Be less selfish for children!
THE FRUITS of two years of research into ways childhood can be improved in the UK were unveiled this week. Parents need to love their children more and be less selfish, say independent researchers commissioned by the Children’s Society. Speaking on Monday about A Good Childhood: Searching for values in a competitive age, Lord Layard, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the LSE, and Professor Judy Dunn, of King’s College, London, said that English society had to turn away from selfishness if it wanted its children to be happy. Their research was “evidence-based”, and drew on the experience of more than 30,000 children, and professionals and other adults who had contributed to the Society’s Good Childhood Inquiry. “The cult of personal success is counter-productive, because there is only so much success to go round,” Lord Layard told journalists and children gathered in the Penguin office for the launch of the book on Monday. The children, assembled by the Society from a number of its projects across the country, looked wistfully out of the windows as heavy snow fell on the Thames embankment.
The report suggests that children’s happiness is most threatened by adults who aggressively pursue their own success; family breakdown; not being allowed to explore outside unsupervised; being pushed towards sex at an early age; too much television, video games, and advertising; not enough exercise; less belief in values such as generosity and fairness; too much emphasis on school league tables. As a result, there was evidence of increasing levels of mental illness among children, for which at least another 1000 therapists were needed.
Be grateful for children says report
A MIXTURE of “sentimentalism and panic” prevents a sensible discussion of childhood, the Archbishop of Canterbury says in an afterword to A Good Childhood, writes Bill Bowder.
Dr Williams commends the report, which, he says, asks “for a coherent vision of how human beings grow and become capable of giving and deserving trust, for unremitting advocacy on behalf of those who are growing up in poverty, for a systematic willingness to pay attention to how children and young people actually talk about themselves, and perhaps, above all, for a realistic and grateful appreciation of who and what our young people really are.”
In nine chapters, the contributors to the report consider what children want from their childhood, what is best for their happiness, and what happy children might do for English society as they grow up. Its main conclusion is that excessive individualism among adults damages children.
Among its recommendations are:
• both parents should attend parenting classes and consider the effect of a child on their relationship;
• parents should be prepared to be authoritative and set boundaries;
• parents and children should establish a good moral vocabulary;
• parental leave should be available for longer periods;
• parents and teachers should help children develop “the spiritual qualities of wonder and inner peace”;
• discipline in schools needs to be stronger and based on mutual respect;
• physical and psychological violence should be out of order at home and at school;
• sex education should be taught not as biology but as part of emotional development;
• a civil birth ceremony should be introduced as an alternative to baptism;
• free welfare support should be available to parents;
• child mental-health services need to be radically improved;
• the salaries of teachers in deprived areas should be increased;
• SATS and league tables should be abolished;
• alcohol and snack foods should not be advertised before 9 p.m.;
• no open spaces where children play should be built upon;
• a drive for apprenticeships should be begun.
The report suggests that children need freedom to explore, but instead they have less space to do this than in the past. The age when they are first let out on their own is now much greater than in previous generations.
There are fewer open spaces for them to go to, the roads are more dangerous, and 11,000 youth clubs can provide only 1.2 million places for the 4.5 million children between the ages of 11 to 16 that might need them. Proposals to impose curfews on children, ban them from parts of town, or expose them to ultrasonic deterrents are “out of order”.
The panel of researchers heard from children that “Some adults behave as if children and young people don’t matter, or seem to be cross with seeing groups of young children and young people in public.”
“That kind of attitude is unfair,” the panel agrees, but it also tells children: “When you are sharing space with adults, on a bus or in the street, make sure you don’t give adults reason to be upset or cross with you.” It also urges them to keep their friends, to enjoy seven hours of exercise a week, and to praise teachers when they are good.
One study in the report found that the more a child is exposed to the television and internet, “the more materialistic she becomes; the worse she relates to her parents; and the worse her mental health”.
A Good Childhood by Richard Layard and Judy Dunn (Penguin/ Children’s Society, £9.99 (Church Times Bookshop £9); 978-0-141-03943-5.
