The Story of Childhood (16 page)

The FCCC study suggested that nurseries are the worst child care option for children up to at least eighteen months, while home-based care by nannies or child-minders is ‘significantly' better than that provided by ‘informal' carers such as grandparents. But the study also emphasised that the
differences were small, and that toddlers whose mothers were depressed or otherwise insensitive to their needs benefited from high-quality nursery care.

Given the sensitivity of the debate about the care of young children, it was inevitable that these findings caused controversy. The results were swiftly filleted by that insidious element of the British media that delights in pillorying working mothers. Alternatively, the authors of the studies were accused of being unsympathetic to the realities of women's lives, much as John Bowlby was a generation ago. Discussion of the role of fathers was conspicuous for its absence in all studies, though the FCCC researchers planned to publish a paper on fathers at a later date.

But the important data contained in detailed studies like these demands that we do more than endlessly polarise positions – the right insisting that women belong at home; the left, along with many feminists, making the historic mistake of assuming that every woman is a careerist at heart.

As Penelope Leach commented when she was interviewed about the findings: ‘These days it isn't a choice between having an “at-home mummy” or a “working mummy”. Most people have a bit of each and child care is the backbone of many people's lives, which is why it is important to get it right.'

The inference is not that every mother must stay indoors until her child starts school. Taken together, the data shows that for children under three, high levels of group-based care can have damaging effects on emotional development, while beyond that age the situation reverses and nursery care benefits all aspects of development. For very young children, it is best if the majority of their care is provided one-to-one by mothers or high-quality carers.

The studies also highlight the significant differences in
care needs between babies, toddlers and preschool children. Although not included in the initial release of findings in 2005, the FCCC research also covered older children and was expected to show that, from around three, children benefit from spending some time in nursery education.

Child-minders and nannies are prohibitively expensive for many, and Leach noted that the government must look at ways of expanding child-minding to make it more affordable. She was also critical of plans to extend free early-years education to two-year-olds – a move prompted by the EPPE findings about the impact of group care on the educational development of poorer children.

Leach also said that children's centres – undergoing a rapid expansion to include one in every community – should not end up as little more than ‘nurseries with add-on', but should offer drop-in centres where infants would come with a parent or other carer and not be pressured towards group play too early.

And what about the Glorias of this world? Will the next ten years see poorer parents having their toddlers wrenched off them, because they have been deemed incapable of providing the appropriate emotional and intellectual stimulus to bridge the early-years attainment gap? Or will universal children's centres – like the PEEP project – consolidate the involvement of parents in their children's learning? Interestingly, when discussing how to tackle the escalation in adolescent depression, many mental health professionals have advocated putting parenting classes on the National Curriculum.

Meanwhile, Gloria keeps talking and waiting for Allana to talk back. Though she may not manage the same precipitate patter, Allana is not entirely mute around her best friend.
She is an active meaning-maker, if not yet a skilled communicator. They are dividing up Barbie dolls. Which one do you want? You can have that one. You can't have this one, this is my favourite. Allana begins to make some conversation between her male and female dolls: ‘I'm not wearing any shoes'; ‘That's OK, I'll carry you.' But although she keeps them talking, the noises degenerate into a jumble of sounds because she can't find the words quickly enough. It looks frustrating.

Kayleigh is putting her doll to sleep in Allana's Barbie castle.

‘Someone's knocking on the door,' says Allana, outside.

‘Hello, my name's Cinderella, who are you?'

‘Pony.'

‘Oh, so if you want to come to our tea party, it's our tea party.' Kayleigh opens the drawbridge to Allana's doll.

‘Hello. What your name, what your name?'

‘Cinderella, now who are you?'

‘Batman.'

‘You can come to our tea party.'

Allana starts jiggling the castle and a bed falls into Kayleigh's face.

‘Don't play with it!' she screeches.

