When I read about Vincent’s parents, who ‘never say he’s good enough’, I felt a cold shiver of recognition. Here we have a classic British tragedy: the child starved of praise, groomed by a predatory middle-aged couple. But this is not merely a story of paedophilia.
It is a symptom of our age – an age of moral decay where we have replaced genuine virtue with a hollow cult of self-esteem. The parents, in their stingy withholding of affirmation, are the real architects of this disaster. They have created a vacuum that any passing charlatan could fill.
Compare this to the Victorian era, where children were expected to earn their worth through duty and hard work. We have swung the pendulum too far, yes, but in the opposite direction: we now demand constant validation, and when it is not provided, we become vulnerable to those who promise it. The online safety alert is a band-aid on a haemorrhaging wound.
The real danger is not the internet; it is the breakdown of the family, the dissolution of clear moral hierarchies. We need less ‘you are special’ and more ‘you can do better’. Vincent’s parents were accidentally correct in their essential attitude, but they executed it badly.
Stinginess with praise is cruelty; but so is empty praise. The middle-aged couple exploited this emotional hunger. This is the fall of Rome, played out in a suburban sitting room.
