In the year 2000—even before terrorism hit so close to home for Americans on 9/11, and before the United States went to war with Iraq—an interesting study appeared in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In her report social psychologist Jean Twenge observed that anxiety levels in American children had increased dramatically since the first effective scale for measuring childhood anxiety was published in 1956.

The increases were so large and linear, Twenge explained, that by the 1980s normal children scored higher on the anxiety scale than did children in the 1950s who were psychiatric patients. The culprits? According to Twenge, disconnected relationships and looming environmental threats were the underlying factors. In particular she notes that "changes in the divorce rate, the birth rate, and the crime rate are all highly correlated with children’s anxiety." In contrast, she discovered that "surprisingly, economic indices had very little independent effect on anxiety. Apparently, children are less concerned with whether their family has enough money than whether it is threatened by violence or dissolution."

If modern young Americans are indeed feeling the strain, they are certainly not alone in the world. According to a March 2008 article in the online Independent, Britain may actually be the "unhappiest place on earth" for children. Education editor Richard Garner notes the "welter of evidence highlighting the fragile states of mind of many of the country’s seven million primary and secondary school pupils," while reporting that British teachers had called for an independent Royal Commission to discover the reasons behind the widespread anxiety and unhappiness among the nation’s children.

The concern expressed by Britain’s Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) stems from the fact that the United Nations Children's Fund actually ranks British schoolchildren the unhappiest in the West, focusing on Britain's lack of social cohesion as the culprit. But British teachers have their own speculations to offer regarding the factors at fault. Among the stressors suggested by the ATL were not only social dysfunction and family breakdown, but also peer pressure and heavy academic pressure. Could this argument have some merit? Could all of these factors underlying childhood anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic be intertwined? Is it possible that Western society places too much emphasis on academic success and too little on the importance of cohesive family relationships?

Britain’s ATL hints that in their opinion this is, in fact, the case. Citing stringent government homework standards as the last straw on the backs of children, some teachers say that their own pressure to teach to standardized tests while increasing homework has resulted in reduced family and play time for children rather than improved academic scores. While it is unlikely that increased academic pressure is the only problem—or even the main problem behind increased childhood anxiety—the ATL may actually be on to something in juxtaposing academic priorities to family ones.

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