freud's most significant and controversial cases.

In the highly repressive "Victorian" society in which Freud lived and worked, women, in particular, were forced to repress their sexual needs. In many cases, the result was some form of neurotic illness.

Freud sought to understand the nature and variety of these illnesses by retracing the sexual history of his patients. This was not primarily an investigation of sexual experiences as such. Far more important were the patient's wishes and desires, their experience of love, hate, shame, guilt, and fear - and how they handled these powerful emotions.

Freud's Followers

Freud attracted many followers, who formed a famous group in 1902 called the "Psychological Wednesday Society." The group met every Wednesday in Freud's waiting room.

As the organization grew, Freud established an inner circle of devoted followers, the so-called "Committee" (including Sàndor Ferenczi, and Hanns Sachs (standing) Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Ernest Jones).

At the beginning of 1908, the committee had 22 members and was renamed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Neo-Freudians

The term "neo-Freudians" refers to psychologists who were initially followers of Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) but later developed their own theories, often modifying or challenging Freud's ideas.

Here are summaries of some of the most notable neo-Freudians:

1. Otto Rank: Rank (1884 - 1939) was an early collaborator with Freud and played a significant role in the development of psychoanalysis. He proposed the "trauma of birth" as a critical event influencing the psyche. Later, he shifted focus to the relationship between therapist and client, influencing the development of humanistic therapies.

2. Harry Stack Sullivan: Sullivan (1892 - 1949) developed interpersonal psychoanalysis, emphasizing the role of interpersonal relationships and social experiences in personality development and mental disorders. He proposed the concept of the "self-system" formed through experiences of approval and disapproval during childhood.

3. Anna Freud: Freud's youngest daughter significantly contributed to psychoanalysis, particularly in child psychology. Anna Freud (1895 - 1982) expanded on her father's work, emphasizing the importance of ego defenses in managing conflict and preserving mental health.

4. Erich Fromm: Fromm (1900-1980) was a German-American psychoanalyst associated with the Frankfurt School, who emphasized culture's role in developing personality. He advocated psychoanalysis as a tool for curing cultural problems and thus reducing mental illness.

Critical Evaluation

Does evidence support Freudian psychology? Freud's theory is good at explaining but not predicting behavior (which is one of the goals of science).

For this reason, Freud's theory is unfalsifiable - it can neither be proved true or refuted. For example, the unconscious mind is difficult to test and measure objectively. Overall, Freud's theory is highly unscientific.

Despite the skepticism of the unconscious mind, cognitive psychology has identified unconscious processes, such as procedural memory (Tulving, 1972), automatic processing (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Stroop, 1935), and social psychology has shown the importance of implicit processing (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Such empirical findings have demonstrated the role of unconscious processes in human behavior.

However, most evidence for Freud's theories is from an unrepresentative sample. He mostly studied himself, his patients, and only one child (e.g., Little Hans).

The main problem here is that the case studies are based on studying one person in detail, and regarding Freud, the individuals in question are most often middle-aged women from Vienna (i.e., his patients).

This makes generalizations to the wider population (e.g., the whole world) difficult. However, Freud thought this unimportant, believing in only a qualitative difference between people.

Freud may also have shown research bias in his interpretations - he may have only paid attention to information that supported his theories, and ignored information and other explanations that did not fit them.

However, Fisher & Greenberg (1996) argue that Freud's theory should be evaluated in terms of specific hypotheses rather than a whole. They concluded that there is evidence to support Freud's concepts of oral and anal personalities and some aspects of his ideas on depression and paranoia.

They found little evidence of the Oedipal conflict and no support for Freud's views on women's sexuality and how their development differs from men'.

References

Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American psychologist, 54(7), 462.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895). Studies on hysteria. Standard Edition 2: London.

Fisher, S., & Greenberg, R. P. (1996). Freud scientifically reappraised: Testing the theories and therapy. John Wiley & Sons.

Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 41-61.

Freud, S. (1896). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 157-185.

Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E., 4-5.

Freud, S. (1901). The psychopathology of everyday life. SE, 6. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. Se, 7, 125-243.

Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. SE, 14: 159-204.

Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.

Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 1-66.

Freud, S. (1925). Negation. Standard edition, 19, 235-239.

Freud, S. (1961). The resistances to psycho-analysis. In T he Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and other works (pp. 211-224).

Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological review, 102(1), 4.

Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of experimental psychology, 18(6), 643.

Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of Memory, (pp. 381-403). New York: Academic Press.

FAQs

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Sigmund Freud: Theory & Contribution to Psychology

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Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and a theory explaining human behavior.

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Individu yang mempunyai personaliti paranoid mempunyai perasaan sangsi dan kecenderungan untuk tidak mempercayai orang lain, yang akan memberi kesan kepada hubungan individu tersebut dengan orang sekeliling mereka termasuk keluarga, rakan rakan dan rakan sekerja.

Personaliti paranoid adalah salah satu jenis personaliti yang bermasalah jika tidak dikawal. Pakar percaya bahawa personaliti ini dialami oleh hampir 4% populasi.

Individu dengan personaliti ini sering rasa terancam dengan orang lain, oleh itu mereka enggan berjumpa doktor bagi membantu mereka.

Individu dengan personaliti ini mempunyai personaliti yang kuat bersangka, sukar memaafkan dan sering cemburu. Pakar juga mengatakan bahawa individu ini mempunyai sifat pentingkan diri dan sering bermusuhan.

Personaliti paranoid boleh dialami oleh pesakit pesakit mental seperti:

Skizofrenia

Skizoaffektif

Bipolar dalam psikosis

Penyakit Alzheimer

Kecederaan otak

Simptom dan Tanda Personaliti Paranoid

Individu dengan personaliti paranoid sukar mempercayai orang lain. Mereka melihat orang lain sebagai ancaman dan merasakan orang lain mahu menyakiti mereka atau menipu mereka. Personaliti ini menghalang individu tersebut daripada mempunyai hubungan yang rapat dengan orang sekeliling.

Tanda tanda lain ialah:

Sering berjaga jaga

Sensitif terhadap kritikan

Agresif

Emosi mudah tercabar

Suka menyendiri

Periksa Simptom anda Di Sini
Cara mengenal pasti personaliti paranoid

Pakar psikiatri akan melihat samada individu tersebut memenuhi kriteria DSM-5 yang digunakan bagi mengesahkan personaliti paranoid.

DSM-5 menjelaskan bahawa personaliti paranoid sering mempunyai masalah kepercayaan dan keraguan terhadap orang lain. Individu dengan personaliti ini mempunyai perasaan bahawa perbuatan orang lain adalah kerana sifat cemburu dan benci kepada mereka.

