Regarding young children as an unfortunate interruption in the workings of a political economy radically disregards the building bricks through which a society is constructed

At the end of November the coalition announced changes to parental leave, allowing up to a year of leave to be shared between those caring for the baby. It is discouraging that this idea is still resisted by captains of industry who see the scheme as producing ‘chaos’, a threat reliably produced by anyone who feels that their comfortable arrangements with the world are about to be threatened, writes Mary Evans. Sadly, and perhaps disastrously, child centred education, indeed, the very idea of the toleration of a state called childhood, appears to be under attack.