Enver Solomon, Director of Policy, The Children's Society

Who is listening to the child?

In all the debates and discussions of family and parenting since the August riots it has been striking how there has been barely any mention of how children view their families. The perspectives of children seem to have been largely absent yet what they have to say and how they experience family life has important implications for policy. Indeed, if government ignores the voice of the child then policy making will be less well informed and less effective.

Research conducted by the Children’s Society asking children what determines their well-being has established that family is critical in shaping their happiness. This is not surprising. What matters, however, is how family determines children’s subjective well-being and also how children experience family life. There are a number of key findings from our research which must be not be ignored if we are to seek solutions that can support parents to strengthen family life and ensure our children are happy and so more likely to achieve and do well.

Families are often defined by government and in official data as living in single households with either one or two parents. But our research, based on surveys with over 5,000 children aged eight to 15 years old shows that this does not reflect how children say they experience family life. They live in a wide variety of structures that actually elude simple categorisation. We found that a fifth said they live in two homes. This inevitably complicates family accounting. For example, seven out of ten live with their fathers in their first home but more than eight out of ten live with their father in either their second or first home. It also suggests that children whose parents are not together have more contact with their fathers than is perhaps generally thought to be the case.

It is equally important to note that for many children family structures are not static. They change over time and more often than is recognised by policy makers. We found that ten per cent had experienced a change in the last year. The notion of the stable nuclear family is clearly outdated.

Children’s experiences show that families are diverse and complex. They are also fluid with both immediate and extended members changing over time. This means that children live in a wide variety of family structures that cannot be simply categorised. In defining and seeking to understand how family life impacts on children, ministers and officials must recognise this.

But how important is structure in determining children’s sense of life satisfaction? The implicit assumption behind the Prime Minister’s desire to promote family life by ensuring that government ‘family proofs’ all policies is that two parents in wedlock provide the best start in life for the nation’s children. Yet the message from research is that the quality of family relationships, not the structure of the family unit, matters most. Our own child-centred research bears this out. A simple measure of family harmony – ‘my family gets along well together’ – was ten times more important in predicting overall well-being than family structure. It explained 20 per cent of the variation in overall well-being whereas family structure explains less than two per cent.

If individual and family characteristics explain very little of the variation in overall well-being compared to family harmony then we need to think seriously about policies which reduce pressure on parents rather than seeking to bolster one form of family structure over another. Parents need to be supported to manage conflict and know where to turn to find support. Family therapy needs to be more universally accessible to all parents regardless of their background. Arguably child and adolescent mental health services need to be developed as child and family services that support children in the context of their family environment.

Clearly no family is an island. Context is important. Wider economic factors impact on the stresses and strains parents experience and ultimately the level of conflict in the home. Household income does, therefore, make a difference in determining whether or not pressures are reduced or parenting capabilities are enhanced. And there are associated consequences for how happy children feel about their lives. We have found a statistically significant relationship between household income and children’s well-being.

Children in the lowest income groups are less happy than children who are better off. In fact, low well-being was reported by more than twice as many children in the bottom income quintile as the top income quintile. We also found that changes in household income make a significant difference. Children in households that had experienced a fall in income were more than twice as likely to report low well-being as children in households that had experienced a rise in income. In addition, children whose parents were ‘very concerned’ about the impact of the economic situation reported lower well being than those whose parents were ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ concerned.

Given the importance of household income to reducing family pressures and determining children’s happiness, primarily for those on the lowest incomes, the government’s welfare reforms have an even greater significance. Reducing the nation’s social security bill by £6billion is going to directly impact on the amount of money available in the pockets of the poorest families. One of the most significant reforms is the introduction of a cap on household benefits for those who are not in work. It is expected to be set at around £500 per week for couples and lone parents, which means they will £93 worse off each week.

The government says the cap is intended to promote income fairness between those in work and those receiving benefits and provide incentives to move into work. However, our analysis reveals that children are being disproportionately punished for decisions they have no control over. Around 210, 000 children will be affected by the cap, compared to 70,000 adults. This means that three-quarters of those affected are children, making them nine times more likely than adults to be affected. To minimse the impact on children the government needs to consider alternative options, such as using average income for working families with children to calculate the level of the cap rather than using the average household wage. This would mean setting the cap closer to £600 and so affect far fewer families.

In addition to family harmony and conflict there is a further factor - children’s participation in family life - which is pivotal if government is to develop family friendly policies that genuinely support parents and their children. Feeling listened to and involved in family decisions really matters to children. Our research shows that it makes a difference to their well being in the same way as family harmony. Children who feel they help make family decisions or who feel their parents listen to their views and take them seriously certainly appear to be more satisfied with their lives.

This sends a clear message to policy makers that children must be seen as active participants in family life rather than mere passive recipients of parenting. They are able to make choices and contribute to the family as a whole and through specific relationships. They should be encouraged to negotiate and play a central part in family decision-making. Overall, children must be supported to play an active role in their families.

This might seem like an impossible policy goal. But parenting information and support programmes need to clearly send out the message that how a child participates in family life really does matter. Politicians can also set the tone for how parents and communities engage with children. By being prepared to acknowledge the importance of listening to children and respecting their realities and point of view the value of children’s participation can indirectly become more widely embedded in family life.

Families are critically important to child development so the renewed focus on parenting and family is, of course, to be welcome. But politicians from all parties appear to be falling into the familiar trap of seeing families solely through the eyes of parents. This one dimensional view of family life does not reflect children’s experiences or capture their concerns. In the long run it risks producing policies that undermine rather than promote children’s well being.

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