thank you very much well thank you for
coming out on a wet and travel
interrupted evening I got on a train at
fabricon I was told it was going to go
slow took of the danger of floods and
thought I wouldn't get here but here I
am and what I want to tell you this
evening is a story of two narratives
about childhood once progressive and
positive and the others depressing and
negative in 1942 the poet in SCS Sylvia
Lind admitted that year that we have our
temporary misfortunes but he was
confident that the story of English
children is a story that moves towards a
happy ending try saying that in 2014 no
one now imagines that the story of
English children is moving towards a
happy ending news reporting of the state
of childhood is almost uniformly
negative children we know we learn our
obese children suffer high rates of
self-harming and mental illness children
are described as couch potatoes slumped
in front of screens children suffer from
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
children are materialistic hooked on
consumerism an alarming number of
children's need to be autistic or to
suffer from dyslexia and since the 1970s
so research shows the world which
children explore on their own has shrunk
by a factor of nine this is not a purely
British phenomenon but according to what
we read it's worse in Britain than
anywhere else when in 2007 UNICEF did a
survey of children in 21 advanced
economies you probably know where the
united kingdom came 21st
and things don't seem to be getting
better there was a report last year
showing that three-quarters of German
junior school children were allowed to
travel home from school alone only one
quarter or British children in 2006 sue
Palmer published the book called toxic
childhood our children's he argued are
being poisoned not only by the food they
eat and the drink they drink but also by
the messages they receive and that
invite them into a world of consumption
and sexualisation so here are the two
narratives I want to show how and why
Sylvia Lynde was so optimistic in 1942
how that optimism survived for another
30 years or so after 1942 but then
collapsed in the early 1970s to be
succeeded by the negative narrative and
I want to suggest that the power of
these narratives is such that they form
a framework within which we fit
everything we hear about children and
childhood further that we go out to look
for facts which will reinforce the
narrative so let me start with the
progressive narrative it's shaped as a
romance that most basic of human stories
it starts in the olden times once upon a
time a historically unspecific period
when children like adults lived in the
countryside help their parents around
the house in the garden on the farm
gradually taking on more responsible
roles as they grew older there was no
great sentimentality about children life
was too hard and demanding for that they
were treated so the story claimed as
little adults though that phrase i think
is an imposition
earlier centuries by the 19th century
neither families nor society were
child-oriented the life course was
pictured as a triangle you started at
the base of the triangle was a baby
climbed up to the height in middle age
and then began the descent downwards
their childhood a Shakespeare described
it consisted of the infant mewling and
puking and of the whining schoolboy
going unwillingly to school the
childhood years were not as they were to
become the best years of life this world
depicted as stable and hardly changing
was according to the narrative disrupted
by two forces that came to prominence in
the late 18th century the first was
romanticism and the second was the
Industrial Revolution if we look a
little bit before romanticism took hold
I think we could argue until the late
18th century there were two main modes
of child-rearing the first strongest
amongst Puritans saw the baby is born in
sin the task of parenting was to bring
the child to a consciousness of sin and
to the means of salvation this was not
something that could be left to chance
or time children's lives were fragile
isaac watts in 1715 in his divine songs
attempted in easy language for the use
of children taught children to sing this
you might just might try and imagine
yourself aged about six singing this
there is an hour when I must die nor do
I know how
sunt will come a thousand children young
as I are called by death to hear their
doom the second mode of child rearing
strongly influenced by john locke's 1693
some thoughts concerning education place
the emphasis on instilling in two
children habits and thoughts that work
induced to the emergence of rational
adults education as far as possible was
to be made enjoyable but all to the end
of producing the desired adult
romanticism in this context was I think
revolutionary the child moved center
stage and was far from being painted
with original sin or as in the Lockean
view a mere blank slate TIG Blake's
Blake's songs of innocence he has a two
day old child talking to his mother I
have no I there no name I am but two
days old what shall I call thee I happy
am joy is my name sweet joy before thee
