Читать книгу The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development - Группа авторов - Страница 98

It is reasonable to think that children’s well‐being mirrors the social and economic conditions in their life. The relationship between well‐being, mental health, and poverty is strong and far from being resolved (Hartas, 2019; Lund et al., 2010). In a study by Hartas (2019), mental health and well‐being were found to decrease for children in families with low income and parent education. Thoughts, behaviors and emotions are socialized primarily in the family environment; there is a direct influence between emotional development and well‐being and the kind of family to which children belong. Families shape emotions according to risk factors in relation to housing and socioeconomic status and these issues directly affect children’s feelings (Shaffer et al., 2012). Social life is organized in ways that the focus is on human relationships where relations and practices of care are an integral part of everyday ethics (Held, 2006). However, the ethics of care, concerned with fostering interdependency, social bonds, and reciprocal responsiveness to need across individual and wider social scales, are gradually replaced by economic rights. Globalization, initially presented as an international project that was equitable, working towards creating a level‐playing field for all, has brought divisions to the fore, outsourcing everything from products and services to care relationships, creating near slavery conditions, affecting low‐paid carers, predominantly women, and the care and socialization they offer to their children (Ehenreich, 1989).

Children and adolescents are the age groups most likely to live in poverty, with their families having increasingly reduced access to educational opportunities, decent housing, and food security (Hirsch, 2015). In a UK study funded by the Rowntree Foundation, of the 12 million working‐age adults and children in poverty, 8 million live in families where at least one person is in work. Employment no longer leads to lower poverty and further reductions of the incomes of low‐income families through rising inflation, changes to benefits and tax credits, and high housing costs continue to reduce the incomes available for families in poverty (JRF Analysis Unit, 2017). Inequality is thought to impact on well‐being and mental health via two related mechanisms. First, inequality causes direct stress due to social comparisons where less well‐off parents and children develop feelings of shame, moral failure, and “social defeat” when comparing themselves with economically better‐off people. Second, inequality erodes social trust and social cohesion, “leading to social fragmentation and leaving people vulnerable to psychosocial stressors” (Burns, 2015, p. 110). Both mechanisms shape socialization processes in that children grow up internalizing the causes and effects of disadvantage, resulting in feelings of shame and a sense of failure.

Trends in mental ill health have changed over time, manifesting themselves earlier, during childhood, and becoming increasingly gendered. Since the 1990s, traditional patterns of mental ill health appear to be reversed with the rates of depression increasing faster among children at younger and younger ages while rates of depression among people over 40 have remained stable (Zahn‐Waxler et al., 2008). Over the last 5 years, research has shown a growing gender divide in young people’s mental health and wellbeing (Finch et al., 2014; Hartas, 2019; Patalay & Fitzsimons, 2017). Less pronounced among boys and young men, self‐reported rates of anxiety and depression are rising sharply among preadolescent and adolescent girls, revealing a deeply worrying trend.

During childhood and as they enter adolescence, girls are told that gender equality is advancing, with gender having become a “protected” characteristic. However, what they experience in almost all domains of their life is quite the opposite. Since the 1990s, feminism as a social justice movement has turned into a form of corporate feminism, promoted because it makes “good business sense,” which seeks to empower girls and women through their participation in employment and position in the market (Fraser, 2009). This form of empowerment does not question existing economic structures but becomes part of them and further emboldens them. As inequality rises so does gender inequality because girls are disproportionally hit by cuts in public services (e.g., education). A report for Young Women’s Trust – a charity that supports women aged 16–30 in poverty or on low or no pay – showed a third of young women feel more anxious now than this time last year, due to money worries, lack of affordable housing, and insecure jobs. A quarter of women reported to be in constant debt and one in 10 is skipping meals (Young Women’s Trust, 2017).

These gendered forms of inequality reflect and reproduce neoliberal frameworks of accumulation that are inherently inequitable and exploitative. As Fraser (2009) and Eisenstein (2009) pointed out, whereas second‐wave feminism tended to focus on the interconnectedness of economic, cultural, and political injustice, in ensuing decades, these struggles have been sidelined by corporate feminism that does not account for unequal social and political structures. Instead, it has helped to legitimize a version of capitalist society that “runs directly counter to feminist visions of a just society” (Fraser, 2009, p. 99). Gender inequality shapes child socialization practices because it emboldens practices related to bullying, body shaming, sexual harassment, and everyday sexism. A study by Bucchianeri et al. (2014) found verbal abuse and sexual harassment to be closely connected to children’s well‐being, particularly in girls who reported lower self‐esteem and body satisfaction, depression, and self‐harm. Body shaming, weight‐based harassment, and sexual harassment are particularly potent correlates of mental ill health among girls resulting in reduced well‐being.