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Does Britain really hate its children?
Something seems to have gone seriously awry with our child-rearing culture.
In a Barnardo's survey, almost half of respondents said children are becoming “feral” Photo: ALAMY
By Jenny McCartney
7:00PM GMT 05 Nov 2011
Anne Marie Carrie, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, unveiled a survey last week that
seemed to indicate that Britons, as a whole, don’t like children very much, or at least the
general concept of children. Almost half of respondents believed that they are becoming
“feral” and “like animals”, and view them as violent, angry and abusive. A rather worrying
38 per cent don’t believe that children who get into trouble need to be helped. “What hope is
there for childhood in the UK today if this is how adults think?” she said.
Broadly speaking, she is right. Of course, the majority of parents in Britain are inclined to
think the best of their own children. But even then, there is often the stubborn notion that
their encroachment on our time must be strictly regulated, and hours spent with them
dutifully ticked off in a mental box.
In spectacularly dysfunctional families, of the kind that came to light during the
heartbreaking case of Shannon Matthews, the children’s needs scarcely figure at all. Shannon
and her siblings scrabbled in the margins of the parents’ existence for crumbs of attention and
hit-and-miss meals.
At the other end of the spectrum, children are togged out in the cutest gear, their little lives
progressing from the Gina Ford regime to a hectic whirl of “improving” activities. There is
nothing wrong with that, so long as they enjoy it – but sometimes it feels as if the manic
middle-class schedule is powered not by the child’s own desires, but the parental terror of
“downtime”, the icy fear of what dark chaos might unfurl if you all just loafed around,
bickering, chatting or examining the anatomical construction of snails in the back yard.
Yet time squandered in comforting routine is often exactly what small children enjoy. Indeed,
can anything be more terrifying than the purposeful tread and rictus grin of an otherwise
preoccupied parent who suddenly has the words “quality time” pulsing through the brain?
It is fashionable now to mock 1970s parenting, in which children grew up in homes wreathed
in cigarette smoke, or playing football in the pub car park. But at least there was a feeling that
they were more naturally an integral part of the family, rather than a tricksy species whose
demands must be catered for separately.
In Spain or Italy, the climate is different. The child’s basic nature is widely assumed to be
benign, and their company is taken to enhance social events. If they don’t behave, any adult
is allowed to tick them off, within reason. Through frequent immersion in such gatherings,
surrounded by people of all ages, the children are gradually socialised.
I have no doubt that these countries have their share of thugs and lunatics, but despite their
economic woes, they do not seem to have the depressive British sense that childhood itself is
somehow fatally corrupted. And where do British parents take children when they want to eat
as a family? To Italian restaurants, where the staff give an astonishing impression of actually
enjoying the children’s company. It says something about this country that the contrast is so
noticeable.
There is, of course, no disputing the fact that a significant number of British teenagers, in
particular, are resentful, out-of-control, and display scant respect for authority, or that they
frighten adults. But how did they get to be that way? On quite a few occasions, I have winced
to hear small children, who are nicely asking their mothers interesting and smart questions,
told to “shut up”, handled roughly, and dragged impatiently by the hand along the street.
Eventually, I suppose, they will take on the mannerisms of the nuisances they are already
assumed to be.
Britain’s essential contempt for childhood feeds through on a national level: the overstretched
and fraying maternity wards, the desultory after-care for mother and baby, the historically
abominable treatment of children in care, the patchy provision of adequate NHS dentistry for
young children. It is hardly a surprise that Lionel Shriver’s novel about an evil rooted in
infancy, We Need to Talk About Kevin, was such an enormous hit here. But I don’t think we
need to talk about Kevin. First, I think we need to talk about us.