In February of 2026, I became a dad.
My daughter arrived a little more than thirty-seven years after I did. I was born on 1 November 1988, which places our childhoods close enough to compare but far enough apart to feel as though they belong to different civilisations. At one, I was living in 1989; she will turn one in 2027. My second and third years unfolded in 1990 and 1991. Hers will unfold in 2028 and 2029, years that once sounded like distant science fiction.
The difference is not simply that her devices will be faster or her television sharper. The structure of childhood itself is changing. The things that were scarce for me will be abundant for her. The things I could forget may be recorded. Technology was something I encountered gradually; for her, it will already be embedded in the room.
My early memories are inseparable from Australian television in the 1990s, particularly that peculiar combination of ABC children’s programming, British animation and stop-motion, North American cartoons and whatever strange creature happened to emerge from Nickelodeon. These programs did not form a neat cultural category at the time. They simply appeared one after another and became part of the weather of being a child.
There was The NeverEnding Story animated series, with Bastian returning to Fantasia and its enormous creatures, impossible landscapes and slightly melancholy sense that imagination itself needed to be protected. There was The Animals of Farthing Wood, a beautiful program that was also unexpectedly brutal. Its animals were not protected by the usual rules of children’s television. They could be frightened, injured or killed, and some of those scenes remained lodged in the memories of an entire generation.
At the gentler end were Franklin and Arthur. Franklin worried about ordinary childhood mistakes and usually found his way towards a modest lesson. Arthur made school feel like a complete social universe, full of rivalries, embarrassment, family arguments and friendships that could collapse and repair themselves within twenty-two minutes. Their problems were small by adult standards, but they were presented with the seriousness that small problems possess when you are small.
Then there were the programs that felt as if somebody had given children’s television to a group of imaginative lunatics. Bump in the Night had Mr Bumpy living beneath a boy’s bed, eating socks and dust bunnies in a lumpy claymation world. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters gave us Ickis, Oblina and Krumm, including the unforgettable image of Krumm carrying his own eyeballs in his hands. Bangers and Mash followed a pair of troublemaking chimpanzee brothers. The Raggy Dolls turned a factory reject bin into a community of imperfect toys. Oakie Doke was an acorn-headed woodland helper who travelled through a miniature world of leaves, branches and tiny domestic crises.
Fireman Sam and Postman Pat belonged to a slower television rhythm. Their original model villages seemed solid enough to visit. Objects had weight, vehicles took time to travel and each episode concerned a problem that could be understood and fixed. Mr Bean occupied a different corner of the same childhood. Rowan Atkinson could turn a sandwich, a hotel room or a trip to the dentist into a prolonged catastrophe without needing to explain very much at all.
The strangest recovered memory is probably Magic Mountain. For years it existed in my head as an uncertain image of enormous animals played by people in full-body suits. Lion, Panda, Tortoise and Dragon lived together in a colourful mountain world, staring through large unblinking eyes and moving with the deliberate physicality of performers carrying several kilograms of synthetic fur. It was friendly, dreamlike and faintly uncanny. Remembering it now feels less like recalling a television program than locating a half-forgotten room from childhood.
What mattered was not only what we watched but how we watched it. A program arrived at a particular time. If I missed it, I missed it. I could not summon every episode, skip an irritating section or ask a system to manufacture another story in the same style. Repetition came from broadcasters and videotapes rather than an endless catalogue. A limited number of programs therefore occupied an enormous amount of mental space.
The same was true of food. The tuckshop and corner-store freezer held a rotating collection of intensely coloured objects that seemed designed by people unconcerned with dignity. Sunnyboys came in triangular cartons and became blocks of flavoured ice hard enough to survive a minor collision. Zooper Doopers left the corners of your mouth feeling cut by plastic. Calippos were pushed upwards through cardboard tubes. Funny Feet were strawberry ice creams shaped like pink feet and inevitably eaten toe by toe.
There were Vice Versas, Yowie chocolates with small wildlife toys sealed inside capsules, Burger Rings, Toobs, Push Pops, Ring Pops, Dunkaroos, Le Snacks, Roll-Ups and Tiny Teddies. Food also functioned as currency, entertainment and status. A lunchbox could briefly alter your position within the schoolyard economy.
Nothing represents that era’s particular imagination better than the Grave Robber ice cream. It came in a small tub of chocolate “dirt” with brightly coloured skeleton lollies buried inside and a miniature shovel for excavating them. The pleasure was not simply eating it. The product required an activity. You dug through the ice cream hoping to uncover bones, ideally assembling enough of the skeleton before everything melted. It was macabre, ridiculous and completely committed to its premise. No smooth, carefully managed contemporary brand experience could improve it.
My daughter’s childhood will have its own absurdities, although I probably will not recognise them immediately.
