The Good Childhood Report 2014

Wellbeing is about so much more than happiness, going right to the very heart of a good quality of life. And a real understanding of well- being must also take into account the factors associated with it; the potential drivers. Children with low wellbeing are not grumpy teenagers experiencing the everyday ups and downs of growing up. Our research highlights stubborn and persistent issues of bullying, insecurity and anxiety; children growing up with little hope for their future.

The good news is that the majority of children in this country continue to be satisfied with their lives. Yet around 9% of children aged eight to 15 years have low life satisfaction which is a statistic none of us can afford to ignore. Our annual state- of-the-nation report on children’s wellbeing seeks to understand more about this. This year’s report confirms gender variations in wellbeing – with girls showing lower levels overall often driven by concerns with the way they look. It also shows that the ages of 14 and 15 continue to be the ages of lowest well-being.

In this year’s report, our third annual Good Childhood Report, we explore new work on the relationship between parents and their children’s well-being and highlight new international evidence that shows the UK is behind the majority of countries in terms of children’s wellbeing.

The second part of the report looks at new evidence on four different factors that are associated with children’s subjective wellbeing:

• Children’s activities and behaviours
• Material conditions – deprivation, relative wealth and changes over time.
• Parental subjective well-being and mental health
• Parenting behaviours.

The report reveals that children in England are faring slightly less well in terms of subjective wellbeing than children in the other nations of the UK; and children in England are faring poorly in terms of subjective well-being compared to other countries within and outside Europe, ranking ninth out of 11 countries surveyed.

Children in England fare particularly poorly in terms of satisfaction with the way they look, compared to children in
a sample of other countries around the world. This finding supplements other evidence of a significant age-related decline in satisfaction with this aspect of life in England, especially for girls.

There is some evidence of a gender gap developing recently in children’s subjective well-being in the UK, with girls tending to have lower wellbeing than boys.

There are associations between how children spend their time and their subjective wellbeing. Children who participate more often in sports and related activities tend to have higher wellbeing. On the other hand, our analysis finds no evidence of a negative association between use of computer technology and subjective wellbeing. In fact, children aged 11 years old who engaged in this activity relatively frequently were significantly more satisfied and happy with their lives than children who never did so.

There is still a lot of work to do to understand the root causes of variations in child subjective wellbeing within the UK. There is substantial variation with most children faring relatively well but up to 10% of children aged eight to 15 experiencing low wellbeing at any given point in time. We know that children’s sense of wellbeing shows a degree of stability over time.

This new data will have particular value for national policymakers in providing an understanding of the links between national political, economic and cultural factors and children’s experience of childhood and could suggest potential areas for policy focus to improve children’s lives. Until then, The Good Childhood Report 2014 provides crucial insights for everyone from teachers, to parents and opinion-formers, because it is based on children’s own evaluations of their lives. The Children’s Society will go on to build on our understanding of children’s wellbeing as we continue to work towards a society where all children are free from disadvantage.