LONDON: In the seething, elbowing, cursing, foot-aching maelstrom of the Merrie Christmas shopping experience, a piercing cry goes up from along the aisle. You look over and there is a harassed, desperate woman -- occasionally a man -- on the edge of losing it completely with a child who is having a tantrum. The tot, or schoolchild, is furiously demanding something on the shelf. It is too expensive, or it is too full of sugar or fat, and the parent is trying to say no. Childless shoppers often look disgusted at the lack of control. Anyone with kids will roll a sympathetic eye.

For, mostly, the parent will give in, and it's hardly surprising. On one side, a £30bn child-orientated market, armed with the latest multimedia weapons to lure, catch and keep the inner life of a small son or daughter. On the other side, a busy, guilty, stressed individual parent trying to avoid an embarrassing scene. Who do you think is going to win?

Everyone, it seems, agonises about the condition of modern childhood. Ministers pile new demands on the British curriculum, aimed at making them better-informed citizens, multi-lingual, numerate and with a sense of history. Asbos and parenting classes are used as the sticks and carrots for failing families. The clergy do their utmost to get the kids back into a religious framework. Conservatives try to restore traditional marriage, as a way of giving today's children the kind of upbringing that some -- some -- enjoyed in the 50s. On all sides there is a ferment of interest in the childhood question.

Some of that is useful, some less so; but it omits the biggest influence on modern children, which is not the school curriculum, the lectures of the faithful, panics in the press, ministerial initiatives or even family ethos. No, the biggest influence is marketing; the power of brands that invades the minds of the youngest. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service