To think that the dream is to raise emotionally secure children and that this is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today?

[OneClearWillow]

It feels like the ultimate goal is to raise kids who feel secure in themselves, emotionally healthy and self-assured. But it seems like capitalism is putting so much pressure on families that many children are growing up disconnected. Could this be one of the biggest issues in the West today? And is it a challenge that we’re really addressing?

But it seems like capitalism is putting so much pressure on families that many children are growing up disconnected.

I suspect that the more that we tell people that external forces, and things they have no control over, and a particular group of people, are responsible for their poor wellbeing, the poorer their wellbeing is going to become. Viewing yourself as passive and helpless and in direct opposition to your government, the society you live in, to many of the other people you live in your society with; it doesn’t make for the foundations of emotional security and self-assurance, but creates a sense of victimhood and fear.

Your OP is a little vague on detail and I'm not sure what the question is.

The internet, screens and social media are what is affecting our children’s wellbeing.

The thing that most affected my kids wellbeing was witnessing violent classmates attack teachers and other classmates. I’m not sure how that’s linked to capitalism. Maybe if we were more capitalist as a family we’d have been able to send them to private school and have avoided this. Not sure that’s what you were getting at OP.

Completely agree with this.

Also while there are certainly huge flaws with capitalism, I think it's silly to assert that living under modern capitalism in an advanced western democracy is any worse than growing up under, say, an authoritarian dictatorship or in a desperately poor pre-industrial agrarian economy.

Children may be growing up "disconnected" but better this than growing up with a high chance of dying before their fifth birthday, of being married off before they reach puberty or being forced to work as serfs until they die young.

There's certainly lots of challenges facing young people but I think we are catatrophising this a bit at the moment and its worth looking back at the 20th century to get this into perspective.

And they need prospects, a liveable planet and parents who aren't working every hour God sends to feed the capitalist machine, too.

More sport. Particularly team sport. Sport in and outside of school. Numerous benefits and so many of life's most important lessons can be learned through sport. And it gives children a sense of community and belonging (or certainly should).

You're right of course, but given that the leading cause of death for young men in those developed countries is now suicide, people are right to feel disturbed and queasy about things.

What about kids who hate sport? I hated it at school (though I'm now an exercise nut) and my DD hates it. I actually feel the massive premium placed on sport is a key thing which turns a lot of the nerdier, more introverted and just different kids off school.

Exercise is really important, but sport is a narrow sub-section of this which plays to the desire to be competitive and encourages a certain sort of behaviour which is a huge turn off to people who don't like competitive sport.

What schools really need to get better at is appealing to the kids who hate sport but want to exercise.

@Summerhillsquare

You're right of course, but given that the leading cause of death for young men in those developed countries is now suicide, people are right to feel disturbed and queasy about things.

I completely agree and I do worry a lot about what screens and social media are doing to our society and mental health. I just find it slightly irritating when people position this as the worst thing that's ever happened to young people. It's really not.

I think the challenge is to bring up financially independent children who leave home!

I wrote 'particularly team sport' meaning both individual sporting activities and team sport. Yes, I agree with you.

Or the arts. Sport isn’t the b all and end all. Arguably the arts teach even more about team work and they teach the same values around hard work and resilience - I’m thinking group ones, singing, instrumental playing, theatre.

I think it's important for children to develop a secure sense of attachment to their families, and a sense of their self and identity that's not reliant on seeking approval from others. That will help them to navigate the worst aspects of growing up exposed to social media, and hopefully help them understand who they are and what matters to them outside of chasing likes and online clout. Sport is one way for kids to develop those values of teamwork, rewarding effort, and the positive feedback that comes from doing something you enjoy and are good at, but it's not the only way to do that, and not all kids will get the same enjoyment from that.

I let DD (9) use an iPad and she's not completely offline, but I'm not keen for her to have a phone before secondary school because I think a lot of the emotional issues the OP describes are related to kids being on social media too young, and not understanding how to handle it. We try to prioritise activities that can help build resilience and do stuff that's not about consuming - lots of outdoor activities for e.g. I'd also really recommend this book which is great for introducing concepts like fake news, online misinformation, and why people's social media isn't always real in a child-appropriate way: https://www.waterstones.com/book/killer-underwear-invasion/elise-gravel/9781797214917

Yes — this is one of the biggest issues in the West today. Capitalism puts huge pressure on families: parents are overworked, childcare is expensive, and emotional connection often takes a backseat. Kids end up growing up stressed, disconnected, or overly reliant on screens and social media.
We are talking more about mental health and parenting styles, but real, systemic support — like affordable childcare, shorter workweeks, and valuing emotional development in schools — is still lacking. Until we address those deeper structures, the problem won’t go away.