now that may sound very obvious and
simple but it is actually I think a
totally new way of looking at childhood
and it had it that is not a very good
reproduction of a famous picture the age
of innocence by Joshua Reynolds but this
became the template from then onwards
for how you would depict children
children sitting amidst nature in the
country innocent Wordsworth in his
enormous Lorraine influential but
curiously titled Oh Don intimations of
immortality from recollections of early
childhood claimed in a phrase which came
much mocked later but claimed that
babies came trailing clouds of glory
from God with our home children will now
messengers from God imbued with a
sensitivity to nature and an in
on morality they could teach adults how
to live a good childhood became the
foundation block for later life but
growing up in this perspective was a
process of loss childhood was now seen
as the best time of life the life course
thereafter downhill childhood they
reiterated again and again should be
happy is an indication of how pervasive
the influence of Romanticism was that in
the 1840s Thomas Guthrie a Scottish
evangelical minister forgetting about
original sin could proclaim that God
made childhood to be happy and what was
the kind of trigger for him saying that
was watching children at play in the
grassmarket in Edinburgh which was a
extremely poor part of Edinburgh at that
time now the other big impact the late
18th century was the Industrial
Revolution which itself became
associated with the exploitation of
child labor in factories and mines as
Jael and Barbara Hammond put it in the
town labourer 1917 I don't think it
would have been at all controversial
when they wrote it during the first
phase of the Industrial Revolution the
employment of children on a vast scale
became the most important social feature
of English life child labor was came to
be seen as a denial of childhood as the
romantics imagined it Coleridge for
example took a leading role in trying to
end it and we need to sort to get us a
sense of how revolutionary in my view
this was to look back to what people
were saying in the late 17th early 18th
century John Locke had war had wanted
all children above three whose families
sought relief from the parish to be sent
to a working to school a school where
they would work too
keep Daniel Defoe rejoiced in reports of
children of four or five earning their
own keep in the textile trades
romanticism in combination with evidence
of children's working conditions in the
Industrial Revolution killed such
notions by the 1830s samuel roberts a
leading campaigner against the use of
boys to clean chimneys was describing
how ever a toiling child death make us
sad such children it was said were
children without childhood childhood now
painted in romantic colors for Sylvia
Lind in 1942 the story of the industrial
age is the story of the martyrdom of
children if the progressive story of
childhood is a romance the Industrial
Revolution was the crisis but a romance
has to have a happy ending fortunately
for both nation and children rescue was
at hand in the story as it was
constructed in the second half of the
19th century philanthropists Lord Ashley
most prominent took up the cause of the
children in mines and factories he was
the biography of 19 26 foot it our
British Abraham Lincoln the Emancipator
of industrial England or in another
phrase the Moses who led the children of
bondage into their Promised Land the
Promised Land was in one since childhood
more mundane Lee it was school Ashley's
concern stretched beyond working
children he took up the cause of stewed
children who were at the forefront of
public attention in the mid-nineteenth
century here to school was seen as the
remedy first in the ragged schools
pioneered in the 1840s and then in a
spread of compulsory
schooling in a late 19th century and
again we have numerous pictures of
street children and a street life and of
here is the rescue in operations feel
like these are the one of Barnardo's
faked before and after photos which he
used the John raise money even dress up
please you would finally still do it
that that wasn't pretty miserable
circumstances but he had a special model
clothing for them and he made them look
thoroughly miserable here he is age 14
photographed before and after and he'd
been rescued in the story of the rescue
there was one further element the rescue
of children from neglect mistreatment
and abuse by adults here the NSPCC
founded in 1889 was seen as playing the
crucial role the NSPCC was supremely
successful in constructing a version of
history in which children enjoyed no
protection under law and it itself until
it itself provided such protection
government in harness with
philanthropists played a crucial role in
the rescue of children it passed factory
apps and education acts and what were
called children's charters is set up
inspectorate's arnold toynbee who was an
inspirational figure in setting up the
notion of the Industrial Revolution as a
social crisis tremble to think what this
country would have been but for the
factory acts romanticism impact and
