“Lack of family life and pressure to be successful in school exams are harming younger children”, said Archbishop Rowan Williams, Primate of the Church of England and leader of the Anglican Communion. The archbishop was participating in the debate on childhood that opened in England in recent days, after a letter to the Daily Telegraph signed by over a hundred prominent psychologists and teachers had censured the lack of proper family life and children being forced at an ever more tender age into a school regime of continuous exams, with parents often absent. According to Jim Richards of the Catholic Children’s Society, “Great Britain has lost sight of the emotional and social needs of our younger children. We have the highest levels of drug consumption and self-mutilation in Europe. The rate of the prescription of medicines to our children is increasing more rapidly than in any other European country”. Meanwhile the Catholic Children’s Society, one of the leading charities for childhood in the UK has launched a survey on childhood, which will run for a year and a half.
