On September 9th, 2025, UNICEF stated that one in ten children worldwide is living with obesity. There are now globally more children with obesity than underweight among school-age children and adolescents. Above that, one in seven children and adolescents have a mental health condition, stated the United Nations on October 9th, 2024. The most common conditions are anxiety, depression, and behavioural disorders. This reduced mental and physical health in children may have severe consequences for their and society’s future if not addressed properly. Nevertheless, global outrage did not materialize after these press releases. Nobody seems to care for the welfare of children and adolescents. How did we as a modern society could have let this happen? Why do we not seem to care? They are our own children that need our protection! As social beings humans need to be cared for, nurtured, and loved. Children definitely need to be cared for, nurtured, and loved. They do not care about the world economy. They thrive and develop healthy with the love of their parents and family, and an environment that gives them the space to learn naturally and on their pace who they are, and of what they are capable. Where did the love go and the social and natural environment they need uttermost?
On March 4, 2021, the World Bank claimed that 350 million (40 percent of total) children below primary-school age do not have access to the childcare they need. The report, Better Jobs and Brighter Futures: Investing in Childcare to Build Human Capital, highlighted the need for investments in childcare to increase women’s employment and productivity, create new jobs, improve child outcomes, drive economic growth, and support a more resilient and inclusive recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But what if this way of rigid economic thinking based on the believe that only the societal system has the right solutions, and boosting the economy at all costs, is the problem that more and more children in especially developed countries get it harder to grow up as physically and mentally healthy human beings?
Children on an assembly line
An increasing amount of children aged 0 to 5 attend some kind of early childhood education across the OECD countries. Eighty-five percent of children aged 3 to 5 and twenty-nine percent of children aged 0 to 2 participate in childhood education. Already for the latter this means in practice that on working days these children are woken up before they naturally wake up, then instrumentally get dressed and fed by their parents before they are brought to childhood education. During the day, their life is unnaturally staged because everything is programmed and monitored. Natural behaviour is quite difficult to show in such circumstances, and even more difficult at such a young age without the direct support of their parents. After the childhood education programme during the day, these children are picked up, must coop with all the unnatural stimuli during the day within limited time, eat, and go to bed. The next day it starts all over again. Children nowadays seem to be treated like raw materials on an assembly line with the aim of turning them into replaceable end products. This does not sound as childhood at all!
A threat towards children’s wellbeing
In 2022 a research was conducted, on behalf of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment of the Netherlands, one of the OECD countries, about the medium and long term effects of childcare on the cognitive and socio-emotional development of children between 0 to 4. The overall conclusion is that intensive childcare before the age of 1.5 may endanger the cognitive and social-emotional development of children. Childcare at that early age carries the risk that children develop more externalising problem behaviour over time, especially in children that are already vulnerable. Childcare before 1.5 years old may also be problematic for children who can fall back on a high-quality home environment. Universal education programmes from the age of 2 also do not seem to have positive effects on children of a higher socioeconomic status. Only children who grow up in poverty could benefit from such programmes. So, while only a minority may benefit from such programmes, some stakeholders in society are trying to push these programmes for all children.
Besides that, you could also wonder if children who grow up in poverty still would benefit from such programmes if their parents do not experience economic backlog, so they could more invest in the cognitive and social-emotional wellbeing of themselves and their children, instead of making use of mandatory childcare.
Unscientific education policy
Although these research results seem not positive for the long term wellbeing of children, early childhood education is still pushed through internationally as well as nationally, for instance by the Dutch research institute DRIFT (Dutch Research Institute for Transitions) founded by professor Rotmans of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, also known as founder of the Urgenda Foundation who won the appeal in the climate case against the Dutch state in 2019. Despite the fact that DRIFT is aware of the research results from 2022, which warn about the cognitive and socio-emotional risks of childcare for very young children, it nonetheless advocates in its own report for childcare from birth, all supposedly for the sake of the emancipation of women. Which advantage do women, and parents in general, have if because of early childcare their child grows up as disconnected human being? Not to forget the negative long term effects on society itself.
Developed countries seem to be totally lost in this rigid way of economic thinking, irrationally convinced that if all children are overfed by cognitive stimuli they all will become Einsteins. That is not how it works. Brilliance flourishes by the right conditions at the right time, which are not controllable at all. It is not because nowadays scientists have a 9 to 5 job, we have more breakthroughs. Although we can fake that it is, it still is not true. That is not how the human mind works!
