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Discover the Impact: China's Hypersonic Missile & Its Effect on Your Investments [WSW Logo]( [Divider] A note from the Editor: Wall Street Wizardry is dedicated to providing readers like you with unique opportunities. The message below from one of our business associates is one we believe you should take a serious look at. [divider] Stories about babies delivered by storks, or grown in cabbage patches, have enchanted generations. But do they still have a place in modern parenting? W When I was five years old, my grandmother gave my younger sister and me a picture book which outlined in detail how a man and a woman have sex to create a baby. We were enthralled. Until this point, our only reference point for where babies came from was Disney's Dumbo being delivered to his mother by a stork. My embarrassed mum placed the book on a high shelf, hoping that would be the end of it. My sister and I, of course, climbed on a chair to get it and continued perusing the pictures, giggling and pointing incredulously at the naked bodies, as my parents awkwardly tried to dodge our barrage of questions. My parents had "the talk" with me a few years later, when they thought I was the right age to learn the truth about sex, childbirth and puberty. Sex education was also part of the curriculum at both the Dutch and English primary schools I attended. But many children across the world aren't properly taught about sex until they get to secondary school, if at all. "There are definitely still plenty of children who are getting folk stories or mythical answers about where babies come from," says Lucy Emmerson, chief executive of the Sex Education Forum in the UK. Could such myths and euphemisms – whether they are classic tales of babies delivered by storks or found in cabbage fields, or more modern, spontaneous inventions – actually affect our attitudes to sex in the long run? And how did they come to be in the first place? A closer look at some of the oldest folk stories about sex and babies reveals fascinating insights into why people tell them – and how we might do better. In Scotland, children placed cabbage leaves outside their homes to ask fairies to bring them a new sibling (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont) In Scotland, children placed cabbage leaves outside their homes to ask fairies to bring them a new sibling (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont) The baby-stealing crane Growing up, I was frequently confronted with the stork tale. Disney films, cartoons and picture books all told me that newborn babies were found and delivered to their parents by these elegant, long-legged birds. The original myth, however, has a darker twist, with the bird stealing – or rescuing, depending on your perspective – the baby. The myth can be traced back to ancient Greece, where cranes, which share many similarities with storks, were associated with stealing babies. In Greek mythology, Hera, the goddess of childbirth, turned her rival Gerana into a crane with an elongated neck because she was having an affair with her husband Zeus. Unwilling to part with her newborn child, Gerana picked up the baby, wrapped it in a blanket, and flew off with the infant in her beak. Over time, the crane was conflated with the stork, says Paul Quinn, senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Chichester in the UK. "There's a link with domesticity because storks nest on people's roofs." Another mythological layer was added by the pelican, which in European medieval literature was a symbol for the Virgin Mary and the nurturing mother, says Quinn. The pelican was also associated with breastfeeding, he says, as the bird is described as picking at its chest to feed its chicks in literature. By the early 19th Century, the stork started appearing in fairytales. Again, it tended to appear as a symbol of domestic life and the family. "Storks have always been associated with family life because they were visibly seen nursing their young," says Marina Warner, professor of English and creative writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. In fairytales, they often come to the rescue of human babies. "The stork finds babies in wells, ponds or marshes and with her beak she pulls the babies out and bundles them in a sling," says Warner. This version was popularised by Hans Christian Andersen's story The Storks, which was published in the early 19th Century. In Andersen's tale, the white birds seek out "the pond in which all the little children lie, waiting till the storks come to take them to their parents". "The prettiest little babies lie there dreaming more sweetly than they will ever dream in the time to come," Andersen writes. "All parents are glad to have a little child, and children are so pleased with a little brother or sister." But there is a cruel twist to Andersen's story: badly behaved children are given a dead baby sibling by the stork as punishment, to make them cry over their "little dead brother". Despite this horrific ending, Andersen's tale quickly swept through the English-speaking world. In Victorian