Research
Please note that we are currently building up these resources
Natural Childhood Report, 2012
Click here to see the Children and Nature Network (CNN) Research Page
CNN Studies. Reports and Publications
Forest School in England and Wales and its impact on young children, NEF, 2008
Natural Childhood Report, 2012
Click here to see the Children and Nature Network (CNN) Research Page
CNN Studies. Reports and Publications
Forest School in England and Wales and its impact on young children, NEF, 2008
UK Evidence
Contact with Nature
http://www.ipenproject.org/documents/conferences_docs/moving_living_more_inspired_2012.pdf
Fewer than a quarter of children regularly use their local ‘patch of nature’, compared to over half of all adults when they were children.
Natural England (2009) Childhood and Nature: a survey on changing relationships with nature across generations. www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/Childhood%20and%20Nature%20Survey_tcm6-10515.pdf
Children spend so little time outdoors that they are unfamiliar with some of our commonest wild creatures. According to a 2008 National
Trust survey, one in three could not identify a magpie; half could not tell the difference between a bee and a wasp; yet nine out of ten could
recognise a Dalek. National Trust (2008) Wildlife alien to indoor children. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/news/archive/view-page/item737221/
There is evidence to suggest that this sedentary, indoor lifestyle is having profound consequences for our children’s health, especially with regard to what has been called the ‘modern epidemic’ of obesity: Around three in ten children in England aged between two and 15 are currently either overweight or obese. The proportion classified as obese increased dramatically from 1995 to 2008: rising from 11% to almost 17% in boys, and from 12% to 15% in girls. If current trends continue, by 2050 more than half of all adults and a quarter of all children will be obese.
Health Survey for England 2008: Physical Activity and Fitness – Volume 1. The NHS Information Centre, 2009. www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/hse08physicalactivity Quoted in Statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet: England 2010, NHS 2010.
www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/publications/opad10/Statistics_on_Obesity_Physical_Activity_and_Diet_England_2010.pdf
The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) measures the height and weight of around one million school children in England every year, providing a detailed picture of the prevalence of child obesity. The latest figures, for 2012/13, show that 18.9% of children in Year 6 (aged 10-11) were obese and a further 14.4% were overweight. Of children in Reception (aged 4-5), 9.3% were obese and another 13.0% were overweight. This means almost a third of 10-11 year olds and over a fifth of 4-5 year olds were overweight or obese.
http://www.noo.org.uk/NOO_about_obesity/child_obesity
Recent research for Natural England has shown that where people have good access to green space they are 24% more likely to be physically active. The research concludes that if the population were afforded equitable good access to green space, the estimated saving to the health service could be in the order of £2.1 billion per annum in England alone.
Natural England Technical Information Note TIN055 – An estimate of the economic and health value and cost effectiveness of the expanded WHI scheme 2009. www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/TIN055_tcm6-12519.pdf
The study conducted by ‘Move More’, which is partly funded by the World Cancer Research Fund, has brought focus to the need for children to play outdoors with friends, as it has been proven that children doing so do an extra 17 minutes of physical activity. Research has shown children now spend most of their after-school hours indoors or with parents. Health experts are suggesting that outdoor, physical play can help reduce the chances of children having future illnesses, including cancer.
http://www.ipenproject.org/documents/conferences_docs/moving_living_more_inspired_2012.pdf
New research by BHF National Centre, has revealed physical inactivity causes 16.9% of premature all-cause mortality, and in 2006/2007 is has been estimated that the cost of physical inactivity to the NHS was £542 million for heart disease and £158 million for type two diabetes. The investigation into how the UK’s fitness affects the economy has also shown the estimated total annual cost of overweight and obesity to the NHS in 2002 was £2 billion, with the total impact on the economy estimated at £10 billion, which included the treatment of it and its consequences.
http://www.proludic.co.uk/announcements/inactivity-in-the-uk-is-costing-the-economy-billions
Family Life
In a single generation since the 1970s, children’s ‘radius of activity’ – the area around their home where they are allowed to roam unsupervised – has declined by almost 90%. In 1971, 80% of seven- and eight-year-olds walked to school, often alone or with their friends, whereas two decades later fewer than 10% did so – almost all accompanied by their parents.
Hillman, M., Adams, J., and Whitelegg, J. One False Move: A Study of Children’s Independent Mobility. London: Policy Studies Institute, 1990.
