I caught this on BBC the other morning:

“I think children act like adults at an alarmingly early age,” said Dame Jacqueline Wilson, who has sold more than 30 million books. Her remarks came as a poll by her publisher suggested that more than half of parents believe childhood is now over by 11.

Which is of course a clever bit of publicity to launch her book. But it’s an interesting topic and my first thought was that its true - childhood and something I’ve long had a problem with is the tendency for work done with young people to put them in positions of adult responsibility (rather than allowing them to participate as children/young people).

Once I got off my high horse though I thought back to the children we work with in Malawi - their education finishes at primary level and then they may have to fend for themselves or even support their siblings. Then I thought its not so long ago children in this country could have been in a similar situation - the school leaving age was younger, think of the workhouses and what about the age of marriage?

Well turns out the BBC have done their own bit of research which you can read here asking the question ‘Was Childhood ever Innocent?’ What I like about this article is it shows the concern that older generations always have for the youth of the day! The article concludes with the comment “Far from growing up too fast, they don’t grow up fast enough.”

The figures I found about the age of marriage werent all that startling - probably more interesting is that up until 1875 the age of consent in the UK was 12 years old, in 1875 it was raised to 13! and 10 years later it was raised to the current age of 16. I’ve also taken some interesting info from the Channel 4 ‘Adult at 14′ site showing the age of consent and voting rights in different countries:

Which I guess shows theres no relationship between having sex and needing to be considered an adult?