Britain, the stork became a useful way for embarrassed parents to explain the facts of life to their children and conceal the realities of sex and childbirth, says Warner. In its benign form, the stork myth still lingers in popular culture. To this day, a common birthmark on a newborn's skin, caused by blood vessel malformations, is still called a "stork bite", highlighting the tale's influence. A similar confluence of ancient beliefs and parental squeamishness lies behind another colourful myth about how babies are born: the idea that they are grown in cabbage patches. Folk tales provide quick answers - and transmit coded messages The cabbage patch myth possibly originates in various beliefs and practices around plants and fertility. In Scotland, it was common for children to place cabbage leaves outside their homes if they were asking fairies to bring them a new sibling, says Quinn. Women also used to eat cabbages to boost their fertility and ensure a successful pregnancy, he says. Just like the child rescued by the stork, the cabbage patch baby is "found in nature and discovered as part of the natural world", says Warner. In French the term of endearment for a young child is "mon petit chou" ("my little cabbage"), she notes. The story also lends itself to sweet, child-friendly illustrations. A series of postcards published in 1906 by three sisters in New Zealand show a gardener tending to a field of babies growing in cabbage patches. Well-dressed Edwardian couples are shown wandering among the fields, browsing the babies growing there. The gardener picks the chosen cabbage baby and presents it to the couple. Similar tales of children being grown in gardens and orchards exist around the world, such as a much-loved Japanese folk myth about a boy emerging from a peach. For Victorian parents, tales featuring the stork and cabbage patch babies offered a "way to explain things to their children that they couldn't explain to them otherwise", says Quinn. "They didn't know what a female body looked like inside … they just imagined it to be an inverted male body," he says. "So how do you explain that? The natural world is the obvious model to go to." For Victorians, the story of Little Red Riding Hood contained an important message about the risk of talking to strangers (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont) For Victorians, the story of Little Red Riding Hood contained an important message about the risk of talking to strangers (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont) Warner agrees: "A lot of parents wouldn't have understood their own anatomy and would have really struggled to explain the facts of life to their children." The tales provided a handy answer. But parents also used them to transmit coded messages about sex and relationships, she says. Take Little Red Riding Hood, a European fairy tale about a girl who goes to visit her granny, and on the way, stops to talk to a seemingly friendly wolf. During the Victorian Age, parents would tell their daughters this fairytale to warn them not to interact with men they didn't know, says Warner. This was before women had access to any contraception so when it came to romance and pre-marital sex, "the dangers were very great", she says. There was also "real social shame" associated with unmarried pregnancy, she adds. Harmful myths? While the baby-delivering stork remains a popular motif on greeting cards and gifts, it may be hard to imagine 21st Century parents seriously trying to persuade their children that this is how babies are born. But other myths and euphemisms are still surprisingly common, says Spring Chenoa Cooper, associate professor of sexual health at the City University of New York School of Public Health. One reason is simply that many parents are still unsure when and how to talk about the facts. "A lot of people don't know the actual scientific things they should be saying and they don't know how to explain sex to their children." However, euphemisms that feel comforting and safe for parents in the moment can in fact be confusing for children, says Emmerson at the Sex Education Forum in the UK. Parents may find it difficult to correct the story later, and admit that they lied. She recounts how an 18-year-old girl visited a sexual health clinic to ask whether she could be pregnant after semen landed in her belly button. "She was engaging in a relationship but she didn't understand sexual health or her own anatomy," says Emmerson. Cooper agrees that "when people make assumptions based on myths and misinformation, it can have harmful results". In Australia, the HPV vaccine, which is given to young people to prevent cervical cancer, was commonly referred to as the "sex vaccine". This led some girls to wrongly believe that it protected them from sexually transmitted diseases and meant they and their partners did not need to use condoms, says Cooper. Another danger of using euphemisms is that it can set a pattern of not discussing sex openly, experts say, making it difficult for children and teens to confide in their parents. "They might experience assault, and feel they cannot speak up