good childhood report 2013 final

8/19/2019 Good Childhood Report 2013 Final

1/56The Good Childhood Report 2013 | 1

The Good ChildhoodReport 2013

A better childhood. For every child. www.childrenssociety.org.uk


2/562 | The Good Childhood Report 2013

This report is the product of an ongoing collaboration betweenThe Children’s Society and the University of York. The report summariseswork conducted by the joint research team:

Gwyther Rees, Haridhan Goswami and Larissa Pople, The Children’s Society

Jonathan Bradshaw, Antonia Keung and Gill Main, University of York

Further details of the research programme as a whole, including additionalpublications, can be found at:

www.childrenssociety.org.uk/well-being

If you have any queries about the report or the research programme, pleaseemail The Children’s Society’s Research Team at:[email protected]

© The Children’s Society, 2013



Contents

1 Introduction 4

2 Children’s well-being: concepts, variations and trends 7

3 The background to children’s well-being 19

4 What can be done to improve children’s well-being 30

5 Conclusions 46

References 48

Appendix 1: The research programme 51

Notes 54



1 Introduction

Children’s well-being remains an importantissue of debate in the UK. The recent UNICEFReport Card 11 (UNICEF Office of Research,2013) showed some improvements in aspectsof children’s well-being in the UK up to 2010,although there is still considerable room forfurther improvement in comparison with otherwealthy countries. The media coverage of ReportCard 11 also raised concerns that current nationaland global economic problems could adverselyaffect young people and put this progress at risk.

2013 presents a very different social andeconomic context to child well-being thanwhen we started this programme of research in2005. The economy was growing, employmentwas at a post-war peak, social expenditure onchildren was increasing with increases in health,education and childcare spending. Child povertyand deprivation were falling. In comparison,the latest official statistics on child povertyfor 2011/12 estimate that absolute poverty hasincreased by two percentage points and theInstitute for Fiscal Studies estimate that relativechild poverty will increase from 17% to 24%by 2020.

This report will hopefully make a timely additionto this ongoing debate. It provides an updateon research and analysis we have undertaken inthe 18 months since the publication of The GoodChildhood Report 2012. In the conclusion to lastyear’s report we identified some priorities forfuture research on children’s well-being.These were:

1. To explore in more detail the well-beingof specific sub-groups of children whomay not be well represented in generalpopulation surveys

2. To undertake research that explores theconnections between well-being andother issues in children’s lives

3. To learn more about ways in whichchildren’s well-being can be enhanced.

4. To continue to monitor children’s well-being,

particularly in view of changes in our society.

This report contains important new evidencerelated to the latter three of these priorities.

At the same time, the report provides anopportunity to summarise what we have learnedfrom the programme of research on children’swell-being that we started in 2005, placing ournew findings within the context of what hasbecome one of the most extensive programmesof research on children’s well-being so farconducted.

This introductory chapter therefore aims toprovide an overarching narrative of the reportwhile at the same time drawing attention to thekey new findings contained within it.

Chapter 2 begins with a review of definitions,concepts and measures of children’s self-reported well-being. This includes a presentationof recent work we have been undertaking toextend the scope of our research to coverchildren’s psychological well-being (personaldevelopment and growth) as well as their

subjective well-being (happiness and lifesatisfaction). We also discuss how these twodifferent components of children’s well-being– subjective and psychological – can be usedtogether to develop a picture of the extent towhich children are ‘flourishing’. We estimate thataround four-fifths of children aged 10 to 15 in theUK can be said to be flourishing in the sense ofhaving reasonably high levels of life satisfactionand psychological well-being.

The chapter goes on to look at variations in

well-being across sub-groups of children.We present some new work which extends theage range we have surveyed to include youngpeople aged 16 and 17. Early findings fromthis work suggest that the steady decline inwell-being observed in our previous researchbetween the ages of eight and 15 may be haltedand reversed from the age of 16 onwards. Thisis an important new insight and suggests thatthere needs to be a particular focus on the dipin well-being that appears to occur around theages of 14 and 15 in particular.


5/56

We then turn to a set of other key questionsabout children’s well-being concerning trendsand stability in levels of well-being. We presentupdated analysis of data from the youthquestionnaire in the British Household PanelSurvey which suggests some discernible trendsin children’s satisfaction with some aspectsof their lives between 1994 and 2011. We alsopresent some new analysis from our ownresearch which supports the idea that, at anindividual level, children’s well-being is relatively

stable over periods of time from three monthsto a year. This has important implications for theextent to which we view low well-being as anissue of concern.

Finally in Chapter 2 we provide a briefdescription, based on a re-analysis of earlierpublished findings, of what life is like for childrenwith low levels of well-being. This evidencesupports the idea that children’s well-beingshould be a matter of concern in its own right.

Given this evidence it is logical to try and

understand what causes variations in well-being,and what can be done to prevent low well-beingand to help children who experience it.

Chapter 3 explores the influence of situationalfactors on children’s well-being. In particular, itfocuses on three issues that have emerged fromour research programme as having the strongestassociations with children’s life satisfaction.These are choice/autonomy, money/possessionsand family relationships.

The issue of autonomy has regularly croppedup as an important factor in understandingvariations in children’s life satisfaction. In thischapter we present new material from somerecent qualitative research that we haveundertaken with young people to explore thisissue in more depth.



In terms of money and possessions, an earlierpublication from our research programmedescribed the development of a new child-centred measure of material deprivation, anddemonstrated that this measure was much moreclosely associated with children’s subjective well-being than measures of household prosperity(Main and Pople, 2011). The new analysis

presented in this report extends previousfindings by focusing on the well-being of themost deprived children, that is, those lackingfive or more items from our 10-item materialdeprivation scale.

The final section in the chapter explores differentdimensions of family relationships and howthey affect children’s well-being. We presentnew analysis of the strength of the combinedimpact of family conflict and parental supporton children’s life satisfaction. We then go on to

highlight the additional relevance of parentalautonomy-granting as a factor which influenceschildren’s well-being. The analysis suggeststhat all three of these factors are importantcomponents in understanding the significantinfluence that family relationships have forchildren’s well-being.

Chapter 4 moves on to the question of whatcan be done to improve children’s well-being.We consider this question at a range of levels,from how children can help themselves, to how

national policy needs to change.

One potential key source of informationto inform national policy is internationalcomparative work. There is a growing bodyof evidence about substantial cross-nationalvariations in children’s objective and self-reported well-being. The recent publicationby UNICEF mentioned earlier is an importantsource of information on variations in well-beingamongst children in wealthy nations.

The chapter then goes on to consider the

potential of local initiatives to improve children’swell-being. We describe some recent pilotingwork we have been doing with three localauthorities in England to make use of measuresof children’s self-reported well-being to informlocal priorities for children. We also presentsome key findings from the first completed pilot.This pilot suggests that there is considerablepotential for local authorities and other agenciesto make use of localised data on children’s self-reported well-being for policy development.

Another key potential point of interventionto improve children’s well-being is servicesand professionals who work directly withchildren and young people. We present someinitial findings from an analysis we have beenundertaking of data from the UnderstandingSociety survey, which suggests that well-beingmeasures could form a useful part of monitoring

children’s welfare and identifying those at risk,in addition to more commonly used measures ofmental ill-health.

Finally in Chapter 4 we consider ways inwhich children themselves might be able toenhance their own well-being, and ways inwhich parents might be able to support themwith this. We presents some initial findings froma study we are undertaking with nef (the neweconomics foundation) to extend the work theydeveloped on ‘ways to well-being’ to include

children. These early findings suggest that the nef framework (see Aked & Thompson, 2011)may also be applicable to children with someadaptation, and that actions such as ‘takingnotice’ and ‘being active’ are associated withhigher well-being in children.

We conclude the report, as we did last year,with some overarching comments and theidentification of key future research priorities inthe field of children’s self-reported well-being.