resonance I think left three lasting
legacies first childhood as the best
time of life should be prolonged the
raising of the school leaving age was
the most influential way of doing this
starting at ten in 1818 now 18 second
children and adults should as far as
possible inhabit inhabit separate realms
the adult world defined as dangerous for
children special spaces should be
created for children schools playgrounds
and adult spaces such as pubs denied
them and third romanticism provided a
story a narrative of things getting
better and we can see that narrative in
place with the reflections on childhood
offered on the occasion of Queen
Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 the
end of the century and then queen with
Queen Victoria's death the romance was
now complete children had gone through
the crisis of the Industrial Revolution
and been rescued for childhood the
nation could congratulate itself in 1897
w clark hall a barrister who worked with
the NSPCC described how when Victoria
came to the throne the great juggernaut
car of unscrupulous commercialism
private greed and domestic inhumanity
rolled upon its way with Nanda hinder
tracing our way back down the dim
avenues of the years we see the white
and moldering bones of the child victims
which is cruel wheels have crushed but
the juggernaut and now in 1897 been
halted year by year the number of his
victims become more few the shouts of
the happy rescue children more loud and
more glad happy children themselves led
the story in the elementary schools they
sang a song entitled o happy English
children I found evidence of it both in
Durham and in Kent but haven't been able
to find the words you can set yourself a
task of trying to imagine them if you
in the rest of this talk here is how the
Scottish Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children told the story it
comes from sicky sparrows the magazine
of the junior branch the League of pity
sixty years ago when Victoria came to
the throne the children of a nation were
in thousands of instances being done to
death morally and physically in wretched
homes in which they slowly pined and
starved to death in factories closely
confined and set to watching the droning
turning wheels until released sick and
faint at night they crept wearily home
with no heart to rejoice in their
childhood no thought but to rest and
were still down in the dark mines
underground little helpless naked
children toiled in the coal pits think
what that must have been new children
who loved the bright sunshine and the
green fields but the rescue happened and
was ongoing since the Queen's accessions
city's barrows went on a hundred and
seven acts of parliament have been
passed relating to child life and child
suffering and now you happy children
throughout the length and breadth of
Scotland we would appeal to you to
commemorate the glorious 60 years of our
queen by joining the league of pity and
so helping to carry on the work for
suffering children she has done so much
to further and we can see again in the
picturing of children the rescue
achieved this is kate greenaway sillas
tration of hark hark the dogs do bark
the beggars have come to town it's set
curiously in the countryside there's no
town there there's a farmhouse and the
beggars us of disappearing into into the
background up in the foreground the
child safely protected by
is a gate and a dog this is how
childhood should be enclosed and safe
within a garden and here is a picture I
take more or less a random from a book I
picked up a few years ago called
children in art which is one of those
books like you have them post cards you
can pull out about 50 of them nearly all
50 of them for something like this of a
child sitting in nature surrounded
carefully by animals and this is I think
from the amount 19 tens or early
twenties so the story is established I
think by the turn of 19th 20th century
and there was no significant threat to
it in the first half of the 20th century
rather it became embedded in 1903 the
author of a standard textbook h2b
gibbons summarized his account in the
words only think of the triumph that
have been won in this generation for the
children of england won for the century
2004 and imagine yourself saying that in
the interwar years the journalists and
suffragist evilyn sharp described how
was a young girl in the 1880s sorry she
had no idea that she stood at the dawn
of a new age that was going to
revolutionize all childhood and had done
so she thought and for the better in
1813 1930 said George Newman chief
medical officer in the Ministry of
Health lecturing to the shafts with
society a society to commemorate
Ashley's work could rejoice the one of
the darkest chapters of our social
history was over the long and shameful
story of cruelty and oppression is ended
children it was frequently said had a
right to health and happiness and
increasingly they enjoyed both Sylvia
Lind celebrated at achievement in
42 drew gress was not confined to
Britain the principle behind factory
legislation claimed Sydney web in 1910
has spread to every industrial community
in the old world and the new in the
