My response as I devoured Toxic Childhood [by Sue Palmer] in record time alternated between ‘oh dear’ and ‘phew’. The ‘oh dears’ were related to the many challenges facing children and their parents in the world we are unwittingly creating today. The ‘phews’ were that many of the solutions suggested are much easier to carry out when there is a parent around for the children a lot of the time, which I am. Lastly, she briefly offers a critique of modern economics as another key ingredient in the toxic elixir. Noting that if our culture is to have a future it needs "family-friendly economies, not economy-friendly families" (p. 155), she discusses the dangers to children posed by the reverence of the developed world for money, material wealth, and the marketing and advertising industry which treats young people strictly as potential consumers.

Mitchell (1971) criticised Parson's male-focused view of the family. By the 1970s, across the western world, a variety of family structures (single parent, lone person, extended, etc.) had emerged to rival the traditional nuclear family. There is some good news in this book. There are fewer TVs in childrens’ bedrooms than when the first edition was published in 2006. The bad news is that this is because of the increase in handheld devices which children are using in their bedrooms, having eaten their individually microwaved meals on their own, after being driven home from school and kept indoors. The subtitle of the book, ‘How the modern world is damaging our children and what we can do about it’, sums up the content of the book brilliantly. It is worth reading for the suggestions alone. Reading through the ‘life skills for children to learn by the age of 6 or 12’ made me realise that actually I could expect a bit more of my children. According to the industry’s own regulator, the Gambling Commission, around 450 000 children, or one in six of all those aged 11-15 now gamble at least once a week.Child and adult worlds are separated – they have different social spaces – playground and school for children, work and pubs for adults. The language Palmer uses to describe the poor is often nothing short of derisive. She implies that “those at the bottom of the social heap” are mainly alcoholics and drug addicts to whom “sociable chitchat with a child is an unthinkable waste of time.” She downright dehumanises impoverished children, labelling them “feral” (although this treatment isn’t exclusive to the poor as, in other chapters, we see children described as “barbarians” and “miserable little creatures”) and more or less writes them off, despite the “mind the gap” sections’ apparent aim being to help. National guidelines on screen-based technology for children up to the age of 12, produced by recognised authorities in child health and development.

One in six children in the developed world is diagnosed as having 'developmental or behavioural problems' - this book explains why and shows what can be done about it. The recent growth of the idea of ‘rights of the child’ has given children more of a voice in society. It was also refreshing to see someone who believes that the use of text language won’t negatively impact a child’s general ability to read and write.Although her argument is somewhat underdeveloped, Palmer identifies a few underlying causes of all this. The bond between the parent and child formed in the first eighteen months of life creates the opportunity for the "dance of communication" which lies at the heart of child development. It is in the prolonged gaze between the parent and child that the parent responds to the most innate and fundamentally human questions the child silently expresses. When this "dance" occurs, neural networks open up in the child's brain, enabling more fluent communication. But this process demands the presence of a parent or steady care-giver, which no amount of money or quality programming can replace. Without concerted action, our children’s physical and mental health will continue to deteriorate, with long-term results for UK society that are frankly unthinkable. Along with changing attitudes, social policies and specialist institutions emerged which gradually changed the status of children. Marxists are critical of Parsons' views on socialisation. Althusser (1998) argued that the family was one of the best places to learn how to think and behave in a capitalist system.