for the

Family

for the

Youth

for the

Future

Bulletin 125: Autumn 2006

In this issue:

New UK study confirms benefits of marriage

Research published at the beginning of September demonstrates that married families continue to provide a far more stable environment for the raising of children than unmarried families, even after other factors such as age, income, education and race have been taken into account.

Based on an analysis of data from the Millennium Cohort Study, the most up-to-date large scale UK panel survey of over 15,000 children born between September 2000 and January 2002, Harry Benson’s study constitutes the largest examination of family breakdown in Britain to date and is the first UK study to look at family breakdown in the context of other factors, such as age, education, income, and ethnicity.

Marriage brings more stability

Funded by the Bristol Community Family Trust (BCFT), Harry Benson’s study found that during the first three years of a child’s life, unmarried parents are 5.5 times more likely to break up than married parents. Among unmarried parents who describe themselves as ‘cohabiting’, as opposed to ‘closely involved’ or ‘just friends’, the risk of family breakdown is 3.5 times greater. The report states:

‘One in three unmarried couple parents – including one in five of those who describe themselves as “cohabiting” – will split up before their child’s third birthday compared to one in seventeen married parents…

‘The odds of cohabiting couples splitting up are more than double those of married couples, even after taking age, education, income, ethnic group and benefits into account.’

These findings contradict a statement made by the Education Minister, Lord Adonis, in response to a Parliamentary Question earlier in the summer. Asked whether the government would instigate research into the reported statistical link between children who grow up in stable, two-parent families and favourable outcomes at school and in later life, the Minister asserted:

‘Existing research suggests that while stable, two-parent families tend to be associated with favourable outcomes for children, factors such as work status, income, and family conflict and disharmony, are likely to be more influential than family structure alone.

‘The House of Commons Education and Skills Committee took oral evidence on this topic from four expert witnesses on 12 July 2006. The witnesses agreed that family structure was a relatively unimportant factor in predicting children’s outcomes compared with other factors such as poverty’ (HoL Hansard, 24 July 2006, Col WA222).

The importance of family structure

However, the recent analysis of data from the Millennium Cohort Study shows that even the poorest 20 per cent of married couples are more stable than all but the richest 20 per cent of cohabiting couples and that a cross every income group, cohabiting couples are at least twice as likely to split up compared to married couples.

For several years, fiscal policy has drawn no distinction between marriage and cohabitation and, more recently, any comparison of married and unmarried families has been excluded from government-sponsored research which prefers to speak in terms of ‘couple parent’ and ‘lone parent’ families. While marriage statistics continue to be recorded in population data, no account is taken of the impact of marriage in any government analysis of outcomes.

Untenable to exclude marriage

In the words of the BCFT report, it is now untenable to eliminate family structure and marital status from research on family:

‘[The] robust finding [that married families continue to provide significantly more stable homes for their children than unmarried families] questions the validity and wisdom of recent government policy to treat married and unmarried couples alike, and abolish marital status from government forms. Gliding over any distinction between couple types rules out analyses based on diverse family structures which could have important policy implications.’

Harry Benson, ‘The conflation of marriage and cohabitation in government statistics – a denial of difference rendered untenable by an analysis of outcomes’, Bristol Community Family Trust, September 2006. http://www.bcft.co.uk/research.htm

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Good Childhood Inquiry

The Children’s Society has launched a Good Childhood inquiry with a view to ‘renewing society’s understanding of childhood’ and helping to shape future policy.

The launch report notes that the character of childhood has changed significantly, with new technology ushering in a period of unprecedented change. In a comparative study of children’s well-being in the European Union using more than 50 indicators, the UK was ranked 21 st, with a higher incidence of physical and mental ill-health than most other European countries. Although high in the league for educational attainment and housing quality, the UK scored poorly for the quality of children’s relationships with their parents and peers, for child health, relative poverty and deprivation, and for risky behaviour (e.g. smoking, alcohol, drugs, teenage pregnancy and underage sex).

Research is cited which suggests that improved economic conditions have gone hand-in-hand with increased levels of emotional problems among young people, with d epression and anxiety increasing since the mid-1980s for both boys and girls aged 15-16, together with ‘non-aggressive conduct problems’ such as lying, stealing and disobedience. According to research undertaken by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), 20 per cent of UK children and young people have mental health problems at some point, and one in ten have a clinically recognisable mental health disorder.

Attention is also given to the impact of changing family structures. The launch report records that between 1972-2004, the proportion of children living in lone parent families tripled to 24 per cent – the highest rate in the European Union and notes that changes in family structure are an important factor in child well-being.