Statistical note

We have used a range of appropriatestatistical tests to support the findingspresented in this report. All differencesidentified as ‘significant’ in the reportare based on accepted tests of statisticalsignificance using a 99% confidencelevel. Because this is a non-technicalreport we have avoided using technical

language regarding these tests in the maintext, although some basic explanatoryinformation is sometimes provided infootnotes and appendix. Full details of allthe data sources are also provided in theappendix. Further details on the technicalaspects of the research are available fromThe Children’s Society’s Research Team(see contact details at start of report).



2 Children’s well-being:concepts, variations and trends

In this chapter we describe some key well-being concepts and how wehave measured these concepts with children through our ongoing research

programme. We then go on to describe some of the basic findings of ourresearch in terms of how children evaluate their lives and how self-reportedwell-being varies for different sub-groups of children. We also look at evidenceof recent trends in children’s self-reported well-being in the UK. The chapterthen concludes with an exploration of the numbers of children who have low

well-being and a discussion of what life is like for children in this situation.

Broadly speaking, well-being can be measuredin two ways – either through objective livingconditions or through asking people to evaluatetheir own lives.

The first approach – using social indicators –has been widely used. An example in relationto children is the recent UNICEF Report Card 11(UNICEF Office of Research, 2013). This report

compared countries using sets of indicatorsin five dimensions – material well-being(eg child deprivation rates), health and safety(eg infant mortality rates), education(eg school participation rates), behavioursand risks (eg percentage of children who areoverweight) and housing and environment(eg average rooms per person).

The second approach – self-reported well-being – has also become common, particularlyin research with adults. For example, the recent

World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al, 2012)was able to compare adults’ self-reported well-being across a wide range of countries aroundthe world. Also the Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development (OECD)1 produces a ‘Better Life Index’ including anindicator of adult life satisfaction. In the UK, theOffice for National Statistics (ONS), as part ofits national well-being programme, has recentlypublished its first annual experimental report onthe subjective well-being of adults.2 It has alsobegun to publish annual reports on the well-

being of children (Beaumont, 2013). UNICEFReport Card 11 included some child self-reportmeasures (Bradshaw et al, 2013).

We will go on to discuss how we have developedquestions to ask children to evaluate their ownlives in the next section. However first, we brieflyreview some of the concepts that are commonlyused to categorise different aspects of people’sself-reported well-being.

Although many different frameworks of self-reported well-being have been developed, some

broad concepts are fairly well-established. Firstof all, there is a distinction between subjective(or ‘hedonic’) well-being (which focuses onhappiness and satisfaction) and psychological(or ‘eudaimonic’) well-being (which focusesmore on personal development and growth).

Subjective well-being is typically sub-dividedinto affective and cognitive components. Theaffective component is concerned with theexperience of positive and negative emotions,which may typically be quite variable over time.

The cognitive component is concerned withevaluations of one’s life overall (life satisfaction)or particular aspects of one’s life (domainsatisfaction). These evaluations are thought tobe more stable over time.

Psychological well-being is a complex concept.One well-known example of some of thedifferent aspects of this component of well-being is Ryff’s model which consists of: self-acceptance, environmental mastery, positiverelationships with others, autonomy, purpose in

life, personal growth (Ryff, 1989).

What is well-being?



Figure 1 shows a visual depiction of thesedifferent components of self-reported well-being.

It should be clear from this very brief overviewof key concepts that self-reported well-beingis about far more than just ‘happiness’. It is ameans of learning about how people feel about

and evaluate the quality of their own lives in thepresent and the direction that they feel theirlives may take in the future.

How can we measure

children’s self-reported

well-being?

Historically there has been much more research

asking adults about their well-being thanchildren. However, in the last 20 years there havebeen attempts to extend the measurement ofself-reported well-being to children and youngpeople. For example Huebner (1994) in theUS and Cummins and Lau (2005) in Australiahave developed and validated questions tomeasure children’s self-reported well-being.Inevitably there are limitations on the use ofthese measures related to children’s levels ofunderstanding, literacy and so on. But it is nowwidely accepted eg Casas (2011, 2012) in the

field of well-being research that it is possible andvalid to ask children and young people from atleast the age of 10 upwards to report on aspectsof their own well-being.

It is very important, however, to developself-reported well-being measures that areappropriate and relevant to children’s lives andconcerns. That is why the initial step in ourwell-being research programme, in 2005, wasto ask young people what they thought wasimportant for them to have a good life. In somecases it has proved possible simply to use the

same questions that have been developed foradults, while in other cases this is inappropriate.We have therefore tested all the measureswe describe in this report with children, boththrough individual and group discussions andthrough pilot surveys and statistical testing.

For each component of self-reported well-beingit is possible to ask a single question, or a set ofquestions. There are competing advantages tothese different options. Single questions havethe advantage of brevity and of being quite

general – allowing people to define the conceptfor themselves. Multi-item measures (sets ofquestions, the responses to which are addedto create an overall score), on the other hand,take up more room on the survey questionnaireand tend to be more specific, but are morestatistically reliable and stable and can facilitatemore confident statistical analysis of patternsand differences. We have used both single-itemand multi-item measures.

Well-being

‘Hedonic’ Subjectivewell-being

‘Eudaimonic’ Psychologicalwell-being

Aective Cognitive For example: • Self-acceptance• Environmental mastery• Positive relationships• Autonomy• Purpose in life• Personal growth

Life satisfaction

‘Domain’ satisfactions

Positiveaffect

Negativeaffect

Figure 1: Components of self-reported well-being



Afect

We recently piloted questions about bothpositive and negative affect in focus groups withchildren aged 12 to 13. We found that childrenunderstood and felt comfortable to answerquestions about positive affect (eg feeling happyor excited), but were less comfortable withquestions about negative affect (such as feelinganxious or lonely). They felt that these questionscould be experienced as intrusive or upsettingin a self-report survey. We need to explore thisissue further, but in view of this feedback wehave only so far used questions about positiveaffect in our recent survey work.

We have used a single question developed bythe ONS in its work with adults. This questionasks people how happy they felt yesterday, usinga scale from zero to 10, where zero means ‘not atall happy’ and 10 means ‘completely happy’.

We have also used a longer set of questions,based on previous research on affect (eg Laurentet al, 1999) – see Figure 2.

Life satisfaction

Most recently, the main single-item measureof life satisfaction we have used is a questiondeveloped by the ONS and used in its recentresearch with adults (Office for NationalStatistics, 2011). This question asks people howsatisfied they are with their life as a whole, usinga scale from zero to 10, where zero means ‘not atall satisfied’ and 10 means ‘completely satisfied’.

The multi-item measure of life satisfaction wehave used consists of five statements (eg ‘Mylife is going well’ ) to which children are askedto respond on a five-point scale from ‘stronglydisagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ (see Figure 2). Thisis derived from a seven-item measure originallydeveloped by Huebner (1994) in the US.Children’s responses to each question are coded

on a scale from zero (‘strongly disagree’) to four(‘strongly agree’), with the score for the middlestatement being reversed because it is negativelyphrased. Then these scores are added together tocreate an overall scale from zero to 20.

We have also used domain-specific measuresof life satisfaction. In particular, we developed(based on ideas from Cummins, 2005 andothers) The Good Childhood Index consisting ofthe above overall life satisfaction measure andthen a further 10 questions about satisfactionwith particular domains. The domains coveredin our index relate to: relationships with family;

relationships with friends, time use, health,expectations of the future, home, things (moneyand possessions), school, appearance andamount of choice in life. Children are asked torespond to each item on an 11-point scale wherezero denotes ‘very unhappy’ and 10 denotes‘very happy’. (See Rees et al, 2010b for furtherinformation about the development of thisindex).

Psychological well-being

Finally, we have recently tested and used anumber of measures of psychological well-being.This work has been exploratory because therehas been very little research internationally thathas attempted to develop measures of self-reported psychological well-being for children.