about it, get pregnant and not tell anybody or get a sexually transmitted disease and not treat it," says Cooper. "The fear of talking about these things can cause ramifications for their whole lives." The stork story can be traced back to ancient Greek myths about cranes transporting babies (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont) The stork story can be traced back to ancient Greek myths about cranes transporting babies (Credit: Emmanuel Lafont) Family Tree This article is part of Family Tree, a series that explores the issues and opportunities families around the world face today – and how they'll shape tomorrow. You might also like: Autism: Understanding my childhood habits When to talk to your kids about sex How your family shapes your body image Climb other branches of the family tree with BBC Culture and Worklife. From storks to cups of tea School may not necessarily fix such gaps and misunderstandings. In the US, just 29 of the 50 states mandate sex education. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer than half of high schools and less than one-fifth of middle schools teach key topics for sex education. In the UK, children are taught about relationships in primary school, but it is not compulsory for primary schools to provide sex education classes, which only become mandatory at secondary school. But Emmerson says some school resources in the UK are failing to properly teach children about sex. One example is the video "consent, it's simple as tea" which was created by Thames Valley Police and is widely shown in schools, she says. The video likens initiating sex to offering to make someone a cup of tea and reminds young people that someone wanting a cup of tea (or sex) one day doesn't automatically mean they want it another day. Emmerson says she has received complaints from young people that the video is "too euphemistic and fails to refer to sex at all". "So if a parent was thinking 'if I say nothing, they're going to understand that when they arrive at school', that is probably not the case," says Emmerson. It seems that my grandma was right, then, in giving me that picture book about sex and babies. But for parents who can't quite imagine that level of openness and factual detail, researchers suggest starting small, with short, simple chats rather than a big talk. It is about "anticipating rather than being caught out", says Emmerson. "[It's about] realising that a lot of opportunities will present themselves before reception or nursery to give their children some vocabulary around their bodies and also around their emotions." For example, if a young child asks how babies are born, "it's enough to say that the baby grows in the mother's tummy and comes out of the vagina," she says. "It's not about explaining sexual intercourse. It's just about providing a factual response that isn't a fabrication." "Whenever a child asks you a question about sex, answer it very simply and directly," says Cooper. "You don't need to sit them down and lecture them for an hour… that might scare them to ask more about it." Vital concepts like consent and boundaries can be taught from the start. For example, you can tell toddlers to check before hugging others and explain to them why asking for consent is important, she says. Does that mean there's no place for charming stories about storks and cabbages in modern parenting culture? The answer might be, perhaps, to enjoy these folk tales for what they are – colourful feats of the imagination, handed down by previous generations. In any case, my grandma's book delighted and entertained me as much as any fairy tale – and was certainly more thrilling than the story of the stork. Dear Investor, China has just launched a hypersonic nuclear missile, sending shockwaves around the world. Developmental milestones are an important medical tool – but is our obsession with them causing unintended harm? S Scroll through parenting feeds on social media, and you'll soon come across so-called milestone cards: pastel-coloured cards marking a baby's first attempt at crawling, sitting up, or walking, along with their age. It's not just on social media that developmental milestones have become something to celebrate – or stress over. One recent poll, for example, found that around six in 10 US parents worried about their babies meeting their developmental milestones. But few knew what should happen, when. Other parents may take the opposite approach and pay little attention to the timing of new skills, trusting that a child will develop at their own pace. Which raises the question: what is the point of milestones – and how should parents use them? Are they a crucial tool that can help us spot early on when something is off track? Or are they just another way for parents to "one-up" each other? The answers depend, partly, on what exactly we mean by milestones. For a start, the reasons that healthcare professionals give for their importance can differ from parents' views. "On a very concrete level, a milestone is a description of a behaviour of a child that parents either say their child can do, or cannot do," says Chris