1830s people across the world look to
Britain in horror at his use of child
labour it had an unenviable not arathi
shared only by belgium by the early 20th
century it was priding itself on setting
the path of progress and a narrative
kept going I think just about into the
1970s in both national and international
level I'll just give you three markers
in 1973 two very was well-respected
historians Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret
Hewitt published the second of two
volumes on children in English society
and their second volume started in the
18th century and they opened with a
chapter entitled childhood without
rights and protection children in the
18th century described as being little
adults they end the volume in triumph
with the children act of 1948 it's a
story of progress that was 1973 1974
Lloyd the modes were crossing the
Atlantic here in America edited a
influential book called the history of
childhood and he argued that child
parent-child relations had gone through
six stages over time these ones I got at
the bottom here the Infanta sidle mode
of child rearing was the first the
abandonment you just leave your child
out to die the ambivalent the intrusive
the socialization is getting better and
finally in the mid 20th century the
helping mode and what he's arguing is
that somehow parents of
got to a stage when they can actually
understand their children can help them
and he starts with this famous or
infamous statement hits the further back
in history one goes that lower the level
of childcare the more likely children
are to be killed abandoned beaten
terrorized and sexually abused there's
still optimism and in 1973 also at the
world level the International Labour
Organization passed its minimum wage
convention setting 15 as the age below
which no child should work very soon
that began to look not only not
achievable but perhaps also something
that it would not be desirable to
achieve that you might in some
circumstances be happy to see children
below 15 working so what happened in the
1970s and 80s or 1974 saw the first
sustained attack on the story and what
it implied for children John halts book
escaped from childhood childhood said
halt was portrayed it childhood pub for
Holt was portrayed as an institution a
kind of prison with powers to lock the
young into 18 years or more of
subservience e independence and make of
them a mixture of expensive nuisance
fragile treasure slave and superpet
childhood he said goes on far too long
what is both new and bad about modern
childhood is that childhood are so cut
off from the adult world this was the
first frontal assault on the image of
childhood that had been built up in the
19th in the first three quarters of the
20th century but it would be naive I
think to place too much emphasis on
haltingly short-lived movements for
child liberation which was some extent
inspired by him larger factors were
involved in the dismantling of the
progressive narrative narrative and its
replacement
by the one we know today and at route
they had little directly to do with
childhood the oil crisis of 1973 seems
to me the great turning point in the
history of the post-war world in the
West the moment when optimism about the
future shriveled it opened the way to
what initially was called the
reaganomics what has come to be called
neoliberalism the belief in the justice
and virtue of the market and the
demonization of welfare states as a drag
on economic progress and the impact of
these developments on children was
dramatic in Britain in the 1980s and 90s
the proportion of children living in
poverty rose from one in ten to one in
three a statistic that led easily into a
negative narrative that things are
getting worse in the developing world
and also in the developed world child
labor began to increase the facts began
to impinge on world consciousness
through the pamphlets published by the
anti-slavery society between nineteen
seventy eight and nineteen eighty eight
but there was also work beginning
looking at the extent of child labor in
Britain in the developed world the
transition from childhood to adulthood
which in the late sixties and early
seventies have become concentrated in a
few short years in the late teens and
early twenties now stretched out over a
decade or more this was largely due to
youth unemployment which has dogged the
Western world ever since we can see the
collapse of the old confidence about
quant constituted the proper childhood
and about the direction in which society
was moving taking shape from the early
1980s and the keynote was now not
optimism but anxiety within 10 years of
John Holt's demand for an escape from
childhood Neil postman
in 1982 was lamenting the disappearance
of childhood his was one of a number of
books published around that time and
many sins arguing that the barriers that
probably properly existed between
childhood and adulthood were being
dangerously lowered children were
ceasing to be children postman had many
successes in laments about the
undermining of childhood and in
campaigns to hold on to it or to bring
it back at a quite different level of
