Analysis: Don't ask the experts

Parents know their child best, right? Wrong, to look at the growth industry that is parenting advice. Every newspaper has its parents' page and resident expert; reality TV shows such as 'Supernanny' turn family dysfunction into 'infotainment'; the Government has launched an academy of 'parenting practitioners', and decreed how many each local council must have in place. At universities, academics specialise in analysing the whole trend.

'Lots of us have become advice junkies; lots of parents are on an IV drip of advice,' says Carl Honore, author of the bestselling book In Praise of Slow. He has just applied his 'slow down' brakes to families in a new book, Under Pressure: Rescuing children from the culture of hyper-parenting (Orion Books, £16.99). As society downsizes to smaller families, he points the finger at 'the culture of soaring expectations, where people think they've got to have perfect teeth, the perfect holiday, the perfect child,' and at the migration of a management ethos from the workplace into family life. Enter the childrearing gurus - 'Parents feel that they don't know anything, but that other people do, so who do they turn to? The consultants!'