Report after report tells us that children are sad, lost and in need of expert intervention. Real-world evidence suggests otherwise.
Talk about the glass being half empty! Surely we should celebrate the finding that at any given time 90 per cent of children are happy with their lives? Only those who believe ‘happiness’ is the be all and end all of human existence would think it was a massive problem that nine per cent of eight- to 15-year-olds have ‘low levels of subjective wellbeing’ at any given time.
Among older children, the figure was slightly higher: 14 per cent of 15-year-olds were found to have ‘low subjective wellbeing’ compared with four per cent of eight-year-olds. Yet this means that 86 per cent of teenagers are, on the whole, content with their lives. I, personally, had a pretty miserable time during my teenage years and I would not relive them for anything. I have long assumed that misery and introspection were par for the course for teens. In fact, it seems that ‘teenage angst’ is not necessarily the norm and that many young adults are pretty happy through their adolescence.
The authors of the Children’s Society report have not tried to interpret their findings with any degree of objectivity. Instead, they seem to have done their utmost to find some bad news. And of course, the bad news they have dredged up is the kind that requires policy interventions shaped by the Children’s Society’s own expertise. Elaine Hindal, director of the society’s Campaign for Childhood, said, ‘We know that, right now, half a million children are unhappy’, and ‘unless we act now’ we risk creating ‘a lost future generation’.
So in Promoting Positive Wellbeing for Children, a report ‘for decision-makers in parliament, central government and local areas’ published alongside A Good Childhood Report 2012, the Children’s Society ‘gives advice for decision-makers in formulating and evaluating the impact of policy on children’s wellbeing’. This report highlights a statement made by prime minister David Cameron before he entered government: ‘It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money and it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general wellbeing. Improving our society’s sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our time.‘ Cameron was following in the footsteps of the New Labour government, which had introduced ‘happiness classes’ into schools.
The Children’s Society seems to be aware that it is pushing at an open door. But that’s no excuse for the paucity of convincing arguments in its two new reports. Some of the claims it makes beggar belief. In Promoting Positive Wellbeing for Children, it claims: ‘The evidence shows that a low level of subjective wellbeing is associated with a wide range of social and personal problems. These include: poor mental health, through increased depression; social isolation, through increased loneliness and likelihood of victimisation; and involvement in risky behaviours, such as running away from home and sexual exploitation.’ The report concludes that ‘improving levels of subjective wellbeing and preventing the resulting negative outcomes will reduce the personal impact to children and their families, and help ensure every child growing up in the UK has a good childhood, and positive life chances’.
Here, the society is explicitly arguing that young people’s low levels of subjective wellbeing are the cause of myriad social and personal problems. So apparently, all we need to do is make children feel more positive about themselves and their life chances will improve. And of course, this means getting experts involved in guiding teachers and parents to help promote children’s positive wellbeing. ‘Children need to see themselves in a positive light, and deserve to feel, and be, respected by all adults and other children’, the society says.
The Children’s Society argues that decision-makers ‘can take some simple practical steps to promote positive wellbeing for children’. Government initiatives should include: introducing ‘positive relationship education’; the ‘national roll-out of free parenting classes for parents with children under five’; and ‘increased funding for relationship advice for teenagers’. Given its track record, I doubt the coalition government will feel any compunction about taking on board these recommendations on the need to educate us all about how we should relate to each other and feel about ourselves. But surely we should have more faith in adults’ and young people’s ability to work out their personal lives and relationships for themselves, rather than relying on academics poring over survey results to teach us all how to speak, act and feel?
It is time we took a more critical look at today’s pessimistic view of human beings and the incessant doom-mongering about children and their relationships. Those who believe we are going to hell in a handcart unfortunately have a disproportionate influence in policymaking circles. Thankfully, though, there are some exceptions.
In the mid-nineteenth century, average life expectancy was 40; today it is nearer to 80. At the turn of the twentieth century, 150 in every 1,000 babies born in the UK and 100 in every 1,000 babies born in the USA died before they reached their first birthday. Nutrition was poor and lack of vaccinations led to deaths from smallpox, diphtheria, measles, typhoid and cholera, among many other diseases. Today, the infant mortality rate has dropped to five in every 1,000 babies born in the UK and seven in every 1,000 babies born in America.
Children’s lives today are so much better in so many ways than a hundred or two hundred years ago. These changes were not brought about by children being taught to feel more positive about themselves, but by social progress – by economic development, improvements in housing and sanitation, medical advances, and much more.
This is not to say that ideas – subjective factors – are unimportant. The great leaps forward of the past two centuries would not have come about if previous generations had not had a belief in their ability to change society for the better. Will today’s generation of young people, who are constantly told that they are vulnerable and in need of expert guidance, feel a similar kind of confidence towards shaping the future? Of course, we should never stop fighting to improve society and the lives of current and future generations. But in order to do that, we need a far less fatalistic discussion about the problems we face and how we might overcome them, and we need to move away from blaming individuals and their ‘low self-esteem’ for every social ill.
Helene Guldberg is author of Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear, published by Routledge. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK)).
spiked would like to organise an online debate that brings together teachers, childcare professionals, researchers, academics, policymakers, media commentators and the general public to take a more critical look at today’s doom-mongering about children. Rather than blaming individual inadequacies and labelling children as fragile and easily damaged, we need to try to identify what the real problems are – and how much they matter. We need to make sure more sensible forward-looking voices get more of a hearing, rather than allow the doom-mongers to monopolise public and policy discussions.
In order to organise such an online debate – including designing, programming, commissioning and marketing the debate, and putting together a report for policymakers - we need to raise sufficient funding. If you have any ideas for who we could approach for funding, or would like to help, please email .