children playing
© Getty Images / Catherine Delahaye
Children are no longer allowed to just be children, they have to be "racial, ethnic beings" acutely aware of systemic racism and white privilege, but won't this all backfire, in the end, on the mommy warriors of woke?

Parents can do a hell of lot of damage to their children, just ask any shrink.

It's often the sustained pressure to be exactly what mummy or daddy wants them to be that causes the most trouble of all.

For example, at football pitches all around the world you'll find the competitive dad screaming at his son from the sidelines and then lecturing him on technique and strategy all the way home.

Then there's the mother with her little girl sitting in front of a huge mirror curling the poor kid's hair and slapping on the makeup, trying to create her very own living Barbie doll for the upcoming beauty pageant.

Woke moms and dads though, they'd never do any of that - they'd choke on their hibiscus lattes at the very thought.

Except, of course, that's exactly what they ARE doing. It's a different flavour but it's precisely the same thing.

It's pressure to conform to an ideal, set by someone else. And that someone is often not even the parent actually, it comes via some celebrity or woke professor somewhere telling other people how to raise their kids.

Teaching children about race and ethnicity should start at the age of three, for example, says Stephanie Irby Coard, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Kids can't just be kids, says Steph. Nope. They're "racial, ethnic beings" that need to be turned into "agents of social change."

Fair enough. But what if they just want to run around the park with their mates screaming like banshees and fling mud at each other?

You've got to stop them doing that. You've got to sit them all down and plant seeds of anti-racism with the help of gender neutral dolls and different coloured M&Ms, maybe give Skittles a try.

These kids would, presumably, all be called Alex or Jordan or Charley - gender neutral names. And God help any child that uses 'he' or 'she', 'his' or 'hers' or any other personal pronoun to identify the gender of a playmate in the sand pit. Some parents aren't even telling their kids their 'assigned gender' and raising them as 'theybies'.

"But, mommy, I saw Charley do pee pee and he's a boy!"

I suppose that's better than the start in life the father of Manchester United footballer Gary Neville was given, his parents christened him Neville. Neville Neville. That kept things simple in the Neville house, but the schoolyard must have been a bit of a trial.

And didn't the boxer George Foreman name ALL of his five sons George? "So they would always have something in common." Righto. Must have made it difficult when trying to call George junior in to answer a phone call though, no?

Parents, sorry guys, but so much of the time you just get in the way. Shut up and chill out. Stop living your life through your offspring. Woke mom or soccer mom, it's all the same thing.

Kids just wanna have fun and kids, it's a natural instinct, also just want to fit in. To feel like they belong. That's just the way it goes and that's the way it has always been.

Parents are pulling their hair out, these days, trying to make it otherwise.

Just ask 'Anti-Racist Mom', who sought advice on Slate magazine about her two year-old daughter. "When we try to discuss issues like structural racism, intersectionality, or White fragility, she doesn't seem at all interested. She often walks away, asks for a cookie, or even falls asleep!"

No sh**, Sherlock. Hopefully, for the sake of the child, that's actually a spoof. But there are plenty of people worrying about this stuff for real.

Halloween is coming up, for example, and for some parents who are trapped in the horrors of this idiocy it truly is A Nightmare on Woke Street. What costume can they get for their gender neutral, racially aware, afraid-to-give-offence offspring?

Maybe just go for the blob from 'Ghostbusters', it's racially green and could well be a boy or a girl. Or a sheet with eye holes cut in it? Actually, probably not that one.

Here's the thing though, despite the best efforts to create the woke warriors of the future, to raise agents of social change, this could all backfire horribly on woke mom and woke dad.

Kids have a tendency to rebel. The thing they are pushed hardest towards, is so often the thing they push hardest against. Especially when puberty hits.

There are plenty of sons of devoutly religious parents who went on to join death metal bands and sing little ditties about the joys of satanic rituals.

Take a walk down Wall Street or the City of London and you're sure to find a hardcore capitalist, who is actually the daughter of a liberated sixties chick whose idea of a fun day out was going on a Marxist-Leninist march.

There's kind of nothing any parent can do about that.

The truth is, nobody really knows precisely how to raise kids because no two kids are precisely the same. Love is what counts. Love and doing the best you can to keep them safe and healthy.

And anyway, isn't it the job of a parent to allow their child to be the best person they can be, not push them to be the best person YOU want them to be? Plus, we all get so little time to just be kids and have fun, can't they just face racial inequality and gender economics a little bit later?

There's plenty time for that plus, come on guys let's be honest, it's really, really boring. Even for adults.

"Give me the child to the age of seven and I will show you the man," is a phrase attributed to both Aristotle and the Jesuit Order.

Here's a really simple piece of advice Aristotle or Saint Ignatius of Loyola may well have given any parent obsessing about race: if you want to be anti-racist parents then just don't be racist in the first place.

If you need to read a note on the wall every morning to remind yourself, then maybe the problem is yours - not your child's.