Having surveyed 11,000 young people aged 14-16 during 2005, the Children’s Society is currently inviting responses from children, parents, professionals working with children or with specialist knowledge, and members of the general public to five key questions:

  • What do you understand by childhood?
  • What does a good childhood mean to you?
  • What are the conditions for a good childhood?
  • What obstacles exist to those conditions today?
  • What changes could be made that would be likely to improve things? (e.g. changes in the behaviour of parents, teachers, government, faith organisations, or society.)

Respondents are requested to address six themes in framing their responses: family, health, friends, values, lifestyle and learning.

The Inquiry is being chaired by Professor Judith Dunn, of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London, and will bring together a panel of twelve experts and influential figures, including Lord Layard (Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics), Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green (Children’s Commissioner for England), and the Bishop of Leicester. The panel will meet regularly to consider the written evidence and hear oral evidence from early in 2007 and plans to publish a final report with recommendations in 2008.

Further details are available at www.goodchildhood.org.uk Responses to the five key questions should be submitted by Monday 13 November 2006 to: The Good Childhood Inquiry Call for Evidence, The Children’s Society, Edward Rudolf House, 69-85 Margery Street, London WC1X 0JL, or by email to: goodchildhood@childrenssociety.org.uk

 

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Rise in childhood depression and behavioural and developmental problems attracts widespread concern

FYC Chairman, Arthur Cornell, and Director, Norman Wells, were among 110 signatories to a letter published in the Daily Telegraph on 12 September, expressing concern about the alarming rise in cases of childhood depression and of behavioural and developmental conditions. The letter was signed by professionals and academics from a broad range of disciplines and by representatives of various organisations to encourage public debate and to urge policy-makers to consider the impact of public policy on the well-being of children.

The letter was the initiative of Dr Richard House, Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy and Counselling at Roehampton University, and Sue Palmer, an educational consultatant, former headteacher and author of Toxic Childhood (see review opposite). It stimulated a good deal of discussion in the press and media, and prompted the Daily Telegraph to launch a ‘Hold on to Childhood’ campaign.

Dr House and Mrs Palmer, in conjunction with other signatories, are currently considering ways to encourage further debate and action on the issues raised by their letter in order to keep the momentum going. The full text of the letter to the Daily Telegraph is reproduced below:

Modern life leads to more depression among children

Sir – As professionals and academics from a range of backgrounds, we are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children’s behavioural and developmental conditions. We believe this is largely due to a lack of understanding, on the part of both politicians and the general public, of the realities and subtleties of child development.

Since children’s brains are still developing, they cannot adjust – as full-grown adults can – to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change. They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed “junk”), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.

They also need time. In a fast-moving hyper-competitive culture, today’s children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum. They are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.

Our society rightly takes great pains to protect children from physical harm, but seems to have lost sight of their emotional and social needs. However, it is now clear that the mental health of an unacceptable number of children is being unnecessarily compromised, and that this is almost certainly a key factor in the rise of substance abuse, violence and self-harm amongst our young people.

This is a complex socio-cultural problem to which there is no simple solution, but a sensible first step would be to encourage parents and policy-makers to start talking about ways of improving children’s well-being. We therefore propose as a matter of urgency that public debate be initiated on child-rearing in the 21st century this issue should be central to public policy-making in coming decades.

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Toxic Childhood: How the modern world is damaging our children and what we can do about it

by Sue Palmer, Orion Books 2006, 357pp, ISBN 0-75287-359-8 £12.99

Since its publication in May, Toxic Childhood has risen to prominence and become one of the most talked-about books on the market. In ten readable chapters, it addresses some of the problems associated with childhood in the modern world, considers some of the pressures faced by parents, and offers practical advice about what can be done.

Against a background in which schools are experiencing growing problems with distractible, impulsive, badly-behaved children, Sue Palmer identifies three principles that children need to learn: (i) the ability to maintain attention even when they are not especially interested; (ii) ‘deferred gratification’ – the fact that rewards are not always immediate; and (iii) living happily in a group involves balancing your own needs against the needs of everyone else.

No single cause

She suggests that there is no single cause that can account for the decline in the emotional well-being of children, but many interrelated factors, stemming from an ongoing cultural revolution associated with major social and technological changes. Since ‘focussed attention, deferred gratification, self-control and empathy cannot be learned at electric speed’, children are becoming more distractible, impulsive and self-obsessed and stand in need of parental wisdom, guidance and support.

However, with the abandonment of old certainties based on absolute standards and the introduction of moral relativism, many parents have lost sight of the age-old truths about child-rearing, and the prevailing wind is blowing parents towards a more indulgent approach. Fathers have sometimes felt marginalised and withdrawn from discipline for fear of being labelled abusive and the growth of ‘parenting experts’ has contributed to a climate in which parents have been made to feel inadequate and unable to trust their instincts.

