The Story of Childhood

by Libby Brooks

  The boom in parenting TV, for example, had a grim inevitability about it. The makeover genre has made a tidy profit out of soothing collective vulnerabilities with slick transformations. But the methodology is interesting. It is not only that dominatrix of the nursery, Supernanny, who instructs parents to be firm as well as fair. Both on screen and in print, there is evidence of a return to a more disciplinarian approach to child-rearing. Gina Ford is telling Dr Spock to ‘take time out’.

  Clearly, discipline has its place. All the uncritical praise in the universe will not help the child who has been given no boundaries. And many of those who fill the bookshop shelves and the television schedules are talented professionals whose techniques have proved hugely successful.

  But as these manuals and programmes filter down, a strange sort of cherry-picked received wisdom comes into being – a naughty step here, some controlled crying there. It can be accepted as unquestioningly as we believe Trinny and Susannah’s advice on what not to wear with fat ankles. It is a truism that every child is different. So why do we go along with those who would limit and standardise the behaviour that is deemed acceptable?

  There remains something troubling in the language used here. Are ‘out of control’ toddlers soon to be villified in the same way that ‘antisocial’ adolescents are? It harks back to pre-Enlightenment religious notions of original sin and infant depravity, which could only be excised through the strictest of upbringings.

  As family and community structures fragment, it is hardly surprising that many parents are forced to turn elsewhere for support. Parenting is not publicly embedded in society. In a largely individuated culture, the emphasis is placed firmly on personal responsibility. For all its Oprah-fication, Britain remains a seriously child-unfriendly country.

  It is getting harder to articulate why people have children, in a period when religious conviction and traditional expectation no longer compels us to. And that makes it harder still to formulate a morality of childhood itself. In a later edition of his best-selling Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, first published in 1946, Dr Benjamin Spock lamented the loss of ‘old-fashioned convictions’ about what kinds of beliefs we wanted to share with our children.

  ‘We’ve even lost our convictions about the purpose of human existence,’ he wrote. ‘Instead we’ve come to depend on psychological concepts.’ Those concepts can sell manuals and gain ratings, but they cannot address the profound confusion about what childhood is and what it could be that presently finds articulation through child-panic.

  In this secular society, where adults and children wear the same clothes and read the same books, how do we reach a consensus on the kinds of morals, ambitions and characters we want to have as adults, in order that we may share them with our children?

  In a speech he delivered to the Citizen Organising Foundation in April 2005, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams argued that if we do not know what moral state it is that we are inducting children into, we cannot be surprised if chaos results. He suggested that the marks of a mature human might include: being aware of emotion but not enslaved by it; being aware of fallibility and death; being sensitive to the cost of the choices they make; and being unthreatened by difference.

  But this is wholly different to the version of adulthood that children see reflected back at them through the commercial sphere, or even in their educational environment, increasingly attuned as it is to turning out good producers and better consumers. As Williams noted unhappily, ‘When we live in a debased environment of gossip, inflated rhetoric, non-participation, celebrity obsession and vacuous aspiration, it’s not surprising that we have a challenge in the area of … human formation.’

  Responding to the Archbishop’s comments, Tim Gill, former director of the Children’s Play Council, suggested that we require a fuller understanding of the journey that children must take to become autonomous adults with self-respect as well as respect for the rights and entitlements of others. ‘This means giving children more license and freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. It also means confronting children with the consequences of their actions through proportionate sanctions and incentives that nurture a sense of human agency, rather than behaviouristic and materialistic systems of punishment and reward. And it means taking seriously the way children model their values and behaviour on those of adults.’

  Lauren doesn’t think much of the idea of parenting classes. ‘It’s just trial and error. You go to parenting class and they’re telling you what they think is the right way. But there’s no right or wrong way of doing it. At least if you do things wrong it makes things better because you learn from your mistakes.’

  She thinks they should just leave you to it. ‘It doesn’t matter how old you are or where you come from. Although I’m young, and where I live no one knows what they’re doing the first time they have a kid. As long as you try your best.’

  Ollie will learn the same as what Lauren’s mum taught her: ‘No swearing, or not in front of me mum; respect, that’s a big one, like my cousins are really naughty, and me and my sister don’t understand how you can speak to your mum like that. Standing up for yourself, and treating others how you want to be treated.’

  Lauren’s mum wasn’t nasty, she wasn’t strict, but she set the rules and if they were broken then something happened. ‘Where with my auntie she was dead lenient, so when she said no they thought they’d got away with it before. If we’re good for my mum then we get a return. That’s why I was always good because something always comes back to you.’

  She does worry about Ollie, because he’s a boy. You worry about him getting in with the wrong crowd, robbing cars and all that. There’s a lot of it round here. ‘It’s harder for boys at school. A girl can do all her work through the lesson and stay behind, it’ll be like, “Ah, you swot”, it’ll be laughed off, but boys, his mates would just remind him of it every five minutes that he’s a geek.’

