New global data: NZ ranks alarmingly low for child wellbeing + high suicide because Boomers hate young people
New Zealand has highest child suicide rate, a survey of wealthy countries shows
New Zealand has the highest suicide rate for children, a survey of wealthy countries shows.
The latest UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 19: Fragile Gains – Child Wellbeing at Risk in an Unpredictable World ranked New Zealand 32nd out of 36 countries for overall child wellbeing.
It ranked Aotearoa last place for child and youth mental health.
The report card showed New Zealand had the highest suicide rate for children out of the 36 OECD and EU countries, at a rate of almost three times higher than the average.
It also showed that New Zealand’s children face a major problem when it comes to bullying, with the second highest rate of children experiencing bullying out of the countries included.
Chief Children’s Commissioner Dr Claire Achmad said the rankings showed that meaningful investment in children and young people was urgently needed to support child and youth mental health, including suicide prevention measures, and better support for the prevention of bullying in schools and communities.
We don’t have a youth problem in NZ, we have an adult problem.
NZ Boomers hate young people.
We screamed ‘something just be done’ during ram raids, that ‘something; was criminalising children, holding them in dangerous facilities and graduating them to jail as quickly as possible.
NZ Boomers hate young people.
The horror of our suicide rate gives us a glimpse behind the ‘she’ll be right’ facade of our culture and the dark torment of an alpha male macho mental landscape that is terribly fragile.
Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our damaged masculinity, the intergenerational consequences of colonialism, our unspoken rage culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger – all of this demands questions we don’t want to hear as a society and the shame of suicide continues to hide and smother any healing.
In a society that has no religious faith and all the cultural maturity of a can of coke, the bonds which keep us attached are frail and disconnected. In our fetishisation of individualism we have lost the central part of the human condition – connection.
We have traded in our interwoven threads of whanau, friendship and kin for a race where no one wins.
The reason we can’t talk about suicide is because we can’t stand to talk about the dark treacle of self hate and loneliness at the core of consumer culture. We don’t dare confront the hollowness of our existence on these far flung crags of rock for fear of what we will reveal about ourselves.
Damaged individuals competing for a self identity too fragile for the storms and tempests of life.
Thanks to neoliberalism, we are further from each other than ever before.
Look at the manner in which our suicide rates jumped after the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, where we moved away from the communal towards the individual…
…we huddle frightened on these lonely rocks at the end of the world and slowly one by one slip off into the swallowing dark. Until we are prepared to confront many of the individualism-over-all myths and rebuild our tattered communities, our suicide rate will remain reminding us of our whispered deceptions.
We refuse to ask the why of suicide because we are too frightened to know the answer is a reflection of the shallow and lonely community we have become. Instead we reel off a list of phone numbers whenever we dare mention suicide as if that means a fucking thing.
We are broken and no one wants to admit that.
NZ Boomers hate young people.
That’s why we have the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD.
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I am a boomer and I certainly do NOT hate young people.
Grow up.
Best comment.
We have high suicide because we have poor parents. They fail to get their children immunized they fail to spend time with them rather instead sit on the phone ,fail to feed them or teach them cooking skills .fail to help educate them leaving it to others.
Boomers do not hate children but for some reason parenting skills have been lost over the last 40 years
Try looking at the big picture Trev .We have gone down hill since it become compulsory for both parents to work for the 1% .Kids are now dumped in ECE farms from 6 months old at 7am every morning and picked up at 5pm ,go home have a feed and into bed .Who is actually raising the kids ? IS IT THE PARENTS OR THE CORPORATE KID FARM .Then when we get to the end of life we all go into old people farms to die .
For once I agree with Trevor, we do have poor parents. This has been brought on by a low wage economy and now National have canceled pay equity claims parents will remain poor. Those parents that are ” sorted” will always have means to be better parents.
Reward parents with better incomes and they won’t be poor.
“But for some reason parenting skills have been lost over the last 40 years”
Righto Trevor let us look at the difference in parents. It is significant that you go right to the starting point of neo-liberal monetary policies(last 40 years) without realising it is the reason( none so blind)
As a boomer I was brought up in a warm, comfortable home which my working class parents could buy with a low interest state advances loan.
By contrast, our daughter and her husband needed our help to get a deposit on a little rat’s nest and have a monstrous high interest mortgage to pay off.
Dad seldom worked more than forty hours a week because compulsory unionism and fair employment meant he had an adequate wage to cover all our needs. In addition, having a massive sized section by today’s standards, we had fruit trees, vegetable plots and chickens. Mum was a fulltime mother, cook homemaker and gardener.
