Growing Up In An Ireland That Refuses To Cherish All The Children Equally
The recently published ‘Growing Up in Ireland’ report from the Economic and Social Research Institute makes for very sombre reading for anyone interested in building a fairer, more equal society.
The report, which covers the years 2017-18, is based on interviews with 8,000 nine-year-olds and their parents in the Twenty-Six Counties. The same cohort of 8,000 respondents, and their parents, have been regularly observed and interviewed from the age of nine months.
While there are some positives in the report - the vast majority of children reporting close relationships with their parents, regular contact with grandparents, a healthy interest in sport etc – the role that the socio-economic background of the children plays in determining the current and future trajectory of their lives cannot be ignored.
The report determined that the ‘children's experiences and outcomes were associated with their family circumstances’. A more direct wording would say that wealth and class permeated every key indicator examined.
Working class children were more than twice as likely to be overweight or obese as children from more financially affluent backgrounds. Similarly, children from wealthier backgrounds were generally healthier, with greater access to extracurricular activities such as dance and drama.
Of course, none of this comes as a shock. The fundamental inequality at the heart of Irish society has been well documented over many decades.
One of the starkest examples of inequality identified in the report relates to reading test scores. It found that children from lower socio-economic backgrounds who were high performers when younger are now being out-stripped by children from higher socio-economic backgrounds who had previously been weaker readers.
A damning indictment of the current system and the illusion that it nurtures all of the children of the nation equally.
Varadkar talks the talk of equality while implementing policies that deepen systemic inequality
In his address to the Fine Gael Ard Fheis in 2017, the then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar told delegates that Fine Gael was about the business of building ‘a republic of opportunities’.
And yet after more than a decade of continuous Fine Gael rule the opportunities for far too many children are determined not by their innate intelligence or work rate, but by the economic circumstances of their parents.
2017 was also the year that the interviews for ‘Growing Up in Ireland’ were conducted. In the intervening four years the housing crisis has deepened, negatively impacting on the tens of thousands of children living in substandard and/or insecure housing.
The Covid crisis too can only have deepened the class fault lines in Irish society and further widened the existing gulf of opportunity between children from poorer and wealthier backgrounds.
If you are sick of a system that pays lip-service to equality, while actively suppressing the potential of huge numbers of Irish children, then join us in the fight for a new Republic that will truly cherish all the children of the nation equally. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Get active today.