First we tested a single-item measure developedby the ONS for use with adults, which asksabout the extent to which life feels ‘worthwhile’.We found that most children aged 11 to 15understood this question, but that typically

around 10% did not (this is higher than forquestions about affect or life satisfaction).

Then, we also tested a further set of ONSquestions used with adults (Office for NationalStatistics, 2011). We found that generallychildren found the wording of these questionsa little complex or confusing. So we createdsimpler wordings for a number of the questions,examples of which are shown in Figure 2.Children were also asked to respond to thesequestions on a scale from zero to 10 where zero

meant ‘totally disagree’ and 10 meant ‘totallyagree’.

These pilot questions worked reasonablywell and we have been doing further work todevelop and refine a new self-report measureof children’s psychological well-being which wewill be publishing as an extension of The GoodChildhood Index later in the year.



Figure 2: Examples of self-report measures of different components of well-being

Positive affect Life satisfaction Psychological well-being

S i n g l e i t e m

M

u l t i - i t e m

Overall, how happy didyou feel yesterday?

Overall, how satisfiedare you with your life

nowadays?

Overall, to what extentdo you think the things

you do in your life areworthwhile?

How calm did youfeel yesterday?

How excited did youfeel yesterday?

How relaxed did youfeel yesterday?

How full of energy did youfeel yesterday?

My life is going well

My life is just right

I wish I had a differentkind of life

I have a good life

I have what I want in life

plus ‘domain’ measures such as:

How happy are you withyour health?

I feel that I am learninga lot at the moment

I feel that I am achievingthings in my daily life

I feel that I have a senseof direction in life

I feel that I do things thatare useful in my daily life

Well-being: How are

children faring?

Each of the above measures will provide a

different perspective on how children are faring.As an illustration of the three key concepts ofaffect, life satisfaction and psychological well-being, Figure 3 shows children’s responses tothe three ONS questions about feeling happyyesterday, feeling satisfied with life, and findinglife worthwhile.

There are similar patterns in children’s responsesto each question with most children rating theirlives positively and the most common ratingbeing eight out of 10. The mean scores for these

three questions were also similar – being 7.2 forhappiness yesterday, 7.4 for life satisfaction and7.3 for finding life worthwhile. However, as can beseen from the chart, a higher proportion (10%) ofchildren scored below the mid-point of five outof 10 for feeling happy yesterday than for feelingsatisfied with life (5%) or finding life worthwhile(6%).

Statistical tests indicate that the associationsbetween children’s answers to the abovequestions are not all that strong.3 This is also

confirmed by statistical testing4

of the multi-item questions listed in Figure 2 which supportsthe idea that, as with adults, there are differentcomponents of children’s well-being.

Some further evidence of the distinctionbetween these different components is providedby looking at time-related variations in well-being. As outlined earlier, theoretically wewould expect that measures of affect – whichare focused on recent emotions such as feelinghappy – would be less stable than measures

of life satisfaction or psychological well-being.Our recent surveys provide some evidence tosupport this theory. Figure 4 shows mean scoresfor these three questions, according to

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Figure 3: Children’s responses to differentsingle-item measures of well-being

Source: Quarterly survey, Wave 7

Happy yesterday

Satisfied

Worthwhile

%

o f c h i l d r e n a g e d 8 t o 1 5



the day of the week on which children answeredthem. However because the happiness questionwas asked about yesterday, the days for thisquestion reflect the day before the survey. It canbe seen from this chart that while responsesto the questions about life satisfaction andfinding life worthwhile hardly vary at all bythe day of the week when they were asked,there is more substantial variation in happinessyesterday – with scores being highest whenchildren were referring to a weekend day. Thisobserved pattern therefore matches theoreticalexpectations.

‘Flourishing’

The different components of well-being havebeen used by some researchers (eg Keyes,2002) to arrive at estimates of the proportionof the population who can be said to be‘flourishing’ – that is to score relatively well ondifferent measures of well-being. We can applythis concept to the questions covered in Figure3. For example, Figure 5 shows the proportionof children who did and did not score above themid-point of five out 10 for the questions aboutlife satisfaction and finding life worthwhile. Justover four-fifths (81%) of children scored abovethe mid-point for both questions. But onlyaround 10% of children scored five or less out of10 for both questions. This leaves 3% of childrenwho scored highly for finding life worthwhile butnot for life satisfaction and a further 6% who feltrelatively satisfied with life but did not find life

so worthwhile. This suggests that around four-fifths of children aged eight to 15 in the UK are‘flourishing’ in the sense of being satisfied withtheir lives and finding their lives worthwhile.

However, the single-item measures discussed inthis section have limitations as discussed earlier,and there is a need to develop better measures ofchildren’s psychological well-being in particularthan currently exist. We have begun to test setsof questions that might capture some of thepsychological well-being concepts identifiedby Ryff (1989). Children’s responses to somequestions of this type are shown in Figure 6:

• 85% of children felt that they were learning alot at the moment. This type of question mightbe taken as an aspect of personal growth inRyff’s categorisation.

• On the other hand, less than two-thirds (61%)felt that they had a sense of direction in life.

M e a n s c o r e

Happy Satisfied Worthwhile0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Figure 4: Children’s well-being on differentdays of the week

9

10

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

Score(out of 10)

0 to 5

6 to 10

Feelingsatisfiedwith life

10%

6%

3%

81%

Finding life worthwhile

0 to 5 6 to 10

Figure 5: Overlap in low well-being using lifesatisfaction and wothwhile measures





Figure 6: Some potential measures of children’s psychological well-being

Disagree

I like being the way I am

I am good at managing my daily responsibilities

People are generally pretty friendly towards me

I have enough choice about how I spend my time

I feel that I have a sense of directon in life

I feel that I am learning a lot at the moment

Neither Agree

7% 14% 78%

16% 26% 58%

4% 9% 87%

11% 15% 73%

11% 28% 61%

5% 10% 85%


Measures such as these could help to develop amuch more rounded picture of children’s well-being and this is an important area for futureresearch. However at this stage the majorityof the data we have generated through ourresearch programme has utilised measures of lifesatisfaction (overall and in specific domains) andmost of the remainder of this report focuses on

presenting new analysis using these measures ofchildren’s well-being.

How stable is life satisfaction?

The main measure of children’s self-reportedwell-being we make use of throughout thisreport is the five-item measure of life satisfactiondescribed above. We use the five questionsin the measure to create an overall score ofchildren’s life satisfaction from zero to 20,

where higher scores indicate higher levels ofsatisfaction. Figure 7, which is reproducedfrom an earlier report, shows the distributionof children’s responses to this life satisfactionmeasure. Most children respond positively andthe mean life satisfaction score is between 14and 15 out of 20. Using this measure, around10% of children aged eight to 15 score belowthe mid-point (10 out of 20) and can be saidto have low well-being.

An important consideration in using this measureis to establish how stable and reliable it is. Thisissue often arises in well-being research in termsof the extent to which people’s evaluations oftheir own lives remain fairly constant over shortperiods, as would be expected conceptually,or are affected by transitory events or issues.This is important because stability of measuresis generally an important requirement for theirusefulness.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Figure 7: Children’s overall life satisfaction

%

o f c h i l d r e n a g e d 8

t o 1 5

Overall well-being score (out of 20)

0%

2%

6%

10%

12%

14%

Source: Quarterly survey, Waves 1 to 5

8%

4%



We have presented in a previous report (Rees etal, 2010a) some analysis of a ‘test-retest’ surveywhich covered the same young people at twopoints in time, a few weeks apart. We foundthat the multi-item measure of life satisfactionwe were utilising met accepted requirementsfor stability over this type of period. Our recentresearch provides further examples about

stability of this particular measure.

