The Story of Childhood (22 page)

She continues: ‘The last thing we want to admit is that the bickering of the playground perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that our social hierarchies are merely an extension of who got picked first for the kickball team, that grown-ups still get divided into bullies and fatties and crybabies … The secret is there is no secret. That is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood.'

Nowadays, aggression on screen and in computer games is regularly blamed for youth crime and delinquency. In a speech to an anti-bullying conference in April 2005, the Oscar-winning producer David Puttnam warned that Hollywood films which portrayed violence as ‘devoid of human consequences' were fuelling a culture of aggression in schools. A year before that, the video games industry, now the most lucrative aspect of the toy business, was implicated in the murder of fourteen-year-old Stefan Pakeerah, who was beaten to death by a friend said to have become obsessed with the game
Manhunt
.

Perhaps most memorably in this country, the ‘video nasty'
Child's Play 3
was discussed at the trial of John Venables and Robert Thompson, the two ten-year-olds found guilty of murdering the Liverpool toddler James Bulger in 1993. Although there was no evidence that the defendants had ever watched the film, a subsequent review by Professor Elizabeth Newson, then director of Nottingham University's Child
Development Research Unit, suggested that screen violence was tantamount to child abuse.

Newson acknowledged that her concerns about the ‘desensitisation to compassion' that viewing such material might cause would confront liberal sensibilities around the issue of censorship. Around the same time, the novelist and poet Blake Morrison – who attended the Bulger trial and documented it in his book
As If
– argued that restriction was not the solution. ‘It's no use blaming art, or thinking censorship would solve the problem,' he wrote. ‘It's not as though life is so innocent either … Copying what you see adults do: it's how children grow up, it's the basis of their play, the dolls, the Matchbox cars, the plastic guns. Copycat, copycat, we taunted other kids. We were all copycats. We still are. No one would need
Child's Play 3
to get the idea of hurting people.'

An increasing body of research links electronic media with a medley of modern horrors. Television viewing has been associated with lower cognitive skills, brain development and academic achievement, as well as increased obesity. One American study reported in 2004 suggested that every hour of television watched by toddlers resulted in a 10 per cent increase in the risk of developing an attention deficit disorder by the age of seven. Another survey suggested that frequent viewing lead to unrealistic expectations of levels of affluence, as well as crime, in the real world.

It is not in doubt that children's access to media, and the prevalence and extremity of violence in such media, has vastly increased over the last fifty years. But the question of correlation versus causality in the research linking media violence with unhappy outcomes remains vexed. Many in the field believe that a critical mass of evidence has been reached, that it is incumbent on governments to legislate for more effective
controls, and on parents to survey their offsprings' media diet more strictly.

But others argue that many of these studies are necessarily flawed because they view violence as an objective category and fail to investigate what audiences themselves define as violent. In
After the Death of Childhood
, David Buckingham notes that cartoons – which regularly top researchers' lists of most violent programmes – are not generally perceived as violent by children.

The concept of ‘desensitisation' has become loaded, implying a dangerous lack of empathy rather than a healthy coping response. But Buckingham refers to accounts of early film that describe how people would scream and rush from the cinema when confronted with sequences of train crashes or falling buildings. ‘Rather than being taken as evidence of “desensitisation”,' he writes, ‘this apparently distanced attitude to violence could well be seen as a reflection of the sophistication of contemporary audiences.'

And, more than thirty years on, a review in the
Lancet
in 2005 reinforces Anthony Storr's contention that ‘it is only when parents or other adults have actually seemed terrifying' that violent stories or images will disturb a child. It found that violent imagery on television and in computer games was more likely to increase aggressive behaviour in children who came from violent families.

The beneficial potential of new media is seldom given as much publicity as its negative aspect. Researchers from the Institute of Education's Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media have argued that video games, for example, can assist children's social and educational development, and that the medium deserves to be treated by schools with the same seriousness as books and films. In particular, they noted that the perception of video games as unremmitingly violent is
wholly inaccurate. Indeed, the majority of those aimed at children involve imaginative role play. The biggest selling video game of all time is
The Sims
, where players assume the role of city mayor, constructing virtual families and communities.

