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The latest survey suggests that if children are unhappy, it's because they don't like what they see in the mirror.
What makes us happy? Difficult to say, but for those who respond to lamentation and hand-wringing, the misery of British children has become a limitless source of distraction. Since 2006, when an open letter, orchestrated by two experts on "toxic childhood", and signed by more than 100 worthies, announced that modern life is harmful to children, any book or study that confirms this picture has found a ready audience, sympathetic to claims that poor morals and computer games, capitalism and fatty food, working mothers and slutty-looking dolls have somehow combined to bring about a crisis. The Archbishop of Canterbury says children are made to grow up too quickly. David Cameron, on the other hand, says they are mollycoddled. On the toxicity of child thongs, mercifully, there appears to be a degree of consensus. A prohibition on inappropriate underwear for the under-10s is expected to feature prominently in the coming Conservative manifesto.
If alarmists disagree over its causes, the fact of pervasive child unhappiness has been pretty much an axiom since a 2007 Unicef survey, An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, placed the UK last in a survey of 21 nations, prompting headlines such as "Britain's children are unhappiest in the western world". Horrifyingly, more than a quarter of the British children surveyed (27%) had agreed with the statement: "I often feel depressed." The head of the Children's Society, Bob Reitemeier, said: "We simply cannot ignore these shocking findings." The report, he said, was "a wake-up call to the fact that, despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children and young people in a number of crucial ways".
Until last week, that is, when a national survey by the Children's Society revealed findings from a new survey, Understanding Children's Well-being. At first, headlines such as "One in 10 children is unhappy" suggested that it contained the usual causes for hysteria and corrective proposals, such as tax breaks for marriage or compulsory extreme conkers. Even the society's press release, "Family conflict significantly harms children's happiness", indicated that broken Britain was up to its usual tricks, ruining young lives. Only at the end of the press release did the same Mr Reitemeier say: "It shows the vast majority of our children are happy."
You do not have to be a follower of Martyn Lewis, the patron saint of good news, to wonder why this cheerful finding was received with conspicuously less enthusiasm than earlier reports that vast numbers of children are depressed. Of course, we mustn't be hasty. You can't be sure, on the basis that nine out of 10 children profess themselves fairly happy, that British childhood might be a bit unwholesome, rather than viciously toxic. They might be too toxic to trust. But, even so, the authors of this fascinating report presumably want to be believed when they say: "The first point to make is that most young people are faring relatively well and that the proportion who tend to be unhappy is a minority."
Faring well? When, three years ago, inequality, alcoholism and poor sex education were among the many things agreed to be ruining their lives? If a general mood swing on that scale does not prompt some reflection, there must be a suspicion that a belief in pervasive childish misery is hard for some adults to relinquish. Perhaps the widespread faith in toxicity is, as occasionally suggested, more of a moral panic than a reasoned approach to child welfare. Have campaigners and politicians projected their own anxieties about contemporary life on to children, Rousseau-style, regardless of developments that probably make growing up more enjoyable for many children than it ever was in the past?
An increased respect for children's views, for instance, probably explains why the new survey contrasts so strongly with its predecessors. This time, researchers rejected the conventional "adultcentric" approach, in favour of one that investigated well-being from a child's perspective. Thus some sources of distress, writ large in earlier studies, have receded. Family poverty and family structure, in this report, made only a "marginal" contribution to reported "lower well-being".
What made children saddest, in this survey, was their appearance. Almost a fifth, of both sexes, were unhappy with how they looked. Instead of dwelling on thongs and conkers and bribes for spouses, you gather, campaigners for children's happiness might do better to address the reasons why, by year 10 (age 14-15), 28% of girls (and half that number of boys) are made so miserable by their appearance.
If it does not appeal to David Cameron, Baroness Greenfield or the Archbishop of Canterbury, this finding is likely to register, at least, with women who have recently been denouncing excessive airbrushing and size zero or endorsing, more volubly since the French took against it, the "freedom" to wear a niqab or burka. Perhaps the most effective argument for this form of oppression, is that, in liberating young women from the pressure to display, it accords with feminist principles. Naomi Wolf, for example, is a feminist who recently had a go with a veil. "I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity," she wrote. "I felt, yes, in certain ways free." Preposterous as this is, it is an argument that can only prevail where so many western women feel physically inadequate. Tellingly or not, the new survey found that unhappiness about appearance was less pronounced among black and Asian children.
The Children's Society cannot elaborate at this stage on what makes young white girls in particular become so exercised about their appearance, but their research conforms with mounting evidence that, in a post-feminist age, women have become more self-conscious about their looks, rather than less. A study by the Girl Guides recently discovered that 46% of girls aged 11 to 16 would consider cosmetic surgery and that girls started to find fault with their appearance as early as 10 or 11.
If this development does not compare for drama with the earlier findings on all-round social and parental neglect, it does, unlike capitalism or marriage, at least look like a specific fault that could be addressed; demonstrating along the way that there is some middle way between looking like Cheryl Cole and wearing a shroud.
Admittedly, even with women working in senior management, it has taken the BBC decades to concede that the sight of an older woman need not, if done carefully, cause televisions to spontaneously combust. But there is no reason why, in time, the homely and imperfect should not also be carefully reintroduced to screens and other places where man has made them extinct, rather as one might restore rare breeds to the wild.
It's possible, of course, that a general assault on discrimination by looks would make absolutely no difference to the toxicity of British childhood. Children might be as unhappy, or happy, as ever. But it's more promising than campaigning for conkers or, for that matter, burkas.
