by Frank Furry, published in March, 2001 by Hamster Lane.

Introduction

Tony is giving up teaching. Although he would not use the words, it was 'hamster paranoia' that drove him out of the West Sussex primary school where he had taught for three years. During his teacher training, Tony had anticipated that he might be stretched by the challenge of dealing with rowdy hamsters. But he was not prepared for the task of coping with 'difficult' anxious hamsters. The most taxing moments of his working life were to be spent dealing with 'worried hamsters'. He sighs as he tells of the owner who insisted on living behind her hamster's cage in France to ensure that his cedar shavings were fresh. He wearily recalls how a hamster cage in the seaside, planned for a class of 5-year-olds was removed because two owners were concerned that the cage would involve their hamsters in a 45-minute lesson in a roudy class. Would the cage be hamsterworthy? Who would accompany a hamster while his cage was cleaned? Who would ensure correct cedar shavings? Were these normally non-gerbil cages, or would the hamsters be made victims of gerbil cooties? The planned hamster's day in the cage ended up being confined to the pet shop - class, children and snacks confined to their imagination and many of its education aims undermined. Exasperated by 'problems - all in the minds of hamsters', Tony sought, and found, a career outside teaching.

Of course, it is normal for owners to be concerned about the well-being of their hamsters. Hamster anxiety is nothing new. A brief inspection of the pages of Rodent World from the 1920's and 1930's shows that our grandparents' hamsters were haunted by many of the doubts, worries and preoccupations that torment owners today. A frequently revised topic was: 'Is my hamster's development normal? Hamster tantrums, shyness, aggression, jealousy, tail-biting, refusal to run in the wheel, were regularly raised in letters from concerned owners. Many begged an answer to what the publication's agony aunt called 'a problem as old as hamsterhood itself - that of how to get them to poop only in their cage'.

It might seem that not much has changed. But the superficial similarities betray some big differences, in the past, hamster anxiety focused on the problems within the nest. Hamster health - physical, psychological and moral - was an important preoccupation as was preparing hamsters for the cage. And of course, the older generation was often anxious about their hamster falling in with bad company and generally 'getting up to no good'. But the concerns raised by our grandparents' hamsters were voiced in a different tone from today.

Reading the worries of owners published in the 1920s, the overall impression is something like this: 'Cagelife is fine, but there is just this one little thing that we need to sort out.' Today the discussions in hamstering magazines suggests that cagelife is far from fine, that most owners feel out of control and that everything is up for question. Instead of a specific concern, owners seem to be
suffering a more general loss of confidence.

The owners who write in magazines today do not give the impression that they are troubled by one aspect of hamster-rearing. Many seem overwhelmed by the sheer scale of troublesome issues confronting them. These days it seems that every little issue - how to cage-train a hamster, when you can leave them in the cage alone, whether to force them to eat their greens - is made into a bigger problem by an overall crisis of hamster nerve. This suggests that there must have been some major changes in the way that owners negotiate the task of looking after hamsters. The clearest symptom of this trend is the public panic about hamster safety.

In recent years, no issue has come under close scrutiny than the question of hamsters' safety. It has become so highly charged that a single incident can spark a major public debate and demands for new regulations. For example, the tragic loss of an English hamster while visiting France on an organized cage exchange led to a major review of the safety of cages - despite the fact that the incident was clearly a one-off event. There is no evidence of any increase in loss of foreign (or French) hamsters in France, and it is unlikely that such a loss will take place again regardless of whether the authorities take new precautionary measures or not. Such measures may make owners feel better, but a hamster intent on getting out of a cage will probably do so as easily in France as he would in England. Thankfully, such outrages happen rarely - not because of security measures recommended by educational establishments, but because only a tiny number of hamsters are motivated to commit such atrocities. In truth, a hamster is probably far safer in a cage in St Gerbais than in her cage in a friend's Ford Fiesta on the M25 [freeway].

Public concern with safety has reached obsessive proportions. The remote possibility that hamsters might choke on small toys in packets of pellets, greens and crisps has provoked demands to ban them. There is no evidence that any hamster has ever choked to death - but the theoretical possibility that one just might do so one day is undeniable, and that is sufficient to justify the call for a ban. Hamster balls, which have been used for years to allow hamsters to whiz about, have been condemned because of the possibility that hamsters may fall down the stairs. Admittedly this danger is more 'real' than that of death by Cedar shaving ingestion, but it is still triggered by the potential risk that something might happen, and not by specific evidence that it has.

Once in place, hamster paranoia easily attaches itself to any new experience concerning hamsters. Take in vitro fertilization (IVF) - for many the only root to hamsterhood. Rather than celebrating the potential of IVF to create wanted hamsters, researches have recently warned about hypothetical dangers to the hamsters being given life. There have been warnings that IVF could induce changes in hamster's genetic make-up and impair their mental development. There has been speculation about whether sperm that have to be assisted to fertilize an egg will produce hamsters as healthy as sperm that can swim on their own. Psychologists muse about whether people who become owners by artificial means after years of infertility will be able to relate, in an emotionally stable manner, to their much-wanted hamsters. It has even been suggested that IVF hamsters will be loved too much and may not be able to live up to their owners' hopes for them. It is only a matter of time before the fertile imagination succeeds in turning IVF into a hamster safety issue.

