Suffer Little Children!

[Patrick]

Children's lives are more difficult now than they were in the past, according to the largest survey into childhood ever to be conducted in the UK.

The finding comes despite the authors saying children have better education, health and more possessions.

It states children need to be loved and sets out recommendations to parents, teachers and the government on how they can better care for children.

The Sunday Times says the Children's Society report had 35,000 contributors.

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ST Article

Reading quickly through the BBC bit - It looks like another excuse to bash Single Parent Families!

Oh! This is a good bit!:

"The report, endorsed by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is likely to be used as a weapon by the Conservatives to attack Labour for what David Cameron has called “broken Britain”.

A Good Childhood states emphatically that society has been damaged by rampant individualism, that Britain is one of the countries worst affected and that this ethos needs to be replaced by a greater sense of personal responsibility and the common good. "

Tell me Dave, which prominent Conservative was the biggest promoter of "Indivdualism" eh?

[everso]

Feb 1, 2009 13:34:09 GMT Patrick said:

Children's lives are more difficult now than they were in the past, according to the largest survey into childhood ever to be conducted in the UK.

The finding comes despite the authors saying children have better education, health and more possessions.

It states children need to be loved and sets out recommendations to parents, teachers and the government on how they can better care for children.

The Sunday Times says the Children's Society report had 35,000 contributors.

----------------------------

ST Article

Reading quickly through the BBC bit - It looks like another excuse to bash Single Parent Families!

Oh! This is a good bit!:

"The report, endorsed by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is likely to be used as a weapon by the Conservatives to attack Labour for what David Cameron has called “broken Britain”.

A Good Childhood states emphatically that society has been damaged by rampant individualism, that Britain is one of the countries worst affected and that this ethos needs to be replaced by a greater sense of personal responsibility and the common good. "

Tell me Dave, which prominent Conservative was the biggest promoter of "Indivdualism" eh?

Does anybody REALLY believe children's lives are more difficult today?

Their parents, on the whole, have more money than they did years ago.

There is much more to do - children are pandered to much more than they were years ago.

They don't risk corporal punishment in school. In fact they don't risk it at home much either.

Children aren't free to wander perhaps, like we used to, due to heavy traffic and the supposed danger from paedophiles (although I'm pretty sure it's no different, in that respect, than it was when I was a child), but, even so, I think I'd have liked to be a child in today's world.

I had a reasonably happy childhood in the 1950s, but looking back we would be "living in poverty" in today's terms.

I guess the big difference is that, for some children, they don't have the stability that children had years ago - i.e. not so many parents divorced. However, for some children surely it's better their parents are divorced, especially when there's physical abuse in the family home.

[Patrick]

Parents can't win - if they go out to work to make things better for their children - they're condemned for not spending enough time with them - If they're working part time they will be condemned for not being bread winner enough to give the child what it needs! I would say that it's only a certain type of "parent" who disrupts the lives of the children if they get divorced - Any parent worth their salt would put their offspring first, regardless of the situation!

I have an Aunt who's marriage broke up not long before the birth of (their) last child in around 1979, the other two were two and six by then. They haven't done too badly, without a Dad.

On the other hand - both myself and my brother have engendered a career as complete wastes of spaces since our parents divorced!

You win some, you lose some, in all parts of life, but it still makes me very annoyed when the Government promotes marriage as some big prize perfect endgame - you'd think some of them knew nothing about real life and just got their information from re-runs of Seventies Sitcoms!

When it comes down to it - perhaps they ought to be looking into what makes people so miserable - rather than conjuring up various extra punishments and taxation. Dealing with the Cause rather thatn The Effect! I think it's called. Make everyone happier and the world would be a better place.

[Patrick]

Preparing Din dins this evening I bumped into The Moral Maze on t'radio. They were discussing this - and very nearly the genuine consensus was that it was a bit patronising and nuts - as I considered above. One supporter was some mad woman who compared her children to goats and kept them in a shed (joke) she banged on - about how the Mother MUST be at home with her children and how she'd raised all SIX of her goats sorry, children at home and it was the best for every one! (I suspected she suckled them all at once until they were 23 too!)

The best detractor of the whole thing was a Psychotherapist who could see exactly the sort of values that were trying to be instilled by the report and that it ought to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Apart from the Mad Woman - the only one who seemed in favour was Michael Portillo - a man without any children of his own, if that says anything?