Following up on Monkey's point about her exeprience in Switzerland, here is a letter from yesterday's (Glasgow) Herald.
"To rethink what we want for children
A GROUP of nine of us, led by the Children in Scotland director, Bronwen Cohen, and including representatives from health, education, play and childcare, have just returned from a week-long study trip to Norway (part-sponsored by the Scottish Executive). The purpose of the trip was to learn how Norwegians plan and provide for their children.
Only days after our return a letter signed by all kinds of childhood experts appeared in The Daily Telegraph to raise the alarm about the growth in childhood depression and anxiety in the UK because of what we expose our children to, we being "the adult world" or "society".
Scotland is a small country, with both problems and advantages very similar to those of Norway. But as far as I was able to tell, to grow up in Norway is to live a very different life from the one most Scottish children know: hours of free play, outdoors in all weathers, no school uniforms, a sensible attitude to "safety" and an absence of testing which would make most Scottish teachers faint with envy.
At our launch of smilechildcare a fortnight ago, I asked: "What kind of a country is Scotland? How do we want to be known?" Now, I'd sum up the difference between the Norway I saw and the Scotland I live in as the difference between a society where trust flourishes and one where it does not. How else is one to understand the point we have reached, the fear and anxiety which pervade our lives, fostered and, indeed, magnified by the kind of news we are fed? If adults are fearful of their environment, of their food, of their neighbours, of the very air they breathe, how on earth can we expect the children we raise to be any more fortified than us against such life-denying influences?
It is hard to reach this conclusion against a backdrop of so much hard work by so many on behalf of children; so many policy papers, all aimed at the ends we all desire - a competent, cohesive society. But it seems to me that the conclusion is inescapable.
Fortunately, Scotland does have an honourable tradition of debate and engagement. We need to draw on that tradition now to rethink what we want for children. And that debate has to go way beyond the question of Scotland's economic power in the global economy. It would be gratifying, indeed, to think that we might give a UK lead on these crucial questions in terms rather different from those that have dominated public discourse in recent times.
During the trip we named our group, not entirely facetiously, "the Northern Lights". We didn't see them and we all know that a small group of nine can do very little on its own to cast new light on the landscape of childhood. But the image of a shimmering curtain of light illuminating the darkness is perhaps not a bad way to conceptualise the task facing us.
Rosemary Milne, chief executive, smilechildcare, 4/2 New Lairdship Yards, Edinburgh."
(I've copied and pasted it as the link wouldn't work after tomorrow unless you subscribe)
It picks up on something that I had been beginning to firm up in my own mind: the sadeness that we in the UK seem to be developing a society based on mistrust - with a follow-on consequence to how we allow children to live.
Our default is to "mistrust". Well, I'm glad that my own default is still to trust people. It makes for a much nicer life!
I'd actually started to think about it in relation to my work: that we are no longer trusted to get on with our jobs and are constantly monitored/measured/have to fiill in long forms to get the initiest bit of help/support. And I work in a realtively high powered sales job - where I used tob e far more ffective, becasue I was able to do the job (ie sell) rather than fill on forms says what I'm doing.