Candid Camera

based on an article by Barbara Ellen

1   I once put a camera in my daughter's room. It was portable, positioned on a bookcase, trained on a desktop and only on when she was supposed to be studying for her retakes. The plan was to use the camera short term, mainly to stop the endless parental rounds of clomping up to her room, checking and chivvying. It was also to give her privacy ─ the alternative (which she was offered) was to study at the kitchen table.
2   The camera was an unmitigated disaster. I rarely remembered to check it and when I did it wasn't on her. With an inventiveness that seems screamingly funny now, it was pointed straight at the ceiling, covered with a jumper or giving me a clear view of the inside of the bin. My daughter ended up mainly studying at the kitchen table.
3   During the brief, doomed camera experiment, I would get into heated debates with people who thought it was akin to a violation of human rights. Those who most opposed it tended to have no children (leave them to their unknowing bliss) or much younger children. While I don't mean to alarm the latter group of rookies, they need to know that they know nothing.
4   Nappies and sleepless nights are nothing compared to the teenage years, when trouble is not only most likely to kick off (which doesn't matter), but also have genuine far-reaching consequences (which do). A crying baby at 4am is hard yakka, but that baby has no real autonomy or power and could not unwittingly (or otherwise) destroy its future.   1  , toddlers or young schoolchildren aren't likely to get into situations that could adversely affect their lives for decades.
5   It is only during the pre-teen/teenage years that a parent is first called upon to do the real dirty work of parenting, including slapping hands away from self-destruct buttons. This is how parents end up eavesdropping, reading diaries, grilling friends, putting location spyware on mobiles. I did none of the above, partly because of ethical quandaries, but mainly because I never got the chance.
6   If this wasn't your experience of parenting teenagers, lucky you. Otherwise, it seems unfair to judge beleaguered, exhausted parents if, at some points, they make mistakes, including convincing themselves that training cameras on their first born is a completely sane decision; they do it because they care.

The Observer, 2013