Estonian Human Development Report

Figure 3.5.1. Percentage of teenagers who find it
easy to discuss their problems with parents, grandparents
and friends (boys and girls aged 11, 13 and
15)
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Father Mother
Source: Aasvee et al. 2007.
Stepfather
Stepmother
Friend
mother Grand-
Grandfather
may be able to cope with their insecurities and anxieties if
they are accepted and recognized by a group of children.
Trust and support provided by people their own age help
increase children’s well-being – their own social capital
which will support and protect them if they have to experience
something bad or difficult in the future.
Andrews et al. (2002) stress the importance of human
and civil rights, social justice and participation in civil society
in the lives of children. Children’s participation in civil
society indicates that they are continuously communicating
with both adults and their peers and that social justice
determines the distribution of social benefits between various
target groups. Children’s human and civil rights help
them to be seen and heard in addition to giving them the
right to actively participate in social affairs, including shaping
their own quality of life to a certain degree. The level
of realization of a child’s quality of life depends on how
the society in question views children as a social category
and to what extent children’s needs are generally taken into
account, to whom the political measure is addressed and
whether the society attempts to regulate the well-being of
children through the well-being of adults.
Solidarity between generations as
a prerequisite for providing children
with a high quality of life
B11
B13
B15
G11
G13
G15
Children do not generate material wealth for the society.
Their task involves the explanatory reproduction
and transmission of knowledge from one generation of
adults to another. Unlike in the case of adults, the work
children do and the compensation they receive are separated
in time, meaning that effective investment into
knowledge and life skills as a child provides the basis for
the ability to cope with life successfully as an adult. Children
and adults form two separate social groups and represent
differing and sometimes contradictory interests in
political discourses. Children’s quality of life, however, is
affected both by political decisions addressed to children
and by decisions that regulate the well-being of adults and
thereby the living environment of children.
Poverty surveys conducted in Estonia have repeatedly
outlined children as the group most vulnerable to the risk
of poverty. The current social practice indicates that in making
political decisions, authorities are quick to misuse the
restraint of groups of adults who represent the interests of
children as well as their limited ability to protect the wellbeing
of children. As a result, the percentage of pension insurance
expenses in the GDP have remained within the limits
of six per cent in recent years, while the actual pension payments
have grown nearly twofold. There has also been a moderate
increase of family benefits in recent years as a result of
the parental benefit introduced in 2004, despite the fact that
the relative importance of family benefits (including those
directed to children) in the GDP has actually decreased. Similar
to other European countries, Estonia is an aging society:
compared to 2000, the proportion of people aged 18 or
younger in Estonia’s population has decreased and the proportion
of people aged 65 or older has grown. If the size of the
interest group that represents children’s needs (adults raising
children) becomes smaller, the direct representation of children’s
interests in political discussions will diminish further
and the decisive role in the distribution of social wealth will
be played by the solidarity of political interest groups.
Children’s support network as a
reflection of their quality of life
Family members. Nowadays, children in Estonia face
changes in social and biological bonds more frequently and
at an earlier age than before, with the changing world of
their own, half siblings and “obtained” brothers and sisters,
parents, grandparents and other relatives. Children’s quality
of life within the system of family relations is directly
dependent on how well adults are able to cope within
their larger family network. Who make up a child’s family
and whom can they rely on? The results of an international
health behaviour study of schoolchildren (Aasvee et
al. 2007) showed that teenagers felt most comfortable discussing
their problems with their mothers, while their least
frequently preferred confidants included stepmothers and
stepfathers (Figure 3.5.1.). Although the tendency to confide
in adults decreases as children become older and they find
new confidants among friends, it can be concluded that the
increasing frequency of situations where children live with
step-parents presents a risk in terms of children’s quality of
life. The study indicated, however, that more children from
economically well-to-do families confided in their parents
compared to children from less wealthy homes.
It is in the interest of children to have both parents and
to be able to communicate with them. Communication with
parents living separately is often rendered difficult by unresolved
problems that persist between the parents, which in
turn overshadow their readiness to understand the real needs
of their children. Leeni Hansson (2004) demonstrated in
her study that the likelihood of communicating with a parent
who lives separately from the family and receiving support
from grandparents on that parent’s side is greater if the
parents have been married. If the parents have been living
together outside wedlock, however, the support networks
tend to be less developed and remain tenuous and ineffective
in the case of a break-up. In the latter case, the ties between
the parent living elsewhere and the child tend to be weaker.
As a result, the wide informal network created around a child
through variegated family structures does not necessarily
provide them with more support or a higher quality of life.
Belonging to a family provides children with a sense
of security, while belonging to a group of their peers gen-
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