Tanith Carey delivers a broadside against hothouse education and tiger parenting.

I became a parent and a secondary school teacher in the same year. During my first decade raising two boys and teaching hundreds of children, I began to suspect that something was rotten. Then it became clear to me: today’s overprotective, failure-avoiding parenting has undermined the competence and independence of an entire generation.

We’ve ended up teaching our kids to fear failure – and, in doing so, have blocked the surest path to their success. Out of love and a desire to protect our children’s self-esteem, we have bulldozed every uncomfortable bump out of their way, depriving our children of the most important lesson of childhood: that setbacks, mistakes and failures are the very pathways to becoming resourceful, persistent, innovative and resilient.

We have ended up teaching our kids to fear failure and, in doing so, blocked their surest path to their success

Modern parenting is dictated by fear. Risks seem to lie around every corner so when we tuck our kids in to bed at night, free of cuts, bruises or emotional hurt, we have, for one more day, found tangible evidence of our parenting success. Maybe tomorrow I’ll let them walk to school, we tell ourselves, but today they got to school safely. Maybe tomorrow they will do their own homework, but today they are successful in maths. “Maybe tomorrow” continues until it’s time for them to leave home.

When tomorrow arrives, and the responsibilities, freedoms and risks inherent in adult life arrive with it, over-parented children will be less likely to manage all of it successfully.