The Children's Society | August 2021 | Good Childhood Report 2021

The Children's Society seeks to understand how young people feel about different aspects of their lives. Their report -the Good Childhood Report 2021- shows the latest trends in children's well-being and reports on children's responses to the Good Childhood Index, and employs measures of personal well-being and measures of self-reported well-being. 

Some of the key messages from the report:

They report that school, friendships and appearance continue to cause the greatest dissatisfaction in adolescence. 

  • Children's happiness with life as a whole, friends, appearance and school was significantly lower in 2018-19 than when the survey began in 2009-10.
  • More children were unhappy with their appearance and school in 2018-19 than other aspects of life.
  • There are some consistent gender differences across waves: boys have, on average, been happier with their appearance than girls (although boys' scores have also declined in recent years). Girls have repeatedly been happier with schoolwork.
  • Females and children attracted to the same/both genders have poorer outcomes across all four measures.
  • Income was more strongly related to emotional and behavioural difficulties, and attempted suicide. A larger proportion of children in the lowest income group had poor outcomes for these two measures than those in the middle, high, and very high income groups.
  • The only significant difference between those from white/minority ethnicities was for attempted suicide. A lower proportion of children from ethnic minority backgrounds reported having attempted suicide than in the white ethnic group (Source: The Children's Society).

The Good Childhood Report 2021 [report]

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