There's so much more to freedom than mere choice

It is essential to find the right shoes for young feet. iStockPhoto.com

Think about the number of tiny decisions you have to make every day. Tea or coffee, diet or full-fat, one spoon or two. Most of them are inane, many are predetermined, but they accumulate into a plethora of choices that prey upon your attention. I have only started to notice the bad aspects of this superfluity of selection since Astrid was born. When you think about it, the first few years of life are remarkably free from decision-making. Infancy is a bit like being in prison or living in a totalitarian state: parents act as wardens or tinpot dictators who regulate so many moments of a child's life. Where you live, what you do, what you eat, how you dress: these choices, which tend to be considered essential to our identity, are not open for discussion at such a young age. In fact, there is no discussion to be had.

As I watch her eat porridge and banana wearing a stripy T-shirt at 8:45am, it is clear how little control Astrid has, but what also strikes me is how little she seems to care. Even without choice, she seems pretty happy. Barry Schwartz, an American psychologist, has set about examining the mushrooming of choice in recent years and how it may be at least partly to blame for the dramatic rise in clinical depression. In books and in talks broadcast on TED.com, he questions what he refers to as the "official dogma" of western industrialised societies. Freedom is a central tenet of these societies. Freedom is good. And the way to make the most of freedom is to give people choice, the more the better. Adding more options will undoubtedly lead to improvement because people can just ignore the ones they don't want. More choice leads to greater happiness.

Contrary to this established way of thinking, Schwartz believes that too much choice can become debilitating. While some choice is good, more is not necessarily better. Fast-food restaurants are a good example of how this proliferation can quickly turn into the tyranny of choice. Do you want fries with that? Do want to supersize? What drink do you want? How about trying our new offer? Despite all these decisions and in spite of seemingly being in control of so many aspects, the meal will probably turn out to be average at best.

In this context, so much choice can have a variety of negative influences. You chose the myriad minutiae of this meal and as a result you feel at least partially responsible for its failure. By choosing a particular set of options, you ignored the other possibilities, so you regret the decision you made and feel less satisfied with it. Because there was so much choice, your expectations for the meal were higher and consequently your disappointment was greater. These are the subtle but important problems with too much choice.

Already I find myself asking Astrid if she would like one flavour of juice or another. She cannot give a meaningful answer, but already choice is creeping in. Clearly, I think giving her the choice is better than not giving her the choice. I may have to force myself to reconsider. "Less is more," wrote Robert Browning in his poem Andrea del Sarto in 1855. Fewer features, fewer options, less choice: while it might seem mean to be restrictive as a parent, simplicity could be the way forward.

A barefoot urchin with sooty soles, Astrid totters precariously between the dresses hanging up in the shop. Then she spies her reflection in the mirror and crawls quickly off to greet it. It has taken only a few minutes for her feet to turn black from the dirt and grime on the floor. She needs some shoes, but it is not as easy as you might think to find a suitable pair. She is starting to walk, but crawls most of the time. We had her feet measured and they are big and wide. She is a big-foot crawler, a zone all but ignored by most shoe manufacturers.

It is important to get the right pair of shoes at this age. Young feet are delicate. Many of the foot's 26 bones are still just cartilage, and the wrong-sized shoes could cause lasting damage. So we wait to find the right pair and Astrid remains a barefoot urchin.