Sienna marches in, pink rucksack on her back as usual. ‘I got lots of bags,' she announces with satisfaction. ‘I gon' tidy up in a minute!' she adds efficiently. ‘Me need two bags to put the packed lunch in.'

Gloria brings in some socks to put away. Sienna folds hers away in her drawer. ‘Shall I help?' asks Kayleigh. ‘I wan' help me one', Allana insists. She puts some away in her drawer too. ‘Are they my ones?' asks Kayleigh, confused. ‘I think you've got lots of socks at home,' says Gloria.

‘Do you want some of this?' Kayleigh offers her the microwaved cake. ‘I made it for you.'

‘Nau'y, nau'y gill,' says Allana to Sienna once their mother has retreated, ‘I'll smack you.' The crime is undefined and Sienna is unconcerned.

‘'Lana, I found the dummy. We got new bag. I've got a new bottle.' She is fondling the special bottle that belongs to Allana's Baby Annabel doll. When you tip it up the milk drains, and when you right it again it refills.

‘Can I have it?' asks Kayleigh slyly, immediately discerning the superior quality of this plaything.

‘No, it's 'Lana's,' says Sienna with hostility.

‘Let me feed it!' cries Kayleigh, snatching the bottle from Sienna's grip and turning to cradle Baby Annabel. Allana flicks the switch at the back of the neck. The doll emits a pre-recorded burp and both snigger loudly. Kayleigh turns to Sienna triumphantly: ‘Annabel burped!'

Allana tries to get her hand on the magic bottle but Kayleigh moves it away, gently but deliberately. She can't operate Annabel properly and it's making her crotchety. ‘Stop it! It's not working.'

‘Because YOU broke it!' shouts Allana.

‘She's thirsty ain't she?' says Kayleigh, into the air.

‘Bye, see you later …' Allana has gone back to playing with the Barbies, feigning disinterest.

Then comes another round of noisy evacuation. ‘Allana! Annabel's burping!' The pair can't contain themselves. They make a staccato impression of an adult laugh: ‘A-ha-a-ha-a-ha-ha-ha!'

‘Once there was a programme that was an hour long and I counted twenty adverts, and they were all about a minute long, so that was twenty minutes.'

Two crepuscular portraits of dark-dressed ancestors hang in the sitting-room. The gentleman by the fireplace bears a certain resemblance to Robert Burns, with the same milky-blue complexion and wanton sideburns. In the background of the painting is a bookshelf, and on it can be made out the spine of Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations
. It is a dry, cold Sunday afternoon towards the end of November, and Nicholas has been to a bowling party for a classmate's eighth birthday.

Himself newly eight, Nicholas is, in all matters, an empiricist. It is rare for him to resist the opportunity to mathematise. He has lived here for two and a half years, with a mum and a dad, one sister, and one au pair. His father is a shipping lawyer. His mother teaches languages at an independent girls' secondary school, near the major London preparatory school which he attends. He has three grandparents, an aunt and three cousins, two uncles and some older cousins.

His house has eight rooms, if you count the sitting-room which takes up most of the ground floor as one, and three bathrooms. ‘Aaaah,' he sighs, for the sake of making the sound.
He has tufty blond hair and scrupulous consonants. His sister is five and a half, and her name is Emma. ‘It's quite hard to explain what she's like. She's quite like me in some ways.'

Nicholas's bedroom is on the first floor, next to his sister's, and their shared bathroom. He has recently had a new carpet fitted. His box bed, bookcases and sofa are all in place, sinking their shapes into the fresh pile, but the shelves and surfaces are empty of clutter. It smells of clean.

On the cork board above his pillow are drawings by him, secured with the pins from the pot on his bedside table. There are pictures of pandas, fish, several coloured-in patterns, and a drawing he did this week at school about Christmas. The forthcoming festive season is his favourite time of year, apart from his birthday. ‘I would like my birthday a bit further away from Hallowe'en because it's the next day and I get invited to Hallowe'en parties. I get invited to about four and then I can't go to any of them because it's my own birthday party.'