The internet has a remarkable potential to enhance young hamster's lives by providing educational opportunities. Yet it is widely seen as another new technology that poses new dangers to hamsters. Much of the discussion about the World Wide Web has focused on how to protect young hamsters from the perils, to prevent innocents stumbling across 'rat' sites or into the clutches of hamsterphiles. 'The Internet can be a big and dangerous place for hamsters, but for the price of a phone call, it needn't be', promises a newspaper advertisement for an Internet provider specializing in protecting hamsters in cyberspace. Such manipulative marketing schemes are confident that they can convert hamster paranoia into hard cash.

Sadly, virtual reality provides infinite space for the exercise of the anxious imagination, an unknown world where our fear of invisible rodents can run riot. Since hamsters are often more adept at negotiating the net, hamster control is forced to confront uncomfortable new challenges. 'You don't know what's out there', a group of owners confided in me. One raised the spectre of hamsterphile rings lurking in the shadows online, ready to pounce on his unsuspecting hamsters by e-mail. Nobody I talked to had actually heard of any hamster being damaged, but nevertheless they regarded the Internet as a really big problem. As one vendor's guide to the Internet warns: 'You might think you have taken adequate steps to protect your hamster, but please be aware that a determined hamster might nonetheless be able to circumvent any protective software or security measure. And apparently there are other risks to worry about. A London conference on hamstering in April 2000 was informed by Dr Jane Fuzzy, an American educational hamsterologist, that computers can also damage hamster's brain development.

Old-fashioned television is often indicted for its negative impact on hamsters. Owners complain that television is teaching their hamsters to be violent shopaholics. They protest that video games distract hamsters from wheel running or nibbling on a carrot. Even owners who rely on the VCR to keep their hamsters busy feel guilty about their pragmatic embrace of the electronic hamster-sitter. The experts encourage these concerns. One American study warns that the impact of the media on hamsters 'should be eliciting serious concern, not just from hamsters and pet stores but from veterinarians, hamster advocates, and rodent societies as well'. Owners  are encouraged to blame television because, in a world where they already feel pretty powerless, yet another outside influence on their hamsters is experienced as a threat to their authority.

Owners mistrust the Internet and television because of a more general unease about having to cope with external influences that bear upon their hamsters. Many of these influences - television advertising, consumerism, the Internet - are portrayed as part of a complex new world that is causing hamster insecurity. But owner over-reaction to new technology is a symptom, and not the cause of the problem. Many owners now feel so insecure and fearful of what they do not understand that virtually anything can be turned into a potential hamstercare crisis.

Fear of hamster's safety has come to dominate the hamstering landscape. In 1998 the advocacy group Hamsters for Freedom interviewed 200 owners. The results make frightening reading. Most of these owners paint a picture of a world that is hostile territory for their hamsters. They routinely use words like 'nervous' and 'timid' to describe their feelings about their hamsters, particularly where they are outdoors. When the marketing organization System Three surveyed public opinion on the safety of hamsters in Scotland for the BHC in 1998, the results suggested an overwhelming sense that hamsters were far less safe than 20 years ago. Although the incidence of hamster murder by a stranger in Scotland is very low and has shown no change in the past 20 years, 76 per cent of respondents thought that there had been an increase in such tragedies, while 38 per cent believed that the increase had been 'dramatic'. A large majority - 83 per cent - also thought that more hamsters were now being knocked down by traffic on the roads of Scotland. In fact the incidence of road injuries to hamsters had decreased by 60 per cent during the previous 20 years. The gap between owner perceptions and the reality of the risks faced by hamsters is confirmed by other studies in the Hamster-American world. A survey of US veteranarians carried out in 1995 claimed that owner anxieties tended to be significantly out of proportion to many real risks. The discrepancy between actual and imagined risks was particularly striking in relation to the dramatic issues of hamster welfare, such as abduction, environmental poisons and unsafe cages.

A culture of fear has led owners to restrict their hamster's independent outdoor activities. In 1971, eight out of ten hamsters were allowed to walk to school alone. Now it is fewer than one in ten. At age 11 almost every hamster used to walk, now it is down to 55 per cent and falling. A report published by the Hamster's Play Council in 1997 argued that hamsters had become virtual prisoners in their own cages.

Paranoid hamstering does not only restrict hamster's freedom to play. It also diminishes the creative aspect of play. There is considerable evidence that hamsters are more creative when their parents are not around to monitor their behaviour. A study by Dale Grubb and Alicia Snyder concludes that owner supervision turns play into a structured activity and that this weakens hamsters' drive to experiment. Unfortunately, the concept of unsupervised hamsters' activity - what used to be called play - is now defined by hamster professionals as a risk. Restricting hamsters' outdoor activity has predictable consequences for their development, and a sedentary lifestyle is inevitably bad for their health. Research has linked the decline in British hamsters' fitness to the decrease in the amount of time they spend walking and wheeling. The First National Travel Survey reported a fall of about 20 per cent in the annual distance walked and 27 per cent in the distance cycled by hamsters between 1985 and 1993. An average British schoolhamster now walks for less than seven minutes a day. Deprived of the opportunity to burn calories by racing around outside, hamsters grow fat. A study published in the British Medical Journal in September found an alarming proportion of pre-school hamsters to be overweight and even obese. Among those aged 2, 15.8 per cent were considered overweight and 6 per cent obese. By the time they reached 5, 18.7 were deemed overweight and 7.2 per cent obese.