that of academic history in 1983 Linda
Pollack published a book called
Forgotten children parent-child
relations from 1500 to 1900 and this
marker really big change in the view of
the past which would generally gone
along with the optimistic narrative
Pollock ruthlessly dismantled the
progressive narrative far from being a
hell she said the past was now a country
where parents had always done the best
for their children Pollock rigorously
avoided nostalgia but parents reading it
in later twentieth-century membra
Pollock stopped in 1900 might well
wonder whether 20th century parents were
doing as well as their forebears
coinciding with this economic historians
were dismantling and questioning the
Industrial Revolution first of all they
they took away the capital letters and
then they began to question it all
together and began to talk about
evolution and more significant for our
purposes they quietly dropped child
labor from his previous simple position
both in academic history and in the
progressive narrative and without child
labor the progressive narrative was
undermined from within
many ways i think it was child labour
the crisis which had brought the
childhood and the rescue which was then
described which set the framework for
the progressive one and so they began to
emerge a new narrative and it's one
which people of my generation love to
tell we were taught the progressive
narrative and we've seen it
disintegrates our story begins with our
own childhoods in the middle years of
the 20th century and ends in the present
in our childhoods we say we had freedom
to explore our world without constant
adult supervision depending on our
social background and where we lived our
mothers might turn us out of doors after
breakfast and tell us not to come back
until teatime or we might have the
freedom to roam the countryside the kind
of Arthur Ransome swallows and amazons
charlton no one talked about health and
safety or about risk assessment autism
dyslexia self-harming attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder eating disorders
the things parents and children worried
about now none of these featured in our
lives as far as we knew in those of our
parents in these childhoods it's always
summer time we had scrapes and box
probably some old man sad old man and a
MAF exposed himself to us but we took
this in our stride I sometimes think we
ought to factor in boredom into these
stories of our childhood but even that
wouldn't alter the overall conclusion
our childhoods were happy they were
proper childhoods I've come to associate
this pessimistic narrative with the
Daily Mail in 2006 I was asked to write
something for the Daily Mail on the
history of childhood a new opportunity
of an academic historian to reach her
new leadership at about one pound a word
with two thousand words to play with it
was an offer that was difficult to
refuse but I was told
little or some way into writing this
thing Paul Dacre would take a particular
interest in what I wrote and unless I
could show that childhood have got worse
since the 1950s he wouldn't publish it I
did my best but not enough it was
archived no I look back on it I think
some ways Paul Dacre was quite right he
knew exactly what his readers wanted to
hear they wanted to have their story
confirmed and I was trying to challenge
it it could be said that this negative
narrative has such a hold on us is
actually quite difficult to find any
space in which to challenge it few of us
here would probably wish to be thought
to have a daily male version of
childhood that in essence i think is
what many of us have the pessimistic
narrative gains much of its potency from
names the names of children who died
through neglect or been murdered or
abducted maria colwell killed by her
stepfather in 1973 despite in the last
nine months of her life 30 complaints
about the way her mother and step-father
treaty to Jasmine Beckford starved and
battered to death in 1984 James Bulger
murdered by two other children in 1993
Sarah Payne murdered by a pedophile in
two thousand Victoria columbia dying of
hypothermia in two thousand after months
of neglect and abuse madeleine mccann
abducted in 2007 Peter Connolly baby p
dying in 2007 after neglect by his
mother and her boyfriend you can add to
the ghastly roll call and it goes on
in the negative narrative the world now
is far from being a safe place for
children in home street school in the
institutions often called homes where
some children have lived many of them
church-run in the BBC or in hospital a
story tells us there is danger for
children so there are the two narratives
the most obvious question to ask of them
is are they true I make some attempt to
answer that but I want also to consider
the implications of narratives of the
kind we have both the childhood and for
children if we ask are they true the
answer has to be I think yes and no take
the progressive narrative it's difficult
to deny that on key measurements like
life expectancy health standard living
level of education it was indeed a story
of progress even on these issue has
however there was a degree of over
aching Sir George Newman whom we
