Britain still has the worst rate of child casualties in Europe.4 The other major cause of death among children and young people is suicide. Road fatalities (but not injuries) have declined in recent years; but, say Roadpeace (a charity for road traffic victims), the statistics are misleading, as there has been a dramatic fall in the number of children allowed out on the roads. Children from lowest income groups have the highest risk of death for all types of accident.Deaths due to accidents or violence, ages 5-9, per 1,0001841-45 9.01946-50 0.81970 0.31990 0.24 Nearly 50 per cent of fatal accidents involving children are road accidents. SIDS peaked in 1988 and then declined, falling most dramatically in 1992 (partly because of a health education campaign) and levelling out afterwards.4 Subsequently, accidents - fire, drowning, traffic and cycling accidents - are the greatest child-killer, accounting for one in three deaths to children aged 5-14 and about two-thirds of deaths between 15-19. In 1991, the figures were 27 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. Boys' survival rate to age 20 is lower than that of girls, but the gap between them is narrowing.Life expectancy at birthMALES FEMALES1841 40 yrs 42 yrs1950-52 66 711990-92 73 794 Traditionally, infant mortality is seen as the key measure of child health:Perinatal deaths per 1,000 births (under one week, including stillbirths)1946-50 401970 23.51990 8Deaths under 1 year per 1,000 births1946-50 361970 181990 84 The main killer in infancy is cot death, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which accounts for one in three deaths between 28 days and one year.
With others, such as those on child poverty, comparisons with the past are of limited use as definitions of poverty are constantly updated.Finally, there is the question of what the figures mean. Are the growing numbers of home computers producing a generation of isolated, unhealthy video-game junkies, or will tomorrow's world be peopled by computer-literate, resourceful, culturally tolerant, international communicators? Such questions can only be answered in the light of what we start with - our personal attitudes and beliefs.Deborah HolderLIFE AND DEATHSize of child population (under 20)1841 3 million1911 14.4 million1991 13 million4 In 1841, children under 20 made up 47 per cent of the male population and 45 per cent of the female population. Pre-teenage children are particularly vulnerable: one in 15 British children will be killed or injured on the roads.The figures gathered here paint a picture of the changing life-patterns of British children Some are hard facts: the population figures, for instance. She was not required to eat grey meat, lumpy powdered mashed potato and tinned peas, semolina and prunes "We normally had beefburgers, half a bun, and chips And they did baked beans And mixed veg - like all chopped up little bits. And turkey drummers."As an adult, I am appalled by this pandering to fast-food cravings "Where are the greens?" I want to protest. Where is the education in such unvarying pap? But if I were a child, if I still had to eat the stuff ... that's another matter.IT MAY have become comforting to believe - not least since James Bulger - that society is damaging children.
Adults want to hang on to the idea of childhood, or at least of their own childhoods, as a once-upon-a-time, happy-ever-after story. That notion of childhood articulates our projections, longings, altruism - some of our best feelings. But has the idyll of childhood really been fatally undermined?Not all childhoods ever were ideal. A lot has always depended on parents, and parents remain what they ever were: a mixed bunch, ranging from the effortlessly brilliant through the effortfully oppressive to the heedless and hopeless. Insofar as communal circumstances have changed - the outward, social conditions - it is true that we inhabit a more violent, commercialised culture.
Yet it is also a culture of staggering, breathtaking opportunity, in which adults are publicly and self-consciously preoccupied with the welfare and development of children.My conviction of averageness was partly a way of contending with a sense of limitations. (Among other things, I grew up before much feminism had filtered through to Wanstead, before grammar school boys, even, were commonplace in the upper tiers of Whitehall or the City.) Lucy is growing up in a world powered by instant satellite and computer communication. At school she can converse instantaneously on the Internet with someone in Sweden or San Francisco. She doesn't expect to get an office job in the City, to catch the Central Line every day looking stylish in navy and green She thinks she might be a lawyer, or a paediatrician For her, Tizer and salad cream are not luxuries. !NOW AND THEN: AN INDEX OF CHILDHOODThere are two kinds of statistics: those that reflect the actualities of the world, and those that reflect personal attitudes and beliefs Where children are concerned, the latter predominate. Politicians, educationalists, social workers - all have axes to grind. And, since it appears to be a condition of adulthood to see the past as a gentler, easier time, many grown-ups are emotionally predisposed to believe that life is harder for today's children than it was in their day.The figures don't always back up this perception - and, when they do, it is not always the full story.
Take child suicide, potentially a measure of unhappiness and anxiety. Figures suggest that it has grown more common, but, warn the Samaritans, in the past coroners would often record child suicides as accidental deaths to spare parents' feelings Today, suicides are more often recorded as such. The same logic can be applied to the apparent rise in child abuse, less likely to reflect a real rise than it is to reflect our recent acknowledgement that something so dreadful exists, and the subsequent rise in reports.But while the statistical picture of childhood across the generations is not straightforward, two things are clear. Parents are worried; and they may be worrying about the wrong things. They worry most about sexual abuse, abductions and child murder; yet there is no firm evidence that these things are any more common than they were 50 years ago. None the less, these fears curtail our children's freedom - and encourage them to grow fat and unhealthy from too much time spent at home or in the back of the car, safe but inactive.We worry endlessly about drugs, which are responsible for only a tiny percentage of deaths among children, but fail to rethink our attitudes to alcohol, a contributory factor in many violent crimes against children. In 1996, it is likely that as many children will die in road accidents as will die from infectious diseases (and 10 times as many as will be murdered).
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