Society

Corporate Village Must Step Up for Children’s Wellbeing, Says Archbishop

The global economic downturn and social uncertainties may provide an unrivalled opportunity to reassess corporate and community attitudes towards child development and wellbeing, say leading childhood advocates.

Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne Dr Philip Freier, who called last year for an inquiry into the state of childhood in Australia, says that parents today are anxious about their children to the point of being overprotective while not perceiving the harm our society is causing.

Dr Freier will join with Dr Rob Moodie, Professor of Global Health at the Nossal Institute, and children’s television producer and author, Dr Patricia Edgar in a public conversation at Melbourne’s Federation Square tomorrow to discuss Fighting For Our Kids: how to raise intelligent, optimistic children.

“We must consider more effective regulation of marketing directly to children,” he says, as well as finding ways to involve all of society in contributing to children’s wellbeing. “It’s not just a job for parents - we all bear a responsibility in providing a healthy environment in which children can grow, while hearing the voices of those who feel alienated by the rhetoric of ‘family’.”

“Parents protect their children from predators in the street, while unwittingly exposing them to inappropriate marketing practices and messages at home on the television. Young people feel free to trust all their personal details to social networking sites like Facebook, while their parents are afraid to let them walk home from school. We invest more and more hours in creating ideal childhoods for our offspring, but our child protection services are more stretched than ever to provide care for growing numbers of neglected children and adolescents.”

“We are a society with an inconsistency between our perceived fears for our children and the real dangers to which they are exposed,” Dr Freier says. “And I suspect that this is a unique moment in our society’s development to change the way we do things, to redress the balance.”

What: Fighting For Our Kids: how to raise intelligent, optimistic children
– a free public conversation with Anglican Archbishop Dr Philip Freier, Dr Rob Moodie, Professor of Global Health at the Nossal Institute, and Dr Patricia Edgar, children’s television producer and author

When: Wednesday 11 March

Where: BMW Edge, Federation Square, Melbourne

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