So children are no longer to have just a minister: they are to be a brand new department of their own, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, headed by Ed Balls, who is, we are told, one of the Prime Minister’s most trusted advisers.
It would seem to reflect the wish to send the message that, as the PM put it, ‘children and families are the bedrock of our society’.
He has created a department that brings together all aspects of policy for children and families, their protection, advancement and flourishing.
The Church of England published a report on the place of children within its life, imaginatively titled: Children in the Way.
On the one hand it set out a vision of how children might be ‘in the way’ of faith and learning, their journey a central part of the Church’s life.
On the other hand that title speaks of how children are often regarded as an obstruction and a nuisance.
There were two messages there: about the recovery and honouring of childhood as the basic, bedrock experience of all of us; and about the fact that the adult world finds children difficult, needing to be controlled.
As one of our police officers remarked, a lot of the punishment of young offenders is actually just punishing them for being young.
Ironically, it’s the adult world that has played the biggest part in the loss of childhood.
Our desire for prosperity has led to our seeing children largely as increasingly affluent customers – we often hear tell that children have too much money these days, but our commercial world has little hesitation about finding ways of getting them to spend it.
And when we don’t see children themselves as customers we have learned ways of using them as a way to influence their parents, and get them to spend their money.
So we need a recovery of childhood, of playfulness as natural, of an inquisitive mind and a rebellious disposition as not only natural but vital for growth and development, and at the same time we must reaffirm our commitment to providing security for the playfulness, inquisitiveness and rebelliousness we want children – and adults too – to have. We may gain from having a new government department – but most of all we all need a new attitude.