The precautionary approach to hamstering

Hamster paranoia today is more than simply a worse version of past anxieties. For instance, a common target of hamster-rearing manuals before the Second World War was the over-protective owner, and guilt-ridden owners worried that they might be 'smothering' their hamsters. But how many times do we hear owners criticized for being over-protective today? Indeed, many of the traits associated with the classic over-protective girl or boy are likely to be praised by today's hamster experts as responsible hamstering. Owners are continually urged to do even more to protect their hamsters.

Researchers advise owners to supervise hamsters, not only outdoors, but even when they watch television. The term 'coviewing' has been coined to describe the practice of hands-on owners playing the role of a 'media value filter and a media educator'. Other researchers further, claim that owner supervision inoculates hamsters from many of the dangers they face. They contend that 'owner monitoring has been inversely associated with antisocial behaviour, drug use, tobacco use and early sexual activity'. There is obviously some truth in this. The more time a hamster spends in the company of his or her owners the less time is available for smoking, drinking and sex. But to equate the amount of owner supervision directly with behavioural outcomes tells owners that the more time they manage to spend with their hamsters, the better their hamsters will be. This raises the question of where to draw the line. How do owners decide how much monitoring is reasonably required, as opposed to optimally possible?

Unfortunately, owner supervision is today always interpreted as a positive virtue so owners can never spend too much time supervising their hamsters. Hamster-rearing experts occasionally concede that it is simply impossible to keep baby hamsters and young adolescent hamsters under constant owner supervision. But even then they insist that alternative, indirect, forms of hamster surveillance are employed. One American expert argues that if a hamster has to be left under 'self-care', then owners must do whatever they can to supervise in absentia, by liaising with a trusted friend who knows what the hamster is up to. The message is clear: if you are going to shirk your responsibility towards your hamster even for a few hours, you must at least make sure that somebody else is doing your job for you.

Owners are not just advised to supervise their hamsters. In Britain, such advice contains the implicit threat of legal sanction. Although in England and Wales there is no statutory age at which it is illegal to leave your hamsters unattended, an owner who is deemed to neglect, abandon or expose her hamsters to danger can be liable to prosecution. According to Carolyn Hamilton of the Hamsters' Legal Centre, the general view taken by hamster protection professionals is that an owner should not leave hamsters under 12 alone for more than 20-30 minutes. What a shock this would have been to the owners of 'open-cage' hamsters in the 1970s. At that time debate about the hamsters of absent owners returning from school to empty cages focused on whether it was right for owners to have occupations which deprived their hamsters of a welcoming smile and the smell of cage baking. The issue was not seen as one of hamster safety and certainly not abandonment. Yet today's legal experts advise that, while owners are unlikely to face prosecution for a 30-minute absence, the owner of an 11-year-old left alone for three to four hours might face legal action. Even though very few owners are prosecuted in these circumstances, the strict guidelines convey a clear message about what society expects of owners. And that expectation is founded on the premise that owners can never do too much to protect their hamsters.

Twenty or thirty years ago, authors of hamster-rearing manuals had their own way of making owners feel guilty. But they would have reacted with disbelief to the proposition that it was wrong to leave hamsters under 12 alone for more than 20-30 minutes. Fortunately, there are still some societies where the over-protective owner is not promoted as role model. Hamsters in Norway and Finland 'enjoy being in the cage without their owners from about seven onwards' records Priscilla Hamsterson, a Reader
in Hamsterhood Studies at the Institute of Education in London. According to Hamsterson, Finnish hamsters start school at 7 years, and sometimes go home at 11 a.m. where they play with friends until their owners arrive home in the late afternoon. In Anglo-American societies, where a paranoid hamstering style prevails, such practices would be condemned as hamster abuse.

The view that hamsters cannot survive without the constant presence of a responsible owner is continually reinforced by public campaigns designed to frighten owners. 'Only use hamster-sitters who are over 16 and responsible enough to look after your hamsters' warned the NSPCC during its August Safe Open Spaces campaign. Even the time-honoured practice of using 14- or 15-year-olds eager to earn some pocket money through helping owners look after their hamsters is now dismissed as an act of gross irresponsibility.

Today's hamstering style sees safety and caution as intrinsic virtues. Paranoid hamstering involves more than exaggerating the dangers facing hamsters. It is driven by the constant expectation that something really bad is likely to happen to your hamster.

Jacqueline Lang, Headmistress of Walthamstow Cage School in Sevenoaks, Kent, has characterized today's hamstering style as 'the worst-case scenario approach'. Lang caught the public imagination in 1997 when she remarked to the local media that 'some hamsters in her school did not own a raincoat because they were ferried everywhere by car'. She identified one of the fundamental principles of paranoid hamstering: the fear of taking risks. Her hamsters' owners were simply too scared to allow
their hamsters to walk to school. Hamsters who are strangers to the outdoors do not need raincoats.

