THE country is in the grip of a moral panic over the plight of our children. Isn't it always? Fretting about the younger generation (Are they in danger? Are they over-protected? Are they lazy? Are they under too much pressure to achieve?) has become a national obsession on a par with dieting. If it's not middle-class mothers worrying about giving their children too little time/too much money, it's self-styled child experts writing books which worry about the fact we all worry so much.
Last week, however, our angst was given a degree of legitimacy. On the day a two-year-old girl was allegedly raped and murdered in her own home, and another teenage boy was shot dead in London, a Unicef report showed young people in the UK were among
the unhappiest in the developed world. All that breast-beating, and our young people are still languishing at the bottom of a league table that charts the emotional and physical well-being of children in 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.
Despite living in the fifth wealthiest country, British children experience some of the worst poverty. Only the US had more children living in a household where the income was less than 50% of the national median. Our children also drink more, take more drugs and have a higher teenage pregnancy rate than their counterparts in any of the other countries (which are mostly European but include the US and Canada) and have poorer relationships with friends and family.
Of course, we all know what's to blame. It's the disintegration of the family, stupid. It's working mothers, feckless fathers, creeping liberalism and over-dependence on the welfare state. It's quickie divorces, gay marriages and a failure to set boundaries. In other words, it's the social ills we often see as threatening the very fabric of our society. That's what the Tories' social justice policy group was saying when it identified family breakdown, educational failure, economic dependence, indebtedness and addiction as the five pathways to poverty, and what Bill Clinton meant when he talked about marriage being the route out of deprivation.
So how come the countries at the top of Unicef's league table of children's well-being are the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland - none of them known for their traditional values or for forcing their citizens to stand on their own two feet.
In Sweden, for example, cohabitation has been the norm since the 70s, with more than 50% of couples unmarried when they give birth to their first child; in the Netherlands, underage sex is accepted as part of life, and drugs and euthanasia are legal.
So why are the children of these countries so much healthier, happier and less likely to indulge in risky behaviour than our own?
With all four Scandinavian countries in the top seven of Unicef's league table, it seems likely its controversial 'social model' must play a role in nurturing happy children. Economists may criticise its combination of high taxation and benefits-for-all as limiting growth, but the way in which the system redistributes wealth means fewer families fall through the gaps. In Sweden just 7% of single mothers live in poverty as opposed to 50% in the US and 48% in the UK. The Labour government may claim to have lifted 700,000 British children out of poverty, but the fact it now regards the welfare state with ambivalence may explain why it is not making a greater impact.
Of course, it's not just about money. The Unicef report suggests British children of all classes lack self- esteem, with many of them feeling lonely and regarding their peers as a threat rather than support.
And when you look at our attitudes to children in this country it's not hard to see why. Although - on a superficial level - we seem more concerned than ever about children, as a society we barely tolerate their existence. In the workplace, they are seen as a barrier to women breaking the glass ceiling, in restaurants they are frowned upon for their inability to sit still, and in supermarkets they annoy other shoppers simply by taking up space.The vast majority of newspaper stories about them seep negativity: they are "fat", "computer-addicted" or "socially disruptive". Even at school, they are treated as little more than cannon fodder for the exams system, with a greater emphasis on gaining certificates than producing well -balanced human beings. If they fail, they are dismissed as useless. But if they pass, their achievements are immediately undermined by claims that the exams have been "dumbed down" - and they were probably cheating.
This view is not shared in the Scandinavian countries, where there is less emphasis on possessing material goods and more on personal fulfilment. Children in Norway and Finland do not go to school until they are six or seven, and are encouraged to play outdoors in all weathers. In Italy, which is ranked eighth in the table, they are regarded not as inconveniences who have to be off-loaded before every social event, but as fully-fledged members of communities.
Then there is the matter of sex and why so many of our teenage girls get pregnant. Sex education in British schools is not so very different from sex education in Dutch ones. But in the UK, there is no cultural consensus on how the information should be delivered. Almost every issue - Section 28, the parents' right to know or the handing out of morning-after pills over the counter - is accompanied by a conservative versus liberal showdown that can only serve to confuse those trying to take the information on board. When you add a lack of self-esteem to the mix, it is little wonder our teenagers behave in such a self-destructive manner.
If we want the situation to improve, we have to do more than wring our hands and wonder how it all went wrong. We can moan and rail against the government for failing to sort it all out. But unless we are prepared to change our own ways, to stop seeing children as a social problem and start seeing them as an investment, and to vote for higher taxes and a more equitable division of the country's wealth, then all the outpourings of the last few days are nothing more than a hollow sham.