It has been possible for us to compare well-beingscores for these children at two points in time.Overall, children who had low life satisfactionthe first time that they participated in the surveyhad a 44% chance of also having low well-being the second time they participated (thiswould be between three and 15 months later). Incomparison, children who did not have low well-being the first time had a 5% chance of havinglow well-being the second time. Not surprisingly,

the link was stronger when the gap betweenthe two surveys was shortest. But even wherechildren took the second survey a year after thefirst survey, the link was still evident with 39% ofchildren who had low well-being the first timealso having a low well-being 12 months later.This evidence has some limitations because wecannot be sure that the children who took parton more than one occasion are representative ofthe general population.

Age variations in children’s

well-being

Contrary to what might be expected, thewell-being of adults and children has onlybeen found to vary by small amounts on thebasis of characteristics such as age, gender,ethnicity and so on. In addition, other socio-demographic factors such as income levels andfamily structure have significant but relativelysmall associations with well-being. The analysiswe published in The Good Childhood Report2012 were in keeping with these findings, withindividual and family factors only explaining aminority (less than 10%) of the variation inwell-being.

For this reason, a key focus for our ongoingresearch on this issue has been to seek otherexplanations for the differences in children’swell-being observed in our surveys. We willpresent new findings in relation to this inChapter 3.

However, our research has highlighted someimportant issues about age variations in well-being. It has also highlighted the fact that someparticular marginalised sub-groups of childrenhave much lower than average well-being. Forexample in last year’s report we reported thatchildren who did not currently live with theirfamily were around five times as likely to have

low well-being as those who did live with theirfamily. This finding has been supported byrecent research on children in Spain (Dinismanet al, 2012).

In this section we present some new findingson the issues of age variations. Our previousresearch has found a significant link betweenchildren’s age and their well-being. Betweenthe ages of eight and 15 children’s well-beingdeclines significantly.

In the most recent wave of our quarterly survey, wedecided to extend this analysis by including youngpeople aged 16 and 17. We included a sample of500 young people in this age group5 in the surveyso it is possible to make some comparisons.Because of the relatively small numbers sampled inthis age group we have combined both ages in thecharts presented below.

Figure 8 shows mean levels of life satisfactionfor different age groups. It can be seen that themean level for young people aged 16 and 17 was alittle higher than for those aged 15 and there weresuggestions of a reversal of the age-related trend.

M e a n l i f e s a t i s f a c

t i o n

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16/17

Age

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1615.1 14.8 14.6 14.4

13.9 13.6 13.3 13.0 13.2


Figure 8: Age patterns in life satisfaction



We found a similar pattern for other measures.For example, Figure 9 shows the age variationin responses to the question about finding lifeworthwhile. Here it can be seen that the meanscore for young people age 16 and 17 wassubstantially higher than for 15-year-olds andactually marginally higher than the level for13-year-olds.

These are tentative but interesting findingsabout the pattern of well-being across the keytransition period between late adolescence andearly adulthood.

We were able to explore this issue a little furtherusing other items from The Good ChildhoodIndex.6 As shown in Figure 10, for some aspects of

life – such as health and time use - there was nodifference in mean scores between young peopleaged 15 and those aged 16 and 17. For someothers – such as friends and appearance – meanscores were a little higher for the older age group.The most substantial and statistically significantdifference related to happiness with the amountof choice in life. For young people aged 15 themean score was 6.6 out of 10, whereas for youngpeople aged 16 and 17 it was 7.1. In fact this latterscore was also higher than for younger agegroups from 12 years old upwards.

This is a further example of the way in whichyoung people’s feelings about the amount ofchoice they have in their lives are intrinsicallyrelated to their overall life satisfaction. Given thesample size for the older age group the findingsare tentative, but they are consistent with theidea that young people aged 16 and over arelikely generally to have significantly more self-determination than those aged 15.

F i n d i n g l i f e w o r t h w h i l e

10 11 12 13 14 15 16/17

Age

0

2

4

6

8

10

7.8 7.87.3 7.4


Figure 9: Age patterns in finding life worthwhile

7.5 7.3 7.1

10

8

6

4

2

0

Figure 10:

Age comparisons for items in The Good Childhood Index between ages 15 and 16/17

Age 15 Age 16/17

M e a n h a p p i n e s s ( 0 t o 1 0 )

Money &things

Future Choice Home Time use Family Appearance Friends Health

Aspects of life




If we combine our previous analysis of agedifferences in respect of The Good ChildhoodIndex for eight to 15-year-olds with our newanalysis of 16 and 17-year-olds, we find someinteresting patterns for different aspects ofchildren’s lives.

The Good Childhood Index domains with the

greatest drops between eight and 15 are school,appearance, money/possessions and the future,while the domains with the greatest increasesbetween 15 and 16/17 are choice, family andappearance. Thus appearance seems to be anaspect of life that is a particular issue for childrenin their early teenage years. There is a large dropin happiness with appearance between the agesof 8 and 12, which continues at a low level for 13,14 and 15 year-olds, and then increases again at16/17.

9

6

8

M e a n h a p i n e s s ( o u t o f 1 0 )

7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16/17Age

Figure 11: Age differences for items in The Good Childhood Index: ages 8 to 16/17

Family

Health

Home

Friends

Money & things

School

Appearance

Time use

Choice

The future




Time trends

Since 1994 the British Household Panel surveyhas asked 11–15 year olds questions about theirwell-being. The questions are not as detailed asThe Good Childhood Index but they can also beused to trace changes in well-being over time.We analysed this data up to 2008 (Bradshaw

and Keung, 2011) and concluded that children’swell-being had improved significantly over thisperiod, particularly for girls and in levels ofhappiness with school and friendships.

The international Health Behaviour of SchoolChildren Survey of 11, 13 and 15 year olds,undertaken every four years, produced similarfindings. There were significant improvementsin the UK in life satisfaction, finding class-mates kind and helpful, liking school a lot andsubjective health.

The recent UNICEF Report Card 11 (UNICEFOffice of Research, 2013) presented thesefindings and also found that the well-being ofchildren in the UK had improved in many otherdomains since 2007. In particular, as well assubjective well-being, all measures of materialwell-being and most of health behaviour hadimproved.

In 2007, in respect of children’s overall well-being, the UK came last out of 21 rich countries.In 2013 it came 14th, if subjective well-being isincluded, out of 29 countries. In 2007, the UKwas in the bottom third of the league table onchildren’s material well-being, education, familyand relationships, behaviours and risks andsubjective well-being and in the middle third on

health and safety. In 2013 it was in the top thirdon housing and the environment (not includedin 2007), the middle third on all other domainsexcept education. This is still in the bottom thirddue mainly to our high rates of children not inemployment, education or training (NEET).

Most of the data in the UNICEF Report Card 11relates to 2009/10 and so predates most of thepolicies introduced by the coalition governmentto cut the deficit. Unemployment has nowincreased and already government evidence7

shows that child deprivation and absolutepoverty have begun to rise also.

We have updated our analysis of the BritishHousehold Panel survey data on children’s well-being – which has now been incorporated intothe Understanding Society survey - with data for2009/10 and 2010/11.8 This shows that, overall,children’s well-being has stopped improving in themost recent years and may have started to fall.

25.00

24.50

24.00

23.50

23.00

Figure 12: Time trends in children’s life satisfaction scores

1994

9 5 %

C I t o t a l h a p p i n

e s s s c o r e ( y o u t h )

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 20092010

Year

Source: British Household Panel 1994/95 – 2008/09 and Understanding Society 2009/10 – 2010/11, unweighted data



What is life like for children

with low well-being?

Hopefully it is clear from the discussion in thischapter that measuring children’s well-being isnot primarily about asking about their happiness(although that is one component of it). Rather itis more about asking children how they evaluatetheir lives as a whole.

Figure 13 provides some insights into the livesof children who are classified as having lowwell-being using our measure of life satisfactiondiscussed earlier. It compares children whohave low life satisfaction with those who donot, using a number of questions relating todifferent aspects of their lives. The comparisonsare striking. For example children with low well-being, compared to those with average to highwell-being:

• Are eight times as likely to feel there isconflict in their family

• Are almost five times as likely to have beenrecently bullied

• Are three times as likely to feel they do nothave enough friends

• Are three times as likely to feel they have alot less money than their friends

and so on.