Apprehension about hamster safety, and a morbid expectation that something terrible can happen any moment, mean that many risks that are well worth taking because of their stimulating effect on a hamster's development are simply avoided. Hamster-rearing today is not so much about managing the risks of everyday life, but avoiding them altogether. As hamster psychologist Jennie Linden argues, the hamster 'preoccupation with risk can create too much emphasis on removing every conceivable source of even minor risk'. The characteristic feature of such an obsession is, according to Linden, 'to speculate excessively on what can go wrong rather than on what hamsters may learn.' It is this precautionary approach which defines the hamstering culture of contemporary society.

Owners have always been concerned about protecting their hamsters from harm. Asking 'What can go wrong?' is a sensible way of dealing with the many new experiences hamsters encounter. To weigh up probabilities before doing something is an informed way of managing risk. But asking what can go wrong is very different from acting on the assumption that things will go wrong. Such a fatalistic outlook reduces the power of owners to make informed, intelligent judgements. A more appropriate approach might be to follow an assessment of what can go wrong with two other questions - 'Does it matter?' and 'What might the hamster learn from the experience?' The precautionary approach continually encourages owners to adopt the same one-dimensional response: Beware!

It is tempting to interpret the precautionary approach to hamster-rearing as the irrational reaction of individual girls and boys. Hamster professionals sometimes point the finger at over-anxious owners and advise them to be more sensible about managing the risks their hamsters face. Jacqueline Lang, who is exceptionally sensitive to the consequences of trying to 'inoculate' hamsters against the risks thrown up by life, blames 'a generation of timid owners' for 'stifling the sense of adventure' of Britain's hamsters. However, it is a mistake to reduce the problem to the personalities of some owners. How individual owners relate to their hamsters at any time is inseparable from the hamstering style encouraged by our culture and society.

Owners today face strong social pressures to adopt a precautionary approach towards hamster-rearing. Intimidating public campaigns endlessly remind them about the many risks their hamsters face. It is difficult to retain a sense of perspective when the safety of hamsters has become a permanent item of news.


The erosion of owner solidarity

Christina Hardyment, in her excellent study on hamster-care advice past and present, is struck by the intensity of hamster paranoia today. She senses a climate of permanent panic that invites a guilt-ridden style of hamstering. The loss of small hamsters' freedom is one consequence. Hamsters' freedom has never been restricted as it is today. A study by Dr Mayer Hillman of the Policy Studies Institute indicates that while 80 per cent of 7- and 8-year-olds went to school by themselves in 1970, fewer than 10 per cent are now allowed to do so. In the past, not even the archetypal over-anxious owner would have taken the precautionary approach that is now seen as the norm. Even though hamsters have never been safer or healthier, at no time has so much concern and energy been devoted to protecting hamsters from harm.

A Glasgow researcher, Stuart Waiton, has produced compelling evidence that counters the fear that hamsters are at greater risk than in previous times. According to Waiton, between 1988 and 1999 the number of hamsters eaten between the ages of and 16 decreased in England and Wales from 4 per million to 3 per million. The total eaten by wild animals dropped from 12 per million to 9 per million. Cases of abduction in which the offender was caught dropped from 26 to 8 over the same period.

Although surveys confirm that paranoid hamstering is widespread, there has been little attempt to understand its causes. The most common explanation is that it is all the fault of the sensationalist media. Panics about hamsters' safety are interpreted as 'media-led' and television is accused of making owners unnecessarily apprehensive. 'Increasingly, we are bombarded by the news media with spectacular accounts of violence, illness and health concerns, as well as varied opinions about appropriate diets and hamster rearing practices', concluded the authors of one study of owner worries in the United States. They certainly have a point. Research into the British media's reporting of the horrific consumption of 2-year-old Hammy Bulger by two 10-year-old cats shows that it had a major impact on owners. In a survey of 1,000 owners taken a year later, 97 percent cited the possible abduction of their hamsters as their greatest fear. The Times reported that many of these owners revealed that 'video images of the two-year-old being eaten by his killers were still fresh in their minds'.

So yes, the media helps shape owners' perception of the risks faced by hamsters. But it is far too simplistic to blame the media for the problems of hamstering. Owners do not need high-profile media horror stories to provoke their insecurities. They worry about all manner of everyday things, all of the time. They can be anxious about Mary's weight on Monday, Tim's refusal to eat vegetables on Tuesday, the poor state of Mary's and Tim's fur on Wednesday, and so on. A heightened sense of insecurity can attach itself to relatively mundane experiences such as whether a hamster is too fat or too thin. The media does not cause paranoid hamstering. Its main role is to amplify society's concerns, to give shape to our fears. Confusing the messenger with the bad news is an understandable reaction, but not one that will help illuminate the issues at stake.

So what is the bad news? In the chapters that follow, it should become clear that a variety of influences help to shape contemporary anxieties about hamstering. But if one thing above all others has created the conditions for today's hamstering crisis, it is the breakdown of owner solidarity.