Sheldrick, a research associate professor at Boston University who focuses on paediatric screening protocols. He points to the literal meaning of the word itself. If you're in a 10K race, at the 5K point, there might be a marker: a milestone. By definition, at the start of the race, no-one has passed it. By the end of the race, everyone has. Checking an individual baby's progress along those markers can help healthcare professionals assess their development. But since parents know their child best, it can be a good idea for them to know roughly when babies tend to do things for the first time, experts say (though there are important caveats to the idea of typical development, to which we'll get later). When parents take a very relaxed view of milestones – assuming that their child hasn't yet tried crawling or walking simply because they have a more laid-back personality, for example – they may be missing other explanations, healthcare professionals say. Milestones can be a tool for spotting underlying problems, and offering the right support early on (Credit: Getty Images) Milestones can be a tool for spotting underlying problems, and offering the right support early on (Credit: Getty Images) Family Tree This article is part of Family Tree, a series that explores the issues and opportunities families around the world face today – and how they'll shape tomorrow. You might also like: What is the best age to learn to read? What helps adopted children thrive? Autism: Understanding my childhood habits "There are absolutely kids whose personalities impact what they're willing to do. So they might be the ones that are trending towards that later side," says Kaitlin Rickerd, a paediatric physical therapist in New York. "But when it starts to fall outside of the ranges of where it can be expected, there's usually something that needs to be addressed. There's a reason, no matter how big or small it might be." Developmental delays are common, experienced by one in six children in the US. A delay alone doesn't signify a medical condition – one review of 404 18-month-olds who weren't walking independently found that two-thirds had no underlying pathology, for example. When there is an issue, though, intervening as young as possible is key. Delayed speech, for example, can be a signifier of autism, while late walking can be a sign of cerebral palsy. Spotting such differences early can help parents understand and support their child's unique development. "We know that in the first three years of life, the amount of brain growth, the amount of learning, the amount of milestones that a child is acquiring is huge – which also means it's our best window to get in there and make a difference," says Rickerd. There is some evidence that hitting certain milestones early can be indicative of future educational attainment But milestones are more than a tool for spotting underlying issues, she says. After working in paediatrics with older children, she realised a failure to master one skill might have caused a cascade effect. Take struggling to hold a pencil to write: it could relate to weakness in the arches of a child's hands, which could have been impacted by not weight-bearing as a baby, whether through crawling or tummy time, she says. This professional view of milestones primarily as a screening tool differs from how some parents treat milestones in everyday life: as a predictive, sometimes competitive, indicator of ability or talent. Indeed, there is some evidence that hitting certain milestones early can be indicative of a higher intelligence or attaining more education later. But, says Sheldrick, this is true across whole populations, not specific children. If there was a one-in-a-million chance of being a professional soccer player for a typically developing child, for an early walker, it might be one in 900,000, he says. Which milestones are marked and celebrated may vary hugely between cultures and even individual families (Credit: Getty Images) Which milestones are marked and celebrated may vary hugely between cultures and even individual families (Credit: Getty Images) And pushing children to achieve milestones can backfire. There is some evidence that frequent use of baby walkers and jumpers can impede motor development, for example. Even the metaphor of the race with each mile marked by a stone doesn't quite fit the complex reality of human development, Sheldrick points out. If you're watching a race, you know which runners are exactly 1K behind the 5K milestone. You can estimate when they'll hit it. Once they do, you know the exact moment it happened. And every runner who finishes the race will reach it at some point. Developmental milestones don't offer this clarity. Nor are they a universal concept. Their interpretation and definition may vary considerably between cultures – and even individual families. "A good example is 'Can your child walk?'," Sheldrick says. "What do you mean by 'walk'? Can your child walk a mile? Can they walk all the way to the well and back? Have they taken a few steps?" This confusion is why new screening tools, like the updated milestones recently put