Running errands used to be a way of life; yet today, two out of three ten-year-olds have never been to a shop or park by themselves.
Children’s Society (2007) Good Childhood Inquiry. www.childrenssociety.org.uk/news-views/press-release/childhood-friendships-risk-reveals-new-survey
A poll commissioned by the Children’s Society revealed that almost half of all adults questioned thought the earliest age that a child should be allowed out unsupervised was 14 – a far cry from just a generation ago, when ten-year-olds would have had more freedom than a teenager does nowadays. Children’s Society (2007) Good Childhood Inquiry. www.childrenssociety.org.uk/news-views/press-release/childhood-friendships-risk-reveals-new-survey
A survey from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) says that the more often children have dinners with their parents, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs, and that parental engagement fostered around the dinner table is one of the most potent tools to help parents raise healthy, drug-free children. The CASA found kids that have dinner with their parents fewer than three times a week, are two times more likely to drink or smoke tobacco, and are one and a half times more likely to smoke marijuana.
When looking for the reasons why today’s children no longer engage with the natural world, many people pin the blame firmly on this screen-
based lifestyle. But we must not forget that technology brings many benefits to children, not least the ability to access information about the natural world (SCM emphasis). And while it would be easy to draw the conclusion that the allure of this screen-based entertainment is the main reason why children rarely go outdoors, it may be a symptom of what Richard Louv refers to as ‘well-meaning, protective house arrest’.Stephen Moss quoting Louv, R. (2005) Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, p.34.
Aversion to Risk
Childhood is being undermined by adults’ increasing aversion to risk and by the intrusion of that fear into every aspect of their lives.
Lord Digby Jones, former chairman of the CBI: If we never took a risk our children would not learn to walk, climb stairs, ride a bicycle or swim; business would not develop innovative new products… scientists would not experiment and discover, we would not have great art, literature, music and architecture.
Jones, D., quoted in Cotton Wool Kids – Issues Paper 7. Releasing the potential for children to take risks and innovate. HTI, London.
www.hti.org.uk/pdfs/pu/IssuesPaper7.pdf
Tim Gill, Author of No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk-averse Society: The weight of evidence for the benefits of getting children back to nature
is, as we have seen, overwhelming. The consensus that ‘something must be done’ is also there, right across the social and political spectrum. We even have a government White Paper, The Natural Choice, which makes several recommendations explicitly designed to reconnect our nation’s children with the natural world, including:
– A recognition that we need to exploit ‘nature’s health service’, in particular relating to children’s physical and mental health.
– A specific pledge to increase outdoor learning, by offering practical support to schools and reducing ‘red tape’.
– Creating better neighbourhood access to nature, both locally and in the wider countryside, in order to allow children (and adults) to
experience its benefits.
Gill, T. (2009) ‘Now for free-range childhood’, in Guardian, 2 April 2009. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/02/children-safety
Nowadays children are rarely allowed to venture outdoors. In 2007, the Daily Mail reported on a single Sheffield family who neatly demonstrated this.Great grandfather George, brought up in the 1920s, had almost unlimited freedom as an eight-year-old, regularly walking six miles to go fishing on his own. But 80 years later, his great-grandson Edward enjoyed none of this freedom: he was taken to and from school by car, and was only allowed to roam within a radius of 300 yards from his home. Daily Mail, 15 June 2007: How children lost the right to roam in four generations. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html
Mayer Hillman’s study One False Move found that in 1971, 80% of seven- and eight-year-old children went to school on their own;
by 1990 only 9% were making the journey unaccompanied.Hillman et al concluded that road accidents involving children have declined not because the roads have become safer, but because children are no longer exposed to the dangers they pose. Hillman, M., Adams, J, Whitelegg, J. (1990) One False Move. Policy Studies Institute. www.psi.org.uk/publications/publication.asp?publication_id=790
In 2004, the children’s charity Barnardo’s joined forces with the pressure group Transport 2000 (now Campaign for Better Transport) to produce
a report: Stop, look and listen: children talk about traffic.This contained powerful first-hand testimony from children on the way traffic has limited their freedoms. In a hard-hitting conclusion, the authors called on the government to make our streets safer, so that children could play outdoors again.
