1 : INTRODUCTION
harder to collect. It is often qualitative rather than quantitative and is therefore more open to methodological challenge. Statistics on the benefits of offering adventurous children challenging playgrounds rather than leaving them to explore more dangerous and uncontrolled environments, or on the long-term impact of risk experiences on children’s creativity or entrepreneurialism, would be all but impossible to compile. The upshot is that critics of risk aversion typically rely on appeals for balance, reasonableness and common sense, in the absence of the more concrete evidence base of those promoting safety or accident prevention. This asymmetry in the measurability of risks and benefits is very common in safety debates. It explains why even socially and culturally homogeneous groups of adults can disagree strongly about the most appropriate response to a given risk for a given group of children.20 These fundamental disagreements can make it difficult to find a consensus position: so much so that one key conclusion of this book is that challenging aversion to childhood risks may sometimes require a radically different style of public policy debate.
Risk in childhood: children’s behaviour and attitudes Hugh Cunningham noted in a 2006 article to mark the publication of The Invention of Childhood that our ideals of a good childhood have changed little in a century. ‘Children should be protected, dependent, healthy and happy,’ he wrote, before concluding, ‘in the last quarter of the twentieth century, many children no longer wanted to be kept in this cocoon.’21 In fact, children have a range of views on risk. Government consultations show that they value their safety and want adults to help them to keep safe.22 However, market research surveys and consultation exercises consistently find a strong demand from children of all ages for greater freedom, more things to do and more places to go.23 The wish to escape a restrictive childhood may contribute to many youth leisure choices, from pursuits like skateboarding and involvement in music subcultures to more marginal, antisocial, harmful and (at the extreme) criminal activities. What is more, some children show an appetite for adventure and excitement that persists in spite of adult anxieties. In 2002, the Child Accident Prevention Trust explored attitudes to risk and 17