In the 'developed' world of today the birth rate is under two children per family (about 1.9 here, 1.7 in Australia and 1.2 in Japan). The divorce rate is approaching 40 per cent in the UK, North America and Australia. Moreover, the economic map of the world is being redrawn by the multinational conglomerates. Less publicised is the pivotal role of women in the economy, which is slowly redrawing it too.
Women rarely command the big salaries or the headlines that the male captains of industry command. A Government report published last month by the Women's Unit showed that working women in the UK earn up to 250,000 less than their male counterparts over their lifetimes.
Yet women are accessing the workforce in significant and increasing numbers; there is evidence to show that more women are likely to be in some sort of employment (albeit 'flexible' , a euphemism for insecure and ill-paid) than men in the traditional and disappearing heavy industrial concentrations in England.
The slow progress towards social justice and equality between the sexes is moving women to the point where they can make choices about marriage, family and work that were largely denied them in the past.
In Australia, for example, the percentage of women who have never married has tripled since 1976 and is now approaching 25 per cent. Some 15 per cent of all families there are single-parent ones, with 26.6 per cent of children now born to unwed mothers. There is a trend, less marked than in Finland or in Sweden, towards 'de facto' marriages and an obvious renegotiation of the meaning of the marriage contract and all that it implies.
The figures are remarkably similar for England, where some 30 per cent of children are born to unwed mothers, and we have the highest rate in Europe of single mothers in their teens. Despite efficient contraception, teenagers in England are notoriously unlikely to use it. A BBC programme broadcast this year claimed that some 65 per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds it interviewed said they had had unprotected intercourse.
The family, therefore, is changing. What Giddens calls 'coupledom' means that contracts and understandings vary, that marriage is not the only way for heterosexuals to live together and breed, that different expectations have become quite commonplace. For many people the quality of companionship has become more important than the title of the contract.
Throughout the richer parts of the world there is a tendency for professional women to delay childbirth, and this may have some serious implications for human development, work and family experiences. We know that the mythical 'average professional woman' has slightly under two children; she has her first at about 25 and her second in her late twenties, or early thirties. We also know that the vast majority of such women are back at work within 13 months of giving birth. So who looks after the child?
In countries without good, accessible, means-tested or affordable state childcare (and few are as good as the Scandinavian countries in this respect), children may experience varied and haphazard circumstances. Some studies in central Canada have reported that a child may experience an average of 12 to 13 carers by the age of three.
Such shifting may not be desirable as part of the early socialisation of our children. The other side of the coin may not be that desirable either: mother (just occasionally father) at home with one child; no siblings or grandparents in this mobile society nearby, no romps in the park or playing outside in an urban sprawl of dangerous roads.
The term 'turbulence' is one that I have sometimes used for the experiences of the child moved from carer to carer. The other situation is, in effect, the 'lonely, only child'. Are either set of circumstances desirable? Will turbulence lead to an inconsistency of attitudes and modes of interaction, a lack of stability and permanency of love? What problems are we storing up for ourselves and future generations?
Should we, instead of government initiatives for education on the sanctity of the family, recognise as our Scandinavian neighbours do that women will work, that they have the right to work and the right to make choices, including, as one Australian demographer put it, not putting up with boring, oafish men any longer?
Under such circumstances we need to ensure that, for whoever needs it (and society surely does), there are good nursery schools, drop-in centres and early childhood education units readily available everywhere. This is an area where we really need high investment. What is the point in disturbing, and perhaps ruining, the life of a young child whose mother may have to work rather than wish to work, and then spending ten times that amount of money on dealing with delinquency or recidivism later in that child's life? We have got our sums wrong.
It is evident that the politicians have at last got some of this message and the Government is beginning to invest in early care and education, though I fear they may simply see it as 'forcing-houses' for numeracy and literacy, rather than as rich and attractive forms of love and emotional and social development. Our children need to 'be' as well as 'become'. They are not merely little economic investments, nor time-bombs, waiting to happen. The quality of our culture and its essential fairness must surely be a greater goal.
Closely allied to this changing social context is that of the changing conclusions from neurological research. While this is an area of some real dispute, there are certain features which seem fairly secure. During the first three years or so of a child's life, the brain is immensely plastic and responsive. In the foetal stage the brain is building billions of brain cells. After birth trillions of connections are gradually established and these form the structures or 'maps' that govern the co-ordination and transmission of information. The constant change in brain networks and in their sophistication is the direct result of contact and observation, and of repetition and curiosity.
Processes of selective amplification occur in direct relationship to the frequency and stimulation of the environment. All of this is embedded in attachment, consistency, mimicry, such that in reality all learning is through social interaction.
Neuron-synapse connections are produced in overabundance during the early post-natal period and those concerned with the mapping of responses seem crucially linked to interactions between the child, its parents and carers. The characteristic way in which a close adult behaves will especially influence the child's emotional behaviour and this seems also to play a major role in helping establish the individual patterns of brain development, thus setting those ever-more-common avenues of expectation which begin to typify little Emma's or Tom's responses to the environment.
Childcare professionals get to recognise those 'typical' responses in the nursery. No wonder some writers (Silva and Stanton 1996) produced some evidence suggesting one might even predict long-term delinquency as early as age three! Some researchers also believe that the notion of 'critical periods' of learning is hugely important, that there are peak times for absorbing, say, language, or peer social skills; and even that the brain is less adaptable to social learning as we age.
There are, then, two basic points to bear in mind as we shape our children's futures:
l We need to be much more aware that marriage is a dynamic, changing system of contracts, and that many of us, perhaps the majority, will experience divorce and different arrangements. Children will continue to be brought up in such changed circumstances and we need to make conditions optimal for all.
2 The research on brain development and child development leads us to realise that the child is massively sensitive and aware in the first three years of life, that this is the critical stage for learning, and that society needs a much more attractive, cohesive organisation of early care and education. To provide anything less than this will be to mortgage our society's future. l
References
Bruer, J T (1999) 'Neural connections; some you use; some you lose', Phi Delta Kappan, December, pp264 -277
Silva, P and Stanton, H (1996) From Child to Adult: The Dunedin Multi-disciplinary Health and Development Study, Oxford University Press
Philip Gammage holds the Lilian de Lissa Foundation Chair in Early Childhood Research, South Australia and is education adviser to the State Department of Education and a consultant for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in early childhood and care.
