Thousands of girls in the North West are unhappy with their lives, with huge numbers struggling with the way they look, according to the latest Good Childhood Report.
Across Greater Manchester, our of an estimated total of 91,000 girls aged between ten and fifteen, nearly 12,400 were unhappy with life as a whole while nearly 31,00 expressed unhappiness with their appearance.
The Children’s Society’s annual state-of-the-nation review of young people’s well-being finds an estimated 31,000 girls aged 10-15 across the region say they are not happy with their lives overall – one in seven of all girls in that age group.
The picture is even starker when it comes to personal appearance, with the number of 10-15 year-old girls who do not feel happy with their looks reaching 77,000 across the North West – more than a third (34%) of the total.
The proportion of girls in the region who say they are unhappy with their lives or their appearance is based on the proportion for the UK as a whole.
Rob Jackson, North West Area Director at The Children’s Society, said: “It is desperately worrying that so many of our young people in the North West are suffering rather than thriving. Girls are having a particularly tough time and it’s clear that concerted action is needed to tackle this problem.”
One teenage girl said: “There are so many things that are difficult about being a young person. There are so many pressures from your friends, from your family. You don’t know who you are going to be, you are trying to find who you are in a certain way.”
Another said: “Girls feel pressured by the boys that they should look a particular way and that leads girls into depression or low self-esteem and makes girls feel ugly or worthless.”
Across the UK, an estimated 283,000 girls say they are not happy with their lives overall and 700,000 do not feel happy with their looks.
The picture for girls is even worse than it was five years previously, with the number unhappy overall up 21% between 2009/10 and 2013/14 and the number unhappy with their appearance in particular up 8% over the same period.
In contrast to the deteriorating situation for girls, the proportion of boys aged 10-15 who are unhappy with their lives has remained stable at one in nine, while the proportion of boys who say they are unhappy with their appearance continues to hover around 20%.
The picture for the North West is the same as for the rest of the UK because a breakdown of the figures shows no regional variation.
The trend builds on findings from last year’s Good Childhood Report, in which England ranked last out of 15 countries for happiness with appearance and also had the most pronounced gender differences of all participating countries. The same report suggested that gender differences in children’s well-being are not inevitable.
The reasons for the widening gender gap are unclear, but the report does find that emotional bullying such as name-calling, which girls are more likely to experience, is twice as common as physical bullying, which is more likely to affect boys. About half of all children aged 10 to 15 had been bullied at school in the past month, the report finds.
Separate research by the Office for National Statistics suggests that girls are much more likely to spend extended periods on social media, which has been linked to a higher risk of mental ill-health.
The Good Childhood Report, a collaboration between The Children’s Society and the University of York, highlights the clear link between unhappiness and mental health problems, underlining the importance of tackling low well-being to address mental ill-health. Boys and girls experience mental health problems in different ways. While boys aged 10 and 11 are less happy than girls with their school work and more likely to experience conduct and attention/hyperactivity problems, girls experience anxiety and depression significantly more than boys – and become increasingly unhappy with their appearance – as they get older.
The report, the latest in a series of studies into children’s lives based on surveys of thousands of young people, finds that at age 12, 10% of children overall are ‘languishing’ in lives they feel have little meaning and purpose – with low scores on both happiness with life and psychological well-being.
The research also finds that children’s perceptions and experiences of their local area, including on the quality of facilities, how safe they feel, and how much freedom they perceive they have, are clearly linked to how happy they feel. The two local problems with the strongest links to well-being are ‘noisy neighbours’ and ‘people drinking or taking drugs’.
The Children’s Society is calling on Government to take action to improve children’s happiness across the nation with a legal entitlement for children to be able to access mental health and well-being support in schools and FE colleges across England and Wales. The Government must also reaffirm its commitment to understanding, measuring and acting to improve children’s well-being.
Local authorities can also do a great deal to deliver change for children’s well-being, by listening to children’s views about what matters to them and making sure they are directly involved in decision making about their local areas.
Rob Jackson, North West Area Director at The Children’s Society, added: “All children deserve a happy childhood and we must never accept that it is somehow inevitable that so many children in the North West should live in distress. As a first step all children should be able to access mental health and wellbeing support in school. Children must be heard and helped.”
Responding to The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report, Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner and Chair of the Greater Manchester Mental Health Strategic Partnership Board, Jim Battle, said:
“This is a welcome report which highlights the issues and pressures faced by our children and young people, and emphasises the important role we all have in safeguarding and supporting them when they need it.
“It’s no secret that mental health services have long been under-resourced and under-funded – a fact the government should be ashamed of. But we cannot afford to neglect the mental health and wellbeing of our younger generation and I fully support The Children’s Society’s call for investment in children and young people’s mental health services.
“In Greater Manchester, we are already taking action and have committed to transforming services, with a focus on prevention and early help. This includes developing a 24/7 mental health crisis service for children and young people, improving access to community-based services, and working with schools and community groups to encourage openness and challenge stigma.”