out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), try to use more specific wording. How do you decide when something 'should' happen? And what data is that based on? Making it more complicated is that children develop very quickly. A child that isn't walking at 18 months might be running by 19. But if the child is only tested at 18 months, they might be identified as not being "on track". Then there's the issue of measurement. How do you decide when something "should" happen? And what data is that based on? The recent change to the CDC and AAP's milestones list highlighted many of these issues. For nearly 20 years, like many other official milestone lists, they based milestones on the 50th percentile – if 50% of children could do something by a certain age, that was the age for that milestone. This meant that the other 50% of caregivers might worry unnecessarily. It also encouraged paediatricians to take a "wait and see" approach for children who hadn't hit a milestone, which sometimes backfired. "Parents of children with disabilities reported delays in identification because they were told to wait, that children develop differently, and that some take longer than others," researchers involved in the changes wrote. As a result, in early 2022 the CDC moved its benchmarking to the 75th percentile. But the risk now runs the other way: with the ages set later, families might notice a child's delay later, too. Then there's the question of where these expectations come from. A boy in Chiapas, Mexico, stacks firewood – which in some families is an important milestone (Credit: Getty Images) A boy in Chiapas, Mexico, stacks firewood – which in some families is an important milestone (Credit: Getty Images) Cultural differences Historically, there's been relatively little data on large populations of children and milestones. In the 20th Century, psychologist Arnold Gesell pioneered quantifying motor milestones by observing babies from white, middle-class families from New Haven, Connecticut and describing their behaviour, movement and expressions over time. Since then, much of the evidence on milestones has been based on Western populations. But early development can look very different in other cultures. In Tajikistan, for example, it's common to swaddle babies as old as two and leave them in a cradle, even awake. Tajik children do acquire motor skills later than their Western counterparts. But they seem to show no long-term ill effects. On the other hand, in the Efe tribe of the Democratic Republic of Congo, babies as young as 11 months use machetes to cut fruit. Suffice it to say that's not on the CDC list – nor do we worry whether US babies can do this. Parental expectations vary, too. One older study from 1997 found, for example, that while European-American parents thought children should feed themselves by 13.7 months, Puerto Rican parents did at 19 months. In rural Mexico, Unicef staff got blank looks if they asked if a child could stack blocks. They had more luck when they asked if a child could stack firewood. Staff at Unicef recently experienced these cultural complexities first-hand. One of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals is that all children should be developmentally on track. As a result, Unicef had to develop an instrument that every country could use. The question, says Unicef senior adviser Claudia Cappa, was, "Can we come up with something that is the equivalent of growth standards? Can we come up with a 'typical' child?" The effort, which sprawled across than 200 national statistical offices, paediatricians, and child development experts, took five years. One of the biggest challenges was how to make the questions universal. In rural Mexico, for example, Unicef staff found they might get a blank look if they asked if a child could stack blocks. They had more luck when they asked if a child could stack firewood. For parents, it might be worth remembering that milestones are meant to be helpful – not anxiety-inducing In one study highlighting the need for a cross-cultural perspective, the researchers are critical of the conventional view of milestones. "Motor milestones are millstones to a 'whole-child' approach to development," they write. "Motor milestones are only a perceived version of what is an important skill; they are cultural conventions, not universals." Today, child development experts are often aware of these limitations – and they are trying to correct them. The CDC's updated list, for example, uses sources like a study of nearly 5,000 children in Argentina, India, South Africa, and Turkey. Still, the question remains: how much data, and how many cultures, need to be represented for a list of milestones to truly be "universal"? And is that even possible? For parents, it might be worth remembering that milestones are meant to be helpful – not anxiety-inducing. "Milestones are important. They're worth paying attention to," Sheldrick says. "If there's something that concerns you, I would follow up on it. But don't freak out." Life, after all, is "long and complicated". And it's unlikely to be defined by whether you walked by 18 months, or 20. [China hypersonic missile launch]( [Here's America's response to it.]