  She lifts Ollie on to her lap, rescuing him briefly from the agony of not crawling. That’s better! Danielle wants to know when their dad’s birthday is, so she can write it on the calendar. When Ollie grows up, he can be whatever he wants to be. Whatever he wants to do, Lauren says, as long as it makes him happy. ‘If he wants to be a belly dancer then he can.’ He eases a string of drool from between his lips. ‘Or a dribbler!!!!’

  Conclusion

  There have been times during the writing of this book when I have felt cheerful about children’s experience of growing up in Britain today, and other times when I have felt profoundly depressed. I remember walking back from a meeting with Ashley one sunny afternoon, righteously indignant that the rest of the population was going about its business instead of marching on Parliament to demand an end to social exclusion.

  When an injustice seems so enormous and intractable, it is inevitable that cynicism and apathy bleed into our understanding of it. Making a difference feels impossible. But that’s what is so exciting about the majority of the questions posed in this book. We all know children. They are our fellow passengers on the bus, our neighbours, our flesh and blood. And how we relate to them can and does make a difference.

  These nine stories offer a snapshot of the state of childhood at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I hope they show that there is much more to celebrate in the way that young people are negotiating the years before adulthood than there is to fear. And, in attempting to unravel the reasons for those fears, I hope I have convinced you that, while child-panic will always be with us in some shape or form, it is worthwhile interrogating adult anxieties, and examining how they can distort the experience of childhood and shift our focus from concern about genuine threats to an exaggerated obsession with children’s well-being.

  Of course adults worry about children. Changes in how childhood is lived confront at the deepest level our sense of personal history and our ideas of what makes us human. The work of raising children is love and life-enhancing, but also very difficult and poorly suppo
rted.

  The nature of childhood has altered fundamentally, but it is not in crisis. Take a deep breath. We are not off to hell in a handcart just yet. Growing up is not how it used to be, nor should it be.

  So many of our fears for and of children relate to adult discombobulation at the shape of the modern world, and nostalgia for a time before mobile phones and breast implants and twenty-four-hour advertising. But we cannot force young people to shoulder the burden of adult loss.

  Children respond to the circumstances they are born into. If their environment is one of conspicuous consumption, sexual saturation and violence, then adults need to equip them with the tools to cope with this rather than perpetuate the fantasy that it is possible to shelter them from it entirely.

  Childhood has never been a time of utter innocence, and experience is not only corrupting. As adults, we need to understand why it is that we continue to idealise childhood innocence, and to be honest about how many of our grown-up needs are currently satisfied by the way we think of children. We need to break with the prevailing ideology of childhood, which constructs young people as needy and incapable at the same time as excluding those who fail to meet its strict parameters.

  If we are to reach a consensus on the kinds of morals, ambitions and characters we want our children to have, then we need to return to a notion of common citizenship. It is time to rebel against the modern absolute of individualism. Parenting cannot happen in isolation. As the saying goes, it takes a village. And it also takes a recognition that children themselves can play an active part in their own development.

  Children’s rights are not a liberal luxury. They are real, and deserved. Children have the right not to be hit. They have the right to make mistakes and to learn from them. They have the right to be consulted about decisions that affect their future. Children’s rights are respected in countless ordinary homes across the country. But where they are not, particularly in the case of children growing up on the margins, they must be fought for.

  British society needs to change the way it looks at childhood. We need to recognise children’s evolving competences whenever possible. We need to challenge a political culture that seems to value children only for their economic potential, and which is taking an increasingly authoritarian line on young people’s behaviour. When dealing with disadvantaged children, we have to understand how social inequality works, rather than assuming that they can be lifted out of poverty through parenting or talent alone.

  We need to break with our ambivalence, whereby we worry hugely about our own children but feel equivocal about others, especially those deemed ‘antisocial’. We need to work as a community, taking an interest in and responsibility for all children, rather than leaving them to individual parents, or, in extreme cases, the police. We need to appreciate that respect cuts both ways, and that a society that does not treat children as full citizens, and that denies any collective responsibility for socialising its young, cannot be surprised when they respond in kind.

  A number of immediate policy changes are necessary. Smacking should be banned. The use of ASBOs must be reined in. A public information campaign about the reality of child sexual abuse, of the kind advocated by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, would be welcome, along with better provision for the treatment of paedophiles. We need to improve children’s media literacy, while finding non-hysterical ways to control advertising to children and screen violence. The number of young offenders and asylum-seeking children who are incarcerated must be substantially reduced. Schools should have the facilities to feed our children properly, and to address bullying. We need to make it easier for parents, mothers or fathers, to stay at home with their children when they are very young. Mental health provision for the young must become more than a postcode lottery. There has to be decent sex education in every school. The government must continue its solid work on child poverty. We have to save the planet for our children’s children.

