Innocent Angels

In the 19th century, a German philosopher called Ludwig Feuerbach had an interesting theory on God. He said humans have a tendency to ascribe all their best qualities – compassion, kindness, love – to God and keep all their worst qualities – selfishness, hatred – to themselves. I’m simplifying to the point of inaccuracy by the way, but Hegelian philosophers make it difficult to summarise their ideas. It sometimes feels as if Britain has done this to its children. We have painted them in absurdly pastel colours, as perfect little angels, and begun to view adulthood as something inexplicably dark and worrying. We have paid a high price. More than a quarter of England’s primary schools now do not have a single male teacher, leaving 4,587 school staffrooms populated solely by women. People in the street are extra cautious even coming into contact with children, for fear of some mad accusation being made against them. The journey to adulthood has become a schizophrenic, jagged road in which our little angels are turned into threatening hoodies, a sort of sub-human faceless tribe dedicated to beating up old ladies.

The UK now regularly appears at the bottom of Unicef tables for child well-being across industrialised countries. Paradoxically, we have made our children less safe. When we distance childhood from adulthood, when we create a sterile space in between adults and children, we dis-incentivise well-meaning strangers from looking out for children in public. We make well-meaning adults think twice before they look after children walking down the street on their own. We prompt suspicion and mistrust in communities which previously did a perfectly good job of looking after children themselves.

Paedophilia – the outrage from which all of this emanates – is, scientifically, a kind of sexuality. It’s a very tragic sexuality, but a sexuality nonetheless. It’s unclear whether it can be treated, for many of the same reasons we cannot turn homosexuals into heterosexuals or visa-versa, even if we wanted to. We can enforce psychological counselling, and in some cases instigate pre-emptive incarceration if we believe someone will act on their urges. In many cases – but by no means all – the sufferer will be strong enough to resist their urges. What we cannot do – or should not do – is hand the issue over to the braying impulses of the mob. This can take the form of actual mobs, like that we saw when the News of the World irresponsibly published the names and details of convicted paedophiles in 2000, or the mob mentality of shrieking tabloid over-reactions. These merely simplify the issue and put children’s relationship with adults further into deep freeze. Parents become paranoid and that, in turn, ultimately makes children less safe.

Children are part of our culture, even if they must be protected from certain aspects of it. I’m the kind of person who generally believes Britain has much more to teach Europe than Europe has to teach us. But in this, we should take a lesson from how they go about things on the continent. Remember your last holiday in Spain or France or Italy? How children played outside in the restaurants and cafés at 11 at night, with their parents happily drinking wine beside them? In Europe, children are part of life, not a divorce from society. New parents do not withdraw into a parallel world where no fun can be had and late nights are a thing of the past. And childhood is not treated in the naive, improbably perfect way it is treated here.

When we talk of children like angels, and turn all adults into suspects, this is what happens; insane health and safety regulations, a reduction in male teachers – with all the absence of positive male roles that entails – and an increased danger to children from sexual predators because of the overly cautious approach adults now take to the young. The path we’ve walked down has taken us to a very strange place. There is a better way. We just have to get over our strange attitudes and incorporate children into society. They are not angels. They are just us, but earlier. We need to protect them. But we also need to stop losing our sanity over how perfect they are.

This comment was written by Ian Dunt for politics.co.uk and does not necessarily represent my opinion on all points he mentioned.