The Public Policy of Children

~ Laura

Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber posted a letter that appeared in the Guardian written by academics (including Harry Brighouse’s dad) about their concerns with child development in the modern age.

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.

They ask for policy-makers to start talking about ways to improve the lives of children.

First of all, yay! Let’s put kids on the public policy agenda. Let’s talk about whether or video games are bad for kids, whether parents spend enough time with their kids, whether the demands of the workplace have a negative impact on children. Let’s talk about whether there is an increase in childhood depression, suicide, and sexual abuse. Let’s not sweep these discussions under the rug with “kids are resilient” or “you’re just an old fart.” I’m not sure how bad things are. I’m not sure how bad video games are for kids. I just want a national-wide discussion about these topics with childhood development experts, teachers, and sociologists.

If it is found that kids need more down time with parents, less videos and computers, better food, and all the other recommendations that were in this letter, then I want public policy built around those recommendations. What can we do? Tax credits can be given to parents who wish not to work full time. Universal health care would be a biggie. Other ideas: free parenting classes, marriage counseling, universal preschool education, longer parental leave policies. Other ideas?

The fear is that by putting children on the top of the agenda that this will have a negative impact on women. I don’t think that should be the case. I never understood why conservatives have cornered the market on kids and families. This agenda could enable more men to stay home with their kids and take the responsibility for kids from the private, female domain and make it a societal issue. I think that this discussion would be good for women.

Published by Laura

5 thoughts on “The Public Policy of Children”

  2. I understand the fear that putting children on top of the public agenda will hurt women. These processes are complex but there have been cases of social policies in Europe that have hurt women — though most of the case these policies are to the disadvantage of some women, and to the advantage of other women. The government of the country in which I live (the Netherlands) has been propagating the so-called “combination model” for quite a number of years now, which would assume that parents would both work 4 days and children would go to child care three days a week; but today a book was published by two professors, claiming that it is all one big illusion since men don’t want to do the household work, and men don’t want to care, whereas women don’t want carreers.
    I am not sure about this. If I look at my streeet, most couples with children work each 4 days a week — but this is not your average neighbourhood, I suppose (in American terms, this would count as a liberal neighbourhood with non-materialistic values – many academics, teachers, etc.).
    The only thing I know for sure, is that it is a really bad idea to discuss policies for children (on which I entirely agree we should have many more discussions) in an alledged gender-neutral language; because there ain’t a genderless world, and if we want to design new policies for the benefits of children, let’s think hard of how they affect women too. Otherwise it will be too easy to let mothers fix what went wrong, while fathers can continue to do whatever they like (sorry, this is a bit rough but it’s getting late here…)

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  3. Yes, I totally agree, Ingrid. We can’t talk about the politics of children in a gender-neutral manner. But I don’t think that if we start thinking about how to improve children’s lives, it will necessarily mean increasing the hardship of women. If the child development experts show that we’re all running around too much (too much work, too much testing, too much “enrichment” activities for kids) and that kids can’t handle it, I think we can find ways of addressing these problems without forcing women out of the workforce.
    I think that by neglecting this big picture examination of the modern life on kids, we are making things worse for women, because men, government, and business aren’t thinking about these things. The responsibility for the kids is still squarely on women. Women have all the guilt and worry. Let’s expand the guilt circle.
    That study you mentioned sounds fascinating. I love that “combination model” you described. That would be perfect for my family.

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  4. Well, I’m going to heavily disagree with some of the stuff in the OP (and agree with others). I’d say children actually adjust better to rapid social and technological change than adults, because kids are usually more flexible and certainly learn new technologies quickly, which is why so many families you have parents getting computer advice from their kids. When my family went to Colombia for a year, it was the youngest of us, my sister Katie (age 5) who most easily adapted and made friends, not the older kids or my parents.
    The biggest thing needed is for incomes to be high enough for people to afford to work less and stay home more with the kids. My family was lucky in that Mom didn’t have to go back to work until I was old enough to take care of my sisters. (Child #4 broke the family finances and Mom had to go back to work when I was 11.) There are lots of people who don’t want to be full-time stay-home-with-kids but would like to spend more time with them than is allowed by the expectation of sinking 50-60 hours a week into their jobs. (I was lucky that Dad was a professor and thus, while he worked easily 60-70 hours a week, he could rearrange it to have time to play baseball with me, attend plays/concerts/recitals for my sisters and I, etc, etc) But until more people can afford less work hours and more home hours, it’s going to be impossible to devote more time to the kids.

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