Uk Children The Unhappiest In Europe .....

[iLegallyBlonde]

I'm Head of ICT.

The whole 'extended schools' agenda is derisory IMO. As are some of the 'Every Child Matters' targets. Yes, we should work with other agencies as closely as possible to make sure kids are safe and cared for.

However, how and when did it become the responsibility of schools to ensure that parents are encouraged to breast feed and to encourage them to get a job/'become economically active'? I thought I was supposed to be educating children. Silly me.

:angry:

That's interesting because as a responsible mother of three daughters I hit the bloody roof this week when there was discussion about school nurses being able to arrange abortions without parental involvement. This government needs to leave the educating to the teachers and hold the parents accountable for their parenting, the lines are too blurred for everyone at the moment.

[Guest AuntJess]

Parents don't have responsibilities, mate, they have 'rights'.

I think you may have hit at the heart of it there, Mancghirl, everyone is too busy claiming their rights: The fact that life entails responsibilities goes over many heads!

At the risk of being called out of date or an old fogey - well a different perspective is useful in debates - I think that the rot set in when women wanted careers too. Not that I think that is a bad thing in itself, but during the child's younger years, say, up to 6 or even 11, one of the parents must take a back seat in the career stakes, unless they can afford a nanny or childminder.

Both parents can't be trailblazing executives, but if that is what they want - then don't have children.

The real sin is that the economy is balanced for two wages coming in and that is what sets the fox amongst the chickens.

In my youth, people did not have such high expectations - they weren't all hoping to be pop stars, pro. footballers or rich, rich rich! People tended to settle for a decent living, which could be attained with one and a half incomes - for a while. I know, my Mum worked part time to allow us kids to have a home life. When we got older she went full time, but we did not have many things which people think are standard today...eg. a car each... two foreign holidays a year.

I remember a younger colleague of mine saying that she could not afford to give up work for a few years to have a child and see it through to school. when I pointed out the economies she could make: run only one car, don't drink wine every evening, bake her own cakes and dishes and freeze some, she recoiled in horror! She said she did not want to be a drudge. Well it can be done and it can be fun too.

For those whose income prevents even a reasonable standard of living unless both parents work, I say , the govt. needs to get it right and pay a living wage, instead of cutting the ground from beneath our feet and bringing in cheap labour. Thus making child poverty a much greater problem.

Edited September 10, 2006 by AuntJess

[Perfectionist]

Personally, I think the complete disintegration of society is only a couple of generations away

[Caledonian-Emigre]

Personally, I think the complete disintegration of society is only a couple of generations away

Maybe not even a couple of generations away !

[dnd]

Personally, I think the complete disintegration of society is only a couple of generations away

As a country becomes 'richer' - morals decline - it's an established pattern of human behaviour seen throughout the world as economies grow

Human Rights legislation is in place to 'decriminalise' current behaviour and 'adjust' people to these new behaviour patterns of the masses - the system just wouldn't be able to cope otherwise..

The future will be different to one I grew up in - as it was for my parents...

[BuyingBear]

The only way to ensure people think a little more before and after they have children is to make both parents financially and emotionally responsible for their children. Presently the whole system is geared towards the mother and/or the state(brekkie schools etc) looking after the children and the father working to support the mother/children/state within the marriage or via the CSA.

This is the intention of the state, now after nearly all meaningful state companies have been flogged off to the private sector the bloated state needs to find new areas in which to expand, given the utopia that is the NHS and state education clearly they need to extent their success into other areas; hence the 'Nationalisation of Childhood' as NuLabour's favourite think-tank puts it, you can see it developing before your eyes from Blair's baby-asbo's to Brown neo-welfare state.

[Saving For a Space Ship]

I know, it's not looking from a eugenics point of view, is it?

Probably not a 'Mewgenics' view either

Handy that a recession / depression is coming along to toughen the kids up a bit, 'crisis creates community' as they say

Edited September 10, 2006 by Saving For a Space Ship

[adamUK]

Wrote this to Severin Carrell...

Dear Severin

So you say.... "Britain's 12 million children and teenagers are the unhappiest and unhealthiest of any wealthy European country"

Wait until they get into collossal student debt and enter low paid "Graduate" employment. With the average house at 5+ times the average salary, once loan repayments are deducted they will have no chance of ever, ever owning their own place.

The ever greater burden of paying pensions will mean that as taxes rise, the quality of public services will deteriorate and these children will have to work until 70 before they will be given the chance of retirement on an eroded personal pension.

Once the stark realisation lands, THEN the depression kicks in.

Oh. Sorry, I forgot to mention that our children will be the generation that also witnesses the chronic shortage of energy as oil and gas run dry, with the associated sprial of prices. And with climate change on top, what a legacy we are leaving behind for them.

