Unraveling the Complexity: Examining the Debate on Early Brain Development

Introduction

The focus of this paper is on the young and children. The early years are, without a doubt, quite important. However, the extent to which this period is the critical and irreversible brain development point forms fodder for debate. Different scholars argue that neuroscience that is drawn on in policy agendas acts as oversimplification and misrepresentation of actual science. Bruer (2011) notes that there exist multiple development points at different stages of development, some of which occur much later in the child's life. Therefore, adverse events would differently affect depending on the age they were experienced. He suggests that the cut-off point at 3-years could possibly be influenced in equal measure by the cut-off point for early intervention funding. That is in comparison to any other timescale for strict scientific development. Therefore, adverse events have different effects, and this is dependent on the age they were experienced. Clearly, early experiences have an effect on the brain's development. Even with that, the recent focus on zero to three as a particularly sensitive period is quite problematic, and that is not because it is not an important period for the brain's development but simply because the attention disproportionately accorded to the period from birth to three years, begins too late and goes on to end too soon.

The concept of ecological niche developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner is one of the important ways of thinking of and analyzing the childhood concept. Bronfenbrenner wrote a book, “The Two Worlds of Childhood” in 1972 which made a comparison and contrasted childhood experiences in the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Over time, he built on the ideas and went about developing increasingly generalized principles which he referred to as an ecological model of childhood. The study of people and institutions in relation to their environments is known as ecology. Therefore, the model advanced by Bronfenbrenner gives consideration to the ways through which different environmental systems among them cultural, social, political and economic factors impact the development of humans (The Open University, 2019). It is worth noting that that has been a quite influential idea in shaping the different ways through which people go about theorizing and explaining the social context of children’s lives.

Mental health

Health is one of the pre-conditions of a good life. Health-wise, young people are now in a better position than they were in years before. They are better fed with humans on average consuming up to one third of the calories they consumed before. Good health leads to longer life. The average person lived to the age of twenty a thousand years ago. Over the years, life expectancy has been on the rise. Maternal deaths are also almost non-existent, with the mortality rate for children under five years also being quite low. In England, for those aged 6 to 16, for every six, one had a mental health condition in 2021, an increase from one in every nine in 2017. These figures were quite concerning, especially for adolescent girls between 17 to 19 years, with one in every four having a probable mental health issue in the UK. The mental health and wellbeing of young people is very important. Identification of poor mental health and the subsequent provision of appropriate support and treatment is quite important for young people and children, as up to half of their mental health issues begin when they are 14. In the absence of appropriate care, there is a huge possibility that these issues would continue into adulthood (Bessell, 2017). That therefore, makes it quite important to develop a better understanding of the different ways through which the mental health of young people is impacted.

Young people have the highest likelihood of reporting mental health problems in the UK, as compared to other age groups. There are self-reports of mental health problems by up to 70% of those aged between 18 to 34 years as compared to 68% of the self-reports by those aged between 35-54 y4ars, and 58% by those 55 years and above (O’Connor et al. 2021). In addition, young people who experience mental health problems also have a likelihood of being affected for the rest of their lives. According to NHS England, all mental health problems are established by the time one is 14 years, while 75% are established by the time one is 24 years old. Young people in the UK, just like in other parts of the world, face pressures that also extend to their mental health (Crane et al. 2019). There are over 1.5 million young people currently reported as having mental health problems, a number equivalent to one in every eight people. There are both profound and pervasive effects of living with mental health difficulties, as these difficulties infiltrate multiple areas of the lives of young people, have an effect on their confidence, school performance and their prospects of finding work. When these young people are not accorded the necessary help and support, in extreme circumstances, some even take their own lives. For every four people experiencing mental health problems, one has either attempted suicide or inflicted self-harm on themselves, with suicide being reported as the leading killer for the young. On the brighter side, young people aged between 16 to 24 years have the lowest likelihood of suffering from obesity, and have the highest likelihood of meeting the physical activity guidelines set out by NHS. The Health Survey for England carried out in 2016 found 11% of individuals aged between 16 to 24 years to be obese (NHS Digital, 2017). However, over time, it is worth noting that there has been an increase in prevalence of obesity. In 2015, there was an increase to 27% of the general prevalence of obesity among the different age groups, from 155 back in 1993.

