Annalisa Barbieri
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/ 22 September 2004

No hurry to grow up

Two recent studies have shown we now become adults much later in life. Adulthood being judged not on the budding of breasts (which these days applies to both sexes) or the ability to vote, but on when one moves away from home, is financially independent or starts a family. But it seems we’ve got it all the wrong way around. We want children to grow up really fast, and as adults we want to be the children we never were.

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/ 2 June 2004

What were they thinking?

Thursday July 7 1966 was a particularly hot and muggy day in London. My mother had just given birth to me and in the bed next to her was a woman who had also had a baby. ”What are you going to call him,” my mother asked, as she lent over to look. ”Strawberry,” replied the woman, aglow with original thought. But giving a children exotic or unusual monikers actually reveals a singular lack of imagination.