Application of age-old wisdom

With this in mind, Sue Palmer concludes each chapter with guidelines for ‘detoxing childhood’, taking age-old wisdom and adapting it to contemporary culture in areas such as diet, play, sleep, communication, family life, childcare, education, mass communications and entertainment industry, the ‘electronic village’ and parenting. The book teems with perceptive observations and sound advice. For example:

‘Parents who are in thrall to a parenting manual are not in control – they’ve relinquished control to an author who knows neither them nor their baby’ (p.86);

‘[Mothers have been] conned into believing that “quality time” was an adequate substitute for parental attention…[but] bringing up children is not some sort of part-time hobby. It’s a real job: skilled, full-time and personally demanding.’ (p.140);

‘From the point of view of children, think of strangers on screens as you would think of them in real life. Never leave your children unsupervised in the company of anyone in whom you don’t have utter confidence’ (p.271).

Family stability

The book contains a welcome recognition of the importance of family stability. Sue Palmer boldly states that: ‘Whatever the circumstances, the life chances of children are hampered by their parents’ single status. No matter how hard single parents work to raise their children, child-rearing requires more time and attention than one person can reasonably give. Children also need the balance of a paternal and maternal approach’ (p.167). She also notes that ‘the… emotional repercussions of parental separation can significantly affect the course of children’s social and intellectual development’ (p.149) and laments the fact that the effects on children of divorce are seldom considered.

Ambivalence towards marriage

However, less account appears to have been taken of the research evidence that demonstrates the crucial role marriage plays in providing the stability that children need. Reference is made to a Gulbenkian Foundation report on ‘Rethinking Families’ which looked towards a future of ‘democratic relationships’ where partners are bound not by ‘obligation and duty’ but by ‘independent choice’. This is followed by the comment: ‘If humanity can manage this, democratic relationships could be just the thing for rearing balanced, civilised children’ (p.136).

Later in the same chapter, it is again suggested that marriage and traditional family structures are not relevant to positive outcomes for children and young people: ‘If, as seems likely, marriage is of dwindling significance – long-term as an institution or short-term in the case of particular couples – it’s the family, in all its contemporary incarnations, that must be preserved and strengthened if children are to thrive’ (p.154). This ambivalence towards marriage comes as a disappointment in what is otherwise a most helpful and stimulating book for both parents and policy makers.

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Advisory group says abortion should be presented as an option to children

In its annual report for 2005/6, the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy (IAGTP) has expressed concern that schools are not providing enough information about abortion in PSHE (Personal Social and Health Education) lessons. According to IAGTP Chair, Gill Frances, ignorance about abortion is ‘leaving pregnant teenagers ill-equipped to assess abortion as an option’. Failing to acknowledge that certain criteria have to be met for a legal abortion in the UK, she asserts: ‘Pregnant young women and their partners need to understand all the options open to them, including abortion, so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not to continue with their pregnancy’ (emphasis added).

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Abortions performed on married women account for less than a fifth of the total

According to figures released by the Department of Health, only 17% of abortions in England and Wales during 2005 were performed on married women. The remaining 69% were performed on single women (33% were ‘single with no partner’, 31% were ‘single with a partner’, and the remaining 15% were ‘single not stated’.)

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The Lost Generation: Why our children are in crisis

A recent article published in the Ecologist magazine reflects on the rapid rise in the number of children diagnosed as suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and prescribed drugs to control their behaviour. According to government statistics as many as 345,000 children between the ages of six and 16 have been diagnosed with ADHD and in 2005, 361,832 prescriptions were written for Ritalin, Concerta and Equasym – the three methylphenidite drugs licensed in the UK.

Quite apart from the considerable economic costs associated with ADHD diagnosis and treatment, there are also potential costs to the children’s health. In the United States, Ritalin now carries a health warning, having been linked to 51 deaths among children and adults since 1999, and while the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends the use of pharmaceuticals only as a last resort, the number of children prescribed drugs from Ritalin to Prozac continues to rise.

Following a ruling by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) in June, children as young as eight can be given Prozac, despite concerns that it can trigger suicidal feelings in patients.

Failing to look for the roots

In his editorial, Zac Goldsmith observes that the response of the medical establishment:

‘all too often involves reaching for pills without seeking to understand the cause of the problem. There is almost a built-in acceptance of these problems, an assumption that they are inevitable, unavoidable. But if the number of children being diagnosed with behavioural problems is increasing rapidly, something is causing that increase, and surely our first priority should be working out what it is.’