( “The Buck Stops Here” Dylan Jovine, CEO & Founder, Behind the Markets Many of us have magical memories of Santa secretly bringing gifts and joy to our childhood homes – but is there a darker side to the beloved Christmas tradition? "You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town." And don't I know it! This is the first year that my three-year-old daughter has fully immersed herself in the mythology of Santa. As she tells me just how Old Saint Nick is going to fit down our chimney, I can see a glint of pure wonder in her eyes that immediately transports me back to my own childhood Christmases. I was – and I'm happy to admit it – a full-blown believer. I absolutely loved the magic of Christmas, especially Santa Claus, and my parents went, let's say, above and beyond to encourage it. On Christmas morning I would tiptoe downstairs to find the fireguard ajar, the remnants of a hurriedly-eaten mince pie on a plate, a reindeer-chewed carrot and a tissue with a red smudge where Santa had clearly polished Rudolph's nose (definitely not my Mum's lipstick). The evidence was, as far as I was concerned, insurmountable. However, as I begin to construct my own Santa Claus myth for my daughter I can't help but feel pangs of guilt. Could fuelling her belief in all this festive magic in some way undermine her trust? In moments of exasperation, I can hear myself invoke the threat of the "naughty list" and I see a sudden flash of fear across her face. It's made me wonder what kind of Santa I want to create for my daughter and, to be honest, whether I should be doing it at all. Belief in Santa has remained surprisingly steady in recent decades (Credit: Getty Images) Belief in Santa has remained surprisingly steady in recent decades (Credit: Getty Images) Fascinatingly, although the modern world feels like it has been stripped of so much of its magic, belief in Santa Claus has remained remarkably consistent. Back in 1978, a study published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry found that 85% of four-year-olds said they believed in Santa. More than a quarter of a century later, in 2011, research published in the Journal of Cognition and Development found that a very similar 83% of 5-year-olds claimed to be true believers. And that is despite Google Trends showing that the search term "is Santa real" spikes every December. I guess it's not all that surprising. The cultural evidence we create as a society for the existence of Santa certainly stacks up. He features in every Christmas TV show and movie, he's camped out in strange little sheds in every shopping centre we visit. Each year the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) allows you to track Santa's journey on Christmas Eve. To reassure children during the pandemic in 2020, the World Health Organisation issued a tongue-in-cheek statement declaring that Santa was "immune" from Covid 19. To be honest, there's more evidence for Santa's existence out there than my own, which is almost enough to trigger a mild existential crisis. And it's precisely this effort on behalf of parents, and society in general, to create such seemingly overwhelming evidence for the existence of Santa Claus that David Kyle Johnson, a professor of philosophy at King's College in Pennsylvania, describes as "The Santa Lie" in his book The Myths That Stole Christmas. "When I say 'The Santa Lie', I am not referring to the entire mythos of Santa Claus, I am referring to a particular practice within that myth: Parents tricking their children into believing that Santa Claus is literally real," says Johnson. He highlights how we don't simply ask children to imagine Santa, but rather to actually believe in him. It's this emphasis on belief over imagination that Johnson sees as harmful. "I definitely think it can erode trust between a parent and a child, but I think the biggest danger is the anti-critical thinking lessons that they are teaching," says Johnson. "Parents who are especially dedicated to 'The Santa Lie' will perform feats of insanity to ensure their children keep believing." This brings a flash back to my childhood, where at eight-years-old I wrote a letter to Santa probing the logistics of his yearly mission, only for my Dad to write back in his best "olden times" handwriting, covering the reply in sooty fingerprints (probably whilst gnawing on a raw carrot). My colleague Rob shared that his Mum apparently found the carrot a particularly disgusting part of the Christmas Eve ritual. For Johnson, it is this creation of false evidence and convincing kids that bad evidence is in fact good evidence that undermines the kind of critical thinking we should be encouraging in children in this era of fake news, conspiracy theories and science denial. "The 'Santa lie' is part of a parenting practice that encourages people to believe what they want to believe, simply because of the psychological reward," says Johnson. "That's really bad for society in general." When magic is no longer the answer, children start to gather evidence – Cyndy Scheibe Interestingly, there