Bagi mengesahkan personaliti bermasalah ini, seseorang perlu mempunyai sekurangnya 4 kriteria berikut:

Mengesyaki orang lain ingin mempergunakan, membahayakan dan menipu mereka

Risau tentang kesetiaan dan samada mereka boleh mempercayai keluarga, rakan dan rakan sekerja mereka

Mengelakkan daripada memberitahu orang lain tentang diri mereka kerana takut orang lain akan mengkhianati mereka

Mentafsirkan setiap perbuatan atau kejadian sebagai memalukan atau mengancam mereka tanpa bukti

Menyimpan dendam

Bersikap agresif sekiranya karakter atau reputasi mereka dipersoalkan

Mengesyaki pasangan mereka curang tanpa bukti

Sesetengah kriteria ini hampir serupa dengan kriteria bagi masalah psikiatri yang lain seperti:

Punca personaliti paranoid

Kajian mendapati bahawa punca bagi kebanyakan masalah mental termasuk masalah personaliti adalah multifactorial iaitu pelbagai punca. Oleh sebab itu, mencari punca utama yang menyebabkan personaliti inin adalah tidak mudah.

Namun, kajian pada 2017 menunjukkan bahawa trauma sewaktu usia kanak kanak mungkin menjadi faktor risiko terjadinya personaliti paranoid.

Pakar juga telah mengenal pasti beberapa faktor lain yang boleh mencetuskan simptom masalah personaliti ini dalam usia remaja dan dewasa. Ini termasuk:

Emosi yang dipinggirkan atau tidak diberi perhatian

Tidak diberi perhatian secara fizikal

Ibubapa yang mempunyai sikap amarah

Rawatan personaliti paranoid

Setakat ini, tidak ada ubat yang diluluskan bagi merawat personaliti paranoid. Kebanyakan doktor mencadangkan menggunakan ubatan sama bagi merawat masalah personaliti seperti personaliti borderline kerana dua personaliti ini mempunyai kriteria yang sama iaitu agresif dan bermusuhan terhadap orang lain.

Walaupun begitu, pakar psikiatri boleh memberikan individu dengan personaliiti paranoid ubatan berikut:

Anti psikosis seperti Risperidone, Olanzapine

Penstabil mood seperti Lithium, Valproate

Anti depresi seperti Escitalopram dan Fluoxetine

Selain daripada itu, seperti kebanyakan masalah psikiatri yang lain, rawatan dari segi ubatan sahaja tidak cukup bagi mengawal pesakit. Pakar mencadangkan bahawa kaedah terapi kognitif dan akhlak boleh membantu mengurangkan simptom personaliti paranoid.

Tujuan utama terapi adalah untuk:

Menggalakkan individu dengan masalah ini percaya dengan orang lain

Mendidik individu dengan masalah ini agar tidak mempersoalkan kesetiaan ahli keluarga dan rakan rapat mereka

Menghalang individu dengan personaliti ini supaya tidak mengganggap komen yang dilemparkan oleh orang lain sebagai ancaman

Mengubah respons individu dengan personaliti ini terhadap kecaman orang lain tanpa marah, agresif dan bermusuhan

Menggalakkan individu dengan personaliti ini agar mudah memaafkan orang lain dan tidak menyimpan dendam

Komplikasi personaliti paranoid

Personaliti paranoid adalah antara penyebab seseorang individu itu gagal untuk maju dalam kehidupan mereka kerana personaliti tersebut mengganggu keupayaan mereka untuk bersosial dan bekerja. Ia juga merendahkan mutu kehidupan dan memberi kesan terhadap individu terlibat, keluarga, rakan dan rakan sekerja.

Individu dengan personaliti ini boleh menjadi ganas, agresif dan membahayakan serta menyakiti orang lain. Sebagai kesan, individu ini sering menyendiri dan tertekan.

Personaliti paranoid sering terjadi dengan penyakit mental lain seperti skizofrenia dan depresi yang mempunyai kecenderungan untuk membunuh diri. Oleh itu, individu dengan personaliti paranoid perlu mendapatkan rawatan dan terapi secara berterusan.
Periksa Simptom anda Di Sini Rujukan:

1. Lee, R. (2017). Mistrustful and misunderstood: A review of paranoid personality disorder. - Pubmed

2. Völlm, B. A., et al. (2011). Pharmacological interventions for paranoid personality disorder. - Pubmed

3. Vyas, A., & Khan, M. (2016). Paranoid personality disorder. -Psychiatry Online

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Paranoid: Punca, Simptom dan Rawatan - The Diagnosa

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Individu yang mempunyai personaliti paranoid mempunyai perasaan sangsi dan kecenderungan untuk tidak mempercayai orang lain, yang akan memberi kesan kepada hubungan individu tersebut dengan orang sekeliling mereka termasuk keluarga, rakan rakan dan rakan sekerja. Personaliti paranoid adalah salah satu jenis personaliti yang bermasalah jika tidak dikawal.

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Sebagai contoh situasi, katakanlah terdapat ahli keluarga yang menawarkan pilihan makanan kepada anak? Apakah yang akan anda lakukan? Mesti anda akan tolong pilih dan jawabkan 'bagi pihak' anak, bukan?

Tetapi tahukah anda, ia sebenarnya hanya akan mewujudkan rasa tidak yakin untuk anak dalam melakukan sebarang interaksi sosial untuk tempoh jangka masa panjang.

Berikanlah peluang kepada anak anda untuk membuat dan menyatakan pilihan mereka sendiri. Bantu anak untuk menjadi lebih berkeyakinan!

Pernah tak anda mengalami masalah dan ia memberikan kesan kepada individu di sekeliling anda? Sebagai contoh, anda mungkin berdepan masalah berat badan dan anda tidak mahu anak-anak mengalami masalah yang sama.

"Jangan makan keropok tu, nanti gemuk!", adalah antara kata-kata yang mungkin anda ucapkan. Namun tanpa disedari, anda mungkin bersikap terlalu kritikal sehingga menimbulkan rasa negatif dalam diri anak anda.

Cara yang lebih baik adalah dengan menjelaskan kepadanya apa yang mungkin berlaku dan memberi ruang kepadanya dalam membuat keputusan yang diingini tanpa mempengaruhi pemikiran anak-anak.

Ya, ibu bapa mana yang tidak sayangkan anaknya. Tetapi bersikap terlalu melindungi ada kalanya tidak baik untuk perkembangan anak-anak.

Beri peluang untuk anak-anak meneroka dunianya sendiri. Bersifat melindungi tidak salah tetapi harus dalam cara yang masih terkawal. Jangan berlebihan.

Perselisihan faham antara suami isteri adakalanya tidak boleh dielakkan. Namun, sebaiknya, hindari daripada bertengkar di hadapan anak-anak.