These types of findings serve as an importantreminder that measuring children’s well-being isimportant and worthwhile.

In the next two chapters we go on to explore inmore depth some of the associations betweenwell-being and other factors and issues inchildren’s lives using analysis of new data fromour own research, some additional analysisof other data sources and references to otherrelevant recent research.

Figure 13: Low well-being and associated issues

Has been bullied more than three times in past three months

Has a lot less money than friends

Likes the way they look

Does not feel free to express their opinions

Does not look forward to going to school

Feels their life has a sense of purpose

Family does not get along well together

Does not feel safe at home

Does not have enough friends

Feels there are people who support them

12%

35%

65%24%

6%

36%

19%

51%

78%

44%

5%

42%

1%

24%

5%

17%

7%

33%

93%

64%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Average to high well-being Low well-being

% of children aged 10 to 15




Summary

• Recently in our well-being researchprogramme, we have tested different sets ofquestions in respect of children’s happiness(affective well-being), life satisfaction(cognitive well-being) and psychological well-being. Statistical analysis of these questions

confirms that they are measuring differentcomponents of well-being, and also that lifesatisfaction and psychological well-being arestable concepts, whereas children’s happinessvaries on different days of the week.

• Around four fifths of children could be said tobe ‘flourishing’, meaning that they about scoreon or above the midpoint for questions abouttheir life satisfaction and psychological well-being.

• In our well-being research programme, we haveconsistently found that well-being declineswith age for eight to 15-year-olds. However,new findings show that this age-relateddownward trend reverses at age 16/17 forlife satisfaction, psychological well-being andsome of The Good Childhood Index domains,notably choice.

• Overall, at any one time, around 10% ofchildren could be said to have low well-being.We explore what life is like for these children,and show that they are several times morelikely than children with average to high well-being to experience family conflict, bullying,problems in their friendships and othernegative experiences.

• This underlines the importance of measuringand understanding children’s well-being.

• Finally, our analysis of the time trends shows anincrease in children’s self-reported well-beingbetween 1994 and 2008. However, when weupdate these data for 2009/10 and 2010/11,

there is evidence that children’s life satisfactionhas stopped improving and may have begun tofall in the most recent years.


19/56

3 The background to children’swell-being: family, choice and money

Clearly, a fundamental issue in terms ofunderstanding children’s well-being is to identifythe factors that are associated with higher andlower levels of well-being. As discussed in theprevious chapter, our research indicates that(as has been found in research with adults)factors such as individual characteristics, familystructure and economic circumstances are onlyable to explain a relatively small proportion ofthe variations in children’s well-being.

In last year’s report we discussed somealternative explanations for variations in well-being. We presented some initial findings thatdemonstrated the importance of child-centredapproaches to poverty measurement andalso the influence that recent events - suchas experiencing bullying, experiencing familychange, problems at school, and so on – canhave on children’s well-being.

Another approach to explaining variationsin overall well-being is to focus on children’sevaluations of different aspects of their lives.This is the approach that we took when wedeveloped The Good Childhood Index. Theinitial report that we published on the index(Rees et al, 2010b) identified 10 questions abouthappiness with different aspects of life thatexplained over half (52%) of all the variation inchildren’s life satisfaction.

We also used regression analysis to explore theinfluence of each domain on overall well-beingwhile holding the other domains constant. Table1 shows the results of the regression analysis.A larger ‘beta’ score shows a greater influence.As can be seen in Figure 14, three of our GoodChildhood Index items stand out as being themost influential – family relationships, choice andmoney/possessions.

The importance of these three aspects of life isfurther emphasised by looking at the types ofexperiences that are linked with low well-being.Earlier in this report we showed that childrenresponding negatively to particular questionsabout their family relationships, choice and

money/possessions were much more likely tohave low well-being than children respondingpositively to these questions. For example:

• Children who said that their family does not‘get along well together’ were eight times morelikely to have low well-being

• Children who said that they do not ‘feel free toexpress their ideas and opinions’ were six timesmore likely to have low well-being

• Children who report having ‘a lot less moneythan their friends’ were three times more likelyto have low well-being.

In this chapter we present new analysis relating tochoice/autonomy, material deprivation and familyrelationships that extends our understanding ofthe way in which these three key factors influencechildren’s overall well-being. In all three cases, thematerial presented builds on work described inThe Good Childhood Report 2012.

The Good Childhood Report 2013 | 19

Family

Choice

Money andpossisions

Health

Time use

The future

Appearance

School

Home

Friends

.178

.163

.139

.091

.086

.081

.078

.074

.055

.024

.000

.000

.000

.000

.000

.000

.000

.000

.000

.221

Beta Sig

Figure 14: Regression analysis of The GoodChildhood Index domains and life satisfaction




Choice and autonomy

In The Good Childhood Report 2012 (TheChildren’s Society, 2012a), we observedthat while children are likely to have greaterautonomy as they move into their teenage years,nvertheless their dissatisfaction with the amountof choice they have increases as they get older.

There was a 10% percentage drop in happinesswith choice between the ages of eight and 15.

In this report, we have been able to extend thisanalysis to 16 and 17-year-olds, and this hasyielded some interesting findings. As can beseen on page 14, choice is the aspect of life withthe largest increase between ages 15 and 16/17.Thus, choice appears to have a relatively steepage-related curve, and reaches its lowest pointat the age of 15. This suggests that there is amismatch between how much self-determination

children in their early teenage years would likeand how much they have in reality.

What children have told us

Choice, autonomy and freedom have beenfrequently recurring topics in our discussionswith children about their well-being.

In our initial consultation with 14 to 16-year olds in2005, freedom was a cross-cutting theme runningthrough young people comments about what

constitutes a good life. They emphasised differentaspects of freedom, including being free to goout with their friends and being able to choosewhat they do in certain contexts. However, theyalso recognised that there should be limits totheir autonomy so that they are able to have areasonable level of self-determination within thebounds of what is safe.

Similar themes were raised by younger childrenin a series of focus groups that we ran with eightto 10-year-olds in 2010. Children thought that

they should be allowed to go out in their localarea on their own or with friends without adultsworrying unduly about their safety.

‘We need to get introduced to responsibilityabout this age... and we should be able togo short distances by ourself and with ourfriends.’

‘I’d like people not to be always totallyso worried about children and that weare capable of handling some stuff byourselves, just not everything.’

The comments above underline the importantlink that exists between autonomy and thefamily, and the role that parents and othercaregivers play as the main gatekeepers ofchildren’s autonomy.

Younger children in our focus groups alsofelt that they should be able to make choicesregarding things like their free time, clothes,food, lessons at school and future career options.

‘Where we sit at lunch, what we eatat lunch ’

‘I wish in story time the children can

read their books’‘You should be able to get to be whatyou want to be.’

M e a n h a p p i n e s s w i t h c h o i c e ( o u t o f 1 0 )

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16/17

Age

6

7

8


Figure 15: Age comparisons for happinesswith choice



Interviews with young people

Given the importance of autonomy and choiceto children and young people – both in theirresponses to open-ended questions, and in theassociations that we have found in our surveyresearch – we decided to explore this thememore closely in a series of interviews with 14and 15-year-olds. The age of the intervieweesis noteworthy given our survey findings about15 being the age at which happiness with choiceis lowest.

Choice and relationships with family

The young people we interviewed felt that theyshould have some choice in respect of theirfamily relationships and the decisions that aremade within the home.

‘I don’t get to have choice on what we havefor dinner... Stuff like that. Obviously Idon’t have choice on where we go on holidayor what we do as a family.’

More frequently, however, and in keeping withcomments presented above and in previousreports, our interviewees placed great valueon being able to choose where, when and withwhom they spend time outside of the home.

One young woman said she was happy with theamount of choice that her parents give her andappreciated that expression of trust.

