A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age
| Published date | 10 July 2008 |
| Date | 10 July 2008 |
| Pages | 59-60 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200800027 |
| Author | Bill Jordan |
| Subject Matter | Education,Health & social care,Sociology |
59
Journal of Children’s Services
Volume 3 Issue 4 December 2008
© Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
This book reports on the 1 8-month inquiry of a
panel set up by the Childr en’s Society into the
experiences of children in t he UK today. Thi s was
a direct r esponse to the p ublication of the UNICEF
report, whic h found that the UK and US occ upied the
bottom two places in a lea gue table of wel l-being
among childr en and young peo ple in 21 afflue nt
countries. T he main author i s Richard Layard, who
chaired the panel, and whose book on Happine ss
(Layard, 200 5) was a bestsel ler a few years ago.
The book i s a valuable sum mary of the avai lable
evidence on the current situ ation of children in
this country , and of interna tional studies on the
importance f or children of f actors such as f amily
relationships, friendships, life style and risky
behaviour, e ducation and menta l health. It is written
and presente d in a style m ade familiar by Layard’s
earlier book , and also by the recent study of the
impacts of inequality by Wil kinson and Pickett
(2009) in The Spirit Level.
The book h as important messa ges for children’s
services, no t least the sign ificance of relati onships
with profess ionals and adult volunteers as wel l as
family and community members. In the preface, the
example is given of the va lue to Adam, a 17-year-
old who pa ssed through care into prison, of a
consistent, determined and cou rageous independent
visitor, who stuck with him during his sente nce and
beyond. The example highlights both the importan ce
of these q ualities in Adam’s eventual transiti on to a
law-abiding and aspiring life, and the way t hat the
system as a whole had prev iously failed him.
My reservati on about the boo k can be traced
to its sub title, and the c entral chapter on ‘Values’.
The authors trace the relati vely poor experien ce
of childhood in the UK to ‘excessive individ ualism’
– ‘the belief that the prime duty of the individual
is to make the most of her own life, rather than to
contribute to the good of others’ (p6). That this
is indeed the leitmotif of UK political citi zenship
and popular culture is indis putable, and it
does disting uish the UK, US and other afflue nt
Anglophone c ountries from othe r nations where
individualism is balanced by more family, grou p and
collective o rientations. But t he book does not make
convincing l inks between this diagnosis and th e
evidence or (in particular) its recommendations.
The problem is that the au thors treat behavi our
as a psych ological derivative of values – pe ople
learn to l ive up to their best principles by cultivating
emotional in telligence and fol lowing programmes
for self-man agement and social skills (pp75–82).
This is ex actly what one w ould expect in a n
individualisti c society: that children should le arn
effective te chniques for getti ng on with other s,
but not th at adult society should challenge its own
patterns of interactions based on self-interest.
Layard is a neo-utilitarian economist, and the basis
of his who le approach is r ooted in the rat ionality of
the individu al in a market, in pursuit of his or her
‘utility’, a t the lowest pos sible cost.
But the lo gical conclusion f rom the finding that
‘excessive i ndividualism’ is t he fundamental cau se
of bad exp eriences of childh ood is that peop le must
start to t reat each other better, and this means
new ways o f living, not ne w values. Indeed, the
remarkable c hange in our soc iety is the way that,
since the 1970s, we have a ll become experts in
justifying n arrowly competitive actions for our own
positional a dvantage (such as getting places i n the
Book review
A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age
Reviewed by: Bill Jordan
Professor of Social Policy, University of Plym outh, UK
Email: Bill. jordan@plymouth.ac.uk
Book details
Authors: Richard Layard and Judy Dunn, 2009
London: Penguin Books
240 pages, £9.99
ISBN: 978 0 141 03943 5
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