Sandbox

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