‘I have a lot of choice about what I do inmy free time and I think that’s quite

important cos it can [influence] how happyyou are with your life.’

The young people that we interviewed were

measured in their views about the balance thatneeds to be struck between granting youngpeople autonomy and keeping them safe.

‘I think [young people] should have a lotof choice, well choices that are sensibleLike they shouldn’t have a choice whether

to smoke or something... You shouldn’t beallowed to smoke and stuff like that. But

they should have choices in like what theycan do in their spare time and who theycan hang out with.’

‘They [parents] try to influence me not to do bad things and do more good things,

which is right.’

We have heard similar opinions from youngpeople before about the need for there to belimits to their autonomy. However, our in-depthinterviews allowed us to explore this in moredetail, and pointed to a rather complex dynamicbetween the amount of choice that youngpeople have and the quality of their relationshipswithin the family.

For example, one young man described havinga poor relationship with his family, while on theother hand experiencing almost no restraints onhis freedom. There is a clear implication from hiscomments that he would happily sacrifice someof his freedom and choice for more supportive

family relationships.

‘I do what I want to do and me mam doesn’treally say anything about it’

‘I think I should have a bit less choice thanwhat I do.’

In contrast, one of the young women that weinterviewed was critical of her mother’s lack of

trust and autonomy-granting, and saw this as thereason for ongoing conflict between them.

‘I’m turning 16 and I’m not allowed to goout without me mam texting us. It’sbeyond a joke.’

These comments show that the precise amountof autonomy that is desirable will vary from oneyoung person to another but both autonomy

and support/nurture are essential components ofpositive family relationships.

One young man summed up the dynamic asfollows:

‘If you have too much choice, you can endup doing stupid things. And if you have lesschoice, you’ll end up getting angry withyour family, so I think you should have just

the right amount of choice which is rightfor themselves.’



Choice and relationships with friends

and peers

Most of the young people we interviewedsupported the idea that they should be free tochoose their friends. However, there were mixedviews about whether parents should interveneif friends are involved in behaviours that they

might later regret. Some felt that sometimesparents intervene for good reason.

‘If they’re going around with people whodrink a lot and take drugs and that... thenI think the parents should like have somesay in it’

Others felt that parents should let young peopleface the consequences of the choices that they

make.

‘It’s their choice, if they wanna do it, theyshould get on with it.’

‘If they want to do something negative, let them do it, they’ll face the consequences.’

One of the young women that we interviewedwho was happy with the amount of choice that

her family give her was much more negativeabout choice in relation to her peers, worryingthat she might get drawn into things that shewouldn’t otherwise ‘choose’.

‘I’m always worried I’m going to say yes tostuff, I worry that I’m just going to give inand go with it’

‘Lots of people my age are drinking... I don’tdrink, I’ve never drunk but I’m worried Icould be at some party and get caught upwith it.’

A number of the young people that weinterviewed talked about the ways in which theirchoices might be constrained by the choicesand actions of other young people. For oneyoung woman, this related to not feeling free toparticipate in lessons as she would like to.

‘Some of them [other young people] arequite intimidating... especially in [a lesson]where you want to give your views, youdon’t feel like you can because of them.’

A different perspective on the link between

choice and friendship was offered by one youngperson who pointed out that loneliness couldconstrain your choices.

‘They might be lonely and not reallyhave much choice in what they do in theirspare time.’

Choice relating to appearance and

self-expressionSeveral of the comments above relate to thechoices that young people make about theirappearance, self-expression and behaviour inthe context of the wider peer group. The youngpeople that we interviewed talked about theways in which choice can be constrained by theattitudes of their peer group and the pressurethat exists to look or dress a certain way.

‘Lots of young people have the mick taken

out of them because of what they looklike... I think people should just get on withwhat they want to do and look.’

‘I know a lot of people who kind of feelforced to wear certain clothes because

they’re in the ‘in set’ and they could getrejected...’

The interviews drew out individual accounts ofthe impact that the attitudes of peers can haveon young people, and the choices that theymake as a result. One girl described her defiancein the face of such pressure:

‘I wear what I want to wear but sometimesI do get people looking at me but I don’treally mind because it’s free choice and

I don’t mind if people stare. They can dowhat they want.’



Meanwhile, another girl described how thenegative attitudes of other young peopletainted her enjoyment of choices she had made(about music preferences) and constrained hersubsequent choices:

‘Like when I used to like this band, I used

to get all this grief, which means I don’tlike this band any more because theyjust really wound me up and I couldn’tlisten to them.’

Choice related to school and the future

The young people that we interviewed alsotalked about the importance of being able tomake choices about the subjects that they follow

at school and the next steps for education.

‘I don’t know who decides what GCSEs you take and stuff but you’re not given much

choice. I think they should ask studentswhat they would like to do.’

‘Where you go after school, there’s not

really much choice where you can go.’Their comments highlighted the ways inwhich choice might be constrained across thespectrum of school achievement. One youngwoman described the pressure that she feels todo certain subjects because she is considered tobe academic.

‘Just because we do well at school, they’rekind of expecting us to be outstanding

in these subjects when actually, if wereally don’t like them, we’re not going todo well in them.’

While another young person felt that he had lesschoice about his future as a result of being lessacademic.

‘Choice of what you want to make of your

future. So if someone doesn’t work as hard, their choices will be limited but they shouldstill have choice.’

One young person also talked about the waythat freedom and choice can be restricted atschool in a more general sense.

‘Because like they put cameras all the wayaround the school... It feels like a prison.

We’re not allowed to drink like water and that in the corridor.’

Constraints on choice arising from

circumstances

The young people in our interviews alsodescribed the constraints on choice that they feltcould arise from their circumstances and/or alack of opportunities.

‘They could be in like in a rough area andlike not have choice in what they do or who

they hang around with.’

‘I feel like I’m in a prison... It feels like I’vebeen in a prison all me life since I startedgetting bullied. I want to be able to walk to

the shop without someone starting.’

Our survey findings show that there is a linkbetween the amount of choice that children haveand their material circumstances. For example,children lacking five or more items on our child-centred deprivation index were eight times morelikely than children lacking none of these itemsto be unhappy with the amount of choice thatthey have (The Children’s Society, 2012a).

Another constraint on choice arising fromcircumstances relates to the legal age at whichyoung people are allowed to do certain things likevote, for example. As one young person put it:

‘At my age you don’t get to have muchchoice about things, do you?... You don’t get

to have much choice about anything... likeyou don’t get to have much choice about likepolitics. I don’t get why eighteen is the agewhere you get all these choices.... I thinklike sixteen is where you should have all

these choices; you know - about rightand wrong.’



In summary, the key themes that emergedfrom our interviews with 14 and 15-year-oldsbuild on previous findings from our qualitativeresearch with children in different age groupsto deepen our understanding of what choicemeans to children and young people. Thisanalysis supports previous findings underliningthe importance of children being able to choose

what they do in their free time and with whom,while emphasising that that young people donot want unfettered freedom. It also contributesfurther insights into, for example, the role thatfriends and peers can play in constraining youngpeople’s choices, especially in relation to theirappearance and self-expression. Furthermore,it highlights the importance of having loving,supportive family relationships on the one hand,and a reasonable level of choice/autonomy onthe other.

Family relationships

From the outset, our research programme hashighlighted the importance of the quality of familyrelationships to children’s subjective well-being.

Our initial consultations (The Children’s Society,2006) with children and young people in 2005to 2008 identified good quality relationshipswith family, friends and others as being of

paramount importance in children’s own views ofwhat constitutes a good childhood.

The importance of the quality of familyrelationships in particular has been identified inour more recent survey based work.

