Idolising Children?

In The Brisbane Line, Michael Gard has a great piece that discusses how our common sense beliefs around childhood obesity do not align with the evidence.

As it happens, a number of studies have tried to measure whether the amount of physical activity that children do has changed over time. The results of these studies are consistently startling or under-whelming, depending on your point of view. They show no obvious decline in childhood physical activity and, in some cases, small increases. The results are pretty much the same from studies in the US, the UK and Australia.

Gard points out that research is even ignored because it doesn’t match our common sense beliefs about childhood obesity. This dogma, I’d argue, stems from our idolising of children. We are so cought up about how we believe children should be and what want childhood and youth to look like we ignore the treality of what it really is.

Gard has just started putting some of these ideas in the public sphere. I’m looking forward to more of his work.