Alderson, Priscilla;
(2007)
Childhood, youth and the economy.
Soundings
, 2007
(35)
pp. 115-126.
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Abstract
The government’s agenda for children, Every Child Matters (ECM), is widely welcomed and praised.1 This article raises less publicised concerns about ECM however. Children’s and young people’s lives are becoming highly constrained in Britain. An example of typical childhood in Stavenger Norway in the 1900s illustrates this. Albert Parr remembered how, when he was four years old, he enjoyed walking on his own for five or ten minutes to the station, buying a ticket, watching the trains and riding over the long bridge to the harbour. He looked at the boats, sometimes went to the fisheries museum, passed the park where the band played, went to the shops or the fire station, explored the fish market, selected, haggled for and bought some fish, and returned home.2 Older people in Britain remember these freedoms in their own childhood, which are still typical for young children in the majority poorer world today. In the Sudan, children combine work and play, contacts with other villagers of all ages, and expeditions across wide areas searching for food and fuel, usually, it seems, with relish and enjoyment.3 Like Albert they enjoy basic rights enshrined in the UN 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child: freedom of association and peaceful assembly (to wander independently around the neighbourhood and markets, meet friends and speak to adults); direct access to many kinds of information; respect for their worth and dignity; and ‘due account’ being taken of their views in matters that affect them - by their parents’ trust, by the adults they encounter on their daily rounds, and by the whole community, who, in many respects, treat them as equal citizens.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Childhood, youth and the economy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/soundings/vol-2007-... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Children (not specific age group), England, Community, Childhood studies, Environmental issues |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10005025 |
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