You'll never make a lady of Lola

Cheltenham Ladies' College may be about as far from sex and drugs and rock'n'roll as it can get. But Madonna might do well to learn from the good intentions of more liberal parents. All it takes to become a wild child is something to rebel against. By Charlotte Williamson

During the Blonde Ambition tour, Madonna gave her father short shrift when he begged her not to do her bump-and-grind simulated sex dance sequence on stage. She was the first woman to wear her underclothes on the outside, then she took the whole lot off and had herself photographed making out with other women and hitchhiking naked at the side of the road. In the film In Bed with Madonna she memorably gave a demonstration of fellatio with a bottle.

Catholics were outraged by her video for "Like a Prayer", in which she seduced a black Jesus.

Surprising, then, that Madonna Ciccone should decide to send her daughter Lourdes to a strict English girls' boarding school where she will wear a remarkably ugly and modest green-and-brown uniform. Her mother is keen for her to do Bible study.

Or perhaps Madonna, aware of the importance - not to say the fun - of rebellion, is setting little Lourdes up with a perfect background from which to break out. She herself was a cheerleader in high school, so she must recognise the seminal role of early conformity in paving the way for later outrage.

The only form of rebellion that children can take if their parents' behaviour is very bad, is to act very good. Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous was the original seriously square, woolly-jumpered daughter of Edina, who knew how to roll joints but refused to smoke them. The children of permissive parents are becoming part of the Establishment, the very thing their mothers and fathers rebelled against.

Aqua, a 21-year-old graduate, is an only child, and her parents - her mother is an artist and her father is an entrepreneur - separated when she was six. They both raised her according to attitudes that would be considered unconventional by many. "My parents are very liberal but in different ways. My mother's more bound by morals, whereas my father's not bound by morals at all.

"My mother is more Bohemian, probably because of her artistic background. She is one of those people who listens to opera at full volume, turns off all the lights, drinks lots of wine and looks very melancholically out of the window. When I was growing up, she always had really weird parties and invited strange people like sculptors and painters and writers and philosophers. They would all dress in weird clothes and stay until morning."

Her teenage years - the most awkward of all - were particularly difficult. "They used to call me Wacky-Aqui at school because I was very individualistic. I wasn't afraid to stand out from the crowd, probably as a result of what my parents had taught me. My mother even encouraged me to model nude at 18 - the photographer was a friend of hers. My father is far too liberal as well. When I was growing up, he didn't really care what I did and who I was doing it with. He encouraged me to try everything.

"I still help my dad run his love-life. I tell him how to behave and I warn his girlfriends in advance. Once I went round to the house of one of his girlfriends and told her to watch out for my dad as he can be a complete bastard. She thought that I was just being mean. A year later they were having a big row. The girlfriend said to my father, `How could you do this to me?' And he said, `Well my daughter did warn you'!"

With liberal parents, the usual taboos of sex and drugs are brought out into the open. The actor River Phoenix was raised by hippy parents. At 14 he decided to lose his virginity with his parents' blessing - they decorated a "love tent" in their backyard. Aqua's mother has a similar attitude. "She was ecstatic when I lost my virginity."

When Aqua was a student, her father would use her to get hold of marijuana. "He used to order hash from the people I lived with. When he called, he'd just say hello to me and then I'd pass the phone over to one of the boys." Actress Winona Ryder, who was brought up on a commune, believes that it was her parents' liberal attitude towards drugs that prevented her from doing any dabbling. "They explained drugs so much I got bored by the whole idea," she told a US magazine.

"The fact that my parents were so liberal meant that I never did anything particularly wrong. In fact, I rebelled against my dad by becoming a complete goody-goody," says Aqua.

Nina, 29, is a Nineties example of a liberal parent. She is a professional musician with two children - a 10-month-old son and a daughter who is nearly six. She has recently married the father of her second child.

"I think that other parents might find the way we are raising our children quite unconventional. For instance, my daughter always takes her clothes off if she is hot. When a friend of mine brought her daughter around to our house, her child did the same and was running around naked in our garden. My friend was quite surprised and could not believe that her daughter was so relaxed being naked. I think it is completely natural and take it for granted that if my child is hot, she takes off her clothes. She is comfortable with her nakedness and very sensual.

"I think it is very important that my children are brought up to be creative. At the moment we are teaching my daughter how to improvise in music. We don't want to teach her any theory. Instead, we say things like `This is a happy note and this is a sad note'."

Nina thinks that her own background explains the way she has chosen to raise her children. "I was one of six kids and my upbringing was extremely strict. My family had a military-style attitude - we had to line up in the kitchen for dinner. There was no time for any communication or emotions. I'm using my children to relive the childhood that I never had. I learn from my children and they learn from me. That's the important difference between the way I am raising them and my own upbringing, because when I was growing up there was a definite divide - they were the parents and we were the children."

What would she do if one day her daughter said she wanted to go into banking? "I wouldn't mind. As long as her spirit is open and she is a good person. I would be happy with whatever she does. I've nothing against straight people - in fact, I find straight people with mortgages really interesting!"

This kind of right-on upbringing may be fine for some children, but others yearn for discipline. They want boundaries laid down and structure in their lives. They want their parents to be parents instead of friends. Which is difficult when their parents are the ones who are out of control. All this may be uppermost in Madonna's mind as she plans a strict, boundaried upbringing for her own child.

"Now I'm older, I don't really care what they do, but there was a time when I was growing up that I wished they were more strict," says Aqua. "My mum is quite motherly, but I wanted my dad to be more daddy-like and less liberal. Nothing ever shocks him."

She thinks that if she has children, she would raise them differently. "I would like to provide more of a stable family background. I know that they care about me, but sometimes it feels like a complete role-reversal where I am the parent and they are the children."