A good childhood?

The Children's Society are conducting research into what constitutes a good childhood and inviting reminiscences from past generations as well as today's. It got me wondering about my own childhood and that of my children and grandchildren.

I suppose my childhood was privileged in many ways, both in terms of a lot of my contemporaries and todays' children. It didn't seem like it at the time and,by today's standards, I suppose that materially it might seem fairly deprived, but where it differed from a lot of my contemporaries was that because we lived with my mother's parents security came from several sources. I had my own room; we kept pigs and chickens so ham and eggs weren't scarce; my grandmother dealt in second hand goods, mostly clothes and books etc., so I was dressed in Ladybird clothing, used but in good condition, right from the start, and there was a large kitchen garden with apples,pears, soft fruits and vegetables. There was room to roam and play and grandma's ragbag provided me with endless dressing up possibilities. There was also an endless supply of comics, both boys and girls, and classic books. The house was never empty and the door open to a varied selection of callers: some to do with my grandma's business, some were family, sometimes neighbours in for a chat and a barter - Mrs Jackson next door made ice cream in the summer and used our eggs or gave us Staffordshire oatcakes and pikelets in winter - and motorists paying their rents on the garages at the end of the yard.

Like most children, though, I was only dimly aware, at that time, that not everyone lived as we did and given that my father worked a brick making machine, only the extended family setup gave us the extras.
Where my childhood might be construed as lacking was that there were few other children living around us. I had to be taken to play with other little girls unless cousins visited. I don't remember feeling lonely but I suppose my preference for being with older people stems from this time. There were two children living across the road, in a row of dilapidated cottages, twins with an Italian father and English mother, but my grandfather disapproved of my consorting with them - not because of Italy's role in the war but because the father was a jail bird. It didn't always stop me playing mud pies with them though.
However, the fact was circumstances and choice meant that I was in the company of adults most of the time. Even school didn't redress the balance as it took me ages to settle. I hated leaving my mother and with fractures and such a great deal of my general knowledge was acquired from the books supplied to me by gran at home.
I have never known again the warmth and security I felt, when ill, of being tucked up in front of a blazing fire, a rich comforting mug of Sister Laura's food in reach, and a pile of comics, annuals. and picture books to occupy me.

My children knew a different sort of environment - a new council estate with a lot of the modern conveniences not available to my family when I was small.
Sophisticated technology was starting to impact on most peoples lives. A wider range of people and experiences influenced their development and there were more children around. We were the nuclear family, living in our own four walls, albeit rented, and living on what was in effect a more restricted income than my parents. Grandparents still helped to make up the shortfall but not so much in terms of their daily presence.

Now I have five grandchildren experiencing, in many respects, a childhood that, materially, would have seemed unachievable fifty five years ago. Three of them have already moved home several times due to dad's job. They have flown and lived life in the sun, gone to school in three countries, become almost casual about travelling and never known life with outdoor plumbing or being in close contact with their food.
My two granddaughters have graduates for parents, a home that belongs to those parents and already know, as do their cousins, how to operate keyboards and digital this and that.
The other great change is in the fluid nature of family relationships. I lived in an extended family but the relationships were relatively simple and stable. Today, children, including my grandchildren, have to untangle the complex web of family connections where both sets of grandparents are divorced and "step-grandparents" are part of the set up. Where aunties and uncles may not stay in the same combinations.

Whose childhood is better? Materially, I suspect, theirs by miles, but having space and opportunity to indulge and develop imagination, time to consider,a lack of pressure to react and a greater degree of certainty then, maybe, mine.

The truth is that all is relative and, while I can see where their childhoods could have been bettered, they would probably regard mine as boring and restrictive in its opportunities and lack of what are now regarded as common place necessities.