Editorial 161: November 2006

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph in September, 110 academics, children’s experts and children’s writers (amongst them Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo) call for action to prevent ‘the death of childhood’. They write ‘We are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children’s behavioural and developmental concerns.’ The letter was prompted by issues raised by Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood (Orion), and Dr Richard House, senior lecturer at the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University.

Philippe Aries’s Centuries of Childhood, the pioneering comparative study of Western childhood over four centuries first published in the UK in the late ’70s, revealed both the extent to which we can underestimate our children and the extent to which we can neglect them. Thus, 14-year-old Marie Antoinette (later to be guillotined), on becoming Dauphine of France, was expected not just to leave her family behind forever but to represent the political interests of her Austrian Empress mother, Maria Theresa, at the French court. Meanwhile in contemporary Chinese and Romanian (to select at random) orphanages, abandoned children with no mental incapacities grow into adults with severe learning disabilities following years of devastating emotional and physical neglect.

And back in the UK? Childhood depression is indeed on the increase and this is a most disturbing phenomenon. The fact that so many parents appear to be ill-equipped for the job demands serious investigation: What is the cause? What could be done? However, the solution is neither to resort to sentimental nostalgia and moral panic nor to attempt to bypass the technological society we live in for some kind of Blytonesque golden age. In the next issue of BfK, Nicholas Tucker continues the discussion prompted by Sue Palmer’s Toxic Childhood.

Diversity Matters

In this issue of BfK we continue to focus on issues raised during and after this important conference. We explore the history of multi-cultural publishing in the UK. Meanwhile in our Briefing pages, the definition of ‘diversity’ is discussed.