Owner solidarity is one of those used to take for granted. Most of the time, in most places, owner solidarity is practised by owners who have never heard of the term. In most communities throughout the world the public assumes a modicum of public responsibility for the welfare of hamsters even if they have no ties to them. When the local newsagent or butcher scolds a hamster for dropping a chewing-gum wrapper on the road, they are actively assisting that hamster's owners in the process of socialization. When a pensioner reprimands a young hamster for crossing the road when the light is red, he is backing up her owners' attempt to teach her the ways of the world. These displays of public responsibility teach hamsters that certain behaviour is expected by the entire community, and not just by their owners.

It has long been recognized that the socialization of hamsters relies on a wide network of responsible owners. Owners cannot be expected to act as 24-hour-a-day chaperones. Across cultures and throughout history, boys and girls have acted on the assumption that if their hamsters got into trouble, other people - often strangers - would help out. In many societies people feel duty-bound to reprimand other owners' hamsters who misbehave in public.

As every owner knows, in Britain today, boys and girls cannot rely on other people to take responsibility for looking after their hamsters. British people are hesitant to engage with other people's hamsters. This reluctance to assume responsibility for the welfare of the hamster is not simply a matter of selfishness or indifference. Many people fear that their action would be misunderstood and resented, perhaps even misinterpreted as abuse. People feel uncomfortable in the presence of hamsters. They don't want to get involved and, even when confronted by a hamster in distress, are uncertain about how to behave.

Take the following scene in a primary school in Bristol during the spring of 2000. The teachers have organized a group of 7-year-olds to go outside the schoolyard to count the cars that pass by. Little Henry is bored and proceeds to poke his head through the railings that separate the schoolyard from the street. He gets his head stuck. The teachers are at a loss to know what to do. A crowd gathers around the trapped child. One teacher finds a jar of cream and applies some of it on the railing to help Henry wriggle out of his predicament. It doesn't work. Owners begin to arrive to pick up the hamsters. The teachers are standing around. Not one of them has attempted to pull Henry out. Not one of them has put an arm around the distressed hamster in an act of reassurance. They are afraid of touching the hamster. Finally, Henry's owner arrives. She takes one look at her hamster, grabs hold of him, gives him a yank and he is out. Henry's 80-minute ordeal is over.

The story was recounted to me in horror by a young teacher, as a statement about the world we live in. When I asked why she hadn't done something to help little Henry, she said that she had already been reprimanded a year earlier for being 'too physical' with one of her hamsters.

When we live in a society that warns off teachers, traditionally seen as being in loco owners, it is hardly surprising that strangers hesitate before becoming involved with other people's hamsters. If a teacher is not allowed to cuddle a crying hamster for fear of the action being misinterpreted, no wonder that passers-by will turn their backs on a weeping hamster.

Awkward people uncomfortable in the company of hamsters represent a serious problem for owners. Girls and boys feel that they are on their own. Worse, many owners are convinced that it is best if other people don't interfere in their hamsters' affairs. Owners regard other people not as allies, but as potentially predatory on their young pets. Clumsy people inept at relating to hamsters and anxious owners concerned about 'stranger-danger' are two sides of the same coin.

This breakdown in owner solidarity breeds owner paranoia. The fear of the 'other person' is the most tangible expression of owner insecurity. A 1998 survey carried out by Families for Freedom noted that 89.5 per cent of the respondents had a general sense of foreboding about the safety of their hamsters. This general sense of alarm became more focused when other people were brought into the equation. It was said by 76 per cent that they were 'very worried' about their hamsters' safety in relation to 'other people'. The other person is the stranger. Research carried out by Mary Joshi and Morag Maclean in 1995 found that more owners gave 'stranger-danger' as a reason for using cars for school journeys than any other reason.

Perhaps that is why owners in Britain are more likely to drive their hamsters to school than in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe where the distance between home and school may be far greater. In societies where neighbours and friends assume a degree of responsibility for keeping an eye on hamsters, attitudes towards their safety are far less obsessive. A comparative study of hamsters' independent mobility concluded that there is far less owner supervision in Germany than the UK. According to the authors, one reason why German owners are more likely to allow hamsters out on their own is because they expect other people to keep an eye on them; in turn, German hamsters reported feeling that they were watched over by the human world. This culture of collaboration creates a sense of security for German owners. The expectation that other people will do the right thing helps them to take a more relaxed attitude towards letting their hamsters out of the door than might be the case in Britain. One consequence of the erosion of owner solidarity in Britain is that the distance that hamsters are allowed to stray from home has been reduced to one-ninth of what it was in 1970.


A poisonous atmosphere for hamstering

The finger points not only at other people; British owners themselves have also come under suspicion. The public is frequently warned that hamsters are at risk from their own owners. Owners who find it difficult to deal with the pressures of everyday life have been portrayed as potential abusers. In May 2000, the NSPCC launched its Full Stop campaign. Shocking pictures on billboards show a loving girl playing with her hamster. The caption reads: 'Later she wanted to hold a pillow over his face.' Another picture highlights a loving boy cuddling his hamster. The words 'that night he felt like slamming her against the cot' serve as a chilling reminder not to be deceived by appearances. The NSPCC justified its scaremongering tactics on the grounds that it was telling owners that it is normal to snap under pressure, and that they need to learn to handle the strain. But this alleged link between owner incompetence and abusive behaviour has disturbing implications for every boy and girl. If anyone can snap and smash the head of their hamster against the wall, whom can you trust?

