Narrowing it down, I think we can place her golden age after the invention of childhood, most likely at some point between the 1870 Education Act and the onset of SATs, electronic entertainment and children's thongs. Our model era must protect children from burgers, ditto working at 14, being killed in the trenches, and - I imagine - from the toxic aspects of evacuation, aerial bombardment and rationing. Most likely, then, we are thinking about the 50s and 60s.

Unfortunately the and the free information (arguably like childhood) has disappeared, and it now just links to her books, which you have to pay for. (I guess times are hard for adults as well as children, especially when you’re used to a headteacher’s salary!)

Marketisation from 1988 has greatly increased the role of testing in schools. This has led to a narrowing of the curriculum as more time is spent on teaching children to jump through the hoops required to pass exams. Professor Guy Claxton Emeritus professor of the learning sciences, author of Building Learning Power

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. The recent growth of the idea of ‘rights of the child’ has given children more of a voice in society. Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein Director of the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media While this appears to be straight-up supporting evidence for Toxic Childhood, you need to be careful how the concepts are operationalised (see * below), also the fact that children are more likely to be taken to hospital doesn’t necessarily mean there is an increase in sleep deprivation, it might mean that paranoid parents are just more sensitive to the issue today, and/ or medical practitioners are happier to diagnose sleep, so this could all be a social construction….The book, as I stated before, comments on everything that most of us would identify as problematic. We probably haven’t said too much aloud for fear of being accused of being grumpy old men or women, or of not being modern in our outlook. The undeniable truth is that Sue Palmer is right and we all must act before it is too late to save this and the previous generation from themselves. Psychological developments dominated childhood studies for most of the 20th century. Child developmental psychologists are concerned with how certain behaviours develop, how and when they develop and to some extent, the influence of the environment on development. Much of the psychology of child development was built upon what was seen as ‘normal’ expectations within Western societies ( Woodhead, 1999).