‘Ah, young love!’ (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

There’s a creepy aspect of childrearing I can’t believe still happens.

Almost every parent, in my experience, is guilty of it.

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Most grandparents as well.

Strangers, too – in fact, they’re usually the worst.


It prematurely sexualises our infant kids, scandalously before they can even string a sentence together.

How anybody, in 2017, can possibly think it’s appropriate to eroticise our sweet, pint-sized sucklings in such a way is beyond me.

Our cherished offspring must be guarded at all costs from this plague of pernicious perversity.

Let kids be kids (Picture: Getty)

And no, it isn’t make-up, beauty pageants or John Lewis baby bras.



The last time I witnessed it – incredibly – was only yesterday, in the alleged safe space of my two-year-old’s nursery.

I arrived to collect him as usual at 4pm when a – seemingly normal – mummy arrived simultaneously to pick up her daughter.

We exchanged pleasantries and entered the playroom only to find my lad and her little girl were giggling and chasing each other around the crafts table.

The pale spring sun glinting through the double glazing as it caressed their adorable, chuckling faces was as pure and perfect a vignette of innocence as one could ever wish to behold.

Yet, for some ungodly reason, the mother saw fit to proffer a matey nudge – eyebrow cocked, head conspiratorially bowed – and callously blurt: ‘Ah, young love eh?’

Sleazebag (Picture: Getty)

Reader, I nearly dropped my nappy bag.

Was this stranger, this deviant, implying that my darling blue-eyed spawn had less-than-honourable intentions toward her wretched daughter?

Was she suggesting – nay, positively encouraging – these tykes, all baby teeth and snot-noses, to shack up?

I couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d dropped to the playmat and mimed a blowjob.

Oh, sure, you might say, ‘it was an innocent ice-breaker dude.’

‘You’re reading too much into it. If anything, you’re the one sexualising kids.’

Well, dear reader, I put it to you that unless we draw a line under this noxious trend of turning nursery into some manner of meat market, an episode of Take Me Out, or Walkabout on a Friday night, then where will it end?

Underage wet t-shirt competitions?

Baby Tinder?

Not on my watch (Picture: Getty)

Left unchallenged, I’m positive this so-called-mother, this lascivious Ugg-booted Jezebel, would have my boy huffing on a Paw Patrol-branded crack pipe within the week.

Stop me if I’m wrong.

So what could I do, in the moment?

I swept up darling, guileless Toby in my loving arms and fled.

To another city, another nursery and another life.

Something must be done, after all.

What kind of parent would I be if I did anything less?

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