According to the author of the Ecologist article, former university lecturer and mother of two, Rachel Ragg, the pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to encourage careful scrutiny of the ADHD phenomenon. They are ‘not only the big winners in the game’, but ‘more disturbingly, they are also the ones who market the disorders in the first place, before providing the “miracle cure”’.

She points to the fact that Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyper-activity Disorder (CHADD), the leading organisation in the United States providing support to individuals with ADHD and their families, receives just under a fifth of its total annual income from drug companies with a vested financial interest in the promotion of behaviour-controlling drugs. In the UK, the main support group, the Department of Health-funded National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service (ADDISS) has also solicited and received funding from three of the major pharmaceutical companies that make methylphenidate and other medications for ADHD.

Uncomfortable questions

However, a more fundamental reason for the current resistance to examining the underlying causes of the growing crisis in childhood is that to do so would involve asking uncomfortable questions about a whole host of issues, including modern patterns of family life, the government’s childcare strategy, the education system, the food we eat, and the way we spend our time.

Rachel Ragg suggests that modern education is out of tune with boys’ impulsive, exploratory natures and that a failure to recognise and respect the differences between the sexes has done educational and developmental harm – particularly to boys. She also considers how shifting economic structures have led to profound changes in the organisation of family life, with 57 per cent of mothers of children under five now employed outside the home.

Despite the fact that 63 per cent of mothers currently in employment want to work fewer hours, and 44 per cent of working mothers would prefer to give up work and stay at home with their children if they could afford to do so, the government is persisting with policies that deny children time with their parents.

Other factors

Early schooling, the breakdown of extended family, a lack of paternal involvement, the consumer-driven culture, poor diet, the constant round of stress-inducing assessment tests – all are cited as possible factors that are taking their toll on children’s mental health and general well-being. Add to that the reluctance of many parents to effectively discipline their children for fear of social service intervention and the breakdown of support networks within the local community, and you have ‘the ideal cultural preconditions for a growth of the idea that the real problem lies with a medical condition in the child’.

While it may be easier to give children a pill than worry about the underlying causes, Rachel Ragg concludes that the welfare of children requires an altogether different approach:

‘If we are to avoid sliding ever further down the drug route, we have to confront some difficult questions. What exactly are our priorities as a society? Economic growth and a generation of children on toxic and potentially addictive drugs? Or a generation of healthy, happy, creative children who are nurtured for who they are, and whose individual talents and personalities are allowed to flourish within the boundaries of a communal sense of right and wrong?’

Rachel Ragg, ‘School Uniformity’, Ecologist, October 2006. An excerpt from the article will be found on the Ecologist website: www.theecologist.org

 

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Information Sharing Index Consultation

The DfES has published draft regulations for the information sharing index that will contain basic details of every child in England. The regulations list the information that will be stored and the types of practitioner who may be granted access by their local authority.

Earlier in the year, the government minister, Lord Adonis estimated that between 300,000-400,000 professionals would have access to the information stored on the database, and the regulations specify that practitioners with access to the index may access any child’s record in England and not only records in their own local authority area.

Concerns about security of the system and potential abuse either from without or within heightened over the summer amid reports that records relating to the children of celebrities would be granted increased levels of security.

Information Sharing Index: Consultation on Draft Information Sharing Index ( England ) Regulations and Partial Regulatory Impact Assessment. Closing date for responses: 14 December 2006. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1431

 

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Children’s commissioner sets out in pursuit of a radical children’s rights agenda

In his first annual report, the Children’s Commissioner for England, Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, stressed that it was the aim of his office not simply to consult with children and young people, but to ensure that they drive every aspect of its work:

‘We have made sure that children and young people have driven everything that we have done. From helping to establish our mission, aims and priorities and recruiting our staff, to designing our offices, we are making sure that they really are at the heart of the organisation.’

But it is not quite as simple as it might at first appear, because children are not the only people the Commissioner is listening to. He also refers to the ‘excellent working partnerships’ he has developed with ‘key stakeholders in government and non-governmental organisations’ and to his close co-operation with the other UK children’s commissioners through the newly formed British and Irish Network of Ombudsmen and Children’s Commissioners (BINOCC). He further expresses his indebtedness to the DfES for its grant-in-aid of up to £3 million a year for three years, for seconding several of its staff in the early months, and for providing temporary accommodation and other facilities at Caxton House, Westminster.

Anti-smacking crusade

The Commissioner certainly lost no time in launching his crusade against parents who smack, but it is less clear what part children had to play in the development of that particular policy. True, children may not like being smacked any more than they like having privileges withdrawn and receiving any other form of discipline, but they certainly do not want their parents to be prosecuted and criminalised for the use moderate physical correction; neither do they want their families harassed by social services, which would be the inevitable outcome of a ban on smacking.

