The rights of children, Libby Brooks, The Guardian UK

It's not enough to say we should listen to children


If we take anything from this devastating report, it must be just how poorly young people's rights are being served in the UK

Libby Brooks
Thursday February 15, 2007
The Guardian

Al Aynsley-Green has got it right. There is a crisis at the heart of our society. The children's commissioner was responding to the publication yesterday of Unicef's report on the well-being of children and adolescents in wealthy countries. Its results are devastating. Overall, this country ranks last, making it the worst place to grow up in the developed world.

British children are more likely to have got drunk or had sex than those of any other country. In terms of numbers living in households where the income was less than 50% of the national median, the UK surpasses only the US. And just over 40% of British children found their peers "kind and helpful", compared with over 80% in Switzerland.

What is so striking is not only the lack of security and contentment that has been identified, but the vast gap between British children's experience and those of young people in other developed countries. Indeed, the UK's only partner in crime is the US, which must lead one to question how successful the Anglo-Saxon economic model can ever be at tackling entrenched inequality and burgeoning discontent.

The government was swift to dismiss the findings as "historic", because they analyse research that was done before the implementation of the Children's Act 2004. But Unicef's report comes after several other substantial pieces of research, from the Institute of Public Policy Research, Save the Children and the Nuffield Foundation, which all identified similar trends. The truth is that post-2004 child poverty still remains nearly double what it was in 1979, while we continue to have the highest teenage birthrate in Europe.

It's important not to cry "toxic childhood" immediately. This is not solely a consequence of junk food, computer games and the Pussycat Dolls. Many of Unicef's findings can be traced back to poverty, pure and simple. But not all of them. The report also points to significant cultural factors. British society does not value its children. Since the Victorian era, they have been segregated from society, corralled into classrooms and swept off the streets. In many ways, simply to be young is to meet the definition of social exclusion: no say in the political process, not contributing directly to the economy, criminalised for offences determined by your status rather than actions, vilified by the media.

This exclusion has been compounded by an increasing panic around the behaviour of some children. New Labour has pandered to popular prejudice with its antisocial behaviour agenda, as well as legitimising adult avoidance of collective involvement in the socialisation of children. Additionally, over recent decades this country has become infected with a culture of individualism and materialism that has proved disastrous for children and parents. The values of parenting are in direct opposition to those that currently dominate society - the modern absolutes of autonomy, freedom and selfhood.

Having children is now increasingly seen as a lifestyle choice. And there is no sense from government that having children could be socially rather than economically useful. Families are encouraged to have babies to ensure that future jobs are filled, not to sustain the community. Education is valued as an investment in potential earning and spending power. Schools have become extraordinarily competitive institutions. Psychologists have identified how, because children use comparison with their peers as a means of self-evaluation, modern teaching methods exploit this. The system is designed to create more losers than winners, and so it's hardly surprising that children are reporting feelings of failure rather than mutual liking, or are deciding to escape it all with a two-litre bottle of White Lightning.

Reactions to the Unicef report have again underlined the need to listen to children. But what do we mean by that? When less than a quarter of children in this country say they feel respected they are articulating something much bigger than the desire to be included in the occasional impact assessment. They are expressing a genuine lack of agency, and the need for a more coherent social identity to allow them real involvement in the world they are growing up in.

If we take anything from the Unicef report it must be just how poorly children's rights are served in this country. Five years ago, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child found Britain failing on many counts, and a recent Children's Rights Alliance for England report found that the government has only made significant progress on 12 of the 76 recommendations made.

Sweden, which came second-top in Unicef's ranking, is a country whose entire approach to children is rights-based. Every aspect of emerging legislation is assessed for its impact on children. The equivalent in this country might include an increase in taxes to support public services for children. If we want a Scandinavian-style rating next time around, we can't have American-style taxation. We could stop locking children up as an antidote to antisocial behaviour, and extend to them the same protection from physical punishment that adults have. We could assess why alcohol has to be so cheap and advertising so pervasive.

Last week, Charles Falconer described human rights as "common sense". But a country that respected its children as rights-holders, with all this entails? That really would be common sense.

· Libby Brooks is the author of The Story of Childhood.

l.brooks@guardian.co.uk