encountered earlier went to great
lengths to deny evidence of children's
poor health in the northeast of England
in the into warriors similarly the Home
Office consistently downplayed the
existence of child labour continuing
child labour in the first half of the
20th century it's when we widened the
focus to look at some of the policies
set in place for the rescue of children
that the progressive story begins
seriously defray the NSPCC version of
history was I'm afraid false there's now
a lot of evidence that the world's
protection for children in law before
the NSPCC this give you one bit of it
the times between 1785 and 1860 I before
the NSPCC reported 385 case
of child neglect and sexual abuse only
seven percent resulting in a not guilty
verdict there is considerable evidence
of neighborhood sanctions against
parents who were perceived to be cruel
one magistrate in the 1820s finding
there was insufficient evidence to
convict someone was up before him for
cruelty and abuse looked up into the
gallery of the court and said I'm sure
you'll know what to do when he leaves
the dock and he was attacked but all
this was forgotten as a NSPCC version of
history took root there were further
problems with the rescue narrative for
many children being rescued meant living
in an institution and we have become
very aware of the inhumanity that can
reside in institutions other rescue
policies were more far-reaching
especially the immigration of children
overseas to Canada and then to Australia
there might be good intentions behind
some of these policies but that does not
defend them against accusations that
they seriously infringe the rights of
those children who were emigrated in
short the invocation to children to be
happy to acquire is evil in sharp-edged
the habit of happiness was asking a lot
of children who experienced nothing that
might make them happy as to the negative
narrative there is a gain much truth in
it but the negative narrative too has
been built on some shaky foundations the
thing that strikes me most about much of
the so-called evidence is a very basic
confusion between a correlation and a
calls just to give you an example
children who watch a lot of television
are rated more materialistic than those
who watch less but you can't jump from
the correlation to say that it's
watching too much television that makes
them more materialistic it might equally
wear
be the other way around or there might
be other factors involved and in many
cases of this which come up in the
research that's been done people almost
know the answers to the research before
they started and how interesting i think
that materialism which you might say is
at the heart of politicians appeal to
the adult public is thought to be quite
unacceptable for children so are there
any reasons to be cheerful well when
unicef in 2013 published the further
study of children's well-being in the
richer countries the headlines and
articles had in some sense been written
before the report emerged we knew it
would be bad news the negative narrative
demanded that it was in fact even on the
most cursory looks better news than in
2007 britain had climbed out of bottom
place and was now 16th out of 29
countries but while grudgingly accepted
accepting this most reporting
highlighted the negative you wouldn't
have known that the report showed
improvement as i've shown here a decline
in infant mortality decline we're
talking about the first decade of the
21st century a decline in child poverty
levels and then from decent from these
figures on with her 4 11 13 15 year olds
a decline in the incidence of bullying a
decline in the incidence of fighting the
decline in drunkenness a decline in
cannabis use decline even in being
overweight apparently and eighty-six
percent asked to rate their lives gave a
pretty positive version there's another
survey of this the 2006 youth survey of
the british household panel survey
showed eighty-seven percent of 11 to 16
year olds rating their life
the whole as happy rather than unhappy
nine percent were neutral and only four
percent unhappy moving beyond the
question of the truth or otherwise of
the narratives what are the implications
of having narratives of this kind at all
in essence it seems to me the new
narrative the negative one is as much
infected by romanticism as the old at
its heart lies a belief in the
desirability of the separation and
distinctiveness of adulthood and
childhood this suggests to me that the
power of the narratives as much if not
more to do with adulthood as it does
with childhood I don't want to explore
this little further a few years ago I
spent some time on an assessment panel
set up by the then department of
children schools and families by PI had
balls to look at the impact of the
commercial world on children's
well-being and we were asked to compare
the present with the past over the past
50 years I was there as a historian was
supposed to know that the answer to that
and we are urged to look for positive
benefits of the commercial world as well
as negative ones but of course the panel
had been set up precisely because of