This part of the Commissioner’s agenda is not so much driven by children as by ideology – the same ideology that prompted the European Network of Children’s Ombudspersons to make a Europe-wide ban on smacking one of its two key priorities back in 2004, under the direction of its advisor, Children are Unbeatable co-ordinator, Peter Newell.

For an organisation that claims to be driven by children and young people, the Commissioner’s agenda is remarkably consistent with the agenda of adult children’s rights activists. Over the coming year, in partnership with the other UK commissioners, Professor Aynsley-Green’s office intends to make available ‘improved information and practical guides for parents as alternatives to physical punishment’ and to develop his work ‘on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in relation to bullying and other areas where young people tell us they encounter discrimination’. He has also made it clear that he supports the right of young people to engage in unlawful sexual intercourse well below the age of consent and to obtain contraceptive advice and treatment without the knowledge of their parents.

Under 13s and the right to a private sex life

In an extraordinary section of the Report, the Commissioner’s office suggests that, ‘opposing mandatory reporting of sexual activity in under 13s’ fulfils the Every Child Matters objectives to ‘Be healthy’ and ‘Stay safe’. A paper on the Commissioner’s website, prepared by Professor Carolyn Hamilton of the Children’s Legal Centre on behalf of the Children’s Commissioner suggests that a requirement on professionals to report a young person for underage sexual activity ‘could be considered an invasion of the young person’s right to private life’. The paper goes on to oppose mandatory reporting of sexually active under 13s on the basis that children under that age who were being abused would not seek contraception or confide in a professional if they if they thought they would be reported.

It is to be feared that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in England, like its counterparts in other parts of the UK and in many parts of Europe, is being used as a vehicle to advance a radical children’s rights agenda that is not at all in the best interests of children and their families.

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Commons support for smacking ban vastly overestimated

MPs’ support doubles for smacking ban: A motion to outlaw violence against children is being given record backing. So read a headline in the Times newspaper on 24 June. The article went on to claim that 172 MPs had signed an Early Day Motion (EDM) in support of a ban on smacking. However, the EDM in question does not refer smacking at all. Rather, it is titled, ‘Children and Human Rights’ and speaks in terms of giving children ‘the same protection under the law on assault as adults’, which it describes as a ‘modernising and progressive reform’ concerning a ‘fundamental issue of equality and human rights that has been trivialised for too long’.

Among the signatories were several MPs not known for their support for criminalising parents for smacking their children in a moderate and responsible way, so Family and Youth Concern wrote to them to ask whether they supported a legal ban on smacking and whether they realised how the anti-smacking lobby intended to use the EDM. One Liberal Democrat MP who had previously assured us of his strong opposition to a smacking ban responded very swiftly to say that he had taken the EDM at face value without appreciating the hidden motives that lay behind it, and that his views on reasonable chastisement and parental discipline remained unchanged.

While a small number of respondents indicated that they did support legislation against smacking and some worded their replies in such vague and ambiguous terms it is difficult to ascertain their position, others have made it quite clear that they do not support a ban on smacking. The following statements are examples of three responses received from Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs who had signed the EDM:

  • ‘I support reasonable chastisement by parents.’
  • ‘Parents have a clear responsibility for the well-being and behaviour of any children that they bring into the world and they have to take what reasonable steps they feel need to be taken in order to control the behaviour of their children.’
  • ‘I would not wish to ban smacking or change that part of the law.  It may be that I should withdraw my name from EDM 729.  Having just read it again I think you may be right and it may have hidden within it a consequence that involves such changes to the law.’

The EDM seems to be yet another example of the anti-smacking lobby attempting to persuade people to sign up to their campaign without knowing what it is really all about and then exaggerating the level of support for their cause.

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When Teenage Pregnancy is Planned

A recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation questions the common assumption that teenage pregnancy is unplanned and is caused by a lack of information or access to contraception. Based on interviews with 51 teenage parents (41 young women and 10 young men), all from disadvantaged backgrounds, the report demonstrates that some teenage pregnancies occur not by accident, but intentionally. In their review of the evidence the authors highlight two major contributory factors in the conscious decision of some young people to have a child:

(i) Many of those interviewed had turbulent family backgrounds and wanted a child to in some way make up for, or provide an escape from, a difficult family situation.

(ii) Against a background of negative experiences in education and employment and a perceived lack of opportunity, parenthood seemed a positive alternative and a way for the teenagers to take control of their lives.