Damaging mandatory school system
Proof of that are for instance the many high gifted children who year by year over generations get stuck in the mandatory education system. They are forced to go to school, while there is no school programme supporting their development. They are forced to get mentally and physically chronically ill before they can stay home from school and even then they do not need to count on societal compassion. Teachers, school boards, and governments force these children by the law to go to school, while they do not have these children to offer anything. When you are forced daily to pretend that you are someone else, you could wonder if we as a society are not torturing these children. Estimated is that eventually twenty percent of these children may drop out of school. Parents of high gifted children who try to care for their child and want to homeschool their child to prevent illness, risk to get fined, end up in jail, and even lose their children to child protection because of mandatory education. We are here not talking about a regime under a dictator! It is about a school system under a democracy, and this is happening for over generations now causing devastating grief and trauma. This damages these kids with lifelong consequences on every aspect of their lives. One of the consequences is that they avoid risks, because they never were challenged by the mandatory school system. This leads to lifelong underperformance. This way developed countries throw away a lot of talent. While some of these children proved during the Covid-19 lockdowns that they should be better off by homeschooling. Some flourished at all parts of their being at that time, including educational skills, because their parents took the education of their children in their own hands.
Policy driven by productivity
In the meanwhile, the President of the European Union (EU), Ursula von der Leyen, opened a legal gateway to the EU for Indian talent, how cynical. Europe does not know how to treat its own talent and is now importing talent from somewhere else.
Governments nowadays seem more occupied by outsourcing labour to artificial intelligence (AI) to boost productivity, without ever showing any curiosity towards the immense potential and brilliance of the human mind that goes far behind cognition. They rather seem to care for short term goals, reducing children into changeable algorithms. This is not the least of how modern society is mistreating children and adolescents.
Children lost in an unnatural environment
About half of the children worldwide now grow up in cities. Places where the natural environment for humans has completely disappeared. They are forced to live in smaller spaces than before, and outside there are no longer trees to climb, no puddles to jump in and get wet, no grounds to get dirty, no natural environments to take the risks necessary to grow up resiliently. They are no longer allowed to play risky games, make flower crowns, get bruises, or explore their emotions due to liability, conservation laws, child protection laws, or increased social intolerance towards children’s behaviour. Meanwhile, we wonder why people are becoming less responsible and accountable. Where and when can children still learn these skills?
Only creative, resilient, or wealthy parents manage partially to resist this increasingly antisocial and unlawful reality towards their children, but most parents nowadays are forced to work to keep their head above water in this inhuman economic rat race or are too tired to defend their children’s rights.
Favouring an unhealthy society
Society points at the children or the parents to blame for all that is going wrong, but as a society we refuse to look at our own role in it. We all contributed towards turning this society into the rat race that it has become. We all facilitated an economy that thrives by making people sick and vulnerable. Culturally we embody that boundlessness is the norm in every aspect of our lives: the sex, drugs, and rock’n roll society 4.0. Most of us do jobs that undermine our own wellbeing and that of others. As society we pushed smart phone use and computers on children, not parents. As society we agreed upon selling ultra processed foods as healthy choice, while we now pay an extremely high individual and social health price for it, including children. That is the exact reason why an increasing number of children have (morbid) obesity, in combination with the fact that they get fewer possibilities to play and live like they naturally should. So, they end up behind computer screens and smart phones.
Children forced by society to raise themselves
The school system no longer fits in the current economic era, and at the same time fails to be reliable towards children. While parents are accused of curling behaviour, the over-organised schools and society force parents to curl all day every day, at the risk of being accused of negligence or even child abuse if they do not. Parents are expected to be jack-of-all-trades by a society that has become extremely intolerant of children’s natural behaviour and the inherently imperfect nature of parenting. Children are expected to sit on command, coop with a technocratic, inhuman style of teaching in which they are constantly monitored and assessed based on unnatural parameters. If you confine an animal in a cage that is too small for it to behave naturally, we all know that the animal exhibits restless behaviour. What do you think the effect is on people when they are forced into a school and societal system where they are monitored 24/7? We are biological humans, stupid.
An increasing number of lessons are being cancelled due to a shortage of teachers, teachers appear to be sick more frequently than before, or because other matters are valued above education. From the moment children are twelve years old, society silently tells them to take care of themselves all day when lessons are cancelled because there is no longer childcare and parents are at work. This effect is reinforced by the reality that an increasing number of families no longer live nearby their family. Nevertheless, teenagers still need support from their families for a long time. On top of that, the quality of education is also lacking, because schools and governments only seem to focus on children’s cognition, while people will not excel cognitively if they are not treated as complete human beings, with disturbing mental effects for children.
Total disconnection
From birth, children are no longer given the time to experience that they have boundaries and that boundaries are healthy to have. They are not given the time and peace needed to experience being unconditionally loved by their parents. When you never experience that others value your boundaries, you will never be able to respect the boundaries of others. Children are no longer given the time and space to connect with themselves, others, and their natural environment. There is no longer time to experience boredom and with that, no moment to discover your own imagination, creativity, and possibilities. There is no longer an opportunity to truly learn to be social. At school, children do not learn to be social, especially not the children who are not average. What they learn is that they are not welcome for who they are. They only learn to survive. It is not the individual teacher who fails, but the failure of our entire social system. Children at school do not learn to cooperate with each other; they simply learn to follow without resistance. At school, they do not learn to explore their natural environment in practice and daily life, upon which human well-being fundamentally depends. When you are no longer allowed to learn who you are, how to connect with others, and with your natural environment, it is not surprising that you become mentally and physically ill.