are some experts, however, who argue that believing in Santa Claus can actually encourage critical thinking in children. It hinges on how parents support them in the process of eventually discovering and accepting the truth. Cyndy Scheibe, professor of psychology at Ithaca College in New York, and an expert in media literacy, has been researching children's belief in Santa Claus since the 1980s. She has conducted research in three different time periods and found surprisingly consistent results each time. "Kids start to ask questions around four or five, and then really start to have doubts around the age of six," says Scheibe. Each time she conducted her research Schiebe found the same thing, that the average age children stop believing in Santa was between seven and eight. However, it is very rarely a sudden thing. "I found that that process seemed to take about two years for kids to navigate through." Scheibe explains that this transition period, of between seven and nine years old, makes sense because it aligns with the ages when children go from being so-called "pre-operational thinkers" to "concrete operational thinkers". Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget developed these terms to explain how children gradually build up their understanding and knowledge of the world. At the pre-operational stage, a child's idea of the world is mainly shaped by how things appear, rather than by deeper logical reasoning. But that changes as children begin to probe and question the things they see or hear. "A concrete operational thinker wants evidence," Scheibe says. "They begin to mature cognitively, where the story doesn't make logical sense and magic is no longer the answer. Then they start to gather evidence." And it is at this stage that Scheibe says parents need to be led by their children, in order to help them develop their critical thinking skills. "They function as little scientists, testing out hypotheses and gathering data to figure out what's true and what's not," Schiebe says. This is something parents can encourage through asking careful questions. "In media literacy it's all about asking questions. What do you think? How could we really find out? Why do you think people do that?" Scheibe explains. It's often the parents, not the children, who find it hard to let go of the Santa story (Credit: Getty Images) It's often the parents, not the children, who find it hard to let go of the Santa story (Credit: Getty Images) My colleague Amy told me about the evidence that triggered the end of her belief in Santa Claus when she was around seven: "I recognised my mum's handwriting on the label and was totally shocked!". However, Amy said she doesn't remember feeling hurt or betrayed by the discovery. Rather, "it made me feel like a grown-up and that I understood something about the world". Amy's experience tallies with research published in Child Psychology and Human Development that found children generally discovered the truth about Santa on their own at the age of seven and reported "predominantly positive" reactions to discovering this. However, the study showed parents, on the other hand, fared less well, describing themselves as "predominantly sad" in reaction to their child's discovery. And herein lies the major issue for both Johnson and Schiebe: It's not so much children but rather their parents who refuse to let go of Santa Claus. Schiebe describes how throughout her decades of research the only times she saw belief in Santa become "problematic" was when parents continued to perpetuate the belief beyond the time the child was ready for the truth. "I think that one problem is kids are ready to hear the truth, but you're not ready to let go of the truth, and you've got to let go of the truth," Scheibe says. As a father I can understand the draw of keeping hold of the Santa mythology for as long as possible. On the one hand it feels like it's a way of stopping them growing up too fast, of protecting an element of their innocence somehow. On the other hand, Santa has, for many parents – and I include myself in this – become a quick-fix for managing behaviour with his infamous "naughty list". The idea that Santa is watching all of the time can be quite a frightening concept for children – Rachel Andrew It's always been the part of the Santa Claus myth that I have found the most uncomfortable. His presence as a sort of festive Big Brother, an all-seeing eye constantly judging your behaviour as either "naughty" or "nice". And recently this element of the mythos has gained a whole new lease of life, with Elf on the Shelf – described on its own website as "Santa's scout elf" – supposedly reporting behaviour back to Santa, and even fake CCTV "Santa cams" that parents can install to hammer home the message that you are never not being watched. In many ways it feels Santa has become a working model for Foucault's panopticism – a form of internalised surveillance and self-monitoring that no longer requires external enforcement. "For a lot of children Santa can be quite a scary figure. That idea that he is watching all of the time can be quite a frightening