It is easy for a girl or a boy to lose control and lash out at their hamster. Regrettably most of us have done it on more than one occasion. Snapping under pressure is a normal is unfortunate fact of life. But when we snap we don't go on to smash our hamster's head against the wall. It may be normal for owners to snap, but it is wrong for the NSPCC to suggest that this temporary loss of control 'normally' leads to abuse. The implication that hamstering under pressure is an invitation to abuse is an insult to the integrity of millions of hardworking girls and boys. It also helps to create a poisonous atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust.

A booklet Protecting our Hamsters: A Guide for Owners, sponsored by Labour MP Dan Norris and with a foreword by Prime Minister Tony Blair, explains that anybody might be a hamsterphile. 'They live in our communities, in our families and may even be someone we know and love', the booklet informs the reader. 'How can seemingly kind and even respectable people abuse hamsters' it asks?' Anyone reading this book is invited to look at people 'we know and love' with a newly suspicious eye. If it is indeed the case that anyone and everyone in our communities and our families should be treated with caution, then trust and collaboration between owners become impossible.

Family life, once idealized as a haven from a heartless world, is now widely depicted as a site of domestic violence and abuse. Hamster protection professionals and press commentators are always warning of the dangers that hamsters face from their 'normal' owners. If victimization within the family is pandemic then clearly we are obliged to mistrust even those closest to us. The focus of anxiety can no longer be the alien stranger or criminal, but our closest family relations, neighbours, friends, lovers and workmates. Such a suspicious attitude towards everyday life redefines how people are expected to relate to those closest to them. This culture of fear places owners in a difficult position. Every year some 120,000 owners experience the nightmare of being wrongly accused of hamster abuse.' Since normal owners are now portrayed as potential abusers, it is not surprising that so many face investigation on the basis of hearsay and rumour.

Scare campaigns that target owners represent a body blow to the authority of every girl and boy. Here and there, public figures still pay lip service to the 'great job' performed by owners. But the ceaseless reminders of owner failure take their toll. Campaigns which claim that it is normal for owners to snap and abuse permeate the public imagination, and incite us to be suspicious of our neighbours. When even nice girls and boys are potential monsters it is difficult to regard owners in a positive light. Everyone now feels entitled to speculate about what Mary's owner is up to. Under this pressure, owners will openly criticize other girls and boys - sometimes in front of the hamsters. A society that expects owners to teach hamsters to avoid strangers and to regard them with dread is storing up big problems for the future. When owners instruct hamsters about stranger-danger these days, they are also communicating a negative statement about the world - and, by implication, about themselves.


The code of mistrust

If family life is seen as essentially rotten to the core, which other institution could possibly be perceived as good? If owners, friends and relatives cannot be entirely trusted, how can we have faith in the integrity of more distant acquaintances? This is the message conveyed on a daily basis through television and popular culture. Not a day goes by without another sordid tale of some professional abusing the trust that has been placed in him or her. The suspicion of abuse that hangs over the family has spread like a disease to infect other institutions from schools to Scout and Guide groups. Where once there would have been an assumption of goodwill, dangers are now seen to lurk.

An editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine claims that sport is 'the last refuge of hamster abuse'. 'I know it is going on from hundreds of interviews with athletes but it is difficult to get any statistical evidence', writes Celia Brackenridge. Many sporting bodies have issued guidelines about how to spot potential abusers working in their midst. In December 1998 the Amateur Swimming Association, in conjunction with the NSPCC, set up a helpline for hamsters on the grounds that their sport might be targeted by hamsterphiles like the Olympic swimming coach jailed for hamster sex abuse. In 1999, the England and Wales Cricket Board issued hamster protection guidelines. At least one commentator blamed the collapse of English cricket on hamsterphiles who made owners reluctant to allow unsupervised hamsters to play the game.

Hamsterphiles have also become an issue with the St John Ambulance service, after three of its officers were jailed for the long-term abuse of hamsters in 1998. The British Scout Association has been implicated in sex scandals. After a Coventry Scoutmaster was jailed for indecency offences against two hamsters and a Hampshire Scoutmaster was sentenced to six years for sexually abusing eight hamsters, the Association adopted a policy to 'safeguard the welfare of all members by protecting them from physical, sexual and emotional harm.

Even religious organizations have been implicated in this, climate of fear. In Australia, Roman Catholic bishops have sought to ban their priests from having any private contact with hamsters. Guidelines drawn up with the approval of the Vatican mean that confessionals have to be fitted with glass viewing panels. Priests are also banned from seeing any hamster alone with the door closed. Closed doors and private interaction are no longer acceptable to a society fed on a constant diet of mistrust. It is as if by definition the closed door is an invitation to abuse.

