The Good Childhood Enquiry

Claire Burdett — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:18:23 GMT

So do our children have a good childhood or not?

Here's the summary

"Most of the obstacles children face today are linked to the belief among adults that the prime duty of the individual is to make the most of their own life, rather than contribute to the good of others. The inquiry report, A Good Childhood, says excessive individualism is causing a range of problems for children including: high family break-up, teenage unkindness, commercial pressures towards premature sexualisation, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education and acceptance of income inequality.

The report says that although freedom and self-determination bring many blessings, the balance has tilted too far towards individualism in Britain.

The Good Childhood® Inquiry received evidence from over 30,000 children, adults and professionals and undertook a comprehensive review of all the available research. It looked at these seven aspects of childhood:

Family
Children with single or step parents are 50% more likely to suffer with lower academic achievement, poor self-esteem, unpopularity with other children, behavioural difficulties and depression.

Friends
The age at which people have their first sexual experience has dropped dramatically due to many forces including more privacy when both parents work and commercial pressures.

Lifestyle
Promotion of sugary, salty high-fat foods to children is leading to rising obesity, and the upward trend in media violence is helping to produce an increase in the levels of violent behaviour.

Values
There needs to be a significant change at the heart of society, so that adults, be they parents or teachers, are less embarrassed to stand up for the values without which a society cannot flourish.

Schooling
To maximise its league table position a school has no incentive to improve the scores of the 30% of children who are well below the target level of five good GCSEs.

Mental health
Only a quarter of children that are seriously troubled or disturbed by mental health difficulties are getting any kind of specialist help.

Inequalities
More money will have to be redistributed from the rich to the poor if the Government is to hit its target of eradicating child poverty by 2020.

The report seems to make some huge assumptions about parenting, children and mothers in particular, as neatly highlighted by [url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article5654264.ece]Finkelstein in the Times[/url] yesterday, where he basically knocked it over with the following:

"Here is an equally brutal summary of my response. Children in this country are not unhappy. The inquiry presents no convincing evidence at all that children are being damaged by the behaviour of their parents or by women working. There is no reason to believe that our individualism is excessive or a social evil. And even if it were, it is impossible to divine what might connect individualism to the happiness of children or the behaviour of parents."

He also pointed out that:

"The central contention of the report is that children are shaped and in many cases badly damaged by the self-indulgent behaviour of their parents. Quite early on it states that “the style of parenting that is loving and yet firm - now known in the jargon as authoritative - is the most effective in terms of children's outcomes and wellbeing”. And to be fair to the authors, there is some research that seems to suggest that this is, indeed, the case.

There is, however, a problem with this research. In fact, two big problems. The first is simple - genes. We all know - and even if we didn't, studies have shown beyond doubt - that we don't just inherit our nose and our mouth from our parents. We also inherit many of the ways in which we behave. Naturally, it isn't true that we all behave exactly like our parents in every respect. I am not going anywhere near as far as that. But we are certainly born with a vastly increased tendency to behave in certain ways, as a result of the genes passed on to us.

So if parents are loving and firm and have children with better “outcomes” (to use the inquiry's phrase) it may not be the loving and firm parenting style that causes the better outcome. It may just be that people who themselves have a tendency to parent in a sensible, mature fashion tend to produce children with genes that help them to be sensible and mature."

So... what was your take on it all? Did you recognise your children, your neighbour's or relative's or friend's children, or the children at school in this report, and if so, what is the solution?

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The Good Childhood Enquiry