ThoughtSpurs

Age is a strange thing. Youth is fetishised by advertising. But it has certain disadvantages to the advertiser. Not least of which is that the young don't have the kind of cash that older people have access to. I don't know where our pre-occupation with youth began. Certainly in Victorian society (European) children were something to be seen but not heard. The obsessive protectiveness and doting on children's every whim is a curious aspect of our culture. As recently as my own grandfather's time a child would be sent out to work when they were in their early teens. My grandfather went to work on the shipyards of the Clyde in Scotland just so. My father, likewise, had little more than a rudimentary education in post-war Scotland. The idea of a contemporary childhood is that it lasts into one's 20's. Are we better for it? I wonder. The culture is increasingly narcissistic. Kids seem obsessed with their 'rights' but have little concern for their responsibil...