Unicef blames the fact that Britons are working longer hours and as a result parents are buying off children with ‘branded goods’ British children are caught in a “materialistic trap” in which they are unable to spend enough time with their families and instead are bought off with “branded goods” by their parents, the United Nation’s children’s agency Unicef warns. Three years ago, Unicef ranked the UK at the bottom of a league table for child wellbeing across 21 industrialised countries, by looking at poverty, family relationships, and health. It attempted to discover why children fared better in nations which were both more equal to the UK – Sweden – and more unequal, such as Spain. The results were startling. Children in all three countries told researchers that their happiness is dependent on having time with family and friends and having “plenty to do outdoors”. Despite that, parents in the UK, especially those in low-income families, said they felt “tremendous pressure from society to buy material goods for their children”. This pressure was felt most acutely in low-income homes. To help alleviate such pressures, Unicef calls for a series of measures. It says the government should follow the example of Sweden by banning television advertising aimed at children younger than 12. The UN also calls for government to pay all employees and subcontracted workers the living wage, the minimum pay rate required for a worker to provide their family with the essentials of life, which in London is £8.30 per hour. Anita Tiessen, deputy director of Unicef UK, said that much of the problem was the “long working hours of British families . Parents have a much greater pressure in fulfilling the commitment to their children. They try to make up for this by buying their children branded clothes, trainers, technology.” By comparison, this “consumer culture” does not exist in Sweden or Spain. In Scandinavia, child care duties are more equally shared and family time is prioritised. In Spain, where women tend to stay at home there is a great reliance on the extended family with grandparents and uncles and aunts helping out with children. “Consumer culture in the UK contrasts starkly with Sweden and Spain, where family time is prioritised, children and families are under less pressure to own material goods and children have greater access to activities out of the home,” said the report. The children’s agency also says that, in an age of austerity and in the aftermath of the riots, local authorities need to be honest about the impact of public spending cuts on children – so that “funding is protected for play facilities and free leisure activities for children and families is protected”. Kate Mulley, head of policy development and research at the charity Action for Children, said that the report showed “some families are facing enormous and growing pressures that undermine family life. These are the families we need to focus on to help them overcome multiple and complex problems.” She said that “substantial cuts are reducing publicly funded activities and support available for children, young people and families who are often already at breaking point. “Not only are these services critical in developing the social and emotional skills needed to maximise children and young people’s potential but they help prevent intergenerational cycles of deprivation. The government needs to stop just hearing young people and actually listen to them.” Children United Nations Parents and parenting Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Unicef blames the fact that Britons are working longer hours and as a result parents are buying off children with ‘branded goods’ British children are caught in a “materialistic trap” in which they are unable to spend enough time with their families and instead are bought off with “branded goods” by their parents, the United Nation’s children’s agency Unicef warns. Three years ago, Unicef ranked the UK at the bottom of a league table for child wellbeing across 21 industrialised countries, by looking at poverty, family relationships, and health. It attempted to discover why children fared better in nations which were both more equal to the UK – Sweden – and more unequal, such as Spain. The results were startling. Children in all three countries told researchers that their happiness is dependent on having time with family and friends and having “plenty to do outdoors”. Despite that, parents in the UK, especially those in low-income families, said they felt “tremendous pressure from society to buy material goods for their children”. This pressure was felt most acutely in low-income homes. To help alleviate such pressures, Unicef calls for a series of measures. It says the government should follow the example of Sweden by banning television advertising aimed at children younger than 12. The UN also calls for government to pay all employees and subcontracted workers the living wage, the minimum pay rate required for a worker to provide their family with the essentials of life, which in London is £8.30 per hour. Anita Tiessen, deputy director of Unicef UK, said that much of the problem was the “long working hours of British families . Parents have a much greater pressure in fulfilling the commitment to their children. They try to make up for this by buying their children branded clothes, trainers, technology.” By comparison, this “consumer culture” does not exist in Sweden or Spain. In Scandinavia, child care duties are more equally shared and family time is prioritised. In Spain, where women tend to stay at home there is a great reliance on the extended family with grandparents and uncles and aunts helping out with children. “Consumer culture in the UK contrasts starkly with Sweden and Spain, where family time is prioritised, children and families are under less pressure to own material goods and children have greater access to activities out of the home,” said the report. The children’s agency also says that, in an age of austerity and in the aftermath of the riots, local authorities need to be honest about the impact of public spending cuts on children – so that “funding is protected for play facilities and free leisure activities for children and families is protected”. Kate Mulley, head of policy development and research at the charity Action for Children, said that the report showed “some families are facing enormous and growing pressures that undermine family life. These are the families we need to focus on to help them overcome multiple and complex problems.” She said that “substantial cuts are reducing publicly funded activities and support available for children, young people and families who are often already at breaking point. “Not only are these services critical in developing the social and emotional skills needed to maximise children and young people’s potential but they help prevent intergenerational cycles of deprivation. The government needs to stop just hearing young people and actually listen to them.” Children United Nations Parents and parenting Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A newly surfaced work from the late JD Salinger is up for sale—for about $1,800 a word. It’s a signed note to his maid in 1989, which the online company History for Sale has up on eBay for $50,000, reports the Concord Monitor . “Dear Mary,” it reads….