  Yeah, yeah, and when we’ve sorted all that out, we can think about what to do next year. Which brings me back to injustices enormous and intractable, and inevitable cynicism and apathy. But that’s the beauty of childhood. Above all else, and in a thoroughly unsentimental fashion, it reminds us about hope. Just by living and loving, parents make a difference every single day. If we were to change the way we think about childhood, if we were all to parent all children, how much more of a difference might we make?

  Acknowledgements

  In the two years that it has taken me to write this book, I have incurred a mountain of debts. The greatest of these is to the nine children and young people who have allowed me to tell their stories here. Without their generosity and trust and that of their families, there would be no book. Thank you Rosie, Lois, Alanna, Nicholas, Adam, Laura, Majid, Ashley and Lauren for your insight, intelligence and patience. I hope that you like the finished product.

  Unless you are Dan Brown, writing is not an economic pursuit. I am grateful to Georgina Henry at the Guardian for facilitating a jobshare arrangement which allowed me to write part-time and still meet my mortgage payments. My desk editor Seumas Milne has been an inspiring and supportive colleague. My thanks also to Ian Katz, my former editor on G2, who first encouraged me to write about childhood.

  Many, many people have helped me to hone my ideas over the past two years. Thank you to all those who submitted to interview, dug out statistics, suggested further reading and generally humoured my obsession. I have acknowledged as many of you as possible in the relevant chapters.

  More practically, I am grateful to a number of people who helped me to find some of the children that I profile in this book: John Hartshorn, Sarah Anderson and Samantha Bakhurst. For child-catching and much more besides I would also like to thank Camila Batmanghelidjh at Kids Company and Dierdre MacFarlane at the PEEP Project.

  A number of experts in their field have taken the time to read individual chapters and offer their comments. Thank you to Priscilla Alderson, Terri Dowty, Tim Gill, David Wilson, Dylan Evans, David Buckingham, Oliver James, Angela Phillips, Phil Scraton and Yvonne Roberts. Becky Curtis and Becky Gardiner nobly undertook to read the full manuscript – thank you both so much.

  My agent Tif Loehnis at Janklow Nesbit was an expert hand-holder and panic-manager. Thank you for keeping the faith, especially when I wasn’t. Rosemary Davidson and Mary Davis at Bloomsbury were sensitive and exacting editors.

  Writing is an isolating business, and I have been blessed with a support group who put up with my tunnel vision and frequent hibernation. Thank you to Sophie Bold, my oldest and dearest friend, Nicola Norton, who lived with the book for a year, Audrey Gillan, Nick Taylor, Amy Owen, and Ros Wynne-Jones, fellow travellers who understand the imperative to put words on paper, Star Molteno, who housed me during my visits to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Rhidian Davis and Conroy Harris. Old hands Helen Garner and Gyles Brandreth gave me the benefit of their vast experience. Jo Clark helped me with a small victory at the beginning of the project. My family in Australia have been email cheer-leaders. My mother in Glasgow, and my step-father Alistair, provided outings and listening ears when I most needed them.

  Any errors or misinterpretations are mine alone.

  Select Bibliography

  The following references relate to books and articles from which I have quoted at length. For all other references, there should be enough information in the text to track them down. Any remaining quotations come from interviews which I conducted myself.

  Introduction

  Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (Cape, 1962)

  Al Aynsley-Green, Do ye hear the children weeping? (Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, 2003)

  Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (Pelican, 1977)

  Tim Gill, ‘Licence and confrontation’, in the Guardian (13 April 2005)

  Alvaro Gils-Robles, Report, by Mr Alvaro Gils-Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights, on his visit to the United Kingdom (Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, 2005)

&nb
sp; Barry Goldson, Michael Lavelette and Jim McKechnie (eds.), Children, Welfare and the State (Sage, 2002)

  Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies: Child Care from Locke to Spock (Cape, 1983)

  Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood (Polity, 2001)

  Allison James and Alan Prout, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood (Falmer Press, 1997)

  Mary John, Children’s Rights and Power (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2003)

  Ruth Lister, ‘Growing Pains’ (Guardian, 6 October 2005)

  John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Hackett, 1996)

  Thomas H. Murray, The Worth of a Child (University of California Press, 1996)

  Jean Piaget, The Language and Thought of the Child (Routledge, 2001)

  Plato, The Republic (Penguin, 1987)

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile (1762)

  William Wordsworth, Selected Poems (Everyman, 1983)

  Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York, 1985)

  Rosie

  Priscilla Alderson, Institute of Education Centenery Lecture (Institute of Education, 2003)

  Frank Furedi, ‘Why are we afraid for our children?’, in Reared In Captivity: Restoring the Freedom to Play (Playlink, 1999)

  Tim Gill, ‘Managing Risk’ (Play Safety Forum, 2002)

  Gunilla Hallden, ‘Children’s fictions on their future families’, in Children’s Childhoods Observed and Experienced, ed. Berry Mayall (Falmer, 1994)