Ireland’s children are languishing at bottom of the league of nations

WHAT are we to believe? The question is posed by the appearance of two conflicting reports, and one disturbing incident, all in the last seven days or so.

This past week several children (because that’s what they are) were at the heart of a garda investigation into a callous and brutal murder. Without wishing in any way to prejudge anything, that must send us some kind of signal that all is not well with our children. There is surely nothing more frightening than the thought that young teenagers could be capable of murder, or even of the sort of violence that can end in murder.

But in the same week we saw the publication of The State of the Nation’s Children, a document that seems to send an entirely different message. What’s more, the document was launched with sufficient accompanying fanfare to suggest that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, at least where our happy, healthy children are concerned.

And at almost the same time, UNICEF published a report which set out to compare the early childhood provision in 25 OECD countries around the world. (OECD countries are, by and large, rich countries. I know we’re not supposed to refer to ourselves as rich any more — but we’re still among the richest countries of the world, even if we’d prefer to feel sorry for ourselves rather than admit it).

That UNICEF report sets out a number of benchmarks against which each country is measured. The degree to which those benchmarks are met is a measure of the kind of quality provision we are prepared to make in the development and education of children in the first six years of their lives. When I say “we” in this context I’m referring to the wider community, and not the to parents of children — the contribution parents make to their children’s development is of course critical, but is not compared, country by country, in this study.

We meet only one of the benchmarks. We are at the very bottom of the league when it comes to early childhood development and education.

A few years ago that wouldn’t perhaps have been too bad — because we were a much poorer country then. We were bottom of a lot of league tables then. But it’s a tragedy, isn’t it, when Ireland tops the league tables when it comes to all sorts of measurement of wealth and wellbeing, that the development of our children lags so far behind.

I’ll come back to the UNICEF league table in a minute. The Minister for Children, Barry Andrews, in defending Ireland’s record where children are concerned, described the UNICEF report as a “snapshot” and pointed to the report he had just published himself as a much more rounded and accurate picture of how well our children are doing.

I’m not in any sense questioning that, nor am I claiming that there is anything wrong with the minister’s statistics.

But I have the report in front of me as I write — The State of the Nation’s Children — Ireland 2008”.

It is 230 pages that add up to a mixed picture. Some good news, some bad news. The publicity surrounding the launch was all the good news, naturally enough. But you can’t read the report and decide the job has been done. It’s the Government’s own publication and it makes clear there is a long way to go before Ireland can be truly and genuinely proud of how we treat all our children.

Our children are physically active. Breastfeeding and immunisation rates are going up. Infant mortality is very low, as is mortality among children generally. For many children, educational outcomes are pretty good. Our children, by and large, report themselves as happy and in good communication with their parents (better with their mothers than their fathers). Under most of the headings the report examines, our kids are doing okay.

Maybe that’s as much as we have any right to expect. Maybe it was true of every generation of children that as long as they’re relatively happy and relatively healthy, we should be prepared to settle for that.

But even within the State of the Nation’s Children there’s a lot of disquieting news. A quarter of our children report being bullied — and that must mean, by the way, that a lot of our children are involved in bullying, something to be just as anxious about. Too many of our children are involved in anti-health and anti-wellbeing activities — smoking, drinking, experimenting with drugs.

And that’s where part, at least, of the link with the other report can be established. If we’re not investing in early childhood development and education — and the UNICEF report quite clearly established that we’re not — we’re putting those children at risk.

And ourselves, by the way. Throughout the world there is more than enough evidence to suggest that where proper investment is early childhood education and development is lacking, children are more likely to encounter difficulties with the law as they grow and less likely to be comfortable and contributing members of the society around them. Perhaps the two conflicting reports and the one disturbing incident are more linked than we thought.

Perhaps what they all really point to is an aspect of our transition that simply hasn’t been thought about, or debated openly in public.

It is a lot less than a generation since the vast majority of Irish children were reared at home. In those days — and we’re only talking about a few short years ago — a woman’s work was widely seen as being in the home.

NOW we’ve undergone a complete transformation. For the vast majority of women, working outside the home is a necessity. One of the great liberating changes of the last 20 years or so has been in the ability of women to participate fully in the development of the economy and in the development of careers.

But we should have started thinking about what that meant when it began. Other countries did it — Sweden, for example — and they saw immediately that if the empowerment of women was to be meaningful, a range of high-quality childcare choices had to be available to families. And high-quality childcare doesn’t just mean good and affordable creches, by the way. The central element of Sweden’s childcare policy (and Denmark, Finland, France and Norway) is one year’s parental leave — divided between mother and father — in the first years of every child’s life.

When I say that the State of the Nation’s Children doesn’t tell the full story, I don’t want to be seen as knocking. I really believe that as long as we keep congratulating each other that everything in the garden is rosy, instead of seeing the very mixed picture for what it is, we’re storing up trouble for the future.

On the other hand, it’s not too late — despite all our present economic woes. The key to a good future is a good start. If we want the State of the Nation’s Children in, say, 2025 to be even as good as it is now, we could start by admitting there’s a lot of work to be done. And soon.