Catherine Deveny on Pernickety Parents

The obsession with the perfect diet, germ-free homes, selective socialising, harm minimisation through choice of the correct fabrics, risk minimisation with helmets, knee and elbow pads, stranger danger and safe searches, baby gym and co-ordination augmentation is suffocating our children and oppressing women.

There has never been more time, energy and thought spent on the raising of babies, toddlers and children, and it is detrimental, counterproductive and narcissistic. Join 1970s parent Catherine Deveny, as she espouses the benefits of benevolent neglect, quality boredom and independence as a result of parental indifference, and rails against the obsession with child-rearing that is leading to a dysfunctional co-dependence – which inevitably affects us all.

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Sometimes there’s nothing better than a good rant. Every Thursday, the Wheeler Centre hosts an old-fashioned Speakers’ Corner in the middle of the city, where writers and thinkers can have their say on the topics that won’t let them sleep at night.

Featuring some of our most compelling voices across just about every sector of human endeavour you can imagine, the themes dominating Lunchbox/Soapbox are proudly idiosyncratic. BYO lunch. Ideas provided.