Children are happier when they are spending time with their families and doing things, as opposed to being given more things, a new report from Unicef has found.

The UN’s children agency warns of the detrimental effect that materialism is having on family life in Britain as parents admit to feeling pressured into buying the latest gadgets and brands for their kids.

The report looked at the wellbeing of children in Britain, Spain and Sweden and found in all three countries that children related happiness to time spent with their families and friends.

In Britain, however, researchers found that parents were struggling to find the time to spend with their children as a result of long working hours and were instead trying to compensate by buying things for them. They also found that, more than in Spain and Sweden, British parents were struggling to control their children.

Consumerism is so dominant within British families that researchers described a “compulsion” in some households to buy new things, many of which ended up unused.

Whilst older children in particular found branded goods and gadgets an important way of establishing identity and status, the report noted that British parents were also more likely than in Spain and Sweden to use material goods and new technology “to compensate for social insecurities and the lack of time they have to be with their children”.

Unicef linked this compulsive consumerism with the looting in July, when hordes of young people smashed their way into shops across English towns and cities to steel designer clothes and electrical goods.

“Children in all three countries told us they wanted time with their parents and families, good
relationships with their friends, and lots of stimulating things to do,” the report said.

“In the UK, we found parents struggling to find time to be with their children, or to help them participate in sporting and creative activities.

“It was also clear that parents in the UK found it more difficult than parents in Spain and Sweden to set clear boundaries for their children.”

The report noted that the older the children were in Britain, the less likely they were to participate in outdoor, sporting or creative activities, despite children saying these activities made them happy.

Among low income families especially, access to such activities was found to be restricted because of the costs involved and the fact that parents had to take on more than one job to make ends meet.

In contrast, children across the ages in Spain and Sweden were more likely to be involved in some kind of activity.

The report continued: “Most children agreed that family time was more important to them than consumer goods, yet we observed within UK homes a compulsion on the part of some parents to continually buy new things for their children and for themselves.

“Boxes of toys, broken presents and unused electronics in the home were witness to this drive to acquire new possessions.

“Most parents realised that what they were doing was often ‘pointless’, but seemed somehow pressurised and compelled to continue.

“Parents from the UK often bought their children status brands, believing that they were protecting
them from the kind of bullying they had experienced in their own childhoods.

“This compulsive acquisition and protective, symbolic brand purchase was largely absent in Spain and Sweden, where parents were clearly under much less pressure to consume and displayed far greater resilience.”

Despite the overreliance on consumer goods, researchers found that many children in the UK did not refer to material goods when asked what made them happy and that parents would buy things for their children “often against their better judgement”.

The findings are based on hundreds of interviews conducted by Ipsos Mori researchers with children in Britain, Sweden and Spain.

In contrast to the entrenched consumerism in Britain, researchers noted that in Spain and Sweden there tended to be a “strong and shared social expectation that family took priority over work and other commitments”.

In Spain, fathers were found to work long hours but the mothers tended to stay at home to look after the children, who also had regular contact with members of their extended family. In Sweden, family time is supported by social policy.

Unicef called upon the Government to tackle inequality in Britain by ensuring that companies pay employees a living wage, and improving access to activities for children from all social backgrounds.