I am not surprised they are unhappy.

Yours sincerely

Adam.

[OverInflated]

We are also teaching our kids that debt is a great thing, have you seen how many adverts there are on the kids channels about IVA, Secured Loans, Credit if you have CCJ's etc. etc..

Who is this aimed at? I don't want my kids telling me I can afford to buy them things because Carol Vorderman or some other TV personality says it is okay.

In fact here is a link about it

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/v...118155080,35099,

Edited September 10, 2006 by Adrian Allen

[BuyingBear]

We are also teaching our kids that debt is a great thing, have you seen how many adverts there are on the kids channels about IVA, Secured Loans, Credit if you have CCJ's etc. etc..

Variable tuition fees have just been introduced, now debt is the only possible means for getting on in life, don't cha know.

[Mancghirl]

That's interesting because as a responsible mother of three daughters I hit the bloody roof this week when there was discussion about school nurses being able to arrange abortions without parental involvement. This government needs to leave the educating to the teachers and hold the parents accountable for their parenting, the lines are too blurred for everyone at the moment.

Quite right. However Tony and his cronies don't trust education professionals to educate and have brought in untold 'jobs for the boys' in the form of 'Advisors' who tell us how to teach, 'Advisors' who check the statistics and tell us we're not doing well enough against seemingly arbitary performance measures and Inspectors who come in and tell a good school it is only 'Satisfactory' because it isn't teaching enough 'Citizenship' (made up subject) in an already overcrowded timetable.

Meanwhile, bringing in nice little laws like Teachers can face prosecution if they fail to spot a child protection issue e.g. neglect. No mention of anything happening to the parents who are neglecting said child. In fact, everytime I do report a child protection issue to social services, very little seems to happen :angry:

[BufferBear Bitcoin Bull]

Interesting research. My husband and I work full time and our children go to nursery and school (my elder child starts big school this week). If I had a real choice, I would work part time but if I did, we would never be in a position to offer our children a reasonable 'standard of living'. Yes, I know that this is open to debate as my children might just want their mum at home with them.

BB

Ps Luckily, (I feel lucky as many of my peers do not have this 'luxury') we are in the position to drop our children to school and nursery (completely different location!) in the morning and still get to work in time. Other parents will have no choice but to use the breakfast club. However, we will need to use the afterschool club as school ends at 15:15. The club runs until 18:30 but we don't want our daughter to be there any later than 17:30. Unfortunately, many parents (both working f/t) would find it very difficult to meet their work commitments without such provision.

Edited September 10, 2006 by Buffer Bear

[OverInflated]

Interesting research. My husband and I work full time and our children go to nursery and school (my elder child starts big school this week). If I had a real choice, I would work part time but if I did, we would never be in a position to offer our children a reasonable 'standard of living'. Yes, I know that this is open to debate as my children might just want their mum at home with them.

BB

Ps we will need to use an afterschool club as school ends at 15:15. Luckily, we are in the position to drop our child to school in the morning and still get to work. Others will have to no choice but to use the breakfast club

Cant you just quit work and go on benefits?? oh and take out a few loans as well while you are at it

[BufferBear Bitcoin Bull]

Cant you just quit work and go on benefits?? oh and take out a few loans as well while you are at it

What I would really like to do is be in a position to work part time when my children start secondary school. Of course young children need emotional fulfilment when they are young but as they get older, the supervisory element becomes extremely important. I do not want to contend with any teenage pregnancies.

[iLegallyBlonde]

What I would really like to do is be in a position to work part time when my children start secondary school. Of course young children need emotional fulfilment when they are young but as they get older, the supervisory element becomes extremely important. I do not want to contend with any teenage pregnancies.

I think you're absolutely right, my babies have had as much attention from me as i had from my mother, she stayed at home but plonked us in a playpen whilst tidying the house, doing her hair etc. I don't buy this babies need 1 to 1 constantly rubbish, teenagers however do imo.

[BuyingBear]

I don't buy this babies need 1 to 1 constantly rubbish, teenagers however do imo.

You need to give them room to grow... and lock 'n load, happy-slap and roll illicit substances.

[hankdd]

This is not a child friendly country. They are excluded , hanging round doing b****r all till some mush serves them in a bar. then they are finally welcomed somewhere. Getting ripped to your t*ts suddenly means you belong, you are accepted into our society. Until then sod off. Drink white lightning in the park and get bingo wings at 12.

[SarahBell]

Maybe not even a couple of generations away !

Chav generations? They're shorter aren't they?

[froggie]

I don't buy this babies need 1 to 1 constantly rubbish, teenagers however do imo.