A further factor, although not a direct reason for choosing pregnancy, was the high visibility and social acceptance of teenage parenthood within their community.

The experience of teenage parenthood

The majority of the teenage mothers interviewed found parenthood a largely positive experience and believed they had made the right choice. In many cases, motherhood had led to an improved financial situation and better accommodation. However, other teenage mothers spoke of being worse off financially and more isolated as a result of having a child. A significant number of young fathers also later regretted the decision to have a child, particularly where the relationship with the mother had broken down and left them without access to their child.

In considering the policy implications of the study, the authors reject the assertion of the Social Exclusion Unit’s report on teenage pregnancy that young people only think about pregnancy after conception has occurred, and suggest that planned pregnancy in teenagers should receive greater recognition. They make three specific recommendations in relation to the education of young people:

  • the promotion of condom usage, to encourage young men to become more involved in the planning process;
  • further information on contraception and fertility to be given to young people. (Interestingly, however, all the young people interviewed knew how to use contraception, so ignorance on that score was evidently not the problem.) In their enthusiasm for contraceptive advocacy the report’s authors overstate its effectiveness when they confidently assert that young people: ‘can have the certainty of avoiding pregnancy if they use contraception’ (p.56, emphasis added).
  • peer education programmes, drawing on the experiences of those who subsequently regretted a ‘planned’ teenage pregnancy, in order to help young people considering pregnancy make ‘informed choices’. Providing more opportunities for young people as alternatives to becoming parents is also raised, suggesting increased life-choices would lead to fewer teenagers seeing motherhood as the only route to independence.

In view of the fact that the teenagers in the study had chosen to become parents and, in most cases, considered that their lives had changed for the better, the authors raise the question of whether planned teenage pregnancy should be perceived as a social problem at all. The report notes that: ‘The majority of the reasons [for having children] were not child-specific (for example, love for a child or “a natural stage in our relationship”). In contrast, reasons were more related to the current situation young people were in’ (p.52).

Children were reported to have the effect of bringing families closer together, and also of helping mothers find a greater sense of their own identity and independence. The study suggests that parenthood gave these teenagers a level of maturity, but fails to acknowledge that such self-centred reasons for having children could be detrimental to the children concerned and that such selfish thinking is actually a mark of immaturity.

The nub of the issue

This is perhaps the nub of the issue: the young people who participated in this study had not considered what was in the best interest of the children they were planning to bring into the world and whether they were capable of giving them the stability and foundation required for healthy development. One young mother’s view of her decision to have a child is telling: ‘She wishes she had waited until she was in a proper, secure relationship with more financial security’ (p.43).

The real need is for a radical shift of focus in sex education so that it places a greater emphasis on the responsibilities involved in bringing up a child, and the need of a child to have two parents who are committed to each other in a stable marriage.

‘Planned’ Teenage Pregnancy Perspectives of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds by Suzanne Cater and Lester Coleman (The Policy Press, June 2006). The full report is available online at: http://www.jrf.org.uk

 

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Morning-after pill fails to cut abortion rate

Growing use of the morning-after pill has failed to reduce the number of women requesting an abortion in the UK, according to an editorial in the British Medical Journal. Abortion rates have continued to rise despite the fact that during 2004-05, the morning-after pill was prescribed on around 0.5 million occasions by GPs and family planning clinics. In addition, s urvey data suggest that about 33% of women obtain the morning-after pill without prescription from a pharmacy and about 5% obtain prescriptions from hospital accident and emergency departments (NHS Contraceptive Services, England: 2004-05).

Writing in the BMJ, Anna Glasier, the Director of Family Planning and Well Woman Services at Lothian Primary Care NHS Trust notes that, ‘despite the clear increase in the use of emergency contraception, abortion rates have not fallen in the UK. They have risen from 11 per 1000 women aged 15-44 in 1984 (136,388 abortions) to 17.8 per 1000 in 2004 (185,400 abortions)’.

Professor Glasier, who, during the past five years, has received grants from Schering Health (which markets the morning after pill in the UK ) for running educational programmes, points to evidence which suggests that the morning-after pill may not be the solution to rising abortion rates that it has been made out to be. Ten different studies in different countries have shown that giving women a supply of the morning-after pill to keep at home has increased its use, but has had no measurable effect on either pregnancy or abortion rates. In the UK, the proportion of women who seek an abortion having previously taken the morning-after pill has increased from one per cent in 1984, to six per cent in 1996 and 12 per cent in 2002. Professor Glasier concludes: ‘If you are looking for an intervention that will reduce abortion rates, emergency contraception may not be the solution.’

BMJ, Vol 333, 16 September 2006.

