The kids these days
In which country do children ignore the internet? Where do youngsters eat sprinkles for breakfast? And who has the most homework? Adam Lusher looks at the lives of young people in six very different nations
IN Amsterdam at 3pm, Benjamin, 9, is going for a swim with friends in the River Ij. There is no anxiety from his father Jan, 45, an urban planning consultant. “Why should there be? He has his swimming diploma and he knows to stay away from shipping.” Nor is there any need for Benjamin to worry about homework. He does not get any. “Treats” are not reserved for after meals, either. Many Dutch children start the day with hagelslag— bread topped with chocolate sprinkles. When it comes to toys, board games like Ludo are still bestsellers, although the Dutch version, in honour of its infuriating nature, is called Mens Erger Je Niet! (Don’t get worked up!). A recent Unicef survey found that Dutch children are the happiest in the world. Youngsters are treated as mini-adults — many 11-year-olds pick their own secondary school. Not that parents need worry. There are very few private schools and all the state schools are decent. “There’s less pressure on children to succeed,” says Paul van Geert, a professor of developmental psychology. “Parents see a happy childhood as very important.” Life expectancy at birth: 80 Homework: None until the age of 10 Latest online game craze: Minecraft — players do battle with night-time monsters Bestselling sweet: Drop — liquorice that can be sweet or intensely salty ON a patch of waste ground under one of New Delhi’s busiest railway bridges, Nishu, 5, a vegetable seller’s daughter, joins 50 children aged four to 15. They put down their Angry Birds backpacks and fall silent for Rajesh Kumar, 42, a shop owner turned volunteer teacher. The backpacks come from a donor touched by Kumar’s philanthropy. Nishu is among 34% of children who fail to finish primary school — she dropped out after the teacher beat her. Her friends under the bridge tell similar stories about government schools in which poorly trained teachers often turn up, write a problem on the blackboard and then leave. “They just come and leave without answering any questions,” says Bharat Mandal, 15. Middle-class children are rarely seen on the streets, and then only accompanied by their ayah (nanny), who is included in the price of a family ticket at Indian museums. In a country where space comes at a premium, however, many children sleep in the same room or bed as their parents until they are six or seven. Among India’s superrich teenagers, motorbikes are the craze. Life expectancy at birth: 65 Percentage of five- to 14-year-olds engaged in child labour: 12% Popular street game: Kite fighting — players paste their line with glue and powdered glass to try to cut the string holding their rival’s kite Obesity : Five out of 10 children in high-income families Monthly pocket money: 280 rupees (about R45) for (middle-class) seven to 14-year-olds, a rise of 200% in the past decade IN the Congo, children do not have just one mother. All Congolese women have the prefix “Mama” before their name, even if they do not have children. Many “mamas” will help to look after friends’ or relatives’ children, or are employed as nannies or housekeepers by welloff families. Breast milk is shared, too. Children oblivious to the internet’s charms love games like Bokwele — two teams draw a circle in the dust and place stones in the middle. The aim is to run and steal your opponents’ stones without being touched by them. But 42% of five to 14-year-olds are engaged in child labour. Kalala, 12, who likes singing and dancing and wears a faded T-shirt emblazoned with the image of a Harley-Davidson, was once one of them. Although education is free and compulsory until 16, in practice children are often required to earn money to help pay the teachers at chronically underfunded schools. Kalala’s father, a farmer, could not afford the fees, so, aged five, she had to work as a “sifter” at a diamond mine. Children forced by poverty into begging and theft can expect little mercy. A 2009 law raising the age at which juveniles were treated as adults to 18 supposedly ensured that no children went to adult jails. But it has been patchily enforced and 3 000 children are in adult prisons. “Every morning, you’re forced to work,” says Vincent, 16, who served time in a Kinshasa jail. “If you don’t, they beat you, pour water on you or lock you in a room.” Life expectancy at birth: 48 Average daily time on the internet: Zero Children per 1 000 dying before their fifth birthday: 170 ABDULATEF, an 11-year-old Arsenal supporter from Jeddah, likes computer games and going for camel rides on the beach. He plays football on a pitch overlooked by a huge model of the Koran. He prays five times a day. When school ends at 2.30pm, he is collected by the family chauffeur. Most middle-class families have at least one servant — and many adolescents will acquire their own personal servant. Yet even privileged youngsters cannot evade Saudi’s infamous sharia law. In 2010, a teenage girl who assaulted a teacher was sentenced to 80 lashes. Teenage boys and girls are forbidden to meet. To subvert the rules, “numbering” has become a rite of adolescent passage. Gangs of young men in cars, wielding signs displaying their cellphone numbers, chase cars with female passengers. The web has made interaction easier, but even virtual contact risks parental fury. A Riyadh father killed his daughter in 2008 when he caught her talking to a man on Facebook — denounced by radical clerics as a “gateway to lust”. In Riyadh, 18-yearold Sara explains the complexities: “With the phone, everyone can agree that it is forbidden, because Islam forbids a stranger to hear your voice. Online, he only sees your writing, so that’s more open to interpretation.”
Life expectancy at birth: 74 Number of brides under the age of 14: 5 622 — there is no minimum marriage age, but the government plans to set the limit at 16 Youth justice: Teenagers can be flogged and have limbs amputated LAST May, in the city of Nanjing, two teenage boys committed suicide — because they had failed to finish their holiday homework. China’s school system remains one of the most pressured in the world. Pupils start the day at 7am — by saluting the flag — and finish at 8.30pm after three hours of supervised homework. In the poverty-stricken countryside, meanwhile, children are often working the land rather than getting an education. Jianhong, 14, from the city of Guilin, admits furtively taking out his cellphone during “boring English lessons” so that he can “instant-message” his friends. Back home, he will battle them online. Until recently, the craze was for the multiplayer QQ Farm. Now it is combat games like Dungeon and Fighter. Once, children had the occasional sip of alcohol at family parties. But recent news stories report shops selling alcohol to minors and teenagers feeling “under pressure” to get drunk. Many say China’s one-child policy has spawned a nation of overindulged “little emperors and empresses”. One district nurse admitted spending a third of her monthly salary on miniature cars for her 16-year-old.
Life expectancy at birth: 73 School day: 80 hours a week (in cities), including Saturday mornings Pocket money: Urban teenagers get up to 17% of their families’ monthly income, but the average allowance is 250 yuan (about R430) LIKE all his friends at his Cambridgeshire primary school, Lewis, 10, was caught up in the craze for Trashies, the thumb-sized collectables. But when Lewis bought a “trash pack” for £10 (about R167) in February, he found it contained the 21st-century equivalent of a golden ticket: the ultra-rare Grimy Gold character. He sold it on eBay for £1 000. With a total of £7.3-billion of goods in their bedrooms, British children are among the most brandconscious in the world. Toys have become status symbols rather than playthings. Other anxieties have become almost traditional — Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate has long been the highest in western Europe; Britain’s binge-drinking culture ensures only Danish children get drunk more often in western Europe. The internet permeates almost every aspect of childhood. British children, posting “selfies” on Facebook and “sexting”, seem to be living in a virtual world that is baffling and alarming many parents. Meanwhile, a new generation of pushy parents has started filling their children’s lives with Saturday morning Mandarin classes, afterschool Kumon maths and private tutors. Life expectancy at birth: 80 Predicted Christmas bestseller: Furby Boom — an “interactive” version of the furry robot pet Percentage of five to 11-year-olds given private tutoring over the summer holiday: 27% (56% at private schools) Youth justice: The age of criminal responsibility (10 in England and Wales) is the lowest in western Europe and the rates of youth imprisonment are the highest—