Transport 2000 / Barnardo’s (2004) Stop, look and listen: children talk about traffic.www.barnardos.org.uk/traffic.pdf
Traffic represents a physical risk to children that should never be understated. But there are other forms of risk that are worth taking.
Giving children the freedom to explore natural environments inevitably incurs an element of danger. Yet we should put this in perspective: three times as many children are taken to hospital each year after falling out of bed, as from falling out of trees. Play England (2008), quoted in the Observer 3 August 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/03/schools.childrenIronically, by far the most dangerous place for a child to be is at home:
– Every year, one million children aged 14 or under go to A&E departments: 30,000 with symptoms of poisoning, mostly from
domestic cleaning products, and 50,000 with burns or scalds.
– Half a million babies and toddlers are injured each year at home, 35,000 from falling down stairs.
– On average, ten children die each year from falling through a window or off a balcony, while house fires cause almost half of all fatal accidents
to children.
All figures from Child Alert website: www.childalert.co.uk/safety.php?tab=Safety
Tim Gill has called for ‘the wholesale rejection of the philosophy of protection’. In its place, he argues, we should embrace risk, uncertainty
and challenge – even danger – as essential ingredients of a rounded childhood.
Gill, Tim (2011)The end of zero risk in childhood? Guardian 3 July 2011. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/03/end-zero-risk-childhood
Launching its ‘Get a Life’ campaign in August 2006, the Health and Safety Executive chairman Bill Callaghan accused over-zealous ‘pedants’ of using health and safety as an excuse to ban perfectly normal activities, including playing conkers, and urged those in authority to allow ‘sensible risks’.
Health and Safety Executive (2006) press release: Get a life. www.hse.gov.uk/press/2006/c06021.htm
In July 2011 his successor Judith Hackett reinforced this message: what she calls ‘the creeping culture of risk aversion’ is, she believes, harming
children’s preparation for adult life. Judith Hackett, quoted in the Daily Telegraph 1 July 2011. www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8612145/Health-and-safety-fears-are-taking-the-joy- out-of-playtime.html
There can be no doubt that most parents’ greatest fear is stranger danger. Fear of strangers is likely to be hard-wired into our consciousness, having evolved as a strategy for survival amongst our distant ancestors. But Richard Louv suggests ‘the bogeyman syndrome’ may have become counter-productive today: Fear is the most potent force that prevents parents from allowing their children the freedom they themselves enjoyed when they were young.
Louv, R. (2005) Last Child in the Woods, p.123.
Ironically, the greatest dangers facing Britain’s children are not outside in the woods and fields, but in the very place their parents regard as a safe haven: their bedrooms. The vast majority of sexual abuse is carried out by relatives of the victim: parents or step-parents, uncles or ‘family friends’. Even when a stranger is involved, they often initially approach their victim via Internet chatrooms, posing as teenagers themselves. With
three out of four 8–11-year-olds, and two out of three 5–7-year-olds, now regularly using the Internet, more – and younger – children may
inadvertently putting themselves at risk.
Ofcom (2009) UK children’s media literacy: 2009 interim report. www.stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/full_report.pdf
When it comes to the most serious cases of all, involving the abduction and murder of a child, the statistics are revealing. On average
55 children in England and Wales are unlawfully killed each year. But eight out of nine victims are less than one year old, two out of three are under five, and the vast majority are killed by either a parent or step-parent – mostly in the family home.NSPCC (2012) Child killings in England and Wales: Explaining the statistics. www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/briefings/child_killings_in_england_and_wales_wda67213.html
According to a 2008 study by Play England, half of all children have been stopped from climbing trees, one in five banned from playing
conkers, and almost the same number told they cannot play games of tag.
Play England (2008), quoted in the Observer 3 August 2008. www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/03/schools.children
As Tim Gill observes, activities that earlier generations of children enjoyed as part of growing up are now being re-labelled as ‘troubling’ or ‘dangerous’.Tim Gill, quoted in the Observer 1 February 2009. www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/feb/01/child-welfare-inquiry
Because children are no longer allowed to venture outdoors, any who do stand out from the crowd. So whereas their behaviour would once have been accepted, it is increasingly regarded as abnormal and delinquent, leading to what Richard Louv has called ‘the criminalisation of natural play’.
Louv, R. (2005) Last Child in the Woods, p.27.
