Saturday, 7 June 2014
Thursday, 10 April 2014
The Riddle of the Childscape
Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape by Jay Griffiths – review
This was so much better and healthier, we insist, than the protected life of the younger generation now. (Of course, we rarely stop to reflect that we are the very ones who have imposed that protective regime on our own children: no dens in tumbledown sheds for them – think of the risks.)
("Children can be mavericks of malice", she concedes at one point), for the most part she holds a sentimental, rosy view of their nature – one that would hardly survive any prolonged face-to-face experience of a boisterous gang of under-10s. Try telling the average parent that, as Griffiths puts it, "there is a space around a child where even the air seems sensitive", or "children are the musicians of thought". Maybe that is how our kids would be, if only we gave them the space to be so; but I very much doubt it. As most parents have known for millennia, the issue is that children are a curious amalgam of little devils full of (for want of a better word) "original sin" that needs to be controlled, and blessed innocents whose autonomy and natural goodness need to be cherished. That's what makes childrearing such a challenge – and the one-sided views of Kith so misleading.
Perhaps the most important theme of the book, though, is the idea that children should be allowed their autonomy, to roam, to explore the wild woods of their "kith" and, crucially, to take risks. "Children need accidents," she writes, "little ones, ideally, accidents the right size, through which they learn to avoid bigger accidents later." We all know what she means: kids cannot know how to manage risk unless they have experienced some danger. But she gives no hint about how we might achieve accidents of "the right size". The truth is that, partly because of all those tedious rules and regulations, Britain really has become safer for children (as the Unicef report recognised, and as a quick scan of any 19th-century newspaper, with its litany of child fatalities from drowning, skating accidents or falls from carts, will attest). The dilemma is that many us might favour, in general, a less risk-averse world – but not if it's our kids that end up at the bottom of the pond.
This was so much better and healthier, we insist, than the protected life of the younger generation now. (Of course, we rarely stop to reflect that we are the very ones who have imposed that protective regime on our own children: no dens in tumbledown sheds for them – think of the risks.)
("Children can be mavericks of malice", she concedes at one point), for the most part she holds a sentimental, rosy view of their nature – one that would hardly survive any prolonged face-to-face experience of a boisterous gang of under-10s. Try telling the average parent that, as Griffiths puts it, "there is a space around a child where even the air seems sensitive", or "children are the musicians of thought". Maybe that is how our kids would be, if only we gave them the space to be so; but I very much doubt it. As most parents have known for millennia, the issue is that children are a curious amalgam of little devils full of (for want of a better word) "original sin" that needs to be controlled, and blessed innocents whose autonomy and natural goodness need to be cherished. That's what makes childrearing such a challenge – and the one-sided views of Kith so misleading.
Perhaps the most important theme of the book, though, is the idea that children should be allowed their autonomy, to roam, to explore the wild woods of their "kith" and, crucially, to take risks. "Children need accidents," she writes, "little ones, ideally, accidents the right size, through which they learn to avoid bigger accidents later." We all know what she means: kids cannot know how to manage risk unless they have experienced some danger. But she gives no hint about how we might achieve accidents of "the right size". The truth is that, partly because of all those tedious rules and regulations, Britain really has become safer for children (as the Unicef report recognised, and as a quick scan of any 19th-century newspaper, with its litany of child fatalities from drowning, skating accidents or falls from carts, will attest). The dilemma is that many us might favour, in general, a less risk-averse world – but not if it's our kids that end up at the bottom of the pond.
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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