Want your child to grow up strong? Then let them play in the dirt

What is the reason for the seemingly inexorable increase in the rise of the allergy and of asthma? Like trousers with their crutch round the ankle or a topknot in your hair, or beards, or all three, an allergy is an essential fashion statement today. It is a way, however bizarre, of declaring yourself “unique”; another outcrop of the modern obsession with self.

It is no surprise, I think, that such faddishness is centred among teenagers, their search for identity now as much medical as sartorial.

Hayfever, cats (I confess I have a mild allergy to them, and nothing I have made much fuss over), shellfish; none of these are exotic enough to reach the top bracket of allergies today. Now you need to have intolerance to gluten, or dairy or, maybe, oxygen, to be a proper allergist.

Maybe though, there is something in the allergy and asthma booms after all. A Swedish study – and I know you have heard that dread intro before, but I shall press on – demonstrates that those growing up in a comparatively rough environment shared with a dog have a significantly lower susceptibility to developing asthma and maybe allergies later on in life. This, given the earthy habits of hounds, is supposed to prove the so-called “hygiene hypothesis”, or the old wives tale that eating a pinch of soil every so often will help strengthen a child’s resistance to all manner of disease. Or, as I believe they say in the South of the US, “A child’s gotta eat their share of dirt.”

The point, I suppose, of all this is to highlight the way childhoods are nowadays much more restricted, sanitised and unadventurous than ever before. You can blame lots of things for that. The car, for a start, which has both destroyed streets as a safe(ish) place for children to play out and made it easier for their parents to just take them somewhere rather than having to walk or cycle there. Something I really miss now is the idea of going to the market – proper market, mind – and buying a few pounds of spuds where the greengrocer scoops these soil-laden King Edwards out of their mucky sack with the metal tray from his scales, and then hands them over with a ready smile and only a few ounces’ worth of overcharging. Now, go to any supermarket and they are shaved and sterilised as if they were about to go into an (eye) operation. (OK, that joke was abysmal, but I hope you take my point).

And we also take far too strict a view of food safety. Since when did anyone get murdered by an out-of-date yoghurt? Or by some slightly fizzy orange juice that has just started fermenting into alcohol (a sort of do-it-yourself Bucks Fizz I’ve found). Or even a dodgy sausage? As with principle of inoculation I believe that sampling at least some stale food over the course of your four score and ten will do you more good than harm. I've just eaten a slightly mouldy fig. I'll report back.

So ingesting few germs and bacteria, nearly getting knocked down, and getting sick after eating too much of something are the arts of growing up that we seem to have slowly been losing.

So while the weather’s nice and wet, why not encourage your children, and the dog, to go and dig the biggest hole they possibly can?