‘The foundation of each state is the education of its young.’ So said Diogenes within the fifth century BC, and it’s an axiom that also holds true today. Children are the long run. For each their wellbeing and our good, it’s the responsibility of all of us to take care of and educate them, giving them the tools that may help them best use their particular gifts, and so grow as much as be completely satisfied and fulfilled individuals. Only in this fashion can we make sure the continuance and future good of society.
But something has gone badly improper.
In a newly published report by The Children’s Society, The Good Childhood Report 2024, it’s claimed that British teenagers rank because the least completely satisfied in Europe. Analysing data from a survey conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED), looking into teenage life satisfaction across Europe, the report states that 25.2% of 15-year-olds within the UK describe low life satisfaction, as compared with a European average of 16.6%, and in stark contrast to the Netherlands’ 6.7% – putting the UK firmly at the underside of the list.
These findings, if accurate, are shocking and needs to be a wake-up call, because if the causes of the issue should not now properly identified and addressed, not only will the lives of those young people be irrevocably blighted, but society as we all know it can collapse.
The report highlights such matters because the family, personal appearance, school, and climate change as potential problem areas contributing to general dissatisfaction and feelings of unhappiness, pinpointing especially financial hardship and strain – it was found, for instance, that within the month before the survey, one in ten 15-year-olds within the UK said that that they had missed meals as a result of lack of cash.
But though these may perhaps be contributory aspects, such bland evaluation surely ignores the very large elephant standing within the centre of the room, because these are merely symptoms of infection, and do nothing to tackle the disease at source. No, the actual, and infinitely more shocking, truth is that society itself has created this problem and, to place it right, society now must change.
For too long we’ve treated children as human guinea pigs in an ideological experiment designed to overturn the normal values on which our nation is predicated. For many years, for instance, as a part of the drive to reconfigure morality, we’ve taught children that sex is a human right, just about from birth, in order that they’ll indulge as soon as they feel ‘ready’ – provided only that they stay secure and use a condom! Thus, promiscuity has grow to be normalised and been promoted, while notions of fidelity and commitment (the premise for strong family units) have been consigned to the scrapheap of despised and repressive patriarchy!
On top of this, we’ve told children as young as three that gender is a matter of selection, not biology, and that it’s as much as them to decide on what they wish to be, which inevitably has produced confusion and unnecessary emotional strain – and indeed has led some into life changing and irreversible treatments which are later bitterly regretted.
This deliberate indoctrination, which began way back within the Nineteen Sixties, has had an effect across the entire of society, however it is children and young people especially who’ve suffered. As a direct consequence of the attempt at moral reframing, the ‘family’ today appears to be in terminal decline (see latest figures from the ONS). Which means that nearly half of all UK children now grow up without the protection net provided by a conventional family unit, and no less than 44% don’t live with – or even perhaps do not know – each biological parents.
In fact, serialised relationships, based on cohabitation, have grow to be a norm, which suggests that a toddler may perhaps have a series of ‘daddies’ or ‘mummies’, and will find themselves living with a changing group of siblings, half-siblings and/or other children unrelated by blood, all of which – again – results in feelings of confusion and emotional instability. And which, research shows, adversely affects their very own future capability to form stable, monogamous and long-lasting relationships, in order that the cycle becomes repeated … with the identical sorry results.
The truth is, we live in a dysfunctional and declining culture that’s spiralling towards chaos. On our present trajectory, sooner reasonably than later, our society will implode – so small wonder teenagers are complaining of low life satisfaction. In fact, it’s a fairly secure bet that the remaining of the population would say the exact same, if asked, because poverty, loneliness, low self-esteem, and low achievement are problems at any age, and while we proceed to live the way in which we do, things aren’t going to enhance!
The policy recommendations recommend by The Children’s Society – calling amongst other measures for mental health support teams for each school in England, a recent Child Poverty Act, the elimination of bullying and an end of the learn to check culture in schools – good intentioned though they could be, are at best sticking plaster remedies and do not even come near solving the very real problems now facing society. If we actually are serious about helping the nation’s young, it’s urgent we abandon the ‘Self’ promoting social experiment that may see an end to traditional values, and re-commit to the principles and beliefs that historically have been the premise of our society, and that thus far have made us strong.
