For some children, there’s no bank of f mum and dad d

Roots and wings. The greatest gifts we can give our children. I think that’s right. Actually maybe it’s self-belief and resilience. Or a puppy. Ski-ing lessons? Personally, I longed for a pair of red Kickers but Santa only ever ran to felt tips, a pop cassette and those wind-up teeth that chatter. But that was the string-and-sealing-wax Seventies when you could buy a three-bed semi for £6,200 and Radio 1 DJs were considered respectable.

Here in the 21st century, parenting is less a hilarious afternoon of Twister than a high stakes game of Risk in which we are expected to do everything – anything – we can to further our offspring’s chances of not just surviving but thriving.

As every 12-year-old armchair general knows, the key to achieving world domination in Risk is holding Kamchatka, which is currently in the possession of Putin. Even the pushiest parent would have to concede that puts it beyond their grasp.

But invading a desolate Russian peninsula is arguably no more out of reach than the £6.5 billion we are now expected to muster to fulfil our collective parental duties. Per annum.

You see, the greatest and increasingly mandatory gift we can give our kids is (no, we’ve covered the dog thing) their very own modest rung on the property ladder. It doesn’t sound too much to ask, but take a look at the figures and feel the chill winds of poverty blow through your retirement dreams.

This week we discovered that the Bank of Mum and Dad is now the ninth biggest property lender in the country, beating the Yorkshire Building Society. As house prices continue to rise – and deposits to soar – there has been a 30 per cent hike in the number of relatives helping younger members of their family to buy homes.

It is estimated that the Bank of Mum and Dad, “Britain’s best-loved lender”, will this year fund a quarter of property purchases, or 298,000 mortgages, worth around £75 billion. If your brain isn’t already aching, that amounts to an average of £21,600 – up from £17,000 just last year. Yes, it’s rocketed £4,600 over the past 12 months alone.

No wonder Cherie Blair has been collecting houses like handbags and now boasts (probably literally) a £27 million property empire, while David Cameron has installed a £25,000 shepherd’s hut in the garden; a couple more and his kids will populate their own garden suburb.

In London where I live, even parents who aren’t technically bankers will fork out an average of £29,400 a child if they are to have any chance of emptying their nest. Is that fair? No, it certainly is not. But as we have often told our children, life’s not fair.

A few years ago, the charity Shelter calculated that house prices had risen 43-fold since 1971 and that if food costs had kept in line, a carton of milk would be a tenner and a roast chicken £51.

Suddenly, veganism has its appeal; but while we can alter our grocery staples to suit our budgets, it’s harder to compromise when it comes to ensuring there’s a roof over our children’s heads.

As it is, most of the squeezed middle have been priced out of independent education for their children. Fees for top independent schools have risen faster even than house prices and it is estimated (by schools themselves) that by 2030 fees will reach £100,000. Annually.

Back in 2017, parents I know are resigned to their teenagers taking out student loans for tuition but endeavour to cover living costs. After graduation they accept it as normal for their fledglings to return, possibly repeatedly, over several years.

They are stumping up deposits on flat rentals, subsidising the decidedly mixed blessing of unpaid internships that offer no promise of subsequent employment, and subbing their kids who may have degrees but still run short at the end of the month.

There’s good-natured grumbling and affectionate exasperation but an acknowledgement that this is the lot of the modern parent; my generation would rather have bedded down in a squat than suffer the shameful ignominy of slinking back home after university, but things today are very different.

My late mother, a retired widow, helped me with the deposit on my first flat in Edinburgh in the early 1990s. It was five per cent of the total £42,000 cost and that £2,000 made all the difference, for which I was hugely grateful. These days, it would scarcely cover the removal costs.

Figures from the Halifax released in January showed that the average first-time buyer deposit across the UK is now £32,321 on a £200,000 home. In London, where similar properties cost more than £400,000, higher deposits mean £100,000 would be nearer the mark.

No wonder over-65 mortgage debt is set to double by 2030; by the time young people can afford to buy a house they aren’t actually young any more and a standard 25-year mortgage won’t see them through. Especially if they in turn have to remortgage to bail out their children financially.

My children are 14 and eight and I already feel I’ve missed the boat by not being savvy enough to invest in bricks and mortar (albeit one brick and single trowelful at a time) rather than Gap babygros and nice wooden toys.

What was I thinking? I was thinking everything would be alright if only they would sleep through the night and eat more broccoli. Then I was convinced that mastering times tables was the key to future happiness.

Tennis lessons, the French pluperfect, chess. And so it continued to this very day when the part of me that longs for a nice kitchen (by which I mean one in which shelves are not held up by columns of plum tomato tins) wrestles with the part of me that wonders if I ought not to sacrifice my hopes and dreams for theirs.

Say what you like about the Seventies but there were more than enough hopes and dreams to go round. As things stand in my house, the Bank of Mum and Dad has insufficient funds to lend (ha! as if!) let alone give my children what they will need.

So maybe global supremacy is the only answer. It costs only £800 to fly to Kamchatka and we’ll be there in 49 hours. After the annexation, we can swap mineral deposits for house deposits; it might sound crazy but for the security and happiness of our children, anything is worth the Risk.

‘My generation would rather have bedded in a squat than slink home’