Jenni Bristow

Being pregnant today means obeying an increasing number of rules. No smoking, drinking, or recreational drugs; avoiding particular foods; worrying about hair dye; worrying about prescription drugs—in fact, worrying about most things. Including worrying about worrying—because stress is supposed to be bad for a developing fetus too.

Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University in California, has criticized “highly educated parents and academic schools” for producing, in the words of a Sunday Times headline, a “generation of no-copers” who achieve perfect grades in school but “cannot cope with the real world.”