Ah, the darling little ones. According to UN estimates there are now 1.7 billion of them under the age of sixteen, nearly a third of the world's population. In thirty years there will be 2.1 billion. We will go on making them.

This issue of Granta describes the rearing, loving, loathing and fearing of them, and evokes what it was like to be that lost personality in a vanished time, a child.