• Our initial report (Rees et al, 2010a) on the2008 well-being survey demonstrated that asimple measure of family harmony was a muchmore powerful determinant of children’s well-being than family structure

• As discussed earlier in this chapter, analysis ofour Good Childhood Index (see, for example,Rees et al, 2010b) has shown that the qualityof family relationships is one of the three mostsignificant aspects of life which contribute tochildren’s overall sense of well-being

• The Good Childhood Report 2012 (TheChildren’s Society, 2012a) showed that a set ofquestions about family relationships explainedover a third of the variation in children’s overallsubjective well-being.

Given the importance of this domain to children’ssubjective well-being, it makes sense to try anddevelop a more in-depth understanding of theparticular aspects of family relationships which areassociated with variations in children’s well-being.

In a more recent survey of young people aged14 and 15 – our Still Running 3 survey - we had

the opportunity to further explore the linksbetween aspects of family relationships andchildren’s subjective well-being. The survey wasundertaken in May to September 2011 with arepresentative sample of young people in year10, aged 14 and 15. The survey covered severalother topics in addition to family relationships,some findings from which have been publishedelsewhere (Rees, 2011). The data we haveanalysed for this section was gathered from asample of 6064 young people in 79 secondaryschools selected to be representative by region

and economic prosperity.9

We included in the survey questionnaire a rangeof 20 questions, most from previous researchand some designed specifically for this survey,with the intention of covering three topicsthat had emerged as important in our earlierresearch, as discussed above – family conflict,parental support and parental autonomy-granting. Using statistical techniques10 we wereable to identify within the group of questionswe included, three sets of four questions related

to these topics that functioned well statistically.These are shown in Figure 16.

Statistical tests suggest that each of thesesets of questions work well together.11 So foreach set of questions we created an overallscore by summing young people’s responsesto each question.12 We use these scores in thefollowing analysis. For brevity, as in Figure 17,we sometimes refer to each of the three topicswith a single word as follows: harmony (familyharmony/conflict), support (parental support/

communication), and autonomy (parentalautonomy-granting).

We tested whether the scores varied accordingto children’s gender and socio-economicindicators. The support and autonomy scoreshad no significant association with gender orfamily socio-economic status. However therewere some small but statistically significantdifferences in relation to family conflict. First,females reported higher levels of family conflicthigher than did males. Second, children livingin households where there was no adult in paidwork and/or who were entitled to free schoolmeals reported slightly higher than averagelevels of family conflict.



Figure 16: Questions about three aspects of family relationships

Family harmony/conflict

Members of my family talk nicely to one another

My family gets along well together

There are not a lot of arguments in my familyFrequency of quarreling with parent(s)13

Parental support/communication

If I have a problem, my parents will help me

If I am upset or unhappy, my parents spend time listening to me

My parents listen to my views and take me seriously

Frequency of talking to parent(s) about things that matter14

Parental control/autonomy-granting

My parents are too strict

My parents try to control how I live my life

My parents like me to make my own decisions

My parents give me enough freedom

For illustrative purposes we also created asimpler two-way split for each topic, dividingthe sample roughly in half to represent highand low parental support, high and low parentalautonomy-granting and high and low levels offamily harmony.

All three topics were significantly associated15 with children’s overall life satisfaction asillustrated in Figure 17. As we expected from ourprevious research, young people who scored‘high’ in relation to each of these aspects offamily relationships had substantially highermean life satisfaction scores than those whoscored ‘low’.

The use of these three measures of differentaspects of family relationships enables us to looka little further into the relative influence of eachaspect on children’s well-being.

Support Autonomy Harmony0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1615.3

12.4

14.8

12.4

15.3

12.3

Figure 17: Three dimensions of familyrelationships and children’s life satisfaction

18

20

High Low

Source: Still Running 3 survey


M e a n l i f e s a t i s f a c t i o n

( 0 t o 2 0 )



First of all we will focus on family harmony/ conflict and parental support. Other previousresearch (see for example O’Connor & Scott,2007, p7 for discussion) has drawn attention tothe combined negative effect on children of livingin high conflict-low warmth family environments.This is illustrated in Figure 18. It can be seenthat the highest levels of life satisfaction are

for children living in low conflict-high supportfamily environments. It appears that lackingeither one of these two positive dimensions offamily relationships has a roughly equal impact inreducing on well-being. However, there appearsto be a cumulative effect when both positivedimensions are lacking; ie there is substantiallylower average well-being for children living inhigh conflict-low support families.

This analysis suggests the importance ofconsidering multiple dimensions of familyrelationships and how the interplay betweenthem affects children’s well-being.

We can extend the analysis further by introducingthe third set of questions regarding parentalautonomy-granting. A summary of this analysis isshown in Figure 19. It can be seen that even whenwe look within particular combinations of familyharmony and parental support, levels of parentalautonomy-granting still make a difference tochildren’s well-being. This is true both for the

group of children living in high conflict-lowsupport families, and also at the other end of thecontinuum for children living in low conflict-highsupport families.

More advanced statistical analysis indicatesthat all three dimensions of family relationshipsconsidered above make a unique, significantcontribution to children’s life satisfaction. Familyharmony/conflict is the strongest predictor of lifesatisfaction, followed by parental support and thenparental autonomy-granting.

The latter two dimensions – support and autonomy-granting – are conceptually similar to two dimensionsthat appear in the extensive literature on typologiesof parenting styles. The most widespread typology(Baumrind, 1991; Maccoby & Martin, 1983) identifiesfour broad styles defined through the combinationof two dimensions – responsiveness/warmth/ acceptance and control/demandingness. The firstof these dimensions is relatively straightforward inthat high levels of responsiveness, acceptance andwarmth are associated with higher well-being andlong-term outcomes for children.

The second requires a little more clarification as itis important to distinguish between appropriatelevels of control and over-control. For example‘authoritative’ parenting is characterised byclear boundaries together with encouragementof independence and individuality; whereas‘authoritarian’ parenting is characterised byclear boundaries but low encouragement ofindependence. Recent work has focused onthe importance of parental autonomy-granting

(Soenens & Beyers, 2012). Our analysis confirmsthe importance of this distinction in finding thatit is a combination of high support and highautonomy-granting that is associated with thehighest levels of children’s well-being.

14.114.1

M e a n l i f e s a t i s f a c t i o n ( 0 t o 2 0 )

Low conflict +High support

Low conflict +Low support

High conflict +Low support

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1615.9

Figure 18: Four categories of familyrelationships and children’s life satisfaction

18

20

High conflict +High support

11.5

M e a n l i f e s a t i s f a c t i o n ( 0 t o 2

0 )

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1614.8

16.2

Figure 19: Eight categories of familyrelationships and children’s life satisfaction

18

20

Low autonomy High autonomy

Low conflict +

High support

Low conflict +

Low support

High conflict +

Low support

High conflict +

High support

13.4

14.6

13.914.3

11.1

12.5





In summary the analysis presented brieflyin this section highlights three importantdimensions of family relationships which allcontribute independently to children’s overalllife satisfaction. These relate to children’s basicneeds to live in harmonious and supportivefamily environments, but also their need tobe recognised as a competent autonomous

individual as they mature.

Poverty/material deprivation

It may seem contradictory to say that materialdeprivation is one of the major influences onchildren’s well-being given the findings discussedearlier in the report regarding the relativelysmall associations between socio-demographicfactors and life satisfaction. Indeed our previous

research suggests that while household income,for example, has a significant association withchildren’s well-being, this influence is quitesmall with income only explaining around 2%of the variation in children’s life satisfaction(Rees et al, 2010).

However we have shown in more recentreports that taking a more child-centredapproach to poverty, by asking childrenthemselves to report on their levels of materialdeprivation, yields much stronger links with

well-being (see Main & Pople, 2011).We have developed a material deprivationindex, which includes the following 10 itemsand experiences:

1. Some pocket money each week to spendon yourself

2. Some money that you can save each month,either in a bank or at home

3. A garden at home, or somewhere nearbylike a park where you can safely spendtime with their friends

4. A family car for transport when you need it

5. At least one family holiday away from homeeach year

6. Family trips or days out at least oncea month

7. The right kind of clothes to fit in with otherpeople your age

8. A pair of designer or brand name trainers

9. An iPod or other personal music player

10. Cable or satellite TV at home

(See Main & Pople, 2011 for a description ofhow our child-centred index of deprivation wasdeveloped)

In this section we present new analysis using thischild-centred material deprivation index, andfocus on what life is like for the children wholack - and would like to have – five or more items

or experiences from this index. This is the casefor about 5% of eight to 15-year-olds nationally,or 250,000 children. We focus on this group ofchildren because, when compared to the c70%of children who are lacking none or one of theitems from our index, there are stark differencesin well-being.

