You can pick any other creature in the animal kingdom and compare the two. There are loads of examples of animals being born, stumbling through their early minutes of life and then jumping to their feet and wandering off to look for food. This happens all in the space of about half an hour. Human baby? Not so good. It requires constant attention and doesn’t even get off its backside or bother learning how to communicate properly for years. Even when they do they’re incapable of caring or providing for themselves for many, many years after that. Granted, our civilisation’s a touch more complicated than that of a horse but it makes you wonder how children got by at the dawn of mankind.
Now, I know that many species have a much shorter life span than homo sapiens (the Mayfly is lucky to reach a day so it has to learn pretty quickly), but there are plenty of animals with a similar lifespan which don’t need their hands (paws? Hoofs?) holding for years before they get to grips with the elementary basics.
In the UK the legal age for being able to have a paper round is 12. Now I can understand that children are not necessarily equipped to deal with the dangers of odd men in raincoats with bags of gummy bears but it’s not the only reason. It seems they can’t be trusted to cross the road without decorating the front of a truck. Well, again, this proves the hopelessness of human young. No-one helps out the newborn rabbit by allowing it a couple of years to get a grip on its surroundings and suss out which animals are likely to rip its throat out. Added to which, those predators will purposely do that, whereas the tabloid-reading, arse-flashing truck driver would probably prefer you didn’t clog his wheels with bits of your intestine.
Anyway, 12 also appears to be the age at which children can be left alone in the house. There’s less chance of them being approached by Gary Glitter in your front room and, unless you’re really unlucky, they’re unlikely to be in danger from an eighteen wheeled Scania. Apparently though, if they’re any younger, they will spend their time jamming forks into electrical sockets, testing the toaster’s ability to float and creating a helter-skelter on the stairs from step ladders and garden forks. It’s hopeless. Survival of the fittest I say; leave them to it and let Darwin decide... except for my young children. They're wrapped in cotton wool and are not leaving the house until they're at least twenty.