Continue reading …Michele Bachmann looks to be pulling back from controversial comments she made about the HPV vaccine after drawing flak from the medical community and others—including Rush Limbaugh, notes Minnesota Public Radio . Bachmann scored points in last night’s debate by criticizing Rick Perry’s decision to try to mandate the vaccine…
Continue reading …Pundits may have applauded President Obama’s jobs speech, but it doesn’t seem to have helped his poll numbers: Now 55% of Americans disapprove of how he’s doing his job, a CNN/ORC poll finds. It’s his highest disapproval rating thus far, CNN notes; July and August polls put the figure at…
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US poverty rate swells for third year to 15.1% with the number of poor in 2010 the largest on record A record 46 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010, pushing the US poverty rate to its highest level since 1993, according to a government report on Tuesday on the grim effects of stubbornly high unemployment. Underscoring the economic challenges that face President Barack Obama and Congress, the US census Bureau said the poverty rate rose for a third consecutive year to hit 15.1% in 2010. The number in poverty was the largest since the government first began publishing estimates in 1959. The report surfaces at a time when the economic straits of ordinary Americans are at the forefront of the 2012 election campaign. Obama is suffering from low job approval ratings on the economy and evidence of rising poverty could give popular momentum to the $450 billion job-creation program he unveiled last week. The census data also could come into play in the deliberations of a bipartisan super committee in Congress, which has been charged with finding at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings over 10 years by 23 November. The United States has the highest poverty rate among developed countries, according to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The poverty line for an American family of four with two children is an income $22,113 a year. The data showed that children under 18 suffered the highest poverty rate, 22%, compared with adults and the elderly. In a sign of decline for middle-income Americans, the figures showed continued decline in the number of Americans with employer-provided health insurance, while the ranks of the uninsured hovered just below the 50 million mark. Underlying the census data was a rate of economic growth too meager to compensate for the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs from 2009 to 2010, as the recession officially ended but the jobless rate shot up from 9.3% to 9.6%. “All of this deterioration in the labor market caused incomes to drop, poverty to rise and people to lose their health insurance,” said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute think tank. “One of the immediately obvious issues this brings up is that there is no relief in sight.” The numbers would have been worse, analysts said, but for government assistance programs including extended unemployment compensation, stimulus spending and Obama’s health reforms, which appeared to reduce the number of uninsured young adults. In Obama’s hometown of Chicago, Salvation Army Major David Harvey knows well the effects of grinding poverty on the city’s South Side, where he attended a food giveaway on Tuesday. “There are more families falling into poverty,” he said. “That’s multiplied on the South Side of Chicago where there are pockets with 20%, or more, unemployment.” You’ve got people crying for jobs. They move out of state to get jobs because employers are leaving because of the tax increases here,” Harvey said. The poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Hispanics but did not differ significantly for Asians. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 54% of the poor with whites at 9.9% and Asians at 12.1%. The South fared worst among US regions, recording the highest poverty rate, a significant drop in median income and the largest number of residents without health insurance. Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor people, at 22.7%, according to calculations by the census Bureau. It was followed by Louisiana, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Mexico and Arizona. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 6.6%. The administration was quick to seize on data showing a 2.1% drop in uninsured young adults, aged 18 to 24, as evidence that families were benefiting from an Obama healthcare reform that allows parents to extend their coverage to children as old as 25. The Affordable Care Act is the centerpiece of Obama’s domestic policy agenda but has come under fierce attack from Republicans including presidential candidates who hope to challenge the president in the 2012 general election. “We expect even more will gain coverage in 2011 when the policy is fully phased in,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a blog posting. United States Poverty Social exclusion guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In a vertigo-inducing video posted online, a group of teenagers in Kiev climbs a suspension bridge pylon—without a safety rope in sight. One teen is wearing a camera mounted on his head; he passes a friend with her legs wrapped, Spider-Man-style, in the bridge’s cables. She’s wearing sandals, the…
Continue reading …Count Rick Perry among those “taken aback” at the reaction of some in the crowd during a debate question about health insurance last night. (A handful shouted “Yeah!” and cheered to a hypothetical question about whether someone who forgoes insurance should be allowed to die. See the video here .)…
Continue reading …Richard Hamilton, the “Father of Pop Art” who designed the Beatles’ White Album cover, has died in Britain at 89, Billboard reports. Hamilton, who coined the term “pop art” to describe the movement that made heavy use of commercial and pop-culture images, came to prominence in the 1950s with “Just…
Continue reading …Thousands of mothers currently doing time will head home soon as California rushes to shrink prison populations . Moms with 2 years or less left to serve for “non-serious, non-sexual” crimes—possibly half of the state’s 9,500 female prisoners—may be released within days; once home, they’ll wear GPS ankle…
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