As my work has developed I’ve found it more important than ever to think about the demands groups make on us, and how these create conflicts with what we see as our individual needs. From the moment someone thinks ‘I want a child’, whoever that ‘child’ becomes is subject to demands that may in the first place be spoken or announced without any ambiguity, but not in ways that the child can remember. Who are the groups that first contain that child? A family, usually, in the way we the UK tend to think of things; a nation, perhaps a race, maybe a faith? So many kinds of group and so many demands. Thought this way what happens between a child and a parent might be very significant, but isn’t the biggest effect from those groups? The ones that call on us for their survival. For a large group, for example, a very anxious person might be a very valuable asset. Someone who’s always looking out for trouble. But perhaps not for maybe another group: a family.