Last month UNICEF released a report into child well-being in the UK, as a follow-up to their study in 2007, which ranked the UK in bottom place out of 21 developed countries for the wellbeing of children. Samia Aziz spoke to Agnes Nairn, who wrote the report, about her findings. Nairn is also the co-author of Consumer Kids - you can read a previous interview on that book here.

According to press headlines, your report into children's well-being in the UK highlights the traps of materialism and compulsive consumerism as the primary causes of the low well-being of children in the UK, relative to other wealthy countries. Is this an accurate summary of your report?

No, not really.  The research was not intended to show any conclusive causal links between materialism and children’s wellbeing; that could only really be achieved by a quantitative longitudinal study.  Our research was a follow-up to UNICEF’s Report Card 7 published in 2007 which drew together the findings of a range of large scale, mainly nationally representative, quantitative studies to create a 6 item index of children’s well-being.  21 OECD countries were compared using this index and the UK came bottom.   The last UK government gave UNICEF UK a grant to start to explore the reasons why this might be the case.  A scoping study was conducted by NeF (New Economics Foundation) which concluded, on the basis of the most up-to-date research, that inequality and materialism appear to be strongly correlated with low well-being in both adults and children.  UNICEF UK then commissioned myself and Ipsos MORI to investigate the relationship between materialism, inequality and well-being in the UK and two comparator countries.  The objective of the research was to get behind the statistics into the real lives of children and their families in order to understand how materialism and inequality are experienced in different countries.  The research was therefore qualitative in nature and used both family ethnographic case studies and school group discussions.  The families and schools were carefully recruited to represent an equivalent range of socio-economic circumstances and geographical locations in each country.  We thus observed families in their everyday lives and spent time with peer groups in schools using a range of projective techniques, scenarios and other qualitative methods to try to understand the complex relationship between materialism, inequality and wellbeing.

It was striking across the families and schools that compulsive consumerism was much more deeply rooted in family life in the UK than in our two comparator countries and that this was closely linked with inequality in that those who felt more disenfranchised in society also felt the greatest need to consume – particularly status brands.  So the traps of materialism and compulsive consumerism certainly seem to be very strongly linked with low well-being but it is a complex issue and I don’t think we can say that they are the primary causes.

You found that the problems children face in the UK are more acute than those in Spain, despite Spain having higher levels of economic inequality. Does this undermine the idea that social inequality has a dominant effect on well-being throughout society?

Again our research was not designed to draw the kind of stark conclusions you suggest.  Spain was chosen as a comparator country because in Report Card 7 it was ranked 2nd for Subjective Wellbeing (ie how children rate their own wellbeing) yet came only 12th in terms of material equality (the UK came 20th and 18th respectively).  We were therefore interested to know if something happened in Spanish families which perhaps mitigated the negative effects which we know unequal societies can have on their citizens. We deliberately recruited children and families from right across the socio-economic spectrum in both countries.  What we found was that inequality does cause problems and that there is a complex relationship between consumption pressure, self-esteem and perceived socio-economic status.  However, the consumption pressures seemed much less in Spain and families seemed to have much more resilience in resisting these pressures.  So our findings do not undermine the idea that social inequality has adverse effects – quite the contrary – but they do point to consumer pressure as a catalyst in the manifestation of these effects.  What we found in Spain was that strong family ties and the role of the extended family seemed to play a part in mitigating the effects of inequality on wellbeing.

You argue that lack of family time in the UK is an important contributory factor to children's low levels of wellbeing. This reflects, in part, the growing absorption of women into the workforce and away from the home. Does this call for a renewed focus for feminist politics, based around a recognition of the value of child-rearing and a demand to have greater male participation in this sphere?

Yes, we certainly found the families we visited in the UK seemed to be much more pressed for time than those in Spain and Sweden and life just seemed more hassled and exhausting.  Whilst in Spain there are fewer women in the workforce which means that mothers have more time for their children (but very little for themselves) the Swedish model with similar proportion of women in the workforce as the UK is certainly very interesting to consider.  In Sweden the value of child-rearing is recognised at the level of both the state and the family.  Childcare is very inexpensive,  leave after childbirth must be equally shared by men and women and fractional appointments for both men and women are much more common than in the UK.  Here we can see how the state facilitates family life.  Within the home we witnessed a much greater sharing of household tasks not only between men and women but also by children.  Young children were involved in helping to cook, tidy and clean.  Thus an egalitarian approach to family “work” created more shared time inadvertently allowing families more time together.  At a state level very long working hours, short paternity leave and lack of flexibility in fractional employment contracts are not conducive to shared family time in the UK.  At the family level our obsession with creating “quality” time with our children rather than simply involving children more directly with the running of the household is also unhelpful in giving children the time with their parents that they crave.  Mobile technology which means that office time can bleed into home time is also not conducive to good family relationships.

You note that in the UK and Spain, girls from poorer backgrounds become focused on shopping for clothes as young as 10 or 11. Is this a reflection of the fact that working class girls are more vulnerable to appearance-related consumerism than middle class girls? More broadly, is it also the case that girls are more susceptible to consumerist pressures than boys, or is it just that they take different forms?

An increasing body of research shows that there is a strong link between socio-economic status and consumerism, particularly related to the purchase of symbolic status items which include branded clothes.  In our research we also found this need for conspicuous consumption to be particularly prevalent amongst the less well-off parents and children.  In an age of easy credit the UK parents wanted to protect their children from the sort of brand bullying they experienced when they were young by buying the “right” consumer goods.  Likewise recent research amongst 8-18 year olds by the young people’s group Amplify showed that a major motivation for buying brands was not to “appear poor”.  This shows the inextricable link between inequality and materialism and I believe it is an area which requires urgent attention.

In terms of gender I don’t think it is true to say that consumer pressure is greater for boys than girls – it just manifests itself in different ways and at different times.  The group most conscious of clothes brands, for example, is Year 8 boys.

A section of your report deals with how parents feel pressured by consumerism and marketisation, and so feel the need to constantly buy new things for their children irrespective of their real needs, or the family's financial circumstances. How do you suggest parents can combat this pressure and become resilient to the commercial world?

Yes, this compulsive consumption on the part of parents was very striking in the UK and stood in stark contrast to parenting in Spain and Sweden.  Parents know deep down that “things” won’t make their kids happy but they often feel that their children will be left out if they don’t have the latest stuff.  When advertising for the latest gadgets, gizmos, fashions and looks is so ubiquitous it is easy to assume that everyone, everywhere has all this stuff and that we are the only ones who don’t.

I think parents need to spend more time talking to their children about the role of consumer goods in their lives rather than working longer hours to buy stuff their kids don’t really want.  Those conversations will help build resilience in both parents and children.  Parent may also find it helpful to talk to each other to create some solidarity.  When parents discuss consumerism they find out that other parents feel the same and have more courage to say no.  Networks like Mumsnet and Netmums are really great places in this respect.  The government also has a responsibility to curb the role that commercial companies play in family life and the new Parentport website is a helpful initiative as parents can go on here to complain about companies and can see that they are not alone.

Many parents in the UK currently feel besieged by consumerism, tired by long working hours and unable to resist.  I believe that our research supports the view that these pressures could be mitigated if the gaping inequalities in our society were reduced and if child-rearing was valued more and consumption valued less both by the state and the family.

 

http://www.agnesnairn.co.uk