It is also worth considering some research conducted by the BBC, BBFC and others in 2003, which found that children were far more disturbed by violence or its implied threat when seen on the news or in documentaries than in cartoons or fantasy. They were especially scared by events which they could imagine happening to themselves or their immediate family, like abduction or terrorist attack. David Buckingham suggests: ‘As they gain experience of watching fictional violence, children may indeed become “desensitised” to fictional violence or at least develop strategies for coping with it; although the notion that they are thereby “desensitised” to real-life violence has yet to be substantiated. By contrast, however, there may be very little that children can do in order to come to terms with their “negative” responses to non-fictional material, precisely because they are so powerless to intervene in issues that concern them.'

Neil Postman, nevertheless, would have applauded Adam's mother and father. He believed that ‘those parents who resist the spirit of the age will contribute to what might be called the Monastery Effect, for they will help to keep alive a humane tradition.' And so, instead of watching endless hours of potentially denaturing television, Adam likes to make things that are kind of messy. He likes cutting-out and sticking, clay and wool. ‘There was art that we did at Beavers,' he says. ‘Beavers is this club that you go to on a Wednesday, and you have to wear a uniform and a neckerchief and a scarf, and you get to do fun things and play games.'

He has only one week left before he goes off on holiday with his Spanish cousins. ‘They speak Spanish but they speak English as well. They're both older, and Sarah does karate and I don't know what Luke does. Together we play football and other things.'

Next week is the class trip to Chester. There's a limit of five pounds' spending money, because it wouldn't be fair if someone brought ten pounds and another person brought less. Adam would like to bring four pounds. He gets one pound of pocket money every Saturday. He'll probably spend it on a little figure, or a Roman helmet.

It will be a whole day trip to Chester. ‘We get one hour at school and the rest we get at Chester. So we get twenty-three hours there. Or maybe twenty or ninteen.' He thinks it's in a bus. ‘It's exciting really. It gets noisy, especially when we go swimming. Some people sing songs, but I don't. It increases the noise.' Sometimes noise bothers him. ‘And sometimes when I'm in bed it can actually be the silence that disturbs me. Because when I was little, I still believe, I know it isn't true, but I think that there's ghosts, but there isn't really.'

When I next visit, it's a dour, misty day, and when Stephen came round earlier they mostly played indoors. There is one more week of holidays left. When Adam's alone, he likes to do archery. He's going to go to an archery club in the summer. He already has his own arrows, which he's got twelve of, and a target.

In the end, Adam took three pounds fifty to Chester. They went round the walls with a man dressed up as a Roman soldier, then they went into the museum, and there was a games area, an excavation area and a gift shop. He bought one little Roman soldier and a plastic sword. You had to bring your own packed lunch. He had some tuna butties, an apple, some juice, some raisins, and some raw pepper.

After Chester they went to Herefordshire, to a cottage. There were nine people staying there in all. They played outside, went up hills and went on midnight walks – which usually take place around half past seven in the evening. ‘We take a torch, and some walkie-talkies, and just walk in the dark. We saw foxes, badgers, rabbits, hedgehogs sometimes.' Adam played football, rounders, swingball, and Frisbee with his Spanish cousins. They didn't bring Monkey back because nobody knows where he is. Probably somebody Spanish is looking after him now.

He came back from Herefordshire, which is hard to pronounce, on Saturday, and then it was Easter. ‘We went on an Easter-egg hunt up hills. It wasn't really an egg hunt. There were clues and you have to try and look for the thing. We had to find things like feathers or sheep. We got forty-seven points and came second. I got a little chicken with a little Easter egg in it as a prize.'

On Sundays, sometimes he and his dad go to church, though they didn't go for Easter Sunday. On Easter, Jesus was crucified and rose up from the dead. When you are crucified you are killed on the cross. It probably hurt a lot. He came back to life because of God's power. It's something that lots of people are happy about now.