Teachers and educational professionals are in agreement that changes to the mental health, attitudes, and behaviors of children have direct impacts on their abilities and willingness to learn and take part in learning in school. That is particularly influential during the crucial moments of the educational journeys of children, for instance, during the time when children are beginning GCSE, when there are significant increments in workload. While young children are observed to be more capable of catching up once things have settled down, the older ones who missed school in the lead-up to GCSE found it increasingly hard to make up for the lost time. The absence of stability at home reduced the confidence and contributes to the disengagement of children, leading to their declined willingness to complete school work (The Open University, 2019). Concurrently, students also shun their teachers, and that is particularly in those instances where the children resided in overcrowded homes without quiet spaces where they could sit and work from. Homelessness denies children access to computers, with homeless children often resorting to asking for permission to utilize school computers for purposes of completing their class work. In general, changes in housing circumstances have a clear and direct impact on education attainment, in terms of basic attendance and punctuality, be it students are moving from school to school, and disruption during critical exam preparation years.

Changes in appearance coming about as a result of homelessness also immensely affect older children as they have tendencies of being increasingly self-aware as compared to younger children. Hence, older children at times, end up turning up to school looking unkempt resorting to tidying themselves in school bathrooms before the onset of their classes.

Equality

There is good equality in the UK and this is with regards to making sure that all individuals enjoy equal opportunities when it comes to making the most of their talents and lives. All UK citizens, including the young are legally protected by the equality act 2010. The Act was a replacement for the previous relatively discriminatory laws, making the comprehension of law increasingly easier in addition to strengthening protection in various situations.

One of the key tenets of equality is that while there are innumerable differences among human beings, common humanity requires that all people are treated equally on merit. That implies that for all differences in treatment, there has to be good reasons (Lester, 2016). The principle of equality therefore implies that it is not right to act on the basis of stereotyped assumptions in relation to group characteristics. It is worth noting that the idea of equity encompasses more than just the eradication of crude and overt discrimination forms.

Stereotypes are one form of inequality in the UK. Stereotypes are invidious things that act to underpin prejudice and discrimination and place constraints on the lives of people. For gender equality to be achieved, negative gender stereotypes would have to be dismantled and that would go a long way in facilitating the realization of the equal rights for women and girls. Marsh (2017) reports that girls as young as seven in the UK often feel as though as they are not able to either say as a result of gender stereotyping. A poll carried out in 2017 involving about 2,000 young people and carried out by the UK charity Girlguiding established that about 55% of the girls aged between 7021 felt as though they were not able to speak freely, owing to their genders. An additional 57% reported that this had an effect on what they wore, and their level of participation in school.

Often, stereotypes prevent people from doing what they would want to do, or oblige individuals into making choices that they would otherwise not have made without pressure to conform to set rigid expectations. Traditional gender stereotypes are without a doubt the most pervasive and they are also not widely acknowledged (The Open University, 2019). From when one is born, society works to confine behavior within lines that are rigid with children receiving lessons on the colours, toys, and books that are suitable for boys and which ones are for girls. Choices with regards to what they will play with or wear are made on behalf of young children and by the time they get to a point where they are able to make their own, they already know too well what is expected of them and often behave in accordance. There are countless children who often chafe against the constraints, with some receiving encouragement to do the same and others receiving either censure or sympathy.

Stories on characters who challenge traditional ways of how boys and girls are expected to behave are recommended as some of the easiest ways of initiating discussions on gender stereotypes. It is possible to either affirm or challenge gender stereotypes in the various aspects of school life. There is need for schools to view children as individuals and make efforts not to impose any expectations on them that have links with gender. At the onset, small changes could be made in relation to how the sexes are differentiated, for instance, referring to them as children and not as boys or girls, and avoiding the children’s marshalling along single sex lines (The Open University, 2019). There are multiple opportunities within curriculums of challenging stereotypes. It is necessary to begin making differences as early as possible by noticing stereotypes whenever they happen and subsequently questioning them. Non-stereotypical behaviors also have to be challenged from when children are young, through the encouragement of non-stereotypical behavior of nursery school children and ensuring emerging stereotypes are swiftly challenged as early as possible.

There is rather stark and unequivocal evidence with regards to how gender stereotypes impact on children and young adults. While there are some girls who score better as compared to boys and have a higher likelihood of advancing to higher education, the same does not translate into equality at home, in society I general or at work. It is stubbornly hard to shift the gender pay gap and women have continued to be under-represented in sectors like engineering, science, and technology as a result of the same. There is limited success in recruitment of men into careers like nursing and teaching. Boys are also observed to have a permanent exclusion rate of about four times as that of girls with a larger number of boys finding themselves in youth offending systems as compared to girls – with some boys viewing learning as not being masculine (The Open University, 2019).

