Children's experts have endeavoured to put parental fears for their children into perspective: the chance of abduction is apparently less than winning the lottery. Others evoke those halcyon days when children played happily in the streets. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has reported that the greatest encroachment on public play space, according to young people themselves, is the motor vehicle. And it is those in the most advanced countries who have been the hardest hit. Parks are likely to be littered with broken glass and, sometimes, dirty needles, though not paedophiles. Cycling is little fun with lorries rumbling past, oblivious to kids on bikes; and if young people cycle on the pavement, this may now be grounds for a criminal prosecution.
There is a very serious issue here though, because hanging around in public space was very much where children and young people used to develop their independence and their early skills of socialising. Much of the blame has been attached to paranoid parents, who are quite naturally anxious to protect their children. Unfortunately, parents seem to have transferred in their minds the long odds of abduction to the short odds of unfortunate, but often unavoidable, accidents that are synonymous with kicking a ball around, skipping or climbing trees. And those who try to organise any kind of public youth activities are themselves preoccupied with the increasing threat of litigation.
We have to step back and redress this balance through a serious review of available social space for children and young people that offers the possibility of meeting and mixing without fear of either stranger-danger or being labelled as yobs. Before we do so, however, how about a bit of lateral thinking, because what is interesting about the latest research is that it emanates from 10- and 11-year-olds themselves.
Maybe they are smarter than some of us give them credit for. Perhaps they have spotted the new political concern about healthy lifestyles and combating obesity. Their strategy, therefore, has been to trade on the deep-rooted fears of their parents, fuelled so easily by a sensationalist media, so that they can stay indoors, chatting to their mates on the mobile and munching crisps while they absorb the latest blockbuster from the video shop.
Howard Williamson is vice-chair of the Wales Youth Agency and a member of the Youth Justice Board, howard.williamson@haynet.com.