Catherine Bennett.
Source : guardian.co.uk
What makes us happy? Difficult to say, but for those who respond to lamentation and hand-wringing, the misery of British children has become a limitless source of distraction. Since 2006, when an open letter, orchestrated by two experts on "toxic childhood", and signed by more than 100 worthies, announced that modern life is harmful to children, any book or study that confirms this picture has found a ready audience, sympathetic to claims that poor morals and computer games, capitalism and fatty food, working mothers and slutty-looking dolls have somehow combined to bring about a crisis. The Archbishop of Canterbury says children are made to grow up too quickly. David Cameron, on the other hand, says they are mollycoddled. On the toxicity of child thongs, mercifully, there appears to be a degree of consensus. A prohibition on inappropriate underwear for the under-10s is expected to feature prominently in the coming Conservative manifesto.
If alarmists disagree over its causes, the fact of pervasive child unhappiness has been pretty much an axiom since a 2007 Unicef survey, An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, placed the UK last in a survey of 21 nations, prompting headlines such as "Britain's children are unhappiest in the western world". Horrifyingly, more than a quarter of the British children surveyed (27%) had agreed with the statement: "I often feel depressed." The head of the Children's Society, Bob Reitemeier, said: "We simply cannot ignore these shocking findings." The report, he said, was "a wake-up call to the fact that, despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children and young people in a number of crucial ways".
Until last week, that is, when a national survey by the Children's Society revealed findings from a new survey, Understanding Children's Well-being. At first, headlines such as "One in 10 children is unhappy" suggested that it contained the usual causes for hysteria and corrective proposals, such as tax breaks for marriage or compulsory extreme conkers. Even the society's press release, "Family conflict significantly harms children's happiness", indicated that broken Britain was up to its usual tricks, ruining young lives. Only at the end of the press release did the same Mr Reitemeier say: "It shows the vast majority of our children are happy."
You do not have to be a follower of Martyn Lewis, the patron saint of good news, to wonder why this cheerful finding was received with conspicuously less enthusiasm than earlier reports that vast numbers of children are depressed. Of course, we mustn't be hasty. You can't be sure, on the basis that nine out of 10 children profess themselves fairly happy, that British childhood might be a bit unwholesome, rather than viciously toxic. They might be too toxic to trust. But, even so, the authors of this fascinating report presumably want to be believed when they say: "The first point to make is that most young people are faring relatively well and that the proportion who tend to be unhappy is a minority."
Faring well? When, three years ago, inequality, alcoholism and poor sex education were among the many things agreed to be ruining their lives? If a general mood swing on that scale does not prompt some reflection, there must be a suspicion that a belief in pervasive childish misery is hard for some adults to relinquish. Perhaps the widespread faith in toxicity is, as occasionally suggested, more of a moral panic than a reasoned approach to child welfare. Have campaigners and politicians projected their own anxieties about contemporary life on to children, Rousseau-style, regardless of developments that probably make growing up more enjoyable for many children than it ever was in the past?
An increased respect for children's views, for instance, probably explains why the new survey contrasts so strongly with its predecessors. This time, researchers rejected the conventional "adultcentric" approach, in favour of one that investigated well-being from a child's perspective. Thus some sources of distress, writ large in earlier studies, have receded. Family poverty and family structure, in this report, made only a "marginal" contribution to reported "lower well-being".
What made children saddest, in this survey, was their appearance. Almost a fifth, of both sexes, were unhappy with how they looked. Instead of dwelling on thongs and conkers and bribes for spouses, you gather, campaigners for children's happiness might do better to address the reasons why, by year 10 (age 14-15), 28% of girls (and half that number of boys) are made so miserable by their appearance.
If it does not appeal to David Cameron, Baroness Greenfield or the Archbishop of Canterbury, this finding is likely to register, at least, with women who have recently been denouncing excessive airbrushing and size zero or endorsing, more volubly since the French took against it, the "freedom" to wear a niqab or burka. Perhaps the most effective argument for this form of oppression, is that, in liberating young women from the pressure to display, it accords with feminist principles. Naomi Wolf, for example, is a feminist who recently had a go with a veil. "I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity," she wrote. "I felt, yes, in certain ways free." Preposterous as this is, it is an argument that can only prevail where so many western women feel physically inadequate. Tellingly or not, the new survey found that unhappiness about appearance was less pronounced among black and Asian children.
The Children's Society cannot elaborate at this stage on what makes young white girls in particular become so exercised about their appearance, but their research conforms with mounting evidence that, in a post-feminist age, women have become more self-conscious about their looks, rather than less. A study by the Girl Guides recently discovered that 46% of girls aged 11 to 16 would consider cosmetic surgery and that girls started to find fault with their appearance as early as 10 or 11.
If this development does not compare for drama with the earlier findings on all-round social and parental neglect, it does, unlike capitalism or marriage, at least look like a specific fault that could be addressed; demonstrating along the way that there is some middle way between looking like Cheryl Cole and wearing a shroud.
Admittedly, even with women working in senior management, it has taken the BBC decades to concede that the sight of an older woman need not, if done carefully, cause televisions to spontaneously combust. But there is no reason why, in time, the homely and imperfect should not also be carefully reintroduced to screens and other places where man has made them extinct, rather as one might restore rare breeds to the wild.
It's possible, of course, that a general assault on discrimination by looks would make absolutely no difference to the toxicity of British childhood. Children might be as unhappy, or happy, as ever. But it's more promising than campaigning for conkers or, for that matter, burkas.
Catherine Bennett.
Source : guardian.co.uk