Child poverty rises as the underclass falls behind

Has there ever been a time in British history when there were such great contrasts in childhood experience? When we sent some children up chimneys, perhaps. But if we believe Lark Rise to Candleford, the typical late Victorian child (at least in a country area) was packed off outside with a crust of bread and told to play with siblings and peers while mother got on with her chores. That was not so different from what happened to contemporaries from rich homes. They were sent to boarding schools or, at best, consigned to the care of live-in nannies. To be sure, the poor children were often hungry, but so were the ones at Eton and Harrow. If anything, the former enjoyed a less violent upbringing, with few of the fearsome beatings then meted out at public schools.

Today's poor children, unlike those of the Victorian era, are a minority, but they might as well be living on a different planet from their affluent contemporaries. One group is more protected, more fretted over, more lavishly provided for than any generation in history. Their parents pore over child-rearing manuals, go to astonishing lengths to secure places in the "best schools", hire private tutors, fill every spare minute with improving activities, provide broadband connections (with internet access carefully supervised, naturally) and maintain constant vigilance against paedophiles and speeding motorists. One headteacher has called them "helicopter parents", keeping their children's lives in general and their education under perpetual surveillance.

For the poor children - and I accept these are generalised caricatures to which there are many exceptions - contact with adults is confined to occasional shouting and slapping. They miss out on sports or drama clubs or learning musical instruments, fail to do their homework, turn to cigarettes and booze, and spend most evenings hanging out with their mates on the street. They are the sort who end up in trouble with the police and who suffer most of the ill-treatment - for example, the nose, rib and thumb holds used in young offenders' institutions - of which the UK children's commissioners complain in this month's submission to a UN committee (see 11million.org.uk under "adult info").

In truth, these children probably have a more traditional childhood than their middle-class peers. But modern Britain doesn't tolerate children who have been left to their own devices. It sees young people hanging around on the streets as automatically guilty of antisocial behaviour, a view that is simply not shared by other Europeans. It sees children as creatures to be feared: according to a report last month from the Institute for Public Policy Research (Make Me a Criminal by Julia Margo and Alex Stevens), we are far less likely than Germans or Italians to intervene if, for example, we see 14-year-olds vandalising a bus shelter. Instead, we ring the police, with the result that youths guilty of little more than boisterousness become criminals.

The disparity in childhood experiences reflects the extent of inequality and the persistence of child poverty. As the latest official statistics show, child poverty has been rising again since 2004-2005. Labour promised to halve it by 2010-2011; it has managed so far to reduce it by only 15 per cent. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Gini coefficient, the internationally accepted measure of inequality, is higher than when Labour came to power and equal to the highest it has been in 47 years.

Our expectations of parenthood have become exactingly high. Impoverished parents struggle to meet them. They are stressed, harassed and short of time. They lack the money and transport to organise improving leisure activities, the cultural capital to help with educational development, the know-how to get the best schooling and the housing to provide quiet study space. Above all, they are unable to provide models of successful adulthood.

As the children's commissioners point out, despite the government's insistence that work is the best route out of poverty, the majority of poor children live in families where at least one adult is employed. But the employment will probably be ill-paid and transitory. No wonder that the highest aspirations of poor children are to become show business or sporting celebrities or that their strongest role models are the local drug dealers they meet on the street who, in many poor areas, will own the flashiest cars and wear the most expensive clothes.

Meanwhile, middle-class parents - seeing the plight of the underclass - are all the more determined to see that their own children do not fall into it. They redouble their efforts to occupy their offspring with more wholesome activities and to ensure that they acquire the credentials to provide steady, remunerative employment.

The two nations thus drift further and further apart, and the effect on childhood is even more marked than it was in the 19th century.

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