Researcher, leave them kids alone
The qualities we value in children both are and aren’t changing.
Some data from one of Slow Futures’ favourite data sources got some wider airplay last week thanks to a new report by King’s College London’s Policy Institute.
The report, led by Professor Bobby Duffy, analysed World Values Survey data to explore how parenting attitudes are changing, both over time and around the world. It’s an excellent study, and you should download it here.
The finding that led the press release was focussed on one of the biggest changes in the data (fair enough, I suppose) – that in 2022 Britons placed a much lower value on children being obedient compared to both other countries and the past. Overall, the proportion of people who said that obedience was a good quality in a child was just 12% - down from 42% in 1990 and 47% in 1999.
Interestingly, this wasn’t the only substantial change since 1990. In the chart below, we highlight three areas in which our values have changed very significantly since 1990. The data is indexed to allow us to measure the magnitude of change. For all three of these qualities, they are either twice as important to us as they were thirty years ago, or half as important.
The drop in obedience is interesting because it’s the most recent change. In 2009 the value we placed on it was essentially the same as it had been for the previous 20 years. Religious faith has been on a similar trajectory to obedience (albeit from a lower base, it’s dropped from 20% seeing it as a good quality in 1990 to just 8% now) with much of the decline happening in the last 10-15 years. Imagination is the other quality we value very differently now to 1990. But the trend here is the polar opposite of obedience and religious faith: it’s a positive change, and it happened in the 1990s.
But as you know, this newsletter focusses on the less dramatic changes. Our next group of qualities are ones that have changed since the 1990s, but only moderately. The data is indexed again, to show the magnitude of change, rather than the absolute level.
Today, we are more likely to want children to be more independent, harder working and more determined than we were in the past. But we place slightly less value on thrift. With the data collected in the first half of 2022 and before the most severe impacts of the cost of living crisis it’s possible that would change if repeated now.
The increase in emphasis on independence and determination go hand in hand with the headline finding on obedience. But there’s a curious delay in the trends. The increase in importance of independence and determination happened in the 1990s and early 2000s – meaning there was an unfortunate period in the late noughties when we wanted children to be both independent and obedient. Those poor Gen Zs.
But most interesting are the things that aren’t really changing at all.
There are four enduring values that we’re just as likely to want to see in children now as we were in the 1990s. Some of these are almost universal – 84% say it’s important for children to have good manners (90% in 1990) and 78% say it’s important for them to be tolerant (79% in 1990).
What does this mean?
There’s a nice consistency in the qualities we value in children and the values we’d like to uphold ourselves. As we explored a couple of months ago, we’re rigid sticklers for the rules and consistently think that cheating – whether on a fare, benefits or tax – is morally unjustifiable. Kids: adults may be many things, but we’re apparently not hypocrites.
There’s not been much change in what we value in children at all this century. Most of the significant shifts in the data happened in the 1990s, and have been stable ever since. Mostly, the qualities we value in children isn’t changing at all – which makes the stark decline in obedience all the more interesting, because it’s basically the only thing that has shifted over the past ten years or so.
Some of the data reveal a great degree of polarisation. Other than good manners and tolerance, no single quality is valued by more than about half of the population (independence at 52%, then hard work at 47%).
Inter-generational conflict is often over-egged, likely a symptom of online culture wars. In reality, different generations tend to have a lot of values in common, as these data suggest. Adults in 1990 (born between about 1900 and 1970) value mostly the same things as adults today (born between about 1930 and 2000).