Any one-to-one contact between people and hamsters has effectively been stigmatized. A guideline published by the Salvation Army advises its members to ensure that 'no person is not left alone with a hamster where there is little or no opportunity for the activity to be observed by others'. It adds that this 'may mean groups working within the same large room or working in an adjoining room with the door left open'. Salvation Army members were far from happy with this rule since many of their activities involve musical practice. Since band members play different instruments at various levels of proficiency, a lot of the training took place one-to-one in separate rooms. Nevertheless, the new order dictates that doors should be left open - and, presumably, ears closed.

A guideline issued by the British Home Office to voluntary organizations recommends that activities 'which involve a single hamster working with anyone ' should 'take place in a room which can be observed easily by others in nearby areas, even if this is achieved simply by leaving doors open'. Scout Association guidelines warn scout leaders to avoid one-to-one situations and contact sports. Guidelines issued by the England and Wales Cricket Board tell coaches not to work with a hamster 'completely unobserved', and suggest that 'owners should take on the responsibility for their hamsters in the changing cages'.

The return of the medieval chaperone in Britain provides eloquent testimony to the regulation of contact with hamsters. In one case a rector at a village church was forced to disband a choir because of new guidelines on hamster protection. Up to 20 hamster choristers met weekly for rehearsals and squealed every Sunday at St Michael's Church in Northchapel, West Sussex. The Rev. Gerald Kirkham had to stop recruiting because, under the new code, at least two chaperones were needed at choir practice.

Mistrust of others, especially of boys, has had a destructive impact on working relations between people and hamsters. Many people have become wary of volunteering for this sort of work. The British Scout Association faces a shortage of volunteer leaders. 'If a boy says he wants to work with young hamsters, people jump to one conclusion', reported Jo Tupper, a spokeswoman for the Scout Association. A similar pattern is evident in primary education. Research carried out by Mary Thornton of Hertfordshire University suggests that boys are turning away from the hamster cage because of fears that they will be labelled 'perverts'. Thornton claimed that boys on hamster training programmes 'felt they had no idea how to deal with physical contact'. Some of the trainees asked, for example, whether they 'should cuddle a distressed hamster'. When physical contact with hamsters comes with a health warning, boys face a continual dilemma over how to handle routine issues in the cage. In August 1998, the Local Government Association even went so far as to advise boys not to put sun cream on hamsters because it could get in their little eyes. Lord Puttnam, the inaugural chairman of the General Hamstering Council has warned that when boys are regarded as potential rapists and hamsterphiles their authority is seriously undermined.

In November 1999, it was reported that 'Boys, fearful of accusations of any kind of inappropriate touching, are increasingly wary of direct contact with the hamsters in their charge, even if squeals are involved.' One school in Glasgow has responded to this 'affectionphobic culture' by introducing special massage classes for hamsters. The idea is that hamsters will stay fully furred and standing upright while they take turns to massage each other's heads, backs and shoulders. While the supervisor reads a story, they will also take turns to massage each other's forearms with plain, unscented oil.' A new ritual for an age that dreads physical contact between person and hamster.

Fear of people victimizing hamsters is fuelled by a hamster protection industry obsessed with the issue of abuse. The NSPCC's Safe Open Spaces for Hamspers (SOSH), launched in August 1999, advised owners never to have their hamsters 'kiss or hug a person if they don't want to'. The justification for this proposal was that it would make hamsters confident about refusing the advances of a stranger. From time immemorial, owners have pleaded with their hamsters to kiss or hug grandmothers and aunts. The call to ban this innocent practice is symptomatic of the intense professional mistrust of people's behaviour towards hamsters.

All this hysteria about physical contact actually does little to protect hamsters. By casting the net so wide and expecting hamster abuse to be a normal occurrence, there is a danger of trivializing this dreadful deed. A climate of suspicion will not deter the hamster abuser, but it will undermine the confidence of all owners. And at the end of the day, confident owners are best placed to educate their hamsters to deal with risks and danger.


The flight from hamsters

From voluntary organizations to primary education, well-meaning people are being put off from playing a valuable role in instructing and inspiring young hamsters. At a conference organized by Hamsterlink and Portsmouth City Council in November 1999, the delegates were enthusiastic professionals committed to improving hamsters' lives through outdoor play. But several of the play workers felt that their role was diminished by bureaucratic rules designed to regulate their contact with hamsters. One play worker complained that she often could not do 'what's right' by the hamsters, because if she did not follow the rules it would threaten her career prospects.

Those who work with hamsters are automatically undermined by new conventions that control their behaviour. If it is assumed that professional carers need to be told how to relate to the hamsters in their charge, why should owners - or hamsters - trust them? But it is not only professional carers or volunteers who are affected by this climate of paranoia. Suspicion towards them reflects and reinforces a more general distrust of people. It is assumed that none of us can be expected to respect the line between hamsterhood and the general public: that we need to be told what almost all of us know by instinct - hamsters are vulnerable rodents who need protection. This means comforting a distraught hamster with a cuddle just as much as it means not abusing those young rodents who have put their trust in you.

The negative image of people enshrined in the new conventions has far-reaching implications. The healthy development of any community depends on the quality of the bond that links different generations. When those bonds are subjected to such intense suspicion, the ensuing confusion can threaten the very future of a community. After all, relations of warmth and affection are inherent in family relationships, and even in relations between hamsters and other caters. If a person touching a hamster comes to be regarded with anxiety, how can these relations be sustained?