During her first three years, she will live among devices capable of answering adults in ordinary speech, generating pictures in seconds and producing songs or stories on request. By the time she can form complete sentences, speaking to a machine may feel no stranger to her than speaking through a telephone felt to me. The challenge for us as her parents will not be finding enough stimulation. It will be deciding how much of it should be permitted into her day.
She may still love wooden blocks, crayons, picture books and toys scattered across the floor. Children have not suddenly lost their hands. The difference is that every traditional activity will exist beside an electronic alternative that is faster, brighter and endlessly responsive. Protecting periods of boredom may become a deliberate parental task. So may allowing her to struggle with something that a device could solve immediately.
Her primary-school years will begin in the early 2030s. Mine belonged to exercise books, photocopied worksheets, library shelves and computer rooms that had to be visited as special destinations. Information lived in books or on discs such as Encarta. A computer felt like a machine with a purpose. It was switched on, used and left behind.
Her classroom will probably treat artificial intelligence as ordinary infrastructure. She may have lessons adapted to her pace, explanations generated around her particular misunderstandings and learning systems capable of observing where she hesitates. That could be enormously helpful. A child who needs a different explanation may receive one immediately rather than quietly falling behind.
It will also raise questions my teachers never had to answer. Schools will need to distinguish between assistance and substitution. They will need to teach children how to verify a claim, protect their attention and recognise when a convincing voice is wrong. Handwriting, mental arithmetic and the ability to produce an unaided thought may acquire renewed importance precisely because machines can perform so much on demand.
Her tuckshop is unlikely to involve a warm two-dollar coin gripped in one hand. Orders may be placed in advance and attached to a family account. Her school photographs, reports and minor achievements may accumulate in a digital archive before she is old enough to decide whether she wants one. Our responsibility will include preserving some privacy for a person who cannot yet request it.
My high-school years crossed the threshold between an analogue childhood and an internet adulthood. The online world was somewhere we went. Dial-up occupied the telephone line. MSN Messenger carried conversations that felt private and immediate despite occurring on a shared family computer. Music was downloaded, traded and burned onto CDs. A mobile phone was useful, but it did not yet contain every friendship, photograph, map, argument, song and source of entertainment.
My daughter will enter high school in the late 2030s. For her, separating “online” from “real life” may sound as artificial as separating telephone life from real life sounds to me. Her identity will move continuously through physical and digital spaces. Images and voices may be easy to fabricate, making proof and trust central parts of ordinary literacy. Knowing who said something, whether a recording is genuine and why a system is presenting a particular piece of information may matter as much as understanding the information itself.
Assessment will have to change as well. Memorised essays completed away from supervision will reveal very little when software can draft them instantly. Students may be required to defend their reasoning aloud, demonstrate skills in person and show the development of their work. The valuable student will not necessarily be the one who produces the most polished page, but the one who can explain the decisions behind it.
By the time she finishes school in the mid-2040s, university may no longer represent the single obvious gateway into professional life. Degrees will still exist, but they may sit beside apprenticeships, shorter credentials, employer-based education and forms of study that combine physical campuses with remote specialists from around the world. The familiar sequence of school, university and one stable profession may be only one option among many.
When I entered adulthood, the standard instruments were recognisable: lecture theatres, heavy textbooks, Word documents, PDF résumés, Seek applications and jobs organised around offices and conventional working hours. Smartphones were beginning to reshape everything, but the old structure remained visible beneath them.
Her first job may carry a title that does not yet exist. Many routine tasks will be automated before she encounters them. The strongest careers may belong to people who can combine technical ability with judgement, responsibility, taste, care or the ability to deal honestly with other human beings. She will need to learn how to work with machines without allowing their output to replace her own sense of what is true or worthwhile.
I do not want to rebuild the 1990s around her as if my childhood represented the correct version. Nostalgia edits ruthlessly. The old world had frustrations, exclusions and limitations that are easy to forget while remembering cartoons and ice creams. Her world may give her better education, earlier access to knowledge, more freedom to pursue obscure interests and easier contact with people who understand her.
What I do want to preserve are the conditions that allowed certain memories to become important. I want her to know anticipation rather than having every desire answered immediately. I want her to make things that cannot be corrected with an undo button. I want her to play outside, become absorbed in an object, finish a book, wait for an event and experience enough boredom to invent her own way out of it.
One day she may describe a discontinued snack or vanished program with the same unreasonable intensity I bring to the Grave Robber ice cream. I may look at it and see nothing more than a silly product from the 2030s. I hope I remember that childhood gives ordinary things an importance adults cannot measure from the outside.
I cannot give my daughter the childhood I had, and I should not try. Her childhood belongs to her. What I can give her is a father who remembers his own clearly enough to recognise hers while it is happening.
