Young People

Greta Thunberg is looking for a way to get to Europe from America now that the climate summit has been switched from Chile to Spain.

Just a wee bit of background information: Chile is one of the most unequal countries in the world. The gap between the poor and the rich is huge and getting wider, and people have been out on the streets for weeks rioting and looting. At least 20 people have died at the hands of the police.

ITV in the UK mentioned Greta Thunberg in a kind of sneering way on Sunday's news: won't take a plane but expects other people to arrange her transport. As if it was her fault this conference had been moved halfway round the world at short notice.

We have a weird attitude to our young people - not just in the UK but right across the western world. On the one hand, we say we are dismayed at their lack of responsibility, but we don't actually give them any. We don't let them vote. In many cases, we don't even let them out. Life for many young people consists of school and home. They are shepherded around constantly by adults in cars. Then we complain they can't walk - as we say in Scotland - 'the length of themselves.'

This isn't new: I can remember being told by the mother of a 12 year old - 40 years ago - that her biggest problem was that the school had taken her child away from her. Her daughter had started to argue with her parents. She wanted her own life and refused to fit in with theirs. But isn't that what parenting is about? No one actually owns children. They're not chattels. Surely a parent's finest moment is when a child goes out into the world on their own?

We seem to be obsessed with the idea our kids will be kidnapped, raped and murdered. We tell them about 'stranger danger', despite the fact that 'strangers' are really the last people children and young people have to worry about. In fact, people are the last thing kids have to worry about. Cars and the pollution they cause are a bigger worry, but we are such hypocrites that grown-ups with grown-up concerns won't allow us to introduce a blanket 20mph speed limit in residential areas, never mind deal with the effect of pollution on the climate.

We can't even agree on a sensible Named Person Act for children at risk. Instead, we keep our children shut in at home playing games on computers and then we complain they don't understand how the world works.

We have infantilised our children, and ourselves, with this idiotic view of what parenting is about.

A century ago, our young people left school at 14 and were chucked into the workplace. Some of them ended up serving in the first world war at 16 and 17. You can see teenagers in many photos from the first half of the 20th century, dressed just like adults. There was no 'teenage' culture. Now there is and we adults act as if the kids invented it, rather than entrepreneurs with an eye on the music and clothing market.

It took us a long time to raise the school-leaving age, first to 15 and then to 16. Now we expect most young people to stay at school till they are 18. A lot are in education till they are - at least - 22. Many are tied to home because they can't afford to leave.

My sympathy, you'll have gathered, is with young people.

I know there will be people reading this who will immediately come back to me with 'You're not a parent - you don't understand'. The first part is true, but I reject the idea that only parents (good, bad and indifferent) are entitled to a say in how our children are brought up. Do I need to quote Hillary Clinton again? 'It takes a village.' I worked for 35 years with children and young people. And it's not like I grew up under a bush.

There are no experts when it comes to child-raising. But a bit of humility from us all helps a lot.