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Sikap Ibu Bapa Punca Wujud Anxiety Pada Anak? - Hello Doktor

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Sebagai contoh situasi, katakanlah terdapat ahli keluarga yang menawarkan pilihan makanan kepada anak? Apakah yang akan anda lakukan? Mesti anda akan tolong pilih dan jawabkan 'bagi pihak' anak, bukan? Tetapi tahukah anda, ia sebenarnya hanya akan mewujudkan rasa tidak yakin untuk anak dalam melakukan sebarang interaksi sosial untuk tempoh jangka masa panjang.

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Kanak-kanak orang tua dengan keperibadian paranoid wujud, walaupun mereka tidak dapat dilihat oleh masyarakat. Mereka mengalami kesan lampiran yang tidak teratur, ketidakstabilan emosi yang meninggalkan tanda dan persekitaran yang tidak berfungsi dengan sangat melelahkan. Ini adalah kanak-kanak yang mempunyai risiko yang lebih besar menderita gangguan jiwa dan yang, selain daripada keluarga mereka, memerlukan perhatian perubatan dan sosial yang lebih besar.

Orang yang mengalami masalah keperibadian, skizofrenia, gangguan disosiasi, dan lain-lain, juga mengenal cinta, mempunyai anak, dan membina keluarga mereka sendiri. Ini jelas tetapi, bagaimanapun, banyak berlalu ke arah keadaan sempadan yang kekal dalam bayang-bayang kerana mereka tidak menikmati sokongan sosial dan keluarga yang mencukupi. Kita bercakap mengenai dinamik bermasalah yang kita tidak selalu sedar.

Kesihatan mental atau profesional perkhidmatan sosial yang bekerja dengan orang dewasa yang sakit harus memberi perhatian yang mendalam kepada anak-anak atau remaja yang membesar dalam persekitaran di mana salah satu ahli keluarga mereka mempunyai gangguan psikologi.

Adalah sangat umum, contohnya, pesakit yang mempunyai keperibadian paranoid mengabaikan rawatan mereka dan juga dicirikan oleh hubungan yang tidak baik dengan mereka di sekelilingnya. Semua ini mewujudkan situasi yang kadang-kadang sangat rumit, di mana kanak-kanak mungkin merupakan pautan yang paling lemah. Oleh itu, adalah perlu untuk bercakap lebih lanjut mengenai realiti-realiti yang berlaku setiap hari dalam persekitaran terdekat kita: penyakit ini kadang-kadang membawa kepada situasi yang memerlukan perhatian dan kepekaan kita.

Hidup dengan seseorang yang mempunyai keperibadian paranoid

Pada masa ini, kita tidak tahu mengapa gangguan ini berkembang. Secara umumnya, ia dianggap sebagai hasil daripada triad kompleks faktor biologi, genetik dan sosial. Perlu diingatkan bahawa Kepribadian paranoid adalah salah satu penyakit psikiatri yang paling biasa, untuk beberapa sebab: ia memberi kesan kepada semua bidang orang, membuat hubungan peribadi, keluarga dan profesional sangat sukar.

Mari lihat beberapa ciri:

Ini adalah profil yang dicirikan oleh ketidakpercayaan tetap.Gangguan ini mula muncul pada masa remaja; Orang ramai memperlihatkan tingkah laku yang mencurigakan yang berterusan dan percaya bahawa orang lain selalu mempunyai niat jahat terhadap mereka.

Mereka masih percaya bahawa mereka akan ditangkap, dikhianati, ditinggalkan ...

Kebimbangan yang berlebihan untuk apa-apa aspek.

Mereka memerlukan bukti kesetiaan dan kesetiaan yang berterusan.

Pengurusan emosi mereka yang buruk Mereka tidak dapat memaafkan atau melupakan apa-apa yang mereka anggap menyinggung perasaan, sampai ke tahap yang teruk menimbulkan rancak yang obsesif.

Mereka adalah hypervigilant.Radar mereka sentiasa "menentang" sebarang kecurigaan, bahaya atau ancaman kepada sesiapa sahaja.

Ketidakpercayaan ini sering membuat mereka membina watak yang sejuk dan bermusuhan. Ini adalah orang yang sentiasa bertahan.

Kanak-kanak ibu bapa dengan keperibadian paranoid

Beberapa kajian telah dijalankan untuk menentukan kesan seorang leluhur dengan personaliti paranoid mengenai pendidikan anak-anaknya. Ia mesti menunjukkan bahawa masalah dalam kes ini adalah dua kali. Kita tidak boleh lupa bahawa gangguan ini mempunyai berat genetik, iaitu bahawa terdapat risiko yang jelas bahawa kelaziman penyakit ini disebarkan dari satu generasi ke generasi yang lain.

Walau bagaimanapun, genetik tidak pernah menentukan 100% risiko mengalami gangguan psikologi. Yang menentukannya paling mungkin adalah persekitaran kita dan piawaian pendidikan yang diterima. Di sinilah masalah sebenar terletak. Sekarang mari kita lihat apa kajian ilmiah memberitahu kita tentang bagaimana anak-anak orang tua dengan keperibadian paranoid berkembang dan matang.

Kanak-kanak ibu bapa dengan personaliti paranoid: kesan ke atas pendidikan

Pada usia dua tahun, kanak-kanak sudah mempunyaipenampilan yang lebih jauh dan penerimaan yang lebih rendah kepada rangsangan luar.

Lampiran yang tidak selamat, tidak teratur dan penuh tekanan menentukan bahawa orang-orang kecil ini memaparkan corak tingkah laku berdasarkan ketidakpercayaan, hiperaktif, ketakutan ditinggalkan, pencarian berterusan untuk penghiburan ...

Satu lagi faktor umum yang mencirikan bapa dan ibu dengan keperibadian paranoid adalah ketidakcocokan emosi dan pendidikan mereka. Mereka boleh menjadi sangat sayang dan, tiba-tiba, menjadi sejuk dan bermusuhan.

Mereka tidak konsisten dengan piawaian dan ini menimbulkan tekanan tinggi dalam perkembangan otak kanak-kanak.

Kanak-kanak ibu bapa dengan personaliti paranoid mempunyai harga diri yang rendah dan imej diri yang negatif.

Kekangan emosi kerana hakikat bahawa ibu bapa telah melumpuhkan keperluan emosi dan emosi merekadari usia muda.

Secara umum, kanak-kanak ini mempunyai pencapaian akademik yang sangat rendah.

Apabila kanak-kanak menyedari penyakit ayahnya / ibu, dia biasanya akan merasa bersalah.

Ibu bapa yang mempunyai personaliti paranoid sering meletakkan halangan kepada sosialisasi anak-anak mereka. Dengan melakukan ini, mereka berusaha menghalang mereka daripada meninggalkan mereka.

Pada masa remaja,adalah perkara biasa untuk melihat kelakuan bermasalah serta tindakan pemberontakan, gangguan kecemasan, kemurungan, dan sebagainya.

