NOW CLOSED Universal Children's Day: Why in the UK are we less optimistic about global issues than developing countries - share your views - you could win a £100 voucher

[AnnMumsnet]

Mumsnet are working closely with Unilever (now a member of our family friendly programme!) to provide opinion on a number of sustainability projects.

On Monday we asked whether your children inspired you to live more sustainably? Thanks for all the responses.

And today (Wednesday) Unilever say "Today is Universal Childrens Day and research from Unilever Project Sunlight reveals that 6 in 10 children are worried about global issues, but in spite of this remain twice as optimistic about the future than their parents. In fact, UK parents were less optimistic than those in developing countries"

So the additional question today is why do you think we are less optimistic in the UK?

Let us know on this thread your views on both questions and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £100 Sainsbury's voucher.

Thanks and good luck

MNHQ

Watching the nightly news or reading the daily papers makes my world view a little more negative. It's a constant bombardment of how many things can and are going wrong; when one of the outlets does do a good news story they are castigated for doing a puff piece.

I think it's because adults in this country can see the greed around them.

I think in the UK these days there us so much pressure to succeed that even when we do well we feel we are falling short of what we should achieve and are therefore failing

Adults do tend to be less optimistic, or as I prefer to see it, more realistic, than children anyway, don't they?!

I think we're probably less optomistic because we have been convinced that we're consumers first and people second (or worse), our community and family strucures are weaker (though of course there are still some very active communities andd tight knit families). I dont see what unilever could or should do about that, but vair kind of them to stimullate the discussion by appealling to our greed/optomism that we might win!

I think we are less optimistic because we get daily exposure to the news, including many global environmental issues. Maybe I'm pessimistic (realistic) but I think a lot of people are a bit naive about the whole thing.

People think it's mostly media hype and I know so many people that don't even make the effort to recycle properly- clever, educated people who should know better. It really gets my goat to be honest.

However, if big corporations and governments aren't doing enough I can see why people are a bit apathetic about the whole thing.

because we are educated and have access to world media and can see the reality of what multinationals such as unilever are really doing to the world and how much power they have.

and what a daft question really. my 6yo is optimistic that he is the best pool player in the world despite barely being able to hit the white.

I think we live quite sustainably already. Although I am always open to new suggestions!

I think we might be less optimistic because we hear about global issues on a daily basis in the press. I always mention that the news is so depressing nowadays.

I'm not sure the company that created and produces the 'Fair and Lovely' skin bleaching products or Axe/Lynx and their misogynistic adverts and messages are very family friendly for many. Nor very sustainable themselves - children can inspire parents, but focusing on families making small changes when corporations and industries like Unilever cutting would have far more impact makes their question even more disingenuous.

I think part of the issue with optimism is not having a clear path of how to make things better. We know things need to change, but the hows and whats are still lost in the fog compared to areas still developing which still has clear cut goals (and imposed goals by others). I'm more optimistic for my children than I am for me as I can see people working on making things better and making plans and there is so much more information and guidance for them than I was able to access. It won't be easy as the media likes to tell them if they do the "right thing" like we were told, but I can see the slow steps being made.

(Also, It's United Nation's Children's Day, the anniversary of the signing of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, many other countries and cultures had a Children's Day before that and keep their old dates. It is also the Transgender Day of Remembrance to grieve those murdered.

sorry, very wrong link!! www.huffingtonpost.com/jamieann-meyers/we-matter-transgender-day-of-remembrance-2013_b_4289786.html this is the proper one.

My eldest is 3 and knows that something go in the black bin, some in the blue etc Doesn't quite understand what yet but does ask which it goes in so already getting to know that you separate your rubbish. We did this before and throw very little... we try and give to charity, sell or recycle before actually throwing away

I think that the UK are less optimistic because we hear more about Global warming, the effects vehicles etc have on the planet, how sustainable things really are to us... We not only hear about it more in this country but also think 'well we could never live without cars, we could never live without boilers' etch etc... People in developing countries are less likely to hear about whats going on with the planet and if they did then they would possibly think we could just stop using all the things that are destroying the planet as they may not use them much and would have the 'we can't live without' attitude. They probably don't contribute to global sustainability issues as much either.

I think with the economy crisis and cuts to benefits, NHS etc all we see is negativity. It's rare to notice a positive story in the news these days. All this makes us less optimistic about everything going on in the world.

Do my children inspire me to live more sustainably? Possibly, they've grown up with different recycling bins, environmental lessons at school, an awareness about the world which encourages them to think and argue their point sensibly. I am sometimes pulled up sharp by them for carelessly flinging a tin in the 'normal' bin rather than rinsing it and recycling it. In the long run this can only be good of course. Conversely I travel in the car umpteen more miles than my parents ever did to take my children to after school activities - swimming, footie, rugby, dancing. We have no option as we live in a rural location but there are definitely opposing forces when I come to answer this question!

Why do I think we are less optimistic in the UK about the future?

We are overloaded with information each day, morning news at breakfast, car radio, tv programmes, newspapers, social media, the computer blasts us with info about instant news and images. There is no doubt we can consider ourselves informed but I think our access to information is sophisticated so there's no wonder we have opportunities to digest this and then feel positive or negative accordingly. Developing countries on the other hand don't always have the access to information we do. i think it's hard to make a reasoned parallel between us here in the UK and developing countries.