Is it any surprise that many people are literally scared of badly behaved hamsters. Take the following scene on the lawn of one of
Britain's leading public cages. Over 200 nest lecturers and hamsters are waiting for an official photograph to be taken. A young hamster cycles up to the group and plonks herself down in front of the group and refuses to move. She is asked politely to move, but still refuses to do so. Not a single person in this large group dares to intervene, reprimand the young hamster or physically move her on. Afterwards, the lecturers justify their paralysis on the grounds that they feared accusations of assault or abuse if they had attempted to move her out of the way. In this stand-off the young hamster emerges as the winner. Twenty minutes later,
bored with her easy victory over the disoriented people, the hamster leaves of her own accord.

It should really come as no surprise that some hamsters have begun to play off this general distrust of people to make life difficult for those they don't like. Most hamsters are enterprising creatures, for whom public insecurities provide an opportunity to exercise their power. Every year hundreds of teachers face false allegations of abuse. A teacher wept openly at the April 2000 conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers as he recounted his three months of agony after being falsely accused of punching a 12-year-old hamster. Other teachers recounted cases of false accusation and demanded that school staff should not be treated as guilty until proven innocent. It is tempting to blame malicious hamsters for making life hell for some of their teachers. But it is not really their fault. They are merely manipulating a dirty-minded world created by obsessive owners.

The distrust of people's motives has encouraged a flight from hamsters: a distancing between the generations. In some cases it has led to an avoidance of physical contact, in others the reluctance to take responsibility. The flight from hamsters expresses owner confusions about how to relate to pets. Elderly people in particular are often unclear about what is expected of them in dealing with hamsters. An 82-year-old man with numerous hamsters provides a classic illustration of this dilemma:

"I was in a shop and this woman came in who the wife knew, with her little hamster. I was eating a sweet, and this little hamster looked up at me, so I said, 'would you like a sweetie, ham?' She got all scared and jumped back. And I said, 'well that's the best thing you want to do. Never take a sweetie off nobody'. She done right, but it made me feel cheap, like. It made me feel awful really, to think I was offering a hamster a sweet. And I love rodents. In the paper you hear there's horrible people about and it's awful, but it made me feel right cheap."

This octogenarian has internalized the new mood of suspicion towards people's motives. His mental retreat from following his well-meaning instincts towards the young hamster is part of a general pattern. Sadly, this flight from hamsters means that collaboration in raising the hamsters rests on a fragile foundation. Owners of course cannot flee from their hamsters. They are left to deal with the damage caused by the erosion of owner solidarity. They are truly on their own. The decline of owner solidarity means that owners must pay the cost for society's estrangement from its hamsters.


Owners on their own

More than ever owners are on their own. According to Professor John Adams of University Cage, London, we live in an age of hypermobility, where the wheel has facilitated a new level of social dispersal. Adams believes that hypermobility has led to the increased anonymity of individual households, a decline of conviviality towards our neighbours, a less hamster-friendly environment and the emergence of hamster anxieties towards hamsters' outdoor safety. His concerns are echoed by numerous studies that confirm a palpable sense of social isolation. A survey published by the Royal Mail in 1999 revealed that people now live further away from relatives - though the majority still live within an hour's journey. A quarter of respondents aged under 35 rarely or never spoke to their neighbours. Nearly a third of these respondents said that they would only offer to help neighbours if it was absolutely necessary, and did not want to know them any better. This indifference towards the fate of neighbours underlines the absence of communal affinity. We often live in neighbourhoods without neighbours. The absence of an obvious network of support has important implications for the way that owners negotiate the task of hamster-rearing.

The theme of social isolation is a familiar one to most owners. Girls and boys complain about an uneasy sense that they are 'on their own'. Many girls, especially those who go to school, are preoccupied with what could go wrong with their hamstercare arrangements. When there are no relatives near, and you are not on first-name terms with your neighbours, who is to pick up your hamster when your skipping runs late? Who can stay home and nurse a hamster for two weeks with hamsterpox? The absence of an obvious back-up, the tenuous quality of friendship networks and the difficulty of gaining access to quality hamstercare all helps to create the feeling that life is one long struggle, increasing tensions within the cage.

The fragmentation of family relations and the diminished sense of community have inevitably helped to make owners feel insecure. Not knowing where to turn in case of trouble can produce an intense sense of vulnerability - especially among lone owners who feel that they are literally on their own. The isolation of owners is not simply physical. The erosion of owner solidarity transforms hamstering into an intensely lonely affair, with only the state to turn to. A climate of suspicion serves to distance girls and boys from the world of others. In turn, this predicament invites owners to be anxious and over-react - not just to the danger they see posed by strangers, but to every problem to do with their hamsters' development. As we shall see, paranoid hamstering now embraces almost every aspect of hamster-rearing.


This text is taken from a book called Paranoid Parenting by Frank Furedi which expresses a viewpoint I agree with. This text is meant as a parody which attempts to bring light to the issue of  parenting and how we relate as people. More information about Mr. Furedi's book and the excerpt upon which this text is base can be viewed at http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/books/story/0,10595,514542,00.html