Cases include a family with three young daughters being reprimanded by police for picking daffodils;a group of youngsters being given anti-social behaviour warnings for ‘making too much noise’ while playing in a park; and a mother fined £75 because her little boy had thrown bread to ducks on their local park pond – a fine that was, after a storm of protest, withdrawn.
http://www.ipenproject.org/documents/conferences_docs/moving_living_more_inspired_2012.pdf
Fewer than a quarter of children regularly use their local ‘patch of nature’, compared to over half of all adults when they were children.
Natural England (2009) Childhood and Nature: a survey on changing relationships with nature across generations. www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/Childhood%20and%20Nature%20Survey_tcm6-10515.pdf
Children spend so little time outdoors that they are unfamiliar with some of our commonest wild creatures. According to a 2008 National
Trust survey, one in three could not identify a magpie; half could not tell the difference between a bee and a wasp; yet nine out of ten could
recognise a Dalek. National Trust (2008) Wildlife alien to indoor children. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/news/archive/view-page/item737221/
There is evidence to suggest that this sedentary, indoor lifestyle is having profound consequences for our children’s health, especially with regard to what has been called the ‘modern epidemic’ of obesity: Around three in ten children in England aged between two and 15 are currently either overweight or obese. The proportion classified as obese increased dramatically from 1995 to 2008: rising from 11% to almost 17% in boys, and from 12% to 15% in girls. If current trends continue, by 2050 more than half of all adults and a quarter of all children will be obese.
Health Survey for England 2008: Physical Activity and Fitness – Volume 1. The NHS Information Centre, 2009. www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/hse08physicalactivity Quoted in Statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet: England 2010, NHS 2010.
www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/publications/opad10/Statistics_on_Obesity_Physical_Activity_and_Diet_England_2010.pdf
The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) measures the height and weight of around one million school children in England every year, providing a detailed picture of the prevalence of child obesity. The latest figures, for 2012/13, show that 18.9% of children in Year 6 (aged 10-11) were obese and a further 14.4% were overweight. Of children in Reception (aged 4-5), 9.3% were obese and another 13.0% were overweight. This means almost a third of 10-11 year olds and over a fifth of 4-5 year olds were overweight or obese.
http://www.noo.org.uk/NOO_about_obesity/child_obesity
Recent research for Natural England has shown that where people have good access to green space they are 24% more likely to be physically active. The research concludes that if the population were afforded equitable good access to green space, the estimated saving to the health service could be in the order of £2.1 billion per annum in England alone.
Natural England Technical Information Note TIN055 – An estimate of the economic and health value and cost effectiveness of the expanded WHI scheme 2009. www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/TIN055_tcm6-12519.pdf
The study conducted by ‘Move More’, which is partly funded by the World Cancer Research Fund, has brought focus to the need for children to play outdoors with friends, as it has been proven that children doing so do an extra 17 minutes of physical activity. Research has shown children now spend most of their after-school hours indoors or with parents. Health experts are suggesting that outdoor, physical play can help reduce the chances of children having future illnesses, including cancer.
http://www.ipenproject.org/documents/conferences_docs/moving_living_more_inspired_2012.pdf
New research by BHF National Centre, has revealed physical inactivity causes 16.9% of premature all-cause mortality, and in 2006/2007 is has been estimated that the cost of physical inactivity to the NHS was £542 million for heart disease and £158 million for type two diabetes. The investigation into how the UK’s fitness affects the economy has also shown the estimated total annual cost of overweight and obesity to the NHS in 2002 was £2 billion, with the total impact on the economy estimated at £10 billion, which included the treatment of it and its consequences.
http://www.proludic.co.uk/announcements/inactivity-in-the-uk-is-costing-the-economy-billions
Family Life
In a single generation since the 1970s, children’s ‘radius of activity’ – the area around their home where they are allowed to roam unsupervised – has declined by almost 90%. In 1971, 80% of seven- and eight-year-olds walked to school, often alone or with their friends, whereas two decades later fewer than 10% did so – almost all accompanied by their parents.
Hillman, M., Adams, J., and Whitelegg, J. One False Move: A Study of Children’s Independent Mobility. London: Policy Studies Institute, 1990.
Running errands used to be a way of life; yet today, two out of three ten-year-olds have never been to a shop or park by themselves.
