Despite being least affected by the virus itself, children and young people bore the brunt of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. When schools were closed, playgrounds taped up and play outlawed, children’s lives were closed down. The catastrophic impact on children and young people’s education, mental health, wellbeing, and life chances is becoming ever clearer, with the most disadvantaged suffering disproportionately.
In May 2020 Liz Cole and Molly Kingsley founded UsForThem to advocate – in an often hostile climate – for children to be prioritised during the pandemic response. Having heard from thousands of families, and having often clashed with policymakers, they have a unique perspective on how the state’s response to the pandemic has affected our children.
Here they document their shocking findings: how completely children’s health and welfare were sacrificed for that of adults; how policymakers appeared to disregard the harms they were causing; and how adults charged with protecting the young stood by and watched as children visibly struggled or slipped out of sight altogether. This dereliction of duty should haunt us for decades to come.
With exclusive testimony from academics, politicians, scientists, educators, and parents, as well as former Children’s Commissioners, the book exposes the problems at the heart of policymaking which led to the systemic and ongoing betrayal of children. From public health to politics, and from media discourse to safeguarding, the authors show how children were too often used as the means to further adult interests. Ahead of the public inquiry, the authors call for an honest appraisal of what went wrong, and commitment from stakeholders to reimagine – not just recover – childhood.
Inversion of Nature
A photo circulating on social media in summer 2021 shows a scene which would have been unimaginable in 2019. In it, a row of small children – aged four or five perhaps – line up holding hands. They are all masked. Behind them stands a row of adults, one of whom is the Governor of New York. None of the adults are masked, and their smiles beam out at the camera. It is an archetypal example of the inversion at the heart of our global pandemic response.
Over the last two years the youngest members of society have often borne the heaviest burden of Covid restrictions, even though the risk from Covid-19 increases dramatically with age. This has created a deep and seemingly perverse inequity between adults’ and children’s lives, spanning contexts and borders. Indeed, it has become so ubiquitous that it risks becoming normalised.
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A pre-pandemic 2019 Public Health England strategy document lays out its vision and goals for the next five years. The document notes that ‘Giving children the best start in life is vital for a healthy thriving society. The foundations of good physical and mental health, healthy relationships and educational achievement are laid in preconception through to pregnancy and the early years of life, which is when many inequalities in health often begin.’ In crisis, we chose to cast aside these principles and priorities and inverted our public health paradigm by requiring the young to sacrifice their own health and wellbeing to safeguard that of adults. In doing so, we have shattered our implicit social contract.
Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University, believes that this societal breach is evidence of a more general ‘rise of individualism.’ She says, ‘Surely, all of us over the age of 50 should have said, “Do what you like to us, let’s protect younger people”... And of course, you should protect grandma, but there are ways... to ensure we protect the elderly. But the focus of the elderly themselves is to protect the children. Everyone protects the children. That’s the fundamental reason to be alive – to celebrate life. If you don’t do that, what’s the point?’
Far from celebrating life, we have stunted it.
We leave this chapter with an illustration from the natural world.
In the brutal landscape of the Arctic Circle, reindeer do whatever it takes to protect their young. When the herd is threatened, the animals stampede in a cyclonic formation, making it impossible for predators to target an individual. A swirling wall of adult deer on the perimeter shields the fawns at the heart of the circle from harm.
How is it that the UK and most Western democracies have failed this basic tenet of nature, systematically and deliberately placing our young on the outside of our societal herd and demanding that they shoulder a burden that should never have been theirs to carry?
The Way Forward
Parental advocacy, and accountability, while crucial, are only pieces of the jigsaw.
Many adults would now accept that we have just lived through an unprecedented intergenerational transfer of wealth and harms. It is not enough, though, to merely acknowledge this. We must also try to correct it.
The reason for children’s lack of representation in politics boils down to the fact there is no incentive for their interests to be furthered – especially where their interests conflict with other sectors of society.
Children don’t vote. But what if they did?
The outcomes from that lack of representation speak for themselves and in light of those we believe there is now a serious case to be made for lowering the voting age to 16 – if children of that age are old enough to make decisions about irreversible medical treatments for themselves, are they not also old enough to vote? However, by Scotland’s example, where children can vote at 16, lowering the eligible age wouldn’t go far enough – the country has been no better a shining light for children’s rights over the course of the pandemic than England, and in some material respects, worse.
‘Demeny’ voting grants parents a partial (0.5 vote) to cast as a proxy on behalf of each of their children, to help better reflect the interests of the next generation in decision making. David Runciman goes further, making a plausible case for lowering the voting age to six, ‘effectively extending the franchise to any child in full-time education.’ He argues that the policy would help to bridge the intergenerational divide, and that children have to live with the consequences of decisions made by leaders for longer than anyone else. In refuting some of the common arguments against such a move he points out that while children are influenceable, so are adults, and while children do not pay taxes this is not a requisite for adults to vote. He quotes political theorist John Wall who says, ‘It is the only way to pressure political leaders to respond to the lived experiences of all instead of just some of the people.’
In 2019 we, like many others, would have dismissed these ideas as too radical. We do not now.
While we do not necessarily advocate giving children as young as six the vote, tame and tentative steps have failed children so radical thinking is necessary.
Real, tangible representation of children in politics must be made a reality, and it must be done quickly. Anything worthwhile involves complexities, and this is no different. The issues it raises – of competence, practicality, knowledge and logistics – are intricate, but not insurmountable.
For that reason we propose a Royal Commission on Childhood, the sole remit of which would be to consider possible options to enfranchise children’s interests in public life and to make a definitive, actionable recommendation in time for the next General Election.
Because we have a decision to make. As a society, are we going to put children, and all they stand for, front and centre, or are we, like Sir Al Aynsley-Green, going to be sitting here in 10, 25, 50 years from now collectively hand-wringing over similar reports with the same conclusions, still gathering dust, unexecuted? We must opt for the former, and when we do we can look ahead to a reimagined future, which is by turns happier, healthier and more prosperous. A future where children are no longer betrayed, but honoured.
Read more here.