Agree. I used to work full-time (and lot of overtime!) when my children were young , I had a childminder or a nanny over 8 years. I never had a problem with the education of my kids. I am now unemployed and I take care of my two 11 years old sons. And I am glad I can afford it even if I miss my work, because it a difficult period for them. Staying at home, I can control what they do after school, who they meet and help them with their homework. It is difficult for parents to always say no to the children : I recently refused to buy them mobile phones and it was not easy to resist ! One of them recently said to me : " we look poor because you have an old Peugeot 106 !" So I had to explain that money was not the only aim in life...

They have not yet made remarks that we are renting our house and not own it !

[MarkG]

It's bad, but it's not as bad as the past, where women were trapped in unhappy marriages because they were completely socially and financially dependent on their husbands.

Tough. The kids' future is far more important than men or women chasing some happy fluffy fantasy: if they picked a spouse badly in the first place, they're probably not going to pick a good one next time, even if they find a man willing to marry a single mother. More likely they'll end up trying to raise kids on their own and doing so badly.

The simple reality is that kids raised by single mothers generally turn out far worse than kids raised in a family, so supporting the growth of single parent families is insane.

You know, there's a good reason why, for centuries, most people lived together in married couples and stuck together if they had kids even though they might have preferred to seperate. That's because it _worked_, at least in turning kids into moderately socialised adults. What we have today most clearly does not work.

In fact, everytime I do report a child protection issue to social services, very little seems to happen

You seem confused. The goal of modern law-making is to control the law-abiding, not the criminals.

The government don't care that the laws are pointless and achieve nothing other than to create new criminals out of people who would otherwise be law-abiding. It's _CONTROL_ that matters, no matter what it may be, not results.

The funny thing is, the government is passing more and more new laws all the while it's losing more and more power.

[SarahBell]

Do you think kids are the unhappiest they've ever been?

What would cure this?

bringing back the poor house? Bringing back the cane? Bringing back child labour?

Whoops is that 2010's Labour Party manifesto surprise spoilt?

[hankdd]

.

"You seem confused. The goal of modern law-making is to control the law-abiding, not the criminals."

The point of lawmaking is, and has always been , to protect money and property. You can drive half a ton of car over a child and walk away in 6 months, tax evasion, stealing from an employer etc go down for years. The law, to be fair is most effective on those with something to loose. That is why the more divided a society becomes, the more unfair it seems towards the middle classes. They are stuck between rival gangs.

Edited September 11, 2006 by hankdd

[I'M WITH STUPID]

With breakfast clubs the poor little blighters could end up spending 10 hours a day in school. When are they supposed to have a life and just be kids?

Well it beats been stuck at home watching TV while mum cleans the house and cooks tea - kids love being with other kids most would rather be in after school club than sat at home on the settee - I suspect most of these disapproving do gooders dont have kids - just like the vast majority of anti-abortionists are men

Edited September 11, 2006 by I'M WITH STUPID

[Zaranna]

As a country becomes 'richer' - morals decline - it's an established pattern of human behaviour seen throughout the world as economies grow

Not true really. Well, it depends on what you take "morals" to mean.

Historically, the richer countries get the faster their rates of violent crime and murder drop. We live in a country with an astonishingly low crime, fraud and corruption and murder rate compared to most other countries in the world; the trouble is we don't actually realise it (because we're all wrapped up in our perceptions and media hysteria about crime). Yes, probably divorces increase in richer countries. But I'd rather live in a society with a high divorce rate and a low murder/violent crime/infanticide rate, morals-wise, than the other way around.

There are some fab statistics that show how violent murder rates dropped dramatically in the West every time we went through a period of economic and political expansion. They're eye-opening. The biggest drop in violent crime and murder happened in the sixteenth century as Europe suddenly became a world trade leader with a big population expansion and the beginning of the emergence of a mercantile class (an early form of the middle classes). Before then the average person had an astonishingly high chance of suffering a violent death. (There were rather few divorces though ) Murder and crime rates in the West have been dropping ever since. The statistics over historical time really show up how wrong we are when we think of the past as some idyll of peace and tranquility in contrast to which we're becoming degenerate and decadent - it's the other way around!

Edited September 11, 2006 by Zaranna

[Lionel Richtea]

When substance has been drained from our culture,

by policies which reward vice, greed, and excessive borrowing...

Is there any reason to think that children would not be confused?

They have lost track of what matters, and think that celebrity and fame is important.

Any fool can see that not everyone can have fame, and even when it is spread wider,

it becomes more fleeting. This tends to do nothing but create losers, since most

will lose out on fame, or hold it only briefly.

A more just society, that has more solid values, and rewards true virtue, would

have happier citizens, and happier children

Remind me what you do for a living again, Dr Bubb.