Emotional inteligence

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While any of these problems in isolation raises no eyebrows,
taken as a group they are barometers of a sea
change, a new kind of toxicity seeping into and poisoning
the very experience of childhood, signifying sweeping
deficits in emotional competences. This emotional
malaise seems to be a universal price of modern life for
children. While Americans often decry their problems as
particularly bad compared to other cultures', studies
around the world have found rates on a par with or
worse than in the United States. For example, in the
1980s teachers and parents in the Netherlands, China,
and Germany rated children at about the same level of
problems as were found for American children in 1976.
And some countries had children in worse shape than
current U.S. levels, including Australia, France, and
Thailand. But this may not remain true for long. The larger
forces that propel the downward spiral in emotional
competence seem to be picking up speed in the United
States relative to many other developed nations. 9
No children, rich or poor, are exempt from risk; these
problems are universal, occurring in all ethnic, racial,
and income groups. Thus while children in poverty have
the worst record on indices of emotional skills, their
rate of deterioration over the decades was no worse
than for middle-class children or for wealthy children:
all show the same steady slide. There has also been a