Are selfish adults damaging childhood or are parents just struggling to cope with the cost of modern living and childrearing?  Is it fair to blame working moms? writes Charlie Cashdan.

Are the parents themselves just a product of the modern education system which pushes for academic and professional success above all things?

The ‘experts’ have been at it again and have probably picked up wonderful fat research grants for the study published today about how rotten modern childhood is.

The Children’s Society commissioned researchers to investigate childhood and the findings of their three year study have been published today. 

I could write reams on each and every point it raises but must remember I’m a humble blogger now not a sociology student anymore, so here is my basic take on it.

The overall conclusion was that the aggressive pursuit of individual success is now the greatest threat to British children and it blamed working mom’s predominantly, not career hungry dads of course.

But here are the reasons, in my opinion, why women work suggesting it is not a simplistic selfish greed which motivates them.

House prices and the cost of living mean that a family cannot survive on one wage and an education system which pushes everyone to grow up and be top flight professionals puts us on the career ladder so late in life and costs us so much, including tuition fees, that it makes it difficult to suddenly change direction and simply stay at home when you have a child.

For example, if you are a married couple about to have your first child and want to buy an average priced house, you would need about £180.000.

Having hunted around on the internet, the average wage is suggested to be around £31,500, which I think is a little high but let’s go with it anyway. 

So to buy a basic house in which to raise their family on the man’s salary alone, the husband would need to borrow about five times his wage. 

Then there are the utility bills, food and council tax on top of the huge monthly repayments. 

Therefore the woman needs to work, not because of selfish ambition but just to buy a house for the child to live in and have a reasonable basic standard of living!

Also, as all children are now pushed towards high academic success, made to stay in education until at least 18 and then pushed into university, if our example family are of average age for having their first child they have probably only been working full time for about nine years (depending on what they studied and whether they took a gap year).

They are probably still paying off student loans and won’t have acquired many savings as they have been paying rent, bills and tuition fees since 18 without working full time until at least 21. 

The woman simply has to work, and the study arguing that her financial independence splits up families is frankly an insult. 

This isn’t the dark ages, the woman’s wage goes into paying the bills same as the man’s, not funding self-indulgent affairs!

Also, if the woman in our little pretend family was bright at school when she was a child and her parents and school pushed her to work really hard and get high levels in her SATs, encouraged her to do A levels, pressured her into studying for a profession then packed her off to university, is it fair to blame her for being career focused?

Is it right to tell her that after going to nursery from 3 years old and working hard in education for nearly 20 years since, that she must give it all up at 30ish because she has a child? 

Society pushed her to achieve and now blames her for ruining her own child’s life!  Why on earth bother sending girls to university then?

However, there are lots of things in the study I agree with like how there is too much competition in education which promotes aggressive individualism rather than a value system where children gain satisfaction from helping others and working together. 

It recommends getting rid of SATS and league tables which I wholeheartedly support.

My mom didn’t really put pressure on me to achieve academically, just to do my best and try. 

She always said “They’ll be too many chiefs and not enough indians in this country because everyone at school is pushed for top jobs” (This wasn’t a racist saying by the way, it’s just one of my mother’s strange old-fashioned ways of putting things!)

She put pressure on me to be a good person, to sit with the old people on the village bus because they were lonely, to carry their shopping home, and to visit my Nan as often as possible even though she had Alzheimer’s and didn’t always know who I was.

Mom made me share my toys with other children and give to those less fortunate.  She made me respect animals, even tiny spiders, and taught me how to love and be kind, putting the needs of others first.

She always said that as long as I was a good person who worked hard and didn’t take from anyone she didn’t care if I swept the roads for a living. 

When I worked in a pub full time on minimum wage, she was just as proud of her hard working daughter as she is now that I am a company director. 

To me, that’s what makes a great parent and a happy balanced childhood.

My father did push me to achieve and was obsessed with me getting a profession even though my skills and personality were not suited to what he had in mind.

He has never quite forgiven me for not signing up to his ideology of success and money above all things, and was horrified when I wanted to be an actor.

His attitude saddled me with a lifetime of guilt, hang-ups and a consuming desire to prove him wrong and win his respect. 

It’s only now that I have achieved a level of conventional success that we have started to have a relationship again.

So basically, the issue of the state of modern childhood is very problematic and the study did highlight some excellent issues about the pressure we put on children, but we can’t just heap blame onto working moms many of whom have no choice but to work and were subjected to the same pressure when they were a child, raised to have a career ever since their own mom left them at nursery full time from pre-school age to go to work herself. 

Is it fair to expect her to just give all that up after a lifetime of striving for it?

Agree with Charlie? Post your comments below.