A growing body of research is pointing to how important and valuable reading is in giving children the best possible start in life, not just for academic success but more broadly including for a child’s mental health and happiness. In this special episode of the Child of our Time Podcast, Professor Yvonne Kelly is joined […]

Child of our Time

Why reading is key to giving our kids a great start in life

Being a scout or a guide when we are young might be a good experience for us in all sorts of ways, but can those positive effects be long lasting though our lives and if so, how? Research using the 1958 Birth Cohort shows a strong link between being a scout or a guide when young and […]

Be prepared: the mental health benefits of scouting and guiding

Making sure that mums-to-be are in the best possible health is key to ensuring their baby gets the best possible start in life. But what sorts of things can help them achieve that? In this episode of the Child of our Time Podcast, Professor Hazel Inskip from the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit at the University of Southampton, […]

Putting a SPRING in the step of mums-to-be

Research by Child of our Time Editor Yvonne Kelly on 11 year-old drinking has caught the eye of Mentor, a charity working to build resilience among young people to prevent alcohol and drug misuse. The charity’s CEO, Michael O’Toole is now looking to collaborate with Yvonne in future research that will take a look a first look at data […]

Young drinkers: using evidence to prevent alcohol abuse

It’s been said and shown over the last few decades that mixed race and mixed ethnicity children tend not to do as well socially and emotionally as their non mixed peers. But new research casts a rather different light on the matter, showing that children both in the UK and US who are from mixed […]

Mixed race kids: happier than we might think!

Born in Bradford is a fascinating child health development project following the lives of thousands of children in the city. It hopes to find out more about the causes of childhood illness by studying children from all cultures and backgrounds as their lives unfold. In this Child of our Time Podcast episode, one of the project’s lead researchers, […]

Born in Bradford

It’s time to stop hitting our children and give them the same human rights protection afforded to adults says an important new report published by the NSPCC today. The report, which reviews all the available evidence on the impacts of physical punishment on children has been compiled by a team of academics at UCL: Dr Anja Heilmann, […]

Are our children’s human rights equally protected?

When it comes to dealing with children’s problem behaviour, do parents and teachers report the same things in the same way and is that linked in some way to the child’s race or ethnicity ? That’s the focus of a recent study by a cross Atlantic team of researchers from the University of Michigan and University College London. […]

Reporting children’s challenging behaviour

Children from lower income families are less likely to be judged ‘above average’ by their teachers, even when they perform as well as other pupils on independent cognitive assessments, according to a new study. Researcher Tammy Campbell from the UCL Institute of Education talks to the Child of our Time Podcast Series about how teachers […]

Stereotyped at 7?

Are children becoming obese at a younger age compared with the generations before them? New evidence from a research team at CLOSER, making use of the UK’s Cohort Studies, indicates they are. One of the team, Professor Rebecca Hardy from UCL, spoke to Child of our Time about the research. How has the age-related process of […]

Are children becoming obese earlier?

Research tracking the health and happiness of the UK's children