Nicholas has finished all his homework. He had a lot to do because on Fridays it's double. ‘Probably it takes about an hour and a half, when normally it takes about twenty minutes. At the weekend I have geography, double spelling and reading, but normally I just have reading and maths, or reading and spelling. I'm good at spelling but I'm very, very, very good at maths'. Because he's so good at maths his teacher has put him up two sheets in the times-table tests.

Numbers can tell us a lot about childhood. It has been estimated that the total under-sixteen market in the UK adds up to £30 billion per annum, and that children receive an average of seventy new toys a year. It currently costs more to bring up a child than to purchase a house. Just as we have come to bemoan the corruption of Christmas by
commerce, so we worry that childhood is uniquely at risk from the gluttony of market capitalism.

Children's changing status in the economy reveals much about their position in society. The young have always been active economic participants, whether as producers or as consumers. But their exclusion from the labour market over the past century and a half has caused their direct economic value to diminish, while their indirect economic value – as pesterers of parents, or as human capital for the future – has increased.

Viviana Zelizer, professor of sociology at Princeton University, who has written extensively about the social value of childhood, argues that the elimination of child labour ‘is key to understanding the profound transformation in the economic and sentimental value of children … The price of a useful wage-earning child was directly counterposed to the moral value of an economically useless but emotionally priceless child.'

So children's ‘work' was gradually reconceived as education and play. Their essential innocence was seen to be under threat from the adult world of employment, resulting in confinement at home and at school for the purposes of appropriate nurture. But here, they are left vulnerable to a damaging culture of competition, as both education and commerce thrive on separating children into winners and losers.

Meanwhile, Nicholas remains very good at maths, and undertakes a variety of other activities at which he is variously good, better or best. Last Friday, he sat his Grade One piano exam. He was quite nervous but he thinks it went well. You had to learn three pieces and do scales. He has piano lessons out of school, but flute lessons in school. ‘And me and my mum always put on a Christmas concert 'cos my mum plays the organ, cello, guitar, piano, and I play the
flute, piano, recorder. I normally just play about three pieces on the piano, one on the flute, probably a few on the recorder. Mum will play one on the piano, one on the cello.'

There is a wide poster of the solar system on the evenly painted wall beyond his bed. He's not really interested in space, not now. ‘I used to be, one or two years ago, but now I'm into things like chess, and making crosswords and reading.' He started to construct a crossword earlier today. It took over two hours and it's not finished yet. One clues reads: ‘Chess is one of these (5)', and the answer is ‘games'; another is ‘a parent (3)', and the answer is ‘mum', but not ‘dad'. It's quite hard to find a way to make all the letters fit.

Next March Nicholas is going to a chess tournament to play in the under-nines section. He may go on to play matches out of London. He likes to play chess with his granny. He normally beats her but she's quite good. ‘I do get competitive,' he admits. ‘It's a competitive game.' In the corner of his bedroom is his electric chess set. It's a thick, seventies-style board, plugged in at the mains. ‘It used to be my mum's, and when I started to beat her she said that I should play the computer.' He switches it on, and it lights into life. A monotonal voice greets him: ‘I am Intelligent Chess Challenger, your computer opponent. Select your level.'

Nicholas talks about his school, which he knows by the initials. It's all boys. ‘You have to wear a tie which is striped, and you can wear a short-sleeved shirt or a long-sleeved shirt, and shorts or long trousers, and grey socks and you have to have black shoes.' He prefers a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. He doesn't get chilly knees. ‘For a start, when it's very cold we have play inside, and I have a fleece.'

He's not certain what's different about a private school because he's never been to an ordinary school. An adult would know. You have to pay. He doesn't know anybody his own
age who goes to a state school. The only difference between the kind of person who goes to a state school and the kind of person who goes to a private school is that to go to a school like his you have to have more money. People might have more money if they work very hard, or they might have more money from their ancestors.