concept," says Rachel Andrew, a clinical psychologist specialising in child and family psychology. Andrew believes using Santa's "naughty list" as a behaviour management tool is flawed in numerous ways. "Having children believe they are on an imaginary naughty list for behaviour they have done over, what, an entire year? Three or four months? It's so far against what we know is likely to encourage positive behaviour in our children," Andrew says. For Andrew, the way parents use Santa for discipline is too vague for children to really understand what we are asking of them, and the time frames are often so broad it is unattainable. "One of the issues might be that the discipline is not coming from you as a parent. You're giving it away to somebody who is outside of your own family home," says Andrew. This can open up the potential that your child doesn't see you as the person they need to change or monitor their behaviour for. Also, Andrew sees the age-old threat of Santa not delivering toys to naughty children as realistically unenforceable. "It's not proportionate to any behaviour that a child is going to do, that they might lose all their Christmas gifts. And I haven't met a child yet who's not had any gifts due to their behaviour. It's unlikely any parent is going to follow it through, so it is also an empty threat." Some question the stern message behind the Santa story (Credit: Getty Images) Some question the stern message behind the Santa story (Credit: Getty Images) Family Tree This article is part of Family Tree, a series that explores the issues and opportunities families face today – and how they'll shape tomorrow. You might also be interested in other stories about children's wellbeing and development: Autism: Understanding my habits Why short-sightedness is on the rise How Arctic kids learn resilience There's another uncomfortable by-product of Santa making a list and checking it twice to find out who's been naughty or nice: it builds an idea that gifts are a measurement of their moral worth. "We have so many ways that we perpetuate the idea that people get what they deserve," says Philip N Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. "You're telling [children] that the presents they get are a function of the quality of their goodness, which just seems a harsh lesson in a world with so much inequality." Cohen wonders what happens when children's belief in Santa intersects with their increasing awareness of the inequality around them, especially at an age when they may be looking for explanations for that inequality. "Do you have seven-year-old kids who can see inequality all around them who still believe that Santa gives you presents based on your moral worth?" Cohen asks. "That would be teaching well-off children that they're getting what they deserve, because they're good, and the poor children are getting what they deserve, because they're not good. That just seems like a corrosive lesson for them." As the cost of living crisis bites this Christmas, this feels a more relevant issue than ever. Scheibe believes that one way to combat this is to share out Santa's gift giving responsibilities. "There are some families in which all the gifts come from Santa. Personally I think that's a mistake," Scheibe says. She argues that children should be more involved in the process of gift giving at Christmas. "Have Santa Claus be a piece, but also it's about more than that, it's about giving and receiving and you can get kids involved in that pretty early." So, as my daughter sits down to watch another episode of The Santa Clauses, what kind of Santa is it that I want to create for her? I think I definitely want to be careful that I don't try to stray too far from playful imagination into literal belief. I certainly want to burn the "naughty list" – I'd like her Santa to be more Gandalf, less all-seeing Eye of Sauron. And as she gets older I hope I am prepared to let go of the truth when she is ready for me to, and to encourage her in that journey of discovery. Although I don't believe that means letting Santa go, but rather just initiating a new Santa to the club. A perfect example of this is what Schiebe told me happened when her own daughter stopped believing: "I said: 'So now that you know the truth, you get to be Santa Claus, and you know what that means? You can get up in the middle of the night put things in people's stockings, but you've got to make sure nobody sees you, and it's got to be something you know they want. So then, the next Christmas morning, when I woke up, there were things in my stocking that I hadn't gotten. The look on her face of how excited she was that she had been able to be Santa Claus, that was just spectacular." [divider] [WSW footer logo]( [divider] You are receiving this e-mail because you have expressed an interest in the Financial Education niche on one of our landing pages or sign-up forms on our website. If you {EMAIL} received this e-mail in error and would like to report spam, simply send an email to abuse@wallstreetwizardry.com. You’ll receive a response within 24 hours. 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