The need to challenge gender stereotypes and additionally ensure that the aspirations of children were not limited by traditional ideas on what boys and girls could do was highlighted by the Women and Work Commission in 2006. Challenging gender stereotypes has the potential of having widely beneficial effects with regards to improvement of educational and life outcomes for both boys and girls, putting young people in a better position to have increasingly respectful and fulfilling relations and improvement of behavior within classrooms. There is research evidence that classroom discussions on gender construction and the use of literature for deconstruction of stereotypes, significantly affects educational engagement and learning. In addition, continuous inequalities within workplaces and unequal roles within families are traceable back to stereotypes on expected behavior and attitudes, which children learn during their primary school years, or even when younger. Within societies, it is common to confuse gender with sex (The Open University, 2019). The majority of the existing differences between men and women, among them physical strength and appearance have links with biology and in today’s highly mechanized world, most of these are not as significant as they used to be. Gender provides descriptions of the characteristics that societies and cultures and cultures delineate as masculine or feminine. The definitions are both culturally and highly malleable, and it is perhaps for these reasons that they are strenuously policed. There are not as many things, in reality, that men and women are not able to do equally.

The UK is also a better place for young women today. Young women report feeling safer walking by themselves in dark areas. There are however, also measures of personal well-being among young women that have been a decline in the UK and these include a decline in the women reporting high satisfaction with life, high levels of happiness and low anxiety levels. There is also overwhelming evidence of increased levels of depression and anxiety among young women, with about a third of the young female population reporting symptoms of depression and anxiety between 2017 and 2018.

Housing and Quality of life

Young people in the UK are generally faced with challenges when it comes to access of good quality housing, in addition to accessing stable good quality jobs. There are also issues with high financial insecurities and the young do not also enjoy sufficient support from their social connections, and all these are factors that bring about inequalities in health. When compounded, these factors make the UK increasingly unfavorable for the young.

Early adulthood and adolescence are rather important stages in life and that are marked by different transitions. The transitions are inclusive of the move from education into employment, housing and financial transitions geared towards increased independence, social transitions characterized by peers and other people other than family members having a greater influence, and also transitions from parents/carers managing health to young people making health related decisions by themselves (Faircloth, 2014). The British Council report “From the Outside” explored the different ways through which young people drawn from other G20 countries viewed the UK. A survey was carried out and this revealed that there were overall good perceptions about the UK, ranking fourth place behind Canada, Australia, and Italy. The EU referendum did not even reduce the UKs overall attractiveness, and largely remained the same with 71% young people finding UK to be attractive.

The New Policy Institute back in 2015 found 30% of young people aged between 14 to 24 years to be living in poverty. That meant that their incomes after taxation and deduction of housing costs was lower than 60% of the median household income. The institution argued that this was the highest proportion among the different age groups. Figures drawn from the Department for Work and Pensions indicated that those households that had children where the head of the family was aged between 16 to 24 years, had a higher likelihood of living in poverty, with the incomes of 54% of them falling below the 60% threshold, after the deduction of housing costs. This compared to 21% of households for the different ages with children whose earnings were below the threshold.

Price Waterhouse Coopers in 2016 reported that the generational rent inclusive of individuals in the age range 20 to 39, would need to save for up to 19 years so that they could be in a position to buy their own homes. A report by the Council of Mortgage Lenders showed that from the 2015-2016 English Housing Survey, the number of first time buyers falling between the age of 16 to 24 years fell from 21.3% in 1995/96 to 7.5% in 2015/16. Generally, there are feelings among young Britons of lacking affordable housing, constrained job markets and poor pay conditions. The academic success achieved by young people in the UK comes at a cost. Vignoles and Machin (2018), report that there are concerns about studying and exam pressures from 44% of the adults in the UK. In addition, young people are also burdened with tuition fees that total over 9000 annually for one to be awarded a degree. While the young people of today are recognized as being the most academically qualified generation and who are under increased pressure to achieve academic success, there are consistent reports from employers of the young being largely unprepared and unequipped for the job market whenever they leave full-time education and they largely do not possess many soft skills (Furlong, 2013). A workforce survey carried out by the British Chambers of Commerce reported that up to 88% of employers considered school leavers to be unprepared for the world of work, while 54% held the beliefs that graduates where not adequately prepared for workplaces (British Chambers of Commerce, 2020). Eventually, when these young people are employed, they do not receive as much pay as other previous jobs and have been reported to increasingly find themselves in jobs with no security.