By contrast, our children have to work all the time to meet the cost of living and with no unions to protect them have to put with inadequate wages and conditions.
My parents spent weekends with their children, trips to the beach, bush, playing sports. We had a long, happy summer holiday each year.
Our children spend whatever leisure time they have recovering from their exhausting working week. They, and masses like them do not have energy and spirit to give their children the time they need.
Many young working people are in a worse position than our children. Their children suffer as a consequence and become the suicides that we bemoan.
As a child I went to a school which was adequately staffed and resourced and well-fed students could study properly. E kati ! why continue with everything so obviously different 40 years ago for the boomer generation.
Trevor there is a bright spot for you and your fellows in malice. The suicides are greatest among the brown working class, hated and feared by settler society. That at least should bring some comfort to you.
RESTORE STATE SOCIALISM IN AOTEAROA! DEATH TO CAPITALISM!
WELL SAID STEVIE AND GORDON.
Both National and labour legacy parties need to be put out on the grass
Wake up folks things are only going to get worse under both of them.
We need 21st century thinking not bullcrap thinking from the 1970s.
Excellent and factual response Stevie, post of the year.
Your final comment is despicable as would only be said by a one eyed socialist. If you add it up the last 40 years have evenly split between being run by Labour and National so the fault is on both their camps.
Were you referring to the state socialism or the truth about who is dying?
Stevie has a perfect explanation for why things are difficult today so your throwing the toys out of the cot over a closing comment would suggest that you live in a bubble and have no idea how tough it is for many people. You are observant enough to notice the poor parenting so how come you don’t have a clue about the reasons. Poverty and single parent families are a basic cause of many problems although the anti vax nutters exist across all income and family situations.
While both parties have shared power over the last 40 years and the 84 to 90 Labour government was a disaster National have consistently been worse and left the country in a worse position than when they started in government. Leaky homes and the version 2 that is coming, the increasing division in society and the pyramid housing economy are all the result of National policies that favor the greedy by transferring wealth instead of encouraging real wealth creation.
bonnie for PM
A good reminder of the way it was, Stevie.
And a good reminder why (in some ways) we must go back to better move forward
I feel the boomers are just too broad a target here. The establishment, with its penchant for victim blaming, might be a better target.
And of course, the raging economic incompetents that control policy need to be smacked around the head with their sustained non-performance until they no longer dare to push underfunding of crucial social infrastructure like health & education. NZ’s failings are not adventitious, but the product of deliberate, and fucking useless policy.
Well-said Stuart. For someone who rages against identity politics, Martyn sometimes plays the identity card with alarming carelessness. I guess that’s the downside of having to generate a lot of content daily, so it’s forgivable in a way.
In any case, boomers don’t hate young people, but a lot of them have become acclimatised to ignoring any young people other than their own children. And that’s because it’s economically rational to do so in the short term at least. It’s always best to look for the underlying material conditions that might make a class of people behave in mostly the same way – rather than attribute it to some inherent flaw in their shared identity.
fish rot from the head down .The head of the NZ fish,the current government, is well and truly rotten so it follows that everything else will rot in time .This rot is fast happening to NZ society which has become full of hate .
Great article. Firstly, I’m a Boomer, but certainly not like the ones you are describing. Our child wellbeing levels are indeed appalling – 34 out of 36 all while this CoC is regularly patting itself on the back for their fast-track tricks and corrupt economy.
While I agree many parents need to become ‘proper parents’, we also need to have the basic building blocks in place, so until we stem the incessant, continually growing GREED in NZ, our standard of living will continue to decline rapidly.
So yes, most with way more than “enough” will know how they got their money! I have absolutely no problem with people working hard and being rewarded accordingly but when you can go and build multi million $ homes and/or own multiple rentals, while others live under bridges and in tents, something is very wrong! Our taxation system was pretty good when I started working but the gap between workers and bosses increased dramatically over the years with clearly a plan to keep workers below the poverty line – how does that help society in any way? There will always be cheats and bludgers but don’t ever think they are only at the bottom!
NZ desperately needs a fairer taxation system for all employees.
What do Boomers have to do with it? From what I can see a good many decision makers are in their 40s or 50s.
INDEED bOZO
Yes Bozo….voted in by boomers.
How many of those kids were Māori?
A lot I’d say given white children have all the wealth and go to private schools.