I asked my mother yesterday how much freedom she had as a child. "Well," she replied, "I walked to my nursery school in Cambridge alone, aged three, and by four I was roaming the fields behind my house."
After that, she explained, came the war[1]. "Your grandfather was away and your grandmother was organising the Women's Voluntary Service; no one knew where the four children were. We spent our afternoons canoeing down the Cam without life-jackets, eating sausages out of tins and, when it rained, we slipped into the cinema to watch unsuitable love stories. No one worried about us, they had more important issues on their minds."
Her childhood sounded idyllic. My mother explained that it wasn't always perfect. She had once been accosted by a man while bicycling to her friend's. "I managed to get away. I carried on cycling to my friend's house and ate my tea; it never occurred to me to say anything until I went home. The police were called but I was back on my bike the next day." My mother took a similar attitude to my childhood. My younger sister and I were allowed to take the Tube home from school across London from the age of five. My sister was hit by a car once when she crossed a busy road to a sweet shop. She broke her leg but, as soon as it had mended we were walking home alone again.
My brothers took the train to my grandmother's in Suffolk on their own from the age of six and spent all day without adults in the park playing football.
Now, according to the Good Childhood Inquiry, children have everything - iPods, computer games and designer clothes - except the freedom to play outside on their own. Two thirds of 10-year-olds have never been to a shop or the park by themselves.
Fewer than one in ten eight-year-olds walk to school alone.
I'm just as neurotic as other parents. I walk my three-, four- and six-year-olds to school every day, clutching their hands. Their every moment in London is supervised, with playdates and trips to museums. I drive them to