Would you like to explore how this manifests in education, or perhaps how different countries are handling it better or worse?

I think every country in the world has challenges. You could argue that in some societies abuse starts from birth and continues. I'm not sure that it's just Capitalism. SM is very damaging. We need lessons for children on being encouraged to think things out, seeing the wider picture and not going down rabbit holes. There were some shown on a local news segment. They've started debating teams and everyone has to do a bit of research and swap sides.

I agree. In a way I actually think capitalism, for all its faults, is probably less harmful than more totalitarian systems of government.

Capitalism encourages rampant individualism which, depending on your perspective either makes people selfish or healthily self reliant but it does at least encourage people to think for themselves, unlike more monolithic systems of government where there's only one approved way of looking at the world.

I agree about social media. A lot has been written about how negative it is but one of the things which particularly worries me about social media is that people have lost the habit of seeking news from different sources.

It used to be that people had their newspaper of choice which aligned with their particular worldview but they would also come across different perspectives from different news stories. I was always encouraged by my family to read both the Guardian and the Daily Mail/Telegraph, so I could get both angles on a story. None of these papers is anywhere near perfect (far from it) but you do at least embed the idea that there are different ways of looking at a story.

Nowadays people just live in a self-referencing echo chamber that fits their own views and it massively reinforces what they already believe.

Private schools are no utopia, either. The rates of sexual assault, abuse and misogyny in them is sky high, and rape culture is endemic. Check out the website Everyone's Invited and the resulting Times investigation that was headline news for weeks in 2021.

Absolutely.

Drama and choir offer the same or better added benefits as sport- team work, etc.

Fitness and coordination can be built in as well.

I agree it's important to raise emotionally healthy kids but I'm not convinced that capitalism is the problem. Or, certainly not the whole problem.

Many of the issues are generational, I think. Emotionally healthy parents typically connect well with their children and produce balanced, emotionally healthy children. There will be exceptions to that, of course, but generally speaking, that's what I've observed. For those parents who are not emotionally healthy themselves - usually through no fault of their own - it can be incredibly hard to break the cycle and sometimes the difficulties and dysfunction just get compounded.

There isn't enough support for parents, imo, to enable them to work through their own issues and not pass their own problems down to the next generation. Investing in really good support for parents could make such a huge difference for society in the longer term.

Physical activity and the outdoors is something which can start at home, as something which can be built into family time, giving parents and children the opportunity to develop healthy relationships and emotional bonds, as well as being affordable. There’s a lot of emphasis on wellbeing and quality of life being better in Nordic and Scandinavian countries, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that these are all countries which place greater emphasis on being outdoors and on physical activity, and we can’t even claim they have much better weather than the U.K. to do that in: I spend quite a bit of time in Norway and it’s entirely the norm to see whole family groups, including teenagers, togged up in waterproofs cheerfully out walking or biking at the weekends in the damp and rain.

I see much less of it in the U.K. - and I can’t see it as being about access necessarily, I’m in London where virtually everyone has great parks and rivers and canals on their doorstep. Plus the data indicates that children and young people from middle income and affluent families are reporting some of the highest levels of poor emotional wellbeing - so it isn’t simply related to affordability, either.

I agree. Earning money is valued more than being a present parent. Raising children who are successful in education and employment is valued more than raising kind and emotionally intelligent children.

@Thepeopleversuswork totally agree with you. My son hated the last few years of primary because he wasn't good at sport and everything was about football for boys. Sports day was a nightmare from day 1 and he felt he didn't fit in. He has thankfully landed at a secondary school where competitive sport isn't a priority and you can excel at sport or take it or leave it. He has actually been more into exercise since starting there a few years ago. You need space for both competition and non competitive exercise, or the kids who aren't sporty will just fake illness or become more self conscious. For me secondary was made considerably worse by PE lessons that shone a spotlight on how crap I was.

Of course. Raising kind and emotionally intelligent children is of course important but teaching those children to be able to support themselves important too. Particularly girls.

These things aren't in binary opposition to one another. You can be emotionally intelligent and make money and I wouldn't want to inculcate the idea that you have to choose one or the other.