Are society's ills in the UK something to do with the fact that we 'don't like kids'?

[Moomin]

Was just reading the hen night thread about leaving your kids and something Caligula said has struck a chord. It's probably a completely obvious chord to most people but was just wondering...

All thes stuff in South London with the shooting, and gang culture in most cities, and kids feeling disillusioned with life and lack of role models, etc. Is it to do with the fact that we don't, as a nation, like children very much - or that's how it seems.

We have threads full of stories about how hard it is to go shopping, go for meals, go on outings with kids; also about how other people's kids get on our tits so much; how rude schoolkids are, what a rubbish job all the teachers are doing; how much our kids dislike their contemporaries and/or feel threatened by them (I'm exaggerating slightly but you get the picture). And then we also see when we visit other countries just how much a part of everyday life it is having families and celebrating the existence of your children.

I was walking home with the pushchair the other day and I passed a car around the corner from my house that a lady was just getting into with her grown-up daughter. I couldn't tell exactly what country they came from but it might have been Greece and the older lady was waving madly to dd2. I wondered if she 'knew' dd2 through the childminder or something but then both ladies got out of their car to fuss dd2 and chat to her and I realised they didn't know her from Adam. How many British people would make this much fuss and make dd2 feel so special? It might happen sometimes but I would guess not that often.

Why don't we like kids and what can we do about it?

societies ills are not becuase we dont like children. it's because we live in a highly capitalist society as as a consequence things suffer

one of these things is community. now community doesnt't necessarily mean everything we think it means - what it does mean is that in any defined community - be that street - area - neighbourhood - there are people who know you - like animals - it's rather hierarchical and theres always those who have lived there forever and in itself is not the be all utopia. however my kids could play in the street. with other adults and their kids from the street - or on their own - if they farted wrong - i would get to know about it - couple that with strong rules and grounding and a good parental style and its more than a little help.

i have been thinking recently about the expectation we have from our children - the standards we hold them to. where the hell did these come from.

why can't kids climb a tree? have water fights in the street.

why can't kids play kerby outside their front door without the community police support officers telling them to stop and go to the park - ( unaccompanied and under 12 at that time)

think about it - what are kids actually supposed to do?

they cant watch telly - its bad for them
they cant play games systems - ditto
they cant play on street - not safe/moved on/society find unacceptable

as parents some of us have no choice but to work 9 given the capitalist society etc)
so we get home from work and then we are supposed to do what? be somekind of uber mater and make papier mache shit every night ( after we have lentil woven the tea from with chick peas a pastle and mortar and baked organic wholemeal bread from scratch)

then do the copius amounts of homework they get given with them

so our children are supposed to sit quietly and read or play board games ( inside)?

i just wonder where the hell this has come from? why did i stop my 13 year old from "going tree climbing" with his mates the other month? becuase i had to tell him he would get an ASBO if he got caught.

yet you get the older generation spouting " we didn't have all this in my day"

no but i bet you could climb a tree!

i'm hung up on climbing a tree - but its not the tree but the principle from which it springs. why do out children have to be confined to the house with no electronic activity? or be parentally supervised allt he time with an ever increasing parental expectation whcih comes on top of an ever increasing Govt/society/ expectation of working parents.

theres a point in there - i think i lost it!

LOL Bozza, funnily enough I like children too! DH is a bit on the extravagant side and we eat out a lot in cafes and so on. On Valentine's Day the three of us went for a curry together. However, we often get the feeling they're not entirely comfortable with DS being there, even in the early evenings when we go out, and he's comparatively well behaved. Good luck tomorrow!

Peaches my children are well behaved in places - but some people would see this as them having to fit in with adult expectations. DH not so keen on children and whinging about tomorrow.

I'm not saying there is a great lack of respect. I'm saying that there is less respect than there was, but that it is a side effect of some of our (society's) new found freedoms. It's not entirely a bad thing.

but isn't pirates of the caribbean a 12 certificate? the guy was right to throw you out if your dd is 5.

But all European countries are capitalist, they don't have quite such an infantaphobic version of it as we do though.There's something in there about kids not being allowed to climb trees now though - it's now seen as ASBO-inducing behaviour, where 30 years ago it was seen as normal, if possibly annoying in certain circumstances.

Also, I think it is something to do with the fact that all adults had some responsibility adn therefore some authority. Now we've all got to be considered potential paedophiles, we no longer have either responsibility or authority, so if a kid is being annoying, we can't deal with it by telling them off then and there, because they don't accept any adult authority apart from their own parents / teachers or the police. (We've taught them not to.) So any slight misdemeanor gets out of hand. Something that could have been calmed easily thirty years ago, now either leads to vandalism (because of no boundaries being imposed) or escalates to the criminalisation of the young due to the massive gulf between generations.

Custardo
The children are the twigs whilst the community is the trunk. In time they will become the branches, higher than the branches that were their parents' branches and enoble the trunk with a graceful character which synergises all the elements. If children cannot climb the tree, it will shrink and whither....

I'll shut up now. You're right about expectations. How can we expect our roses (my analogy below) to flourish if we keep them pot bound. Sadly though it's not our pot bound darlings that are out there terrorising the grannies and firing the guns.

grannies are terrified becuase of the dun and the daily mail and other tabloid shite - kids in hoodies frighten people who have little to do with that culture or know little about teenagers.

so the frightening in most instances is percieved that than deliberate.

guns? manchester and london - maybe - and then is it a huge fear? i;m asking i don't know, however out of those cities or maybe - oout of cities gun crime isn't a major fear is it?

teenagers as a group have always been picked on. i dont like other peoples kids - as you may know but i have helped at and even started youth groups.

we usually have 2 shits outside causing trouble and a hall full of kids who just want to play pool - get out of the cold - have somewhere to go - sommat to do. and lordy! if you give them a responsability - or ask for some help - i always find i am suprised at the amount of help i get given.

