Maybe she’d had a bad day at pre-school, didn’t want to be there at all, eaten something that disagreed with her or had been deprived of a ‘treat’ , the venom with which the diminutive pigtailed diva laid into her designer carrier-bag laden mother in front of the lift at Sand street car park last week, was a command performance worthy of the sharpest felines of Coronation Street.

The incident ended with parental capitulation, the promise of a reward and a very reluctant acquiescence by mini party. Handing over a bribe has long been the traditional antidote to a ‘strop’, but has become more prevalent in the face of the pressures of ‘bringing up baby’ in a consumerised environment.

What better evidence, one might have thought, to back up the findings of a report last week by the United Nations Convention on children’s rights, suggesting that UK youngsters were probably the least happy in the developed world because a culture of materialism had degraded the relationship between parents and their off-springs. No rocket science this, if a tad contentious. Of course everyone instinctively wants to be a good parent, but the pace of life necessary for bringing up today’s family, means that many find themselves by their own admission too busy or too exhausted to engage adequately with their kids and so compensate by buying toys, gadgets and clothes as a substitute for ‘family time’.

It’s not the first time UNICEF has waded into UK parenting. Last week’s report is the ‘follow up’ to a survey it conducted four years ago, which spurred politicians into railing against our ‘broken society’, though it is difficult to identify any particular initiatives that emerged to spread happiness among the under-teens. Certainly, the pace of life and the increasing pressures on family budgets have done little to liberate parents into abandoning the convenient substitutes for satisfying the desires of their material girls and boys.

Yet there is undoubtedly a resistance from being told relentlessly you children are unhappy; particularly if it’s reinforced with allegations of neglect. Maybe there is some magic ingredient to be added to family life consisting of playing with toys made from cardboard, communal jig-saw sessions or refusing them access to ‘things’ they craved for their last birthdays – or when they last conned Mum, Dad or indulgent relative into a toy or gadget shop. I see that some UK MPs are calling for a ban on adverts for the under 12s – because, apparently, it works in Sweden. Well, fine, but there are many more differences between family life in Sweden and the UK than a ban on crisps, theme-parks and i-players.

It’s easy to be glib, but sharing time, aspiration and, yes, a sprinkling of material things are definitely incentives towards establishing a cohesive family life. It’s called inclusion. We’ve come a long way – thank goodness – from the days when youngsters were ‘seen but not heard’, raising a hand to leave the table and all those other draconian elements of domestic oppression.

But a flip-over to misplaced ‘kindness’ in the guise of easily bestowed material substitutes for pastoral guidance can indeed create emptiness and amounts to negligence of gene-husbandry. As with all things, there is a balance to be struck, and far be it for UK parents to be consumed with guilt for not striving to provide their progeny with better than they had in their own infancy – so long as it does not become obsessive.

It is easy for the shroud-wavers to jump on the bandwagon. You read it every day in the ‘whinge’ columns of the easy-access news sheets. You know the sort of thing:- ‘Kids aren’t educated or disciplined anymore; too many ‘rights’ – too few responsibilities; they can’t be seen to fail because they’ll be upset, and parents or ‘friends’ who are too weak to exert authority and discipline will back them up because they are scared of ‘sprog’ power.’ And that introduces a further player on the ‘substitute’ bench – namely, the parents who want to have a view on their child’s development, so long as someone else is doing it for them. Just like the UN criticism that ‘love’ at home is substituted by ‘things’, it’s not difficult to find formal parenting abrogated to nanny or the State for all the same socio-economic reasons.

So what would we prefer? The choice is as personal as the means are available. A while back, I struggled through the exasperating chronicle of tyranny and selfishness penned by a Chinese- American matriarch called Amy Chua and titled ‘Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother’. Having heard it serialised on Radio 4, I felt I had to read it because I just couldn’t believe the account I was hearing of self-deluded despotism, as she ruthlessly schooled her musically gifted daughters almost to breaking point to satisfy family keyboard glory. Over indulgent or pushy parents are certainly no guarantees of happiness.

So what is it that inspires organisations and commentators to castigate those who do and try as much as those who haven’t a care? It is too easy for armchair sociologists to contend that lonely youngsters are so bored that they inevitably get drawn into anti-social behaviour and activities. Some self-appointed gurus appear to have totally lost the plot. With what possible genius could a weekend newspaper ‘agony aunt’ actually advise a 13 year-old child to e-mail her parents if she felt she wasn’t attracting their attention through the normal channels of verbal communication?

Preparing the next generation is, after all, our overriding goal. Example and guidance, discipline and reward are the tools. Who’d be the arbiter when hindsight is not an option?