In such an atmosphere, it’s nearly impossible to come to grips with the problems of our children. Each family is left to its own devices to raise their children in spite of the obstacles.

Great observations, domajot. I have a pretty good idea of what I believe is best for my family but one can only control the internal family environment and to a limited degree set up the external environment. When everyone else is raising their children differently than I am, it’s a difficult feat. That doesn’t mean that there should be complete homogenicity either, but shared values among a community would be helpful. I find that sometimes my community veers too far to the conservative and traditional, but I wouldn’t want it to lean too far in the other direction either. A mixture that would preserve what was good about traditional family life while also embracing progress and diversity would be nice, but seems impossible in our polarized society.

I’m very gloomy about America’s prospects in the near term. Decisions are being made via fights between social extremists; the rational middle is disappearing fast.
The conservatives are upset because the word ‘scrotum’ appears in a children’s book They want to ban the word ‘imagination’ from school texts because of its connection to ‘magic’ (a non-Christian concept)
The politically correct Left insists that all doctors in texts be female and nurses be male. A lot of great American Literature is disappearing from classrooms, because some of the characters are typical of the politically incorrect male-doctor type. Read Diane Ravitch’s “Education After the Culture Wars’, and you despair.

The fight over language is just the tip of an iceberg of fighting about everything. I fear our society is disintegrating into separate enclaves. The libertarians want to move to New Hampshire to create heir own colony, so they don’t need to have anything to do with people of other stripes.

In such an atmosphere, it’s nearly impossible to come to grips with the problems of our children. Each family is left to its own devices to raise their children in spite of the obstacles.

On the whole, they want to live comfortably, but are not driven by dreams of extreme wealth or luxury. They value free time, vacations and travel more than luxury cars or lavish homes. They are avid gardeners, and spend more time tending to their greenery than watching TV. They spend little time grumbling about taxes, even though they pay more than we do, because they accept as natural the investment in the ‘common good’.
As a result, they are more relaxed, and the children grow up in a more relaxed atmosphere.
Contrary to Michael’s experience, I was struck by how well behaved children were in these countries. The only children I’ve seen acting up in public were American tourists.
Parks are quiet!

When children go to school, they bring all that background with them,
The same lesson plan applied to different groups of children can have very different results.

Of course, I realize that my impressions are only anectdotal. Sociologists may prove me wrong. Still, with every renewd contact, my impressions are reinforced.

It is an a priori report. As best as I can tell it doesn’t attempt actually tp determine how “well off” children are from country to country. Rather it constructs a model of what the study’s authors believe constitutes a good environment for children and, surprise!, it’s a system in which government plays a much larger role in daily life than it does in the US and UK.

Example: the report doesn’t deem number of children per family and proximity of other children as factors in child welfare. That implies they don’t think that opportunities for unstructured play are important, either.

Another problem with the report is the underlying assumption that one size fits all. I don’t believe there is an single perfect solution to child welfare. Quite to the contrary I think that the Dutch system is good for the Dutch and the British system suitable for the British. There’s more to differences in national character than language and GPS location.

Note also that “child welfare” as reckoned by the report is a pretty good proxy for homogeneity of population. I also don’t see any measure in this report of how children with special needs e.g. autism, cerebral palsy are treated under the various systems and, no, comparing the healthcare systems of countries doesn’t measure that. Kids with special needs are enormously better-treated in the US than in the UK, for example (the only systems with which I’m familiar in this area). Case loads for speech pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists in the UK are impossibly high.

There are literally dozens of other deficiencies in the report but the most significant one is irrelevance. What possible relevance is there in small differences between the treatment of children in the Spain compared to their treatment in Italy when there’s an enormous difference between the treatment of children in Sweden compared to their treatment in rural India?

As for the kids: We’re having a ‘cross partyline’ debate inside the government about day care centers right now. Maybe you already read about it in ‘Der Spiegel’?

I think guaranteed day care for all kids is a good idea. I know many young mothers who had to step back in their career plans because of problems with getting a good solution for the kids, and imho social skills are very important for children, too. In today’s suburbia, too many kids don’t have enough friends and not enough opportunities for safe outdoor playing, either.

Yes I will try to do something with it: one point though: please e-mail links about different subjects in the future.

However, sry, OT but I have to misuse this thread for anouncing urgent incoming news, from the NYT:
Documents captured from Iraqi insurgents indicate that some of the recent fatal attacks against American helicopters are a result of a carefully planned strategy to focus on downing coalition aircraft, one that American officials say has been carried out by mounting coordinated assaults with machine guns, rockets and surface-to-air missiles.
Read it all, it shows who the real enemy in Iraq still is!

Can you post a quick roundup for the readers, Mike?