When people ask me my job and I say 'teacher' they say 'ahh, what age?' and when I say '11-16' they nearly always shudder and say something along the lines of 'oo rather you than me'. I would say that in every class I teach, averaging about 25 in a class, there might be 1 or 2 kids that are at different times disruptive or rude or indifferent, etc. But there are very few pupils in the whole of the school that I could say are genuinely unpleasant. Yet if you read the papers you would think the streets and schools are overflowing with thugs and yobs! It simply isn't true. And it must be soul-destroying for so many youngsters receiving all this bad press for no good reason, or at least taking the collective blame for about 5% of the teenage population. It's got to have an effect on their self-esteem.

I live in the west midlands and I'd say the place where I live isn't overly friendly to strangers in general (just something I have noticed) and there are other areas of the country where people do seem more friendly and therefore this is passed on in their attitudes towards children.

Do you think some of the general attitude is because so many people have forgotten what it's like to be a kid? So many parents admit when I meet them in school that they hated school and they don't like parents' evenings because of the association with their own experiences. Yet if they were to go into a classroom and watch a lesson, in a good school with a positive ethos, it could really open people's eyes. It really is a crying, crying shame.

I think the greek approach to children is so much healthier-- kids are welcome virtually everywhere, other people take a healthy interest in your kids, teenage boys will play for hours with a small baby without anyone batting an eyelid.
Adults in Britain without kids generally don't know how to relate to children ( I didn't before I had my dd)...

Agree bluejelly - but how did it ever get to this? It's like living in that place where Chitty Chitty BangBang lands and the Baroness has outlawed children so they live in a dungeon under the castle!

Personally I blame the victorians, all that 'children should be seen and not heard' crap. I think it's had a long-lasting effect...

I live in Spain and it has taken me a while to get used to how people are with my children. At first I would feel all defensive and think to myself why are you looking,speaking to or touching my child?

I am not saying that bad things to happen to children here but children are of interest to everyone. People of all ages will ask about your child, talk to your child, pinch their cheeks etc They will also keep an eye on your child, it is not unusal, say if you were in a bank queue and your baby is crying for someone to come and deal with the baby. There is a certain amount of repect here too.

The other day i was in a queue at the drs and a teenage boy of about 18 just came up and stared in my pram. He just stood and stared in wonder at my little boy. He then asked me questions about him. He was genuinely interested. He let me go infront of him in the queue too.

Another thing I have noticed here is how grown men melt at the sight of a baby. The miserable git in the supermarket has become my friend since I have had ds. Anyway I am waffling what I really am trying to say is that here people are genuinely interested in your child and their well being and are not afraid to be demonstrative. Although it can be a bit annoying when old ladies tell you that dd should be wrapped up because it is cold and it's only 25 degrees!

I have a soft spot for fish and chips as well .
I agree with custardo on many points, but it's too late for me...

I do know a few adults without children who are genuinely interested and supportive of mine. However, there's a direct ratio between how money driven they are and how little they understand kids. One "friend" of mine is positively confused as to why I would ever have wanted my DS. She's pretty shallow though and totally materialistic.

Blame Victorians for our hang-ups about sex and death too... but those are other threads!

I have to say that we visited friends in Amsterdam twice when dd1 was 18m and 2 and a half and both times were relatively hassle-free, just because everything seemed a bit more geared towards families, e.g. public transport, restaurants, play areas, etc. and the people were so much more friendly. I like the Greek and Italian approaches where kids are treated like little VIPs. but I also like the Dutch model where it's simply no big deal to have your kids with you.

I must say, things aren't helped by columnists in the Sunday papers thinking they're hilarious for getting paid shedloads to write how tiresome their latest flight to/from Barbados/St Lucia/up their own arsehole has been due to the crying child/ren on their plane. It just reinforces the idea that children have no right to be anywhere near other members of the public.

I think our society segregates people too much, even between age groups-- 13 year olds are expected to hang out with other 13 yos , 25 year olds tend to hang out with other 25 year olds etc If children and adults spent more time in mixed groups, regardless of whether or not the adults were parents, we would all have a much better understanding of childhood

Peaches your friend sounds nuts

So agree with the segregation thing. And it's not just with children, it's also with old people. Elderly people are expected to hang out with each other and when they get to a certain age, they get banished to retirement communities or a home they may not necessarily want to go to. There is very little inter-generational socialising in Britain; if I go to a barbecue, the host's parents might be invited, but no other older people will be generally, simply because there isn't that much inter-generational contact. It's really wierd compared to other places.

I might be wrong, but I think this is a very Anglo-Saxon thing, to ostrasize all but the young and strong.

Yes I think you are right expat. And totally agree caligula, it applies to the old as well ..
Jeez our society is so fked up

I've said this before but I live in London and have people cooing over the children all the time. I've never had a negative experience.

and how do find travelling, eating out and so forth? (Interested to hear something positive)

Custardo - you make a really good point. Things that our parents and grandparents did without abandon we either forbid our kids to do because it's dangerous or because, as you say, it's likely to result in complaints and possibly an ASBO (which are being used so often they've lost their original purpose).