Narcissism and sociopathy
It is not surprising that when societies turn into rigid systems in which the individual gets it hard to discover themselves, narcissism increases. When as a child you do not receive the love necessary to grow up healthy, you will have to give yourself that love in order to survive. Narcissism seems to be a coping mechanism due to a chronic lack of love. This can also apply to sociopathy. As a society, we could really ask ourselves whether people with sociopathic and narcissistic behaviour lack empathy, or whether these people had to block their empathy towards others in order to survive amid the chronic social neglect of who they truly are during their childhood. What if they are simply mirroring the lack of empathy or remorse, the irresponsible behaviour, the unpredictability, and the lack of respect for personal boundaries by their social environment, which they had to experience chronically as children? Then we as a society must recognize that the way they behave may actually be natural behaviour to survive in the disconnected, inhuman society we have become. On that basis, one could question whether narcissism and sociopathy are disorders, or in fact natural behaviour to cope with unbearable social injustice. This could mean that if society continues to fail to look at itself and address this properly, the number of people exhibiting this kind of behaviour could increase under the current societal conditions, reinforced by a poor Western diet, which undermines not only physical but also mental health.
High time for a human society
Now that we live in the 21st century, it is too cheap to keep blaming the failures of our society on the individual, while we continue to claim that the system we have built over generations since the Industrial Revolution is endlessly the best that could ever happen to us. That is totally not true.
What is true is that we as humans have lived for millions of years in small groups of relatives. We had to develop autonomy as well as social behaviour to increase our chances of survival. We could not afford to live in a strongly hierarchical society, because we could not neglect each other’s talent for the same survival chance. Men and women were equally valuable, also to increase survival. By growing up in a group that was quite similar to us, we learned that we were valued for who we are. We experienced that our boundaries were respected and, as a result, we could recognize the boundaries of others. In this way, we became able to be social with each other and developed social skills towards others who differed more from us. Children were allowed to play, experiment, and explore their surroundings without having to worry about grandma’s expensive vase or their parents’ luxury kitchen, and they were not forbidden to make music with things they found in their immediate environment, because there were no cooking pots where they were not allowed to make music with. Because they were encouraged to explore their natural environment, they learned to feel safe in their surroundings, instead of being confined as babies or toddlers in a playpen due to all the expensive things children are not allowed to touch in modern society. Baby gates were not necessary, because they were carried by their mothers and relatives as long as they needed, or supervised while exploring. And as they grew up, they were not unnaturally pushed out of the ‘nest’.
Although we as a modern society claim that it is best for families, including children, that women work too, you could instead ask yourself whether the opposite is not the best: that both parents are at home to support their family. That is what millions of years of human history confirm. But how do you do that in today’s society?
AI as a possibility for a human society
Suppose AI offers us the possibility to do that. Instead of further dehumanizing modern society with AI, we could use it to enhance the true human qualities that elevate us as a species. It can give us all the opportunity to work remotely. To restore the balance between work and private life. To get rid of the idea that productivity is only achieved when we all continue to work harder and harder. It is not. Where will we let this end: reintroduction of child labour or slavery? Have we lost our minds?
Instead of using AI to degrade humanity, we could choose to support natural behaviour in humans with it. All species, including humans, thrive when the conditions match the natural behaviour of that species. With AI, we can update the current societal system to a new system that meets our natural human needs. A system that supports our need to be cared for, nurtured, and loved. We could restore the societal foundation within the family unit that is necessary for children to grow up as socially resilient and capable individuals. Children could develop with the direct support of their parents, while parents also continue to develop and maintain the fundamental bond with their children, which is crucial for growing up into reliable adults who are necessary to build a resilient society. We could reconnect with our immediate natural environment and restore what we have lost for generations due to the Industrial Revolution. Schools could be transformed into educational centres where everyone can meet each other and seek knowledge, materials, and answers that support their personal development. Not only the development of children, but also the lifelong development of adults. In this way, we can finally explore the brilliance of human intelligence and much more before declaring that AI will surpass human intelligence. If we never allow ourselves and each other to explore our own potential in every aspect of who we are, we will never know if AI has surpassed human intelligence. It is time to unleash our potential and start to become who we truly are, and to pave the way for a society of true innovation: development that strengthens the connection with ourselves, each other, and the natural environment.
If you can create the worst, you can also make your dreams come true
It is high time to not only start dreaming, but also to make your dreams come true. We were given the gift of imagination not to ignore this ability. If we can make things happen that we do not want, as we have been doing for generations now, we can certainly create the reality we want. Let us begin right now!
©FPM
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