Children’s Society (2007) Good Childhood Inquiry. www.childrenssociety.org.uk/news-views/press-release/childhood-friendships-risk-reveals-new-survey
A poll commissioned by the Children’s Society revealed that almost half of all adults questioned thought the earliest age that a child should be allowed out unsupervised was 14 – a far cry from just a generation ago, when ten-year-olds would have had more freedom than a teenager does nowadays. Children’s Society (2007) Good Childhood Inquiry. www.childrenssociety.org.uk/news-views/press-release/childhood-friendships-risk-reveals-new-survey
A survey from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) says that the more often children have dinners with their parents, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs, and that parental engagement fostered around the dinner table is one of the most potent tools to help parents raise healthy, drug-free children. The CASA found kids that have dinner with their parents fewer than three times a week, are two times more likely to drink or smoke tobacco, and are one and a half times more likely to smoke marijuana.
When looking for the reasons why today’s children no longer engage with the natural world, many people pin the blame firmly on this screen-
based lifestyle. But we must not forget that technology brings many benefits to children, not least the ability to access information about the natural world (SCM emphasis). And while it would be easy to draw the conclusion that the allure of this screen-based entertainment is the main reason why children rarely go outdoors, it may be a symptom of what Richard Louv refers to as ‘well-meaning, protective house arrest’.Stephen Moss quoting Louv, R. (2005) Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, p.34.
Aversion to Risk
Childhood is being undermined by adults’ increasing aversion to risk and by the intrusion of that fear into every aspect of their lives.
Lord Digby Jones, former chairman of the CBI: If we never took a risk our children would not learn to walk, climb stairs, ride a bicycle or swim; business would not develop innovative new products… scientists would not experiment and discover, we would not have great art, literature, music and architecture.
Jones, D., quoted in Cotton Wool Kids – Issues Paper 7. Releasing the potential for children to take risks and innovate. HTI, London.
www.hti.org.uk/pdfs/pu/IssuesPaper7.pdf
Tim Gill, Author of No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk-averse Society: The weight of evidence for the benefits of getting children back to nature
is, as we have seen, overwhelming. The consensus that ‘something must be done’ is also there, right across the social and political spectrum. We even have a government White Paper, The Natural Choice, which makes several recommendations explicitly designed to reconnect our nation’s children with the natural world, including:
– A recognition that we need to exploit ‘nature’s health service’, in particular relating to children’s physical and mental health.
– A specific pledge to increase outdoor learning, by offering practical support to schools and reducing ‘red tape’.
– Creating better neighbourhood access to nature, both locally and in the wider countryside, in order to allow children (and adults) to
experience its benefits.
Gill, T. (2009) ‘Now for free-range childhood’, in Guardian, 2 April 2009. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/02/children-safety
Nowadays children are rarely allowed to venture outdoors. In 2007, the Daily Mail reported on a single Sheffield family who neatly demonstrated this.Great grandfather George, brought up in the 1920s, had almost unlimited freedom as an eight-year-old, regularly walking six miles to go fishing on his own. But 80 years later, his great-grandson Edward enjoyed none of this freedom: he was taken to and from school by car, and was only allowed to roam within a radius of 300 yards from his home. Daily Mail, 15 June 2007: How children lost the right to roam in four generations. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html
Mayer Hillman’s study One False Move found that in 1971, 80% of seven- and eight-year-old children went to school on their own;
by 1990 only 9% were making the journey unaccompanied.Hillman et al concluded that road accidents involving children have declined not because the roads have become safer, but because children are no longer exposed to the dangers they pose. Hillman, M., Adams, J, Whitelegg, J. (1990) One False Move. Policy Studies Institute. www.psi.org.uk/publications/publication.asp?publication_id=790
In 2004, the children’s charity Barnardo’s joined forces with the pressure group Transport 2000 (now Campaign for Better Transport) to produce
a report: Stop, look and listen: children talk about traffic.This contained powerful first-hand testimony from children on the way traffic has limited their freedoms. In a hard-hitting conclusion, the authors called on the government to make our streets safer, so that children could play outdoors again.
Transport 2000 / Barnardo’s (2004) Stop, look and listen: children talk about traffic.www.barnardos.org.uk/traffic.pdf
Traffic represents a physical risk to children that should never be understated. But there are other forms of risk that are worth taking.