Campur tangan semasa

Kanak-kanak ibu bapa dengan keperibadian paranoid sudah pasti memerlukan intervensi psikososial yang diperibadikan. Walau bagaimanapun, kerana kesan persekitaran rumah yang tidak konsisten dan tidak menentu sangat luas, kita tidak boleh berfikir hanya tentang kanak-kanak. Campur tangan harus diberikan kepada semua orang, termasuk orang tua.

Apabila seorang ibu dengan keperibadian paranoid melahirkan anaknya,ia adalah perlu bahawa dia mengikuti psikoterapi berdasarkan peningkatan lampiran.Ibu atau bapa digalakkan untuk membicarakan pengalaman anak-anak mereka sendiri dan menghubungkan peristiwa-peristiwa ini dengan hubungan mereka sekarang dengan anak mereka, sehingga mereka memahami bagaimana kitaran lampiran yang tidak teratur dan / atau tidak selamat itu dilestarikan.

Di samping itu, kita juga harus berusahauntuk menggalakkan pendidikan psycho-keluarga yang mencukupi, di mana rangkaian sokongan yang mencukupi akan ditawarkan kepada orang ramai.Oleh itu, dinamik seperti latihan kemahiran keluarga atau keperluan untuk selaras dengan perasaan, norma, rutin, dan tabiat adalah matlamat penting untuk dicapai dalam pengaturan keluarga ini.

Di samping itu, dan akhirnya, dalam kes-kes di mana anak-anak ibu bapa dengan personaliti paranoid sudah besar dan di mana masalah ini dikesan di medan sekolah, campur tangan psikologi akan sangat konkrit. Kami akan cuba mempromosikan harga diri yang baik untuk kanak-kanak atau remaja dan membantunya untuk mempunyai hubungan positif dengan orang-orang di sekelilingnya, untuk memastikan bahawa dia mempunyai minat yang sihat, dan untuk membangunkan strategi untuk mengurangkan tekanan yang disebabkan oleh penyakit mental salah satu daripada warganya.

Ini adalah, seperti yang kita lihat, situasi yang sangat rumit yang memerlukan sokongan konkrit dan pelbagai disiplin.

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Kanak-kanak ibu bapa dengan personaliti paranoid: penjara emosi

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Kanak-kanak orang tua dengan keperibadian paranoid wujud, walaupun mereka tidak dapat dilihat oleh masyarakat. Mereka mengalami kesan lampiran yang tidak teratur, ketidakstabilan emosi yang meninggalkan tanda dan persekitaran yang tidak berfungsi dengan sangat melelahkan. Ini adalah kanak-kanak yang mempunyai risiko yang lebih besar menderita gangguan jiwa dan yang, selain daripada keluarga mereka, memerlukan perhatian perubatan dan sosial yang lebih besar.

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The behavior of a child grows in a patterned manner just as the body. Like the physical growth, behavior too is strongly influenced by the home and other surroundings in which the child grows up. While we all have a lifetime to develop varying aspects of ourselves, it is the childhood period that is the most important in acquiring many tools. The strongest and the longest environment to affect the child are the parents. Most parents consider it their responsibility as well as the privilege to provide the best possible environment favorable to child's physical growth. However, often they tend to forget about the behavioral aspect in a child's development. The more a parent knows about the changes that take place in a child's behavior when he grows up, the more successful they can be in guiding the child along the complicated path leading to maturity. The attitude of the parents towards a child is what can make all the difference.

In today's time when the society is dominated by nuclear families and so much emphasis is given on family planning, the bond of closeness has been limited within a small family. Hence, overprotection has become the most common emotion to be found in parents, especially in this part of the world. According to a recent survey by GoDubai, it was found that 77.5% people agree that children in Dubai are over protected and unprepared for the world outside (2000). Many of the parents also try to mould their child just the way they are. As a parent, it is very natural for them to try and protect their children from all the possible dangers in their lives. Nonetheless, a distinction must be made between protection and overprotection. Protection means to keep the children out of real danger. Overprotection is t...

... middle of paper ...

...p://tfj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/12/3/243">http://tfj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/12/3/243

Gallagher, Robert (2001) Parental Use of Child Feeding Practices, Retrieved April 2005 from the https://txspace.tamu.edu/bitstream/ 1969/1620/1/etd-tamu-2003C-NUTR-yeley-1.pdf -

Curtois, Christine (1993) Vicarious Traumatization of the Therapist, Retrieved May 2005 from http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/publications/cq/v3/n2/courtois.html

Hamner, James (2004) An address on overprotected parents, Retrieved May 2005 from http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:VhMBcs1ErNwJ:www.stmartinschool.org/headoct04.doc+overprotectio

n+of+children+parenting&hl=en

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Paranoid Parenting: Obsessive Control over Children

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The behavior of a child grows in a patterned manner just as the body. Like the physical growth, behavior too is strongly influenced by the home and other surroundings in which the child grows up. While we all have a lifetime to develop varying aspects of ourselves, it is the childhood period that is the most important in acquiring many tools.

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Extracts from this document...

Introduction

Running Head: PARENTING Paranoid Parenting: Obsessive Control over Children Sanjay Lalwani I.D. No.: 4339 Course name: English Composition II Course no.: ENG 121 American College Of Dubai Date of Submission: 05/04/2005 Abstract This report studies the effect of obsessive control over children. Nowadays, it seems that parents are too over-protective to their children. They place too much emphasis on eliminating possible dangers around their children even before they exist. Those kids face a difficulty in protecting themselves because they have never been given a chance to experience the wider world. Obsessive control over children produces an over-dependency within a child that emotionally handicaps them. Children must be free to overcome their frustrations, solve their own problems, and accept the consequences of their choices if they are to develop the emotional and mental strength required to succeed in school and in the community. This report uses vital information from recent books and websites on child rearing. Views of parents and suggestions of psychologists are also included. Paranoid Parenting: Obsessive Control over Children The behavior of a child grows in a patterned manner just as the body. Like the physical growth, behavior too is strongly influenced by the home and other surroundings in which the child grows up. While we all have a lifetime to develop varying aspects of ourselves, it is the childhood period that is the most important in acquiring many tools. The strongest and the longest environment to affect the child are the parents. Most parents consider it their responsibility as well as the privilege to provide the best possible environment favorable to child's physical growth. However, often they tend to forget about the behavioral aspect in a child's development. The more a parent knows about the changes that take place in a child's behavior when he grows up, the more successful they can be in guiding the child along the complicated path leading to maturity. ...read more.