 

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Life without Children

The crucial role of parents in raising their children has been devalued as childrearing has taken up a smaller proportion of many adults’ lives, according to a recent essay published by the National Marriage Project in the United States.

As a result of people marrying later, living longer and having fewer children, most Americans now spend the larger share of their adult lives without minor children in the home. While in 1970, 73.6 per cent of women, aged 25-29, had already entered their childrearing years and were living with at least one minor child of their own, by 2000, the proportion had dropped to 48.7 per cent. Likewise, the proportion women aged 50-54 who had at least one minor child of their own at home fell from 27.4 per cent in 1970 to 15.4 per cent in 2000. Also, in 2004, almost one in five women in their early forties was childless, compared with one in ten in 1976.

As life with children has receded as a defining experience of adult life for an increasing segment of the adult population, popular culture has begun to portray the child-rearing years as less satisfying compared with the years before and after having children. Society has become more oriented to the work and play of adults than to the care and nurture of children with the consequence that many parents feel out of sync with the larger adult world.

Negative perceptions of parenthood

Life with children is all-too-often perceived as a disruption rather than as one of the defining purposes of married life. With this shift in focus, parents have increasingly come to view the years of active child-rearing as ‘a gruelling experience, imposing financial burdens, onerous responsibilities, emotional stress, and strains on marital happiness’, with the result that married couples frequently see children as an obstacle to their marital happiness.

The negative portrayal of family life in the media has not helped the shift away from a society of child-rearing families to a society of child-free adults. Television soaps presenting the image of a glamorous single life without children have fed the perception that the years of life devoted to child rearing are less satisfying than the years before and after.

The authors of this sobering and thought-provoking study make the perceptive observation that:

‘More generally and pervasively, the expressive values of the adult-only world are at odds with the values of the child-rearing world. Indeed, child-rearing values—sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity—seem stale and musty by comparison…What it takes to raise children is almost the opposite of what popularly defines a satisfying adult life.’

In previous generations, parents enjoyed the respect and support of society for the valuable work of bringing up children. With the absence of such recognition in the present culture, the task of bringing up children looks set to become increasingly difficult.

Life Without Children, by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, National Marriage Project, July 2006. http://marriage.rutgers.edu/

 

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BOOK REVIEW

Family Policy, Family Changes: Sweden, Italy and Britain Compared

Patricia Morgan, Civitas, 2006, xii + 148pp ISBN 1-903386–43-8 £14.00
Available from FYC for £5.00 + £1.00 p&p.

The purpose of this title is to examine the state of the family in three developed Western European countries and to consider to what extent the differences could be explained by public policy goals. The three countries selected for consideration are at a similar level of economic development with comparable systems of law and well-developed political structures, but differ sharply in terms of national culture, social, political and religious characteristics, family policy, and patterns of female employment.

Patricia Morgan looks at each country in turn in three chapters that contain a wealth of facts and figures relating to social conditions and family policy and make for fascinating reading.

Sweden

We learn that in Sweden, long held up as a beacon of progressive, gender-neutral family policy, universal childcare has turned out to be an unattainable goal. While the rate of female participation in the labour force is high, in reality it is a paper exercise, because paid leave entitlements for sickness, holidays and parenting are so generous that on any given day, 20 per cent of female workers are absent from work (48 per cent for mothers of children under three).

Contrary to the common perception, Sweden has a more gender-segregated workforce that the USA, Germany or the UK. Despite the Swedish government’s concerted efforts to ‘engineer the freedom of women from child-rearing responsibilities and the demise of the traditional family through economic manipulation, social pressures and massive public re-education’ (p.19), men tend not to take parental leave and role reversal is very rare.

Patricia Morgan comments, ‘If sexual differentiation in the labour market persists after Sweden’s years of commitment to egalitarian policies, what chance of equal outcomes elsewhere?’ (p.56). The Swedish experience suggests that there are fundamental differences between the sexes that run much deeper than social convention.

Italy

In Italy, there has been much less state intervention in the family. Such social welfare provisions that exist are only intended to complement the resources provided within the family. Italy enjoys high levels of family stability, with low rates of lone parenthood and teenage pregnancy. Cohabitation is rare, and while rates of separation and divorce are rising, they are still comparatively low, with 90 per cent of children under 18 living with both parents. However, the fertility rate is exceptionally low (1.26 in 2002), leading to an ageing population, with the elderly outnumbering the young.

Britain

In a chapter entitled, ‘Britain : The Worst of All Worlds?’ Patricia Morgan traces some of the key changes in family law and policy in the UK. Support for marriage has been stripped away, with a clear bias in favour of lone parenthood in the tax and benefit system. However, ‘encouraging lone-parenthood or “family diversity” and, at the same time, trying to push down poverty is a very expensive business’ (p.116).

