Motherload

A Good Childhood is a report for the Children's Society. I'd never heard of it, but my husband got it for work. I think he was in part inspired to buy it by the terrible UN report back in around 2006, which put the UK at the bottom of the heap for good places to raise kids. The report's been put together by Richard Layard and Judy Dunn, although they are really only the final adjusters, synthesizing an absolutely huge amount of research, that has been done on the state of childhood and all that contributes to it (ie the whole of British society, saturated in consumerist capitalist ideology). Richard Layard is the economist who wrote Happiness , and the report is written in a delightful avuncular style, which just makes my heart melt. It's very tough: we hear about the dreadful state of the UK education system, about mental ill-health in children and young people, and the terrible impact of consumerism, substance abuse, violent games, and overworked parents. Yet because ...

I've been reading The Lottie Project by Jacqueline Wilson to my daughter, Beauty. I have to confess that I look forward to the evening read specifically because this book is so excellent. My first foray into Wilson, and I'm hooked. The story moves between Charlie's account of her life at school and with her young mother, Jo, and sections excerpted from Charlie's Victorians school project. She has hit upon the idea of writing her project in the form of a kind of diary, the servant girl Lottie's life. Each chapter about Charlie is headed with themes such as 'Family', 'Sunday, 'Courtship' and so on. As the story unfolds, we realize that each chapter is then mirrored or echoed by Lottie, who discusses a parallel theme in her own life. Charlie and Lottie are two halves of the same person, modern day Charlotte, and her imagined understanding of a Victorian underling. Jo is a single mum. The way Wilson writes about single parent family life opens up th...