We have previously published findings showingthat children who lack items and experiencesfrom our child-centred material deprivationindex are much more likely than their peersto have low overall well-being. For example,children lacking five items or more items fromour index were more than five times as likely aschildren who lack no items, and twice as likely aschildren who lack two items, to have low well-being (page 9 of summary, Main & Pople, 2011).

Our new analysis demonstrates that materialdeprivation is linked with lower well-being inevery aspect of children’s lives covered byThe Good Childhood Index.

As can be seen in Figure 20, children lacking

five or more items from our material deprivationindex, when compared with children lackingnone or one of the items, have lower happinessin every domain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, thedomain where this difference is greatest ismoney and possessions, followed by choiceand home.

Figure 21 provides further insights into the livesof children who do not have (and would liketo have) five items or more from our 10-itemmeasure of material deprivation. These children,

who we describe as ‘materially deprived’ inthe figure overleaf, are much more likely thanchildren lacking none or one of the items toreport being disabled. They are also more likelyto report low self-esteem and bullying, and tofeel unhappy with aspects of their home, theirprospects for the future, their friendships, theamount of choice that they have and their health.



10

8

6

4

2

0

Figure 20: Difference in happiness with different aspects of life between materiallydeprived children and non-deprived children

Money &

things

Choice Home Future Appearance Family Health Time use School Friends

M e a n h a p p i n e s s ( 0 t o 1 0 )

Aspects of life

Figure 21: Differences between materially deprived children and non-deprived children

Does not feel that thay have enough choiceabout how they spend their time

Does not feel safe at home

Does not feel that their home is nice

Disagrees that they have a lot to be proud of

Does not feel that a lot of things about them are good

Does not feel that their friends treat them well

Is disabled

Does not feel that their friends will help them if they need it

Does not feel safe with their friends

2%

23%

2%

24%

3%

27%

4%

31%

2%17%

3%

14%

3%

18%

2%

14%

6%

35%

5%

33%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Non-deprived (lacking 0-1 items) Deprived (lacking 5+ items)

% of children

5%

25%

5%

21%

9%

37%

Does not always feel positive about the future

Does not feel safe at school

Feels that their health is bad or very bad

Has been bullied more than three timesin the past three months

Non-deprived (lacking 0-1 items) Deprived (lacking 5+ items)





For example, children lacking five or more items,in comparison to children lacking none or one ofthe items, are:

• Home: Thirteen times more likely to disagreethat ‘I feel safe at home’

• Self-esteem: Nine times more likely to disagreethat ‘overall I have a lot to be proud of’

• Future: Six times more likely to disagree that ‘Ialways feel positive about the future’

• Disability: Six times more likely to say that theyare disabled

• Friends: Six times more likely to disagree that‘my friends will help me if I need it’

• Choice: Six times more likely to disagree that‘I have enough choice about how I spend mytime’

• Health: Four times more likely to say that theirhealth is bad or very bad

• Bullying: Four times more likely to haveexperienced bullying three or more times in thelast three months.

In summary, the analysis presented in thissection builds on previous findings to showthat children who are materially deprived havemarkedly lower well-being than their peers, andare more likely to report friendship problems,bullying, lower self-esteem and to be unhappywith aspects of their home, health, choice andthe future.

Summary

• In this chapter, we turn to the aspects ofchildren’s lives that are most strongly relatedto their well-being. Three aspects of TheGood Childhood Index stand out as being themost influential – choice, family and money/ possessions.

• Children’s happiness with choice drops steadilybetween the ages of eight and 15, but thenthere is a marked rise at age 16/17, suggestingthat there is a mismatch between the amountof choice that children in their early teenageyears have and how much they would like.

• Interviews with young people aged 14 and 15about choice highlight a number of key themesfor this age group, including: the role thatfriends and peers play in relation to choice,especially in relation to their appearance andself-expression; and the equal importance ofhaving loving, supportive family relationshipson the one hand, and being granted areasonable level of choice/autonomyon the other.

• Autonomy is also a theme that emergedfrom our analysis of family relationships.Expanding on findings that we have alreadypublished about the fundamental importanceof family harmony, parental support andchoice/autonomy, we demonstrate that all ofthese dimensions of family relationships areassociated with, and make an independentcontribution to, children’s self-reportedwell-being.

• Finally, in this chapter we present new analysisexploring what life is like for children that arematerially deprived, by which we mean thatthey lack five items or more from 10-itemmeasure of deprivation. This group of childrenhave markedly lower well-being than theirpeers for all of The Good Childhood Index

domains, and are more likely to report lowself-esteem, friendship problems, bullying andto be unhappy with their home.



4 What can be done to improvechildren’s well-being

In the previous chapters we have presentedevidence from our research programme, and fromother sources, which provides an overview of theself-reported well-being of children aged eight to15 in the UK, explores some of the factors whichaffect children’s well-being and examines theassociations between well-being and other issues.

This evidence clearly demonstrates thatchildren’s feelings about their lives – theirself-reported well-being – is an important

consideration for all those concerned with,or responsible for, children’s welfare and lifechances. This includes parents, professionals andlocal and national policy makers. In this chapterwe consider what can be done to improvechildren’s well-being and describe some recentwork we have been doing through the well-beingresearch programme.

A framework for thinking

about ways of improvingchildren’s well-being

Children’s well-being can be influenced bya wide range of factors at different levels;from children’s own choices and behavioursto national policy decisions and societalattitudes. Figure 22 attempts to illustrate thispoint in a diagram, using the framework ofBronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory ofhuman development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

Bronfenbrenner’s theory delineates a set ofsystems that can affect children’s development.Working from the inside of the diagram outside,the microsystem refers to the child’s closestrelationships, with parents, carers and others.The mesosystem represents the relationshipsbetween components of the microsystem. Theexosystem then refers to people and institutionsthat the child may not have direct contact withbut nevertheless exert an influence on them. Themacrosystem represents more remote factors such

as societal values, attitudes and culture. Finally thechronosystem represents change over time.

This may be a helpful framework for thinkingabout different routes to influencing children’swell-being.

In this chapter we present some initial piecesof work which may begin to enhance ourunderstanding of parts of this framework. Inparticular we discuss ways in which nationalpolicy, local policy, services for children, parentsand carers, and children themselves, may be ableto influence well-being.

We have not yet been able to explore theinfluence of the broad macrosystem on children’swell-being, although general societal attitudesto young people, for example was an issuethat young people aged 14 to 16 identifiedas affecting their well-being in our initialconsultation work in 2005, as illustrated by thefollowing quotes:

‘... crime which is exagerated by media

who overestimate the fgures and levels

of crime. Also young people in generalare blamed for Britains ‘rising crime’

(according to media) this makes people

scared and frightened of young people.’[What stops young people having a good life]

‘To socialise and not to be discriminated

against because we are young. We all are

not thugs or vandals.’[What makes for a good life]

‘People thinking we are all the same eg

a teenager might have been rude to

someone, elderly, person etc. So they

think we are all like that and then be rude

to other teenagers.’[What stops young people having a good life]

Source: The Children’s Society, 2005

The influence of societal attitudes is animportant area for future exploration in relation

to children’s well-being.



Child

Services

Local area

National

Attitudes

CultureValues

Routes toinfluencingchildren’swell-being

Based onBrofenbrenner�

good childhood report 2013 final

Documents