Hail the Sun God or Hide from His Wrath?

It was a fantastic weekend, hot enough even for my South African wife. I spent most of the weekend in our family size paddling pool. The picture on the box shows a large nuclear family of impossible beauty having a pleasant play in the water but the reality of the pool for me was that I spent saturday afternoon being waterboarded by a three and four year old. I can see immediately how waterboarding is effective as an interrogation technique and also why it is illegal. Every time you come up for air you get forced back under or have a bucket of water poured over your nose and mouth. It makes you very easy to manipulate and although my two sons were obviously not trying to elicit intelligence from me, had they been more savvy, I would have agreed to all kinds of Christmas presents; it's a good job they still believe in Santa.

Despite my initial objections to the cost, the pool has been a useful purchase although it requires some maintenance and close supervision with small children. It has attracted many mums and their offspring to our house and I came home on Friday afternoon to find half a dozen slightly flushed moms sat enjoying "Wine Club" in my garden. It was not long ago that finding a group of drunken women and a swimming pool would have been like entering Valhalla but on this occasion the myriad of their children running amok like the tribe from Lord of the Flies was my main focus. What surprises me most about this recurring scene is not the dent the ladies make in my wine rack, but the amount of sun cream they rub on their ghostlike children. In contrast, my two sons looklike lightly grilled sausages. Even our baby looks tanned in comparison.

I do not understand this fear of the sun. I grew up in Yorkshire where the Sun god rarely visits and every time his presence was felt we children were ushered outside to "get some sun" and, as a parent, I can now see the merit in this. Obviously, sun burn is not good but this is Britain, the sun is not that strong. Medical research has linked problems in later life arising from a lack of sunshine such as rickets and MS. MS, for example, is more prevalent in Scotland and Canada than countries of lower latitudes and this has been linked to a lack of sunshine in childhood. It strikes me that sun hats and creams and Wii or XBox will have the same effect. There is MS in my family so I am very sensitive to the issue and, for me, it is an obvious balance of risk. Apart from that, I am not sure why this aversion to the sun is so strong or who is promoting it. Retailers of said sun products certainly seem to emphasise it a lot but what will be the health repercussions for today's generation of children in 20-30 years time?

There is increasing awareness of this problem and the BBC have run several stories on it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11355810
However, the glacier of public opinion is frozen in the myth that the sun is bad and I fear it will be another generation before this will change.