Adam believes in God. If you do, you have to help people and be kind. ‘You have to say prayers at night-time and at teatime. The prayers are all different. Sometimes they come from
The Lion Book of Prayers
, which has different prayers for different times of the year, and sometimes we make them up to say thank you, and sometimes we don't say any at all.'

He scrambles up the back of the sofa to watch the hens that are lording around the garden. What became of the chicks in the woodshed? He ponders. ‘I think we've killed them all. We've got another set now. You just break their necks. I haven't
done it on my own but I've watched Mum and Dad. After that we cook them. There are loads of ways really. Sometimes we roast them, sometimes we make stew. Sometimes chicken doesn't have any taste, and sometimes it does.'

Adam says that his favourite things to eat are broccoli, chips, chicken and chocolate egg. ‘I eat five fruit and vegetables a day, and we grow food round where the swing is, sometimes broccoli, rhubarb, leeks, potatoes and sometimes cauliflower.' He rubs a fresh scratch on his nose absently. He can't remember how it got there.

When he goes to the supermarket with his mum and dad, he asks them to buy treacle tarts. But the majority of Adam's food comes from local producers. His parents buy meat, fruit and vegetables that are in season, and that come with the minimum of food miles. There's a non-profit-making organisation that delivers boxes to a house near the school, and the families pick them up every Friday. Most of the villagers avoid big supermarkets if they possibly can.

His mum says it's important that he knows where food comes from, and that their lambs which he pets in spring will end up on his plate. He likes helping in the kitchen, and his favourite thing is chopping. Adam says he doesn't really see adverts for sweeties or drinks because you see them on television. Sometimes he's noticed that after eating jelly babies he feels excited.

When he's at school, the dinners are different every day. His favourite is fish, chips and peas. Again, the food is sourced locally, the sausages are home-made and the pizzas constructed from scratch with fresh ingredients.

This evening it's kedgeree for tea, made with newly laid eggs from the hens. His parents are in the kitchen and the radio is on. This weekend they are going to Durham. It's a golden wedding, which he thinks is fifty years. His own mum
and dad are ten years. They'll be in their eighties when they have theirs. They'll be wrinkly then, but they'll still go for long walks because his grandad and grandma still do.

He spots his father out of the window, coming round the side of the woodshed. He's got his helmet, his chainsaw and his clippers because he's been cutting down trees. He's making a fence for the goats from the wood that he's harvested from the coppice. Adam says he can use an axe, and sometimes he sharpens it too. ‘Sometimes it's quite heavy when I'm using one hand, but not with two hands.'

Adam returns to playing with his Playmobil figures. One is a flag-bearer, and another is a knight in armour. Where's his shield? Now that notice of tea has been given, there's an urgency to get everyone constructed. He snatches vital seconds, attaching swords to hands as his mum comes in to encourage him towards the table.

The kitchen is heated by an oil stove. Strings of dried chillies and orange slices garnish the sides of the fireplace. Some of Adam's pottery hangs on the walls: an owl with individually moulded clay feathers, a glazed mug and a loving portrait of his mother which presents her with wild, wormy hair. The family sit down to eat together every evening. Before eating, everyone holds hands and thanks God for the food: the fish that gave its life and the chicken that laid the eggs.

They talk about the trip to Durham. Adam is wearing a red sleeveless T-shirt, and when he gesticulates his arm muscles flex vigorously beneath the skin. He describes the games they play in the car, making sentences out of letters on number-plates they see. One of them was Dad's Windy Bottom!

In the spring of 2005, the government pledged £280 million to improve school meals, as a result of the celebrity chef Jamie
Oliver's ‘Feed Me Better' campaign. His television series
Jamie's School Dinners
, which exposed the appalling state of school catering, ambushed public opinion, driving an issue that had long struggled for attention straight to the top of the political agenda. The reintroduction of minimum nutritional standards that had been abolished by the Conservative government when they privatised the service in 1980 was also announced.