Middle

Moreover, psychologists feel that by diminishing the children's capacity to deal with danger, overprotection could be seen to increase the risks they face. They say that overprotected children become emotionally handicapped because they are not "psychologically weaned" and have not learned to be independent. (Guldberg,2001) Physically challenged children Physically challenged children often receive special attention than the other children. But, the extra protection and love they are offered might be as harmful as it is for the other children. It will just make them think that they are fragile enough to face any challenges in life. In fact, they have certain disabilities, making them weaker than the other child. Hence, it is moreover important for them to be emotionally and psychologically very tough. They should be just treated as other children in all aspects, including responsibilities and discipline, and they shouldn't be reminded of their incapabilities. Responsibility is a vital preparation for independence in a child's life. "Discipline means providing consistent guidelines and expectations for behavior, with clear, immediate consequences." (MDA,2004) Over indulging The parents today are keen to get over indulged with their children's life. They will do their best to always see their children succeed and never face any kind of disappointment. But taking all the discomfort and disappointment out of development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguidance. With few challenges in all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal circumstances of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment. They lack in perseverance, which may not be just a moral virtue, but a necessary life skill. These turn out to be the spreading psychic fault lines of the twenty-first century youth. Whether we want to or not, we're on our way to create a "nation of wimps".(Morano,2004) ...read more.

Conclusion

Parents should ideally leave their children to find their own feet. The less the adult involvement, the more the children are likely to learn about each other and themselves. They should be left free to make their own judgments and mistakes. The quantity and quality of a child's friendships is a good indicator of her mental and emotional well-being. In all probability, a child who is shunned or disliked by her peers is likely to develop anxiety, self-doubt or some kind of disorder. (Dobson,2004) This calls for more respect than many modern people have: respect for children and respect for other cultures. Too often, we pretend we have a control on truth and wisdom, as if people from other eras and cultures had not been enlightened. We are living in the darkness of our own prejudice, into which we want to force the children. Many of us may like to call this "protection". But, it does not protect; it only limits and endangers. According to the psychologists, a good way of dealing with your child would be by reinforcements. The reinforcements may either be negative or positive. A positive reinforcement would be giving rewards for a good piece of work done by the child. The rewards may be praise, money, a treat or any such thing depending on the likes and dislikes of the child. Negative reinforcement would be taking away something the child likes in order to make him do something valuable. For example, grounding, loss of privileges, a cut-down in the pocket money are some of the common ways of this reinforcement. This could be really useful as children strive harder to reach goals they've set for themselves, and when they have their parents' support. (Morano, 2004) Parents must gain freedom from their fear and guilt about transferring responsibility to their children and allowing them to experience pain. As long as parents are bound in the cycle of overprotection, then their children remain hopelessly bound to them as well. The two are entangled to each other in a paralyzing interdependency that suppresses growth and development. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level Developmental Psychology section.

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Paranoid Parenting: Obsessive Control over Children - A-Level Psychology - Marked by Teachers.com

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Extracts from this document... Introduction Running Head: PARENTING Paranoid Parenting: Obsessive Control over Children Sanjay Lalwani I.D. No.: 4339 Course name: English Composition II Course no.: ENG 121 American College Of Dubai Date of Submission: 05/04/2005 Abstract This report studies the effect of obsessive control over children.

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Chap 9: Civilizing young children: Long-term parenting trends

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Is media can be a reason why parent being paranoid?

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Is media can be a reason why parent being paranoid?

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Give some issue that make parents being paranoid

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Give some issue that make parents being paranoid

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Utah just became the first state in America to pass the so-called "Free-Range Parenting" bill, named for the movement I founded. It declares that parents can't be arrested for negligence just because they let their kids play outside, walk to school or wait briefly in the car.

But do we really need a law like that? "What next?" wrote one commenter. "Utah legalizes drinking from the hose?"

Well here's the rub: In most places, it is still, thank God, totally legal to let your kids do the things we did as kids, like play outside or bike to the store. Most parents who give their kids a little freedom do not get arrested or investigated.

But once in a while, they do - like the Meitiv family in Maryland, investigated twice for letting their kids, 10 and 6, walk home from the park. Or Debra Harrell, the single mom in South Carolina who let her daughter, age 9, play at the sprinkler park, rather than sitting at McDonald's all day while mom worked her shift. For not being at the park with her frolicking child, Debra was thrown in jail for a night and had her daughter taken away for 17 days. Similarly, many parents have been arrested for letting their kids wait in the car a couple minutes while they picked up the pizza or dry cleaning.

In all these cases, the kids were not in any more danger than they'd be walking down a flight of stairs: Sure, they could fall and break their necks. But overwhelmingly, the odds were on their side.

Because we understand that nothing can be 100 percent safe, we have not criminalized parents who choose to raise their kids in homes with stairs. But increasingly we have criminalized parents who choose to let their kids out of their sight.

Why is that?

Chalk it up to the modern and misguided belief that any time kids are unsupervised, they are automatically in danger.

This belief is new. When you were growing up, most likely your parents did not worry every single second you were out that you were in mortal peril.

But six recent developments are not just driving parents nuts with worry - they are inspiring busybodies to frantically dial 911 every time they see a kid on his own. These developments are:

With a 24/7 media cycle, there's no respite from terrible news. And terrible news is what the media look for - the worse, the better, because that means more people will watch. More eyeballs = more revenue for the network. "Up next: Is your child's sippy cup safe?"

No danger is too dumb to worry about - and grab viewers with.

Then the drama shows take real-life tragedies, throw in some terrorists, season with a psychopath and toss it all in the blender of doom. Voila: "Law & Order."

The media glue us to the screen with fear.

2. Our litigious culture

"Your kid broke her arm at recess? Sue!" Lately we have all started thinking like product liability lawyers, convinced that there are no innocent accidents, only people and products who screwed up and someone's gotta pay.

Once you're wired to look for negligence, you find it everywhere. And once you start finding it, nothing seems safe enough. Richland, Wash., got rid of all the swings on its playgrounds after a child fell off and died. Alberta, Canada, banned all bathroom passes on lanyards after a child got one wrapped around his neck and suffered near-strangulation. One single sad, anomalous event is all it takes to freak us out, make a law and/or ban something forever. We have been trained to see the world through the lens of danger, registering only risk, never reward.

Experts in the media have one message for parents: "You're doing it wrong." They sabotage our confidence. They make the world seem difficult and dicey. I just Googled "10 Toy Safety Tips" and immediately found this doozy: "Discard the plastic wrappings from toys immediately; they become deadly playthings to small children." Deadly? Really? So dangerous they must be removed "immediately," like radioactive isotopes?

Even plastic bags don't kill kids unless they cover the mouth of a baby so young that he can't move it away. A kid that young is not opening a package. But of course it doesn't matter if an expert's tips make any sense. All they really have to do is make you scared enough to watch the show or buy the magazine.

Speaking of which . . .

4. The child-safety industrial complex

If you can convince parents that their kid is in any kind of danger - physical, psychological, emotional - you can get them to buy almost anything to make that danger disappear. So it is just good business to frighten parents. This starts the second they bring their happy, healthy baby home from the hospital. Popular new monitors check the baby's breathing, heart rate and blood-oxygen level - tests previously performed only in the neo-natal intensive-care unit. Somehow even healthy babies today are treated as if they are extremely fragile.

