Telegraph | Opinion | A 'civilisation' afraid to comfort children: "Across the country, families will be going through the annual return-to-school ritual. Filled with the optimism of a fresh start, caring parents will ruffle their offspring's hair, stick an apple in their satchel and wave them off at the gate as they run, care-free, down the road to school.
Or rather, this being 2004, the procedure will involve chucking a Krazy Cheez Dipper into the Marilyn Manson lunchbox, before bodily lifting them away from the computer, where they are downloading the new Libertines album on to their iPod, and hurling them into the 4x4 for the treacherous 200-yard drive to school, hoping that they might just breakfast on a Pop-Tart on the way"