I don't think it is that we are less optimistic about global issues in the UK, it is just that having a richer community allow its members to dwell, reflect and make assumptions on global issues that, in other less favourable conditions, would be simply ignored to be able to focus on more pressing needs.

If the population of a country is mainly focused in covering their more immediate needs via a great struggle, they don't have time to think about other distant issues that do not affect them directly, they (and I am sure I did at some point) just assume that everything will be ok at the end.

Do my child influence me to live in a more sustainable way? Of course he doesn't, it is the other way around. Being sustainable means planning ahead for the future, he is too worried about his most immediate "needs" to get overly distracted with other things.

I don't think my children have had any effect on my attitude to living sustainably. If anything, DS1 frustrates me because he thinks something should be replaced if it's "old", regardless of whether it's perfectly functional or not.

As far as comparing our attitudes with those of people in developing countries goes, perhaps that's because we have access to more information and possibly less propaganda?

Other developing countries have access to he information (they may not have as many reporting teams as we do, but there plenty of information agencies that make news available to developing and developed countries' newspapers and broadcasters for a more affordable price.

Having said, another thing we have in Britain is TIME, we have very reasonable working day that allow for us to spend time pondering about global issues or even joining charities to defend certain causes, I am sure that there should be other countries in the world where people are getting ready to head home at 5pm but you don't even need to go out of Europe to find that the average end of work time is somewhere around 8 pm. When you leave work that late you really don't have much time (or energy) to dwell over global issues, unless they are affecting you directly.

right, so awareness of global economics and politics and the direction being taken by multinationals is just having too much time on your hands to navel gaze?

well done unilever - it seems your glib marketing does have a target audience. they'll be calling for us to work 18hrs a day and have less access to information for our own good before you know it. all those happy people in developing countries they just prove how good it is to be poor and not have proper healthcare and how we should all be living 12 to a house and looking after our elderly relatives and not worrying about silly things like politics or the environment or personal freedoms or the right to a standard of living or the reality of mega rich multinationals raking in billions whilst much of the world's population can't even access basic healthcare.

yes having kids has inspired me to live more sustainably. Not just because I want the earth protected for their future but just because I can't hide from doing the things I talk to them about.
It would feel so hypocritical to be teaching them about issues around the world and how we can help and then not do enough about it ourselves.

In terms of why in the UK we are not so optimistic - perhaps we prefer to moan about things rather than make a difference?

Perhaps we've tried to make a difference and got nowhere in the past?

Perhaps we've been let down by those in power speaking the rhetoric but not matching it with reality?

Perhaps we've seen too many big organisations give lip service to green issues rather than make it truly part of who they are?

Perhaps the products and services we associated with being green have been let-downs in the past in terms of cost and quality. Yet truly great green products are often far superior to their counterparts if only we give them a chance.

Perhaps we are relying on big organisations and powerful people to start making the big differences and driving more change and not believing in ourselves that we too can make a difference?

I think it is all relative, so UK parents now compare themselves to the older baby boom generation and can't help but feel less optimistic about things, eg houses, income, pensions, retirement age, crime levels, antisocial behaviour in society, broken Britain etc.

Maybe their counterparts in developing countries still still the potential for their life be an improvement on their parents lives?

Yes, makes me think of the need to keen the planet clean and green for future generations

To be honest, my opinion is that when you live in the abject poverty that some of those families in the developing world live in - children living and crawling through "the worlds" rubbish to try and scrape together a few pennies selling garbage, then you have to be optimistic - life doesn't get much worse, does it?.

When they are interviewed in television documentaries they all smile and happily tell the tv crew that one day they will have a better life, one day they will all be Drs, lawyers etc. I do admire their optimisim, but also believe that it is a reaction of circumstances, better to imagine a better life, than to accept the reality.

Perhaps the lack of optimism in the UK is down to the fact that we have accepted the reality! The entire world needs to change to make things better and that isn't such a simple thing to do.

My kids definitely push me to be more sustainable. Their school is fab on recycling so the kids make sure we recycle everything we can. Did you know egg boxes cut up make fantastic egg cups? Neither did I but my 6 yo dd did :)

I also think its a good thing that we are more realistic about the future here. I lived in a developing country for three years and very few thought about the environment it just wasn't a priority. There were no recycling collections, lots of deforestation and dumping rubbish into the sea. However, people were optimistic because for them life was improving. The town was growing, there were new job opportunities and improved access to information and education. I think we need to take our childrens pessimism as a positive and do something about it.

My children inspire me to live more sustainably because I do not want to trash this world that they are inheriting and I want to demonstrate to them how we should care for our environment,.

I think we are less optimistic in this country because we have the most rapaciously greedy, hypocritical, lying, vicious ruling class in all of Europe who will do everything to feather their own nest while letting the environment and we who sail in it go to hell in a handcart. We older folks have seen their lies and shenanigans time after time. Children still have some hope and lack of experience.

I think we are less optimistic because it's culturally accepted to be this pessimistic way and its in our idioms idiosyncrasies and anecdotes