What is it like being a child today? What is happening to childhood? Clearly, the playing field of childhood has never been a level one, but I fear that childhood in the 21st century is becoming increasingly vulnerable and believe that everyone has a part to play in redressing the balance.
The media alerts us not just to the sufferings caused by war, poverty and climate change in some communities in the underdeveloped world. It also highlights the deteriorating well-being of children in our own developed world.
Of the 21 countries surveyed in Child Poverty in Perspective: an overview of child well-being in rich countries (UNICEF, 2007), British children came last in two of the six categories - family and friendship and sex, drink and drugs. They come second from last in happiness, 17th in education and 18th in poverty and inequality.
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