Giving children the freedom to explore natural environments inevitably incurs an element of danger. Yet we should put this in perspective: three times as many children are taken to hospital each year after falling out of bed, as from falling out of trees. Play England (2008), quoted in the Observer 3 August 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/03/schools.childrenIronically, by far the most dangerous place for a child to be is at home:
– Every year, one million children aged 14 or under go to A&E departments: 30,000 with symptoms of poisoning, mostly from
domestic cleaning products, and 50,000 with burns or scalds.
– Half a million babies and toddlers are injured each year at home, 35,000 from falling down stairs.
– On average, ten children die each year from falling through a window or off a balcony, while house fires cause almost half of all fatal accidents
to children.
All figures from Child Alert website: www.childalert.co.uk/safety.php?tab=Safety
Tim Gill has called for ‘the wholesale rejection of the philosophy of protection’. In its place, he argues, we should embrace risk, uncertainty
and challenge – even danger – as essential ingredients of a rounded childhood.
Gill, Tim (2011)The end of zero risk in childhood? Guardian 3 July 2011. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/03/end-zero-risk-childhood
Launching its ‘Get a Life’ campaign in August 2006, the Health and Safety Executive chairman Bill Callaghan accused over-zealous ‘pedants’ of using health and safety as an excuse to ban perfectly normal activities, including playing conkers, and urged those in authority to allow ‘sensible risks’.
Health and Safety Executive (2006) press release: Get a life. www.hse.gov.uk/press/2006/c06021.htm
In July 2011 his successor Judith Hackett reinforced this message: what she calls ‘the creeping culture of risk aversion’ is, she believes, harming
children’s preparation for adult life. Judith Hackett, quoted in the Daily Telegraph 1 July 2011. www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8612145/Health-and-safety-fears-are-taking-the-joy- out-of-playtime.html
There can be no doubt that most parents’ greatest fear is stranger danger. Fear of strangers is likely to be hard-wired into our consciousness, having evolved as a strategy for survival amongst our distant ancestors. But Richard Louv suggests ‘the bogeyman syndrome’ may have become counter-productive today: Fear is the most potent force that prevents parents from allowing their children the freedom they themselves enjoyed when they were young.
Louv, R. (2005) Last Child in the Woods, p.123.
Ironically, the greatest dangers facing Britain’s children are not outside in the woods and fields, but in the very place their parents regard as a safe haven: their bedrooms. The vast majority of sexual abuse is carried out by relatives of the victim: parents or step-parents, uncles or ‘family friends’. Even when a stranger is involved, they often initially approach their victim via Internet chatrooms, posing as teenagers themselves. With
three out of four 8–11-year-olds, and two out of three 5–7-year-olds, now regularly using the Internet, more – and younger – children may
inadvertently putting themselves at risk.
Ofcom (2009) UK children’s media literacy: 2009 interim report. www.stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/full_report.pdf
When it comes to the most serious cases of all, involving the abduction and murder of a child, the statistics are revealing. On average
55 children in England and Wales are unlawfully killed each year. But eight out of nine victims are less than one year old, two out of three are under five, and the vast majority are killed by either a parent or step-parent – mostly in the family home.NSPCC (2012) Child killings in England and Wales: Explaining the statistics. www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/briefings/child_killings_in_england_and_wales_wda67213.html
According to a 2008 study by Play England, half of all children have been stopped from climbing trees, one in five banned from playing
conkers, and almost the same number told they cannot play games of tag.
Play England (2008), quoted in the Observer 3 August 2008. www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/03/schools.children
As Tim Gill observes, activities that earlier generations of children enjoyed as part of growing up are now being re-labelled as ‘troubling’ or ‘dangerous’.Tim Gill, quoted in the Observer 1 February 2009. www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/feb/01/child-welfare-inquiry
Because children are no longer allowed to venture outdoors, any who do stand out from the crowd. So whereas their behaviour would once have been accepted, it is increasingly regarded as abnormal and delinquent, leading to what Richard Louv has called ‘the criminalisation of natural play’.
Louv, R. (2005) Last Child in the Woods, p.27.
Cases include a family with three young daughters being reprimanded by police for picking daffodils;a group of youngsters being given anti-social behaviour warnings for ‘making too much noise’ while playing in a park; and a mother fined £75 because her little boy had thrown bread to ducks on their local park pond – a fine that was, after a storm of protest, withdrawn.