Then come all the crazy safety doodads like baby knee pads to keep kids "safe" when they crawl and baby spoons that change color if the food is too hot - as if parents couldn't figure this out on their own. Entire aisles at Babies R Us are filled with safety devices somehow no one ever "needed" until now.

But once you have rewritten childhood as a minefield (even as child mortality rates reach historic lows), you can sell parents anything. They'll pay any price for peace of mind - the peace that the products undermined to begin with.

5. The Illusion of control

This is the biggie. When my mom sent me, age 5, to walk to school, she didn't worry if I didn't text her when I got there, because there were no cellphones yet.

Ironically, now that we can be in constant touch with our kids, we are more nervous all the time, not less, because the minute we can't reach our kid, what kicks in?

Panic! So now, with all the devices that can tell you where your kid is, and how many steps they took today, and what pictures did they post, who did they talk to, how did they do on their Spanish exam and what in God's name are they looking at online, parents have a million new streams of worry.

What's worse, now that you can know everything about your child every second of every day, anytime you choose not to know, you are making a conscious decision to opt out of your role as omniscient protector.

This means that now, if something bad does happen, instead of sympathy, the parent can expect a chorus of haters: "Why didn't she GPS him?" "Why wasn't she watching more closely?" "Why wasn't she with him?"

It is this double whammy of fear - that something terrible could happen (unlikely) and that everyone will blame you if it does (they might) - that is driving parents to helicopter.

It's also driving busybodies to call 911 when they see a child outside unsupervised. They feel the child is in danger and the parents are negligent - even though the crime rate today is lower than when most adults were growing up, playing outside on their own.

6. Hallucinating danger

A fascinating study done at the University of California Irvine in 2016 tried to determine why we've become so eager to arrest or at least shame parents who do the kind of things our own parents did without a second thought, like let their kids walk to the store or wait in the car.

UC Irvine researchers Ashley J. Thomas, P. Kyle Stanford and Barbara Sarnecka asked 1,200 people to rate how much danger unsupervised kids faced in different situations. The only thing the researchers varied was the reason the kids were left unsupervised.

In one survey question, for instance, they presented the story of a child waiting 30 minutes in a car because her mom had been dropping off a book at the library but was hit by a car and temporarily knocked unconscious.

Other survey takers were told the child was left in the car the same amount of time but the reason for mom's absence was different: She was working, volunteering, exercising or (gasp) off to see her lover.

While all five groups of respondents felt the child was in danger, the group that judged the danger the lowest was the group told that the mom was unconscious - in other words, that the mom did not mean to leave her child unattended; it was an accident.

The groups told that the mom was doing anything else felt the child was in more danger, and the group told that the mom was having an affair felt the child was in the most danger.

In other words, "People felt it was more immoral to leave a child voluntarily than involuntarily," said professor Sarnecka. "And once you think only a bad mom would leave her kid in that situation, then your belief about how dangerous it is goes up."

So our perception of danger goes up the more judgmental we feel toward the mom. And now that parents can watch their kids all the time, physically or electronically, not watching them is considered immoral because it's dangerous, and dangerous because it's immoral.

But it is neither.

Teaching our kids the age-old lessons - how to cross the street safely, never get into someone's car, stay alert - ultimately makes them street-smart, confident and . . . safer. These are the kids who can think and fend for themselves. They are the ones who will succeed at college and the crazy economy headed their way.

Utah gets that. It is allowing young people to take on the world by letting them be part of it - and not arresting their parents.

Now it's time for the rest of America to do the same.
Lenore Skenazy is president of the new nonprofit Let Grow and founder of Free-Range Kids.

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Utah just became the first state in America to pass the so-called "Free-Range Parenting" bill, named for the movement I founded. It declares that parents can't be arrested for negligence just because they let their kids play outside, walk to school or wait briefly in the car.

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ack in the days when I was responsible only for myself, I'd commute to work and often just goggle. So many people had, individually, got themselves out of bed, washed, dressed, to a station and on to the right train. The level of collective competence seemed staggering. These days, the feat of someone getting to the office on time and not naked seems like child's play. Now I stop and goggle instead at other people's offspring.

Not because they are doing anything remarkable, but because they exist. Serious accidents have not befallen them. They have, somehow, survived. Their carers have miraculously managed to keep them going all the way until now. It seems endlessly astonishing.

In my limited experience, looking after a toddler is like living in a nonstop, real-life version of Final Destination, albeit a happy and rewarding one. For those unfamiliar with the films: they involve people dodging death, only for their end to find them in some labyrinthine fashion. A typical sequence sees a chap cooking supper in a flat strewn with red herrings - smoking pan, exploding microwave, malfunctioning fire escape - before being finally finished off by slipping on some spaghetti.

Caring for a toddler in your own home is much the same: an obstacle course of mundane deathtraps - a living, breathing public safety film. But it's a walk in the park compared with going on holiday. In France this summer, our son was ill three times (mystery virus, allergic reaction to ant bite, moderate vomit). In an Airbnb in Swansea earlier in the year, I thought I had finally cracked the combination of pyjamas/sheet/fan/window to prevent both overheating and hypothermia, until the door was closed and I noticed that the window opened directly on to a ledge accessible from a sloped roof above the kitchen.

The possibility of passing abductors popping in seemed too far fetched even for me. But what about that cat from next door? And if it did successfully shin up the roof, would it be more likely to savage the baby or suffocate him? After all, "a dingo ate my baby" sounded far fetched in 1980. Such is the circumstance that leads to bleary-eyed research into the incidence of mog-caused tot mortality, followed by tiptoed bedroom re-entry, and resignation to the idea that a woken baby is better than an ever so slightly endangered one.

And this is why I am secretly relieved the holidays are coming to a close, and with them the need to navigate never-ending thin ice. It's also why, when I see a report about, for instance, how at least 20 children have drowned in swimming pools in Germany this summer, I'm amazed the number isn't higher. Everyone knows pools, like stairs, are especially iffy. But you only need lose focus for a second for tragedy to happen. Mobile phones copped some of the blame: parents apparently too engrossed to notice a child in difficulty. But I bet some were Googling "can you overdose on Calpol", or "German word for Lyme disease".

Being a parent involves a constant monitoring of both your baby and your paranoia levels. I'm a relatively elderly first-time mother who has seen a lot of horror films - and I realise I may be late to some of these realisations - but it's not just me who is affected. Parents today are broadly more alarmist, and children are counting the cost in terms of limits to their freedom.

Yet, looked at coolly, much of this apparent irrationality reflects a reasonable reassessment of the value of children's lives. Once, people saw parenthood as an inevitability. Now, as many of us have fewer kids, later in life, people are more heavily invested in what offspring they do produce, both for their own sake and as extensions of their own identity.