The early years are, without a doubt, quite important. However, the extent to which this period is the critical and irreversible brain development point forms fodder for debate. Different scholars argue that neuroscience that is drawn on in policy agendas acts as oversimplification and misrepresentation of actual science. Bruer (2011) notes that there exist multiple development points at different stages of development, some of which occur much later in the child's life. Therefore, adverse events would differently affect depending on the age they were experienced. He suggests that the cut-off point at 3-years could possibly be influenced in equal measure by the cut-off point for early intervention funding. That is in comparison to any other timescale for strict scientific development. Therefore, adverse events have different effects, and this is dependent on the age they were experienced. Clearly, early experiences have an effect on the brain's development. Even with that, the recent focus on zero to three as a particularly sensitive period is quite problematic, and that is not because it is not an important period for the brain's development but simply because the attention disproportionately accorded to the period from birth to three years, begins too late and goes on to end too soon.

Neil Postman made an argument for consideration of adulthood as a symbolic achievement and not a biological one. That demonstrates that adulthood is just as much a social construction as childhood (McDowall, 2016). One can actually not be present without the other as they only exist in relation to one another. Existing age divisions are socially defined and are not natural and they simply denote customary ways of viewing categories of people (Allan, Catts and Stelfox, 2012). How these different categories come about and eventually gain acceptance as normal life stages could be easier to comprehend through the example of how the invention of teenagers happened in the decade that came after the Second World War. Before, then, generally, adolescents were seen as young people at the onset of their adult lives. Over the last two decades, there have been quite dramatic changes in how childhood in children’s culture, practices of child rearing, relations between adult and children, and family life are conceptualized (The Open University, 2019). To develop a sound understanding of the place occupied by children within contemporary societies makes it possible to look through the eyes and recognize the different ways through which varying mindsets alter reality perceptions and what qualifies as normal. That helps keep open the questions on what childhood actually means and recognize the concepts fluidity and ambiguity.

Social attitudes are not stagnant but dynamic and owing to this, there are multiple contradictions and disagreements with regards to the nature of children, what constitutes the state of childhood and the best ways through which to treat and respond to children. The concept of innocence is one of the most commonly associated ideas with childhood. The presumption of innocence is veiled behind perceived needs for child protection and concerns in relation to the loss of the innocence have given rise to regulations and control. Protection, therefore, holds the potential of being a double edged sword, with some considering childhood to be an idyllic garden where children are carefree and are at liberty to play and frolic, with others seeing childhood as more of a prison in which children are restricted and confined and from which they are not able to escape until they are grown. These underlying assumptions have an effect on the ways through which people respond to children and also have an influence on what qualifies as proper childhood, even though, often, they are taken for granted and left unquestioned most of the times (The Open University, 2019).

Young people are also reported to have the highest likelihood of being victims of crime. The Office for National Statistics, in the year ending 2018 reported that 20.2% of those aged 16 to 24 in UK had been victims of crime before (Ivanov et al. 2020). That was compared to 14.4% of the entire adult population. Young men had a higher likelihood of being victims of crime; 22.4% of those aged 16 to 24, as compared to women between 16 to 24 years, reported at 17.9%.

A major report published by Demos think tank for the Next Generation research by the British Council revealed that there were common feelings among the young adults in Britain of being overburdened by responsibilities, and facing multiple barriers as they forged ahead (Demos, 2017). The research revealed that only half of young Britons felt that they lived within societies that were socially mobile. The frustrations of most of these young people came from an education system that they perceived as being largely doggedly focused on academic routes and examinations at the expense of life skills, including management of education around independent living, management of financial resources, mental health, eating healthy and relationships. The Youth in Britain are observed to be split down the middle between those who feel as though the education system supports them and have adequate preparation for work related tasks in the outside world.

Conclusion

Public information and communication efforts specially tailored for young people’s media habits have the potential of resulting in increased uptake of opportunities of getting involved in the making of political decisions. That would go a long way in increasing the young people’s level of trust in government officials. Governments stand to benefit from largely young populations as such are considered as assets providing active workforces with the capabilities of driving economic growth and productivity, in addition to drawing increased innovation into economies. It is however, worth noting that the young are largely reliant on the availability of sufficient economic opportunities.

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References

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