The hostility towards marriage has been demonstrated in the removal of any reference to it on official forms and in the decision to equate marital and cohabiting relationships in government-sponsored studies when it is well known that the two have very different implications and outcomes. In addition to redefining the family and going into the business of child-rearing, the UK government is increasingly finding ways to regulate family life.

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Full-Time Mothers Annual Meeting

Full-Time Mothers are holding their annual meeting in the Crypt of St James’ Church, Piccadilly, London SW1, on Tuesday 7 November at 11am. Speakers include Michael Clark from ‘Keeping Time for Children’ and Caitriona Lynch, from Cúram (With Care). For further information, please telephone Liz Swift on 01883 715648.

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Teenage pregnancy – more of the same

During July, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) published fresh guidance aimed at helping local authorities and primary care trusts reduce teenage pregnancy rates.1

The guidance is based on the assumption that any reduction in teenage conception rates must be due to projects overseen by a local teenage pregnancy co-ordinator. No account is taken of any other factors that might have influenced these rates, such as abstinence education initiatives, or the decision in some areas to stop providing free independent accommodation to teenage mothers.

In September, the DfES published a further document seeking to extend the teenage pregnancy strategy.2 While the document may be new, the proposed measures are not: improving sex and relationships education, running condom campaigns, and making condoms more readily available in easily accessible places such as shops and beauty salons.

Despite the success of abstinence programmes in the United States, abstinence education does not feature in the government’s thinking at all. Although the document advocates ‘a strong focus on the benefits of delaying early sex’, the reason for this has more to do with ‘the high levels of regret reported by young people themselves’ than with any moral considerations. The age of consent does not receive so much as a passing mention, and in its zeal to improve the quality of accommodation of teenage mothers and provide more support for them, the DfES appears oblivious to the very possibility that beneficience might make teenage motherhood a more attractive option to other young people.

Notes:

1. ‘Teenage Pregnancy Next Steps: Guidance for Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts on Effective Delivery of Local Strategies’

2. ‘Teenage Pregnancy: Accelerating the Strategy to 2010′

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British public remains strongly opposed to a ban on smacking

A survey of 1,939 adults conducted by GfK NOP for ITV1 during August found that the majority supported smacking as an appropriate form of discipline for children and opposed a change in the law. Although 35 per cent of parents with children aged under 18 were under the misapprehension that it was against the law to smack, and a further 13 per cent were unsure about the current law, 67.2 per cent said they had smacked their children, and 79.8 per cent of non-parents said that if they did have children, they would smack if their children misbehaved and they thought it necessary.

Contrary to the view of the NSPCC and a number of other children’s charities, 80 per cent of parents drew a clear distinction between ‘smacking’ and ‘hitting’, as did 87.2 per cent of non-parents. Asked, ‘Do you think parents should be prevented by the government from smacking their children?’, 82.4 per cent of parents said no, rising to 87.2 per cent of non-parents.

62.9 per cent of parents (and 74.3 per cent of non-parents) thought smacking played an important part in disciplining children, and around three-quarters of those questioned believed that a smacking ban would have a negative impact on child discipline in wider society (72.6 per cent of parents, and 77.7 per cent of non-parents).

The strength of public feeling against the imposition of a legal ban on smacking is highlighted by the fact that 63.6 per cent of parents and 72.9 per cent of non-parents said that if an anti-smacking law were in place, they would still smack their children if they deemed it necessary.

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Sexual orientation discrimination regulations

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has announced its intention to postpone the implementation of the highly controversial sexual orientation discrimination regulations until 6 April 2007. It had originally intended that the regulations would be brought into force during the autumn of 2006.

A spokesman from the Women and Equality Unit (WEU) within the DCLG told FYC that ministers needed more time to reflect on their plans following a strong response from religious and pro-family groups and individuals to the consultation document.

Under the proposals published in the ‘Getting Equal’ consultation paper, a Muslim printer could be charged for declining to publish a flyer for a gay pride march and an IT consultant with Christian convictions could be prosecuted for refusing to build a website designed for same-sex dating. Former Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay commented that for people who believe that the practice of homosexuality is wrong, ‘these proposals carry a serious threat to their freedom in their voluntary and charitable work and in relation to earning their livelihood in a number of occupations’ (Daily Telegraph, 2 October 2006 ).

The WEU spokesman rejected reports that ministers might quietly shelve the plans and denied that there had been any change of heart on the part of ministers.

It is now anticipated that regulations will be published early in the New Year before being laid before Parliament.

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