concern about the negative impact the
commercial world and what part of the
world I kept asking myself is not now
commercial is conceived of as an adult
world adults buying and selling as
equals but posed the commercial world
against children and you are likely to
think of advertisers and marketers
manipulating children's innocent and
naive minds children need to be
protected against it if we think of
children as obese if we think of them
constantly searching inappropriate parts
of the internet if we think of them was
prematurely sexualized if were bothered
by pester power the commercial world
surely has much to
answer children we might say have a
right to a life without any of these
things children and I think it's a very
telling world as seen as vulnerable
adults by contrast also Abby's also
searching inappropriate parts of the
internet the whole world sexualized and
arata sized their insatiable desire for
material goods what makes the world go
round adults can survive without
protection we probably don't much like
this adult life where perhaps rather
ashamed of it but at least we think we
can spare children from it life is
downhill we often say that childhood has
been shortened that children go up too
quickly to historian this looks nonsense
on the contrary it's been extended it
lasts officially now up to 18 but I
think you would have found very few
people who had thought it lasted much
beyond 10 or perhaps 12 in the 18th
century and one sign of the lengthening
of childhood is the shift in the cash
flow until roughly the mid-twentieth
century children typically kept up their
earnings to their mothers who gave them
back something for spends cash flowed
from children to parents would that was
still the case some of you may be
thinking
as many of us know to our cost cash now
flows the other way from parents to
children and there seems no age at which
it will or should end if one sign of
being an adult is to be financially
independent then children in their 20s
and 30s have yet to attain that status
but if childhood has been extended it
has also been and this will sound a
contradiction shortened we constantly
hear of children doing things at an age
much younger than adults now in their
middle age ever did children today may
not be able to cross a road on their own
but they're integrated into a world of
social media fashion and celebrity in
ways older people were not what has
happened is that the boundary fences
between childhood and adulthood those
which postman was so worried about
coming down having deep broken down
so-called adults behave like children
and Beth children behave like adults and
if we ask why this has happened one
answer I think is that the prospect of
adulthood is pretty bleak if you find
work it differed enough then adulthood
means work and we've learned in the last
quarter century of it so that work means
stress for many work means well life
means paid work plus unpaid child care a
recipe for even more stress I've heard
many people say i had an idyllic
childhood i never heard anyone say they
are enjoying an idyllic adulthood of
course the dilek childhoods a
constructions made by adults they're
actually pointers to see to how we see
the life course narratives make sense of
the world but they do not necessarily
reflect the world as it is the
narratives I've considered are extremely
powerful in effect mindsets
that can incorporate into the story
anything that's thrown at them huge
number of adults in 21st century of
Britain have bought into the negative
narrative and internalized it clinging
onto a romantic and idealized view of
childhood if there are lessons to learn
I think they come from the Scandinavian
countries which no one's surprise do
well in the UNICEF surveys why first it
has something to do with greater
equality if you ask why Britain came
21st in the 2007 it's worth looking at
the country which came 20th which was
the United States the US and Britain are
on almost every count among the two most
unequal societies in the developed world
inequality feeds social exclusion and
damages children's sense of their
well-being and is not only the poor who
suffer from this parents are all too
we're aware of how their children's
future is dependent on school success
and of course convey this to their
children we want our children to be
happy perhaps even more we want them to
achieve but second besides being less
unequal scandinavia seems to me has a
rather different view of children than
in britain in britain children are seen
as vulnerable basically deficient in the
qualities and attitudes that would
enable them to survive in the world
without adult supervision and
helicoptering parents in scandinavia the
attitude is more that children are
basically competent and could be trusted
to be sensible encouraging competence
sounds rather unexcited aim for
childhood it is at the opposite pole to
the romantic conception of child
childhood and I think that would be all
to the good it might even mean that the
issue of childhood became less fruit
discussions of it less emotional we
might be able to change the narrative or
even do without one thank