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Up Yours
One of the most interesting projects on modern British TV has been the 7 Up series, charting the lives of a group of youngsters as they grew into adults. Starting at the age of seven, the series has caught up with them at seven year intervals. The '42' year round of reports were screened recently. Some of the original subjects now refuse to be interviewed but others have stayed with the project.
It is a striking example of the way social structures shape individual destinies, with those born to well-to-do families going to expensive private schools, then top universities, before settling into lucrative careers as lawyers and the like. Those from more humble backgrounds have tended to follow a somewhat different lifestyle trajectory. There have been exceptions and surprises of course but the role of social circumstance remains striking.
The programme makers have managed to create a fascinating spotlight on such processes. More noticeable, however, is their disinterest and/or evasion with regard to other matters. Contrary to complacent notions that increasing affluence means smaller family sizes, the programmes have revealed how the well-to-do often choose not to stick at parenting two children (i.e. reproducing themselves) but go for a third child. It is a decision which says, in effect, that the world not only cope well with existing human numbers but also can absorb many more.
Tact probably prevented the programme makers from asking one of their subjects the obvious questions. He had come from a broken marriage, living part of his early life in care. The '35' reports showed him married with five children. The latest round visited him, now divorced, remarried and with a new child by his new wife. In other words, his other five children were growing without their father. But the interviewers approached this little problem with great delicacy.
That was fair enough but they showed no restrained in asking another subject why he and his wide only had one child. It implied that there was something wrong about this choice, that it needed justification. Yet if it is reasonable to pose that question, why was it not reasonable to ask those who had parented three or more children, why they thought it right to add to already unsustainable human numbers. Nor did the programme makers ask any of the rich interviewees whether they thought that their lifestyles could be generalised to the rest of humankind without finally bankrupting the biosphere. The 7 Up series is a very valuable and interesting one but, like so much pop-and academic-sociology, it avoid the really big social questions.
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