Parents are therefore far more concerned about the safety of their children than the children are themselves. Teenagers keen to try tombstoning are happy to gamble with their own lives, but when someone in whom you have invested all you have is your direct responsibility, knowing it takes only one silly incident to lose it all is overwhelming - and accurate.

For our distant ancestors, their own lives and lineages were not their sole stake in the world. Today the self is, for most of us, the only repository of value. If you endanger it, you can't console yourself with the thought that you'll be all right in the afterlife, or that it is the group that matters, not just you. And if that is what's making me jabber madly about cats at midnight in Wales - well, no matter. Better that than even the slimmest possibility of a worse alternative.

Catherine Shoard is a Guardian columnist

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I'm a paranoid parent - and proud of it | Catherine Shoard

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ack in the days when I was responsible only for myself, I'd commute to work and often just goggle. So many people had, individually, got themselves out of bed, washed, dressed, to a station and on to the right train. The level of collective competence seemed staggering.

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In 2001, Professor Frank Furedi wrote ‘Paranoid Parenting’, arguing that a ‘culture of fear’ pervades parenting today, with parents perceiving their children as vulnerable, and as being…

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According to sociologist Frank Furedi we are producing a generation of ‘battery’ children, chained to the TV and under constant surveillance. Try the first chapter of Furedi’s controversial Paranoid Parenting and see if you agree.

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If family life is seen as essentially rotten to the core, which other institution could possibly be perceived as good? If parents, brothers and sisters cannot be entirely trusted, how can we have faith in the integrity of more distant acquaintances? This is the message conveyed on a daily basis through television and popular culture. Not a day goes by without another sordid tale of some professional abusing the trust that has been placed in him or her. The suspicion of abuse that hangs over the family has spread like a disease to infect other institutions from schools to Scout and Guide groups. Where once there would have been an assumption of goodwill, dangers are now seen to lurk.

An editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine claims that sport is 'the last refuge of child abuse'. 'I know it is going on from hundreds of interviews with athletes but it is difficult to get any statistical evidence', writes Celia Brackenridge. Many sporting bodies have issued guidelines about how to spot potential abusers working in their midst. In December 1998 the Amateur Swimming Association, in conjunction with the NSPCC, set up a helpline for children on the grounds that their sport might be targeted by paedophiles like the Olympic swimming coach jailed for child sex abuse. In 1999, the England and Wales Cricket Board issued child protection guidelines. At least one commentator blamed the collapse of English cricket on paedophiles who made parents reluctant to allow unsupervised children to play the game.

Predatory paedophiles have also become an issue with the St John Ambulance service, after three of its officers were jailed for the long-term abuse of cadets in 1998. The British Scout Association has been implicated in sex scandals. After a Coventry Scoutmaster was jailed for indecency offences against two boys and a Hampshire Scoutmaster was sentenced to six years for sexually abusing eight boys, the Association adopted a policy to 'safeguard the welfare of all members by protecting them from physical, sexual and emotional harm.

Even religious organizations have been implicated in this, climate of fear. In Australia, Roman Catholic bishops have sought to ban their priests from having any private contact with children. Guidelines drawn up with the approval of the Vatican mean that confessionals have to be fitted with glass viewing panels. Priests are also banned from seeing any child alone with the door closed. Closed doors and private interaction are no longer acceptable to a society fed on a constant diet of mistrust. It is as if by definition the closed door is an invitation to abuse.

Any one-to-one contact between adults and children has effectively been stigmatized. A guideline published by the Salvation Army advises its members to ensure that 'an adult is not left alone with a child or a young person where there is little or no opportunity for the activity to be observed by others'. It adds that this 'may mean groups working within the same large room or working in an adjoining room with the door left open'. Salvation Army members were far from happy with this rule since many of their activities involve musical practice. Since band members play different instruments at various levels of proficiency, a lot of the training took place one-to-one in separate rooms. Nevertheless, the new order dictates that doors should be left open - and, presumably, ears closed.

A guideline issued by the British Home Office to voluntary organizations recommends that activities 'which involve a single child working with an adult' should 'take place in a room which can be observed easily by others in nearby areas, even if this is achieved simply by leaving doors open'. Scout Association guidelines warn scout leaders to avoid one-to-one situations and contact sports. Guidelines issued by the England and Wales Cricket Board tell coaches not to work with a child 'completely unobserved', and suggest that 'parents should take on the responsibility for their children in the changing rooms '.

The return of the medieval chaperone in Britain provides eloquent testimony to the regulation of adult contact with children. In one case a rector at a village church was forced to disband a choir because of new guidelines on child protection. Up to 20 child choristers met weekly for rehearsals and sang every Sunday at St Michael's Church in Northchapel, West Sussex. The Rev. Gerald Kirkham had to stop recruiting because, under the new code, at least two adult chaperones were needed at choir practice.

Mistrust of adults, especially of men, has had a destructive impact on working relations between adults and children. Many adults have become wary of volunteering for this sort of work. The British Scout Association faces a shortage of volunteer leaders. 'If a man says he wants to work with young boys, people jump to one conclusion', reported Jo Tupper, a spokeswoman for the Scout Association. A similar pattern is evident in primary education. Research carried out by Mary Thornton of Hertfordshire University suggests that men are turning away from primary school teaching because of fears that they will be labelled 'perverts'. Thornton claimed that men on teacher training programmes 'felt they had no idea how to deal with physical contact'. Some of the trainees asked, for example, whether they 'should cuddle a distressed child'. When physical contact with children comes with a health warning, teachers face a continual dilemma over how to handle routine issues in the classroom. In August 1998, the Local Government Association even went so far as to advise teachers not to put sun cream on pupils because it could lead to accusations of child abuse. Lord Puttnam, the inaugural chairman of the General Teaching Council has warned that when teachers are regarded as potential rapists and paedophiles their authority is seriously undermined.

In November 1999, it was reported that 'Teachers, fearful of accusations of any kind of inappropriate touching, are increasingly wary of direct contact with the children in their charge, even if tears are involved.' One school in Glasgow has responded to this 'affectionphobic culture' by introducing special massage classes for children. The idea is that pupils will stay fully clothed and standing upright while they take turns to massage each other's heads, backs and shoulders. While the teacher reads a story, they will also take turns to massage each other's forearms with plain, unscented oil.' A new ritual for an age that dreads physical contact between adult and child.

Fear of adults victimizing children is fuelled by a child protection industry obsessed with the issue of abuse. The NSPCC's Safe Open Spaces for Children, launched in August 1999, advised parents never to make their children 'kiss or hug an adult if they don't want to'. The justification for this proposal was that it would make children confident about refusing the advances of a stranger. From time immemorial, parents have pleaded with their children to kiss or hug grandmothers and aunts. The call to ban this innocent practice is symptomatic of the intense professional mistrust of adult behaviour towards children.

