A toxic culture of suspicion is souring our children's lives

It's a kind of Stalinism that promotes the fear of bogeymen, doubts our worth as parents and demands we must prove ourselves to the state before enjoying the simple - and, yes, innocent - delight of a contact with a child who is not our own. A moment should occur in every child's life, when he or she meets an adult from outside the family and that adult takes an interest in them as a person and shows the child that they have something to offer. This is an important part of becoming a successful individual and I imagine most people reading this remember with pleasure - retrospective awe, in my case - when someone outside school and the family valued them for what they were.

Now these contacts are to be policed with a formal structure of suspicion that implies to the child that every adult who has not been checked is a potential abuser. Philip Pullman last week said of the new law, which he likened to Clause 28: "It seems to be fuelled by the same combination of prurience, sexual fear and cold political calculation."

source: Article 'A toxic culture of suspicion is souring our children's lives' by Henry Porter; www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/19/adults-children-paranoia-surveillance; The Observer; 19 July 2009