have GPS...lose the plot [26.10.2007]
So now parents can now purchase children's clothing specifically designed to track tykes at all times (and there's even a nifty historical view, 'where past days/weeks or even months movements can be viewed'). If your child strays beyond particular boundaries the device will text your mobile.
I can see the updated versions of Little Red Riding Hood being scribed as I write...'My, grandma what big eyes you have'. 'All the better to track you with my darling...'
Knowing how quickly children grow out of their clothing, and how infrequently they actually keep their jackets on, I can't see that this could be an effective containment strategy anyway (especially at £250 plus £10 per month monitoring). If parents really wanted to get serious about this they would just embed GPS devices under their children's skin at birth and be done with it. Alternatively you could just tell them creepy stories like Little Red Riding Hood to keep them in line.
Valerie Paradiz writes in Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales about the way in which the Grimm Bros. collected their stories not, as most folk believe, from researching the traditional storytelling of German peasants but from contributions made by educated friends and family in Kassel, Westphalia (and most of them women). 'Little Red Riding Hood,' which apparently had an obscure alternate version that provided much stronger roles for the women, was sourced from family friends, the upper-class Hassenpflug twins and was intended as a story about the repressive social climate of the time, which didn't allow women, even those of means, much control over their lives.
But at least they didn't have GPS readers sewn into their corsets!
I always sent my kids out with stale bread and a small hatchet sewn into their parkas when they were little...if they couldn't make their way back via stale bread trail they could chop the head off the wolves themselves..gotta love old technology!