All this hysteria about physical contact actually does little to protect children. By casting the net so wide and expecting child abuse to be a normal occurrence, there is a danger of trivializing this dreadful deed. A climate of suspicion will not deter the child abuser, but it will undermine the confidence of all parents. And at the end of the day, confident parents are best placed to educate their children to deal with risks and danger.
The flight from children
From voluntary organizations to primary education, well-meaning adults are being put off from playing a valuable role in instructing and inspiring young children. At a conference organized by Playlink and Portsmouth City Council in November 1999, the delegates were enthusiastic professionals committed to improving children's lives through outdoor play. But several of the play workers felt that their role was diminished by bureaucratic rules designed to regulate their contact with children. One play worker complained that she often could not do 'what's right' by the children, because if she did not follow the rules it would threaten her career prospects.

Those who work with children are automatically undermined by new conventions that control their behaviour. If it is assumed that professional carers need to be told how to relate to the children in their charge, why should parents - or children - trust them? But it is not only professional carers or volunteers who are affected by this climate of paranoia. Suspicion towards them reflects and reinforces a more general distrust of adults. It is assumed that none of us can be expected to respect the line between childhood and adulthood: that we need to be told what almost all of us know by instinct - children are vulnerable creatures who need protection. This means comforting a distraught child with a cuddle just as much as it means not abusing those young people who have put their trust in you.

The negative image of adulthood enshrined in the new conventions has far-reaching implications. The healthy development of any community depends on the quality of the bond that links different generations. When those bonds are subjected to such intense suspicion, the ensuing confusion can threaten the very future of a community. After all, relations of warmth and affection are inherent in family relationships, and even in relations between children and other caters. If an adult touching a child comes to be regarded with anxiety, how can these relations be sustained?

Is it any surprise that many adults are literally scared of badly behaved children. Take the following scene on the lawn of one of Britain's leading universities. Over 200 law lecturers and students are waiting for an official photograph to be taken. A young girl cycles up to the group and plonks herself down in front of the group and refuses to move. She is asked politely to move, but still refuses to do so. Not a single adult in this large group dares to intervene, reprimand the young girl or physically move her on. Afterwards, the lecturers justify their paralysis on the grounds that they feared accusations of assault or abuse if they had attempted to move her out of the way. In this stand-off the young girl emerges as the winner. Twenty minutes later, bored with her easy victory over the disoriented adults, the girl leaves of her own accord.

It should really come as no surprise that some children have begun to play off this general distrust of adults to make life difficult for those they don't like. Most children are enterprising creatures, for whom adult insecurities provide an opportunity to exercise their power. Every year hundreds of teachers face false allegations of abuse. A teacher wept openly at the April 2000 conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers as he recounted his three months of agony after being falsely accused of punching a 12-year-old pupil. Other teachers recounted cases of false accusation and demanded that school staff should not be treated as guilty until proven innocent. It is tempting to blame malicious children for making life hell for some of their teachers. But it is not really their fault. They are merely manipulating a dirty-minded world created by obsessive adults.

The distrust of adult motives has encouraged a flight from children: a distancing between the generations. In some cases it has led to an avoidance of physical contact, in others the reluctance to take responsibility. The flight from children expresses adult confusions about how to relate to younger generations. Elderly people in particular are often unclear about what is expected of them in dealing with children. An 82-year-old man with numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren provides a classic illustration of this dilemma:

I was in a shop and this woman came in who the wife knew, with her little granddaughter. I was eating a sweet, and this little girl looked up at me, so I said, 'would you like a sweetie, duck?' She got all scared and jumped back. And I said, 'well that's the best thing you want to do. Never take a sweetie off nobody'. She done right, but it made me feel cheap, like. It made me feel awful really, to think I was offering a little girl a sweet. And I love kiddies. In the paper you hear there's horrible people about and it's awful, but it made me feel right cheap.

This octogenarian has internalized the new mood of suspicion towards adult motives. His mental retreat from following his well-meaning instincts towards the young girl is part of a general pattern. Sadly, this flight from children means that adult collaboration in raising the young rests on a fragile foundation. Parents of course cannot flee from their children. They are left to deal with the damage caused by the erosion of adult solidarity. They are truly on their own. The decline of adult solidarity means that parents must pay the cost for society's estrangement from its children.
Parents on their own
More than ever parents are on their own. According to Professor John Adams of University College, London, we live in an age of hypermobility, where the car has facilitated a new level of social dispersal. Adams believes that hypermobiliry has led to the increased anonymity of individual households, a decline of conviviality towards our neighbours, a less child-friendly environment and the emergence of parental anxieties towards children's outdoor safety. His concerns are echoed by numerous studies that confirm a palpable sense of social isolation. A survey published by the Royal Mail in 1999 revealed that people now live further away from relatives - though the majority still live within an hour's journey. A quarter of respondents aged under 35 rarely or never spoke to their neighbours. Nearly a third of these respondents said that they would only offer to help neighbours if it was absolutely necessary, and did not want to know them any better. This indifference towards the fate of neighbours underlines the absence of communal affinity. We often live in neighbourhoods without neighbours. The absence of an obvious network of support has important implications for the way that adults negotiate the task of child-rearing.

The theme of social isolation is a familiar one to most parents. Mothers and fathers complain about an uneasy sense that they are 'on their own'. Many mothers, especially those who work, are preoccupied with what could go wrong with their childcare arrangements. When there are no relatives near, and you are not on first-name terms with your neighbours, who is to pick up your child when your meeting runs late? Who can stay home and nurse a child off school for two weeks with chickenpox? The absence of an obvious back-up, the tenuous quality of friendship networks and the difficulty of gaining access to quality childcare all helps to create the feeling that life is one long struggle, increasing tensions within the household.

The fragmentation of family relations and the diminished sense of community have inevitably helped to make parents feel insecure. Not knowing where to turn in case of trouble can produce an intense sense of vulnerability - especially among lone parents who feel that they are literally on their own. The isolation of parents is not simply physical. The erosion of adult solidarity transforms parenting into an intensely lonely affair. A climate of suspicion serves to distance mothers and fathers from the world of adults. In turn, this predicament invites parents to be anxious and over-react - not just to the danger they see posed by strangers, but to every problem to do with their youngsters' development. As we shall see, paranoid parenting now embraces almost every aspect of child-rearing.

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If family life is seen as essentially rotten to the core, which other institution could possibly be perceived as good? If parents, brothers and sisters cannot be entirely trusted, how can we have faith in the integrity of more distant acquaintances? This is the message conveyed on a daily basis through television and popular culture.

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Go to school after so long lockdown

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A mom do not allow his son to eat a half-cooked steak