I have few memories left of my childhood. The few I have, I therefore love a little extra.
For example, I remember my first eagle camp well. I remember the great anticipation. For the first time, I was going away for a whole week, in the middle of summer. It felt like a luxury vacation. Something I wasn't used to at all.
And then I remember the feeling of community and warmth around the campfire in the rainy and muddy field. Around the fire, everyone was equal - even though we all knew how different we really were and how different the conditions we all grew up with. Around the fire it didn't matter.
But outside the camp activities, the differences were clear.
"It showed in the clothes we wore, how we ate the school lunch and who could come along on the school trip where the rental cost of the skidrics or lunch bag was mandatory. "
Our upbringing shapes us. How our childhood is affects how the rest of our life looks like. We know that an unequal childhood can affect several areas of life, both during growing up and in the longer term, for example increased risk of ill-health, poorer school results, substance abuse, crime, unemployment and the need for assistance in adulthood. Research also shows that growing up in economic vulnerability has a negative impact on children's living conditions. That is why it is completely incomprehensible to me that we do not do more to ensure that children do not grow up in poor economic conditions.
When the alarm bells are now ringing around the country, where families with children do not have enough money for the most basic things such as food and diapers, every politician should turn over every stone to ensure that this crisis does not also affect the children the worst. Children's Rights Sweden has laid out a smorgasbord with various suggestions on how we can ensure that children make it through the crisis.
In the report "The children and the crisis - how the children are affected by inflation" written by Amanda Schulin for Unga Örnar and the think tank Tiden, we propose a series of measures to help families with children affected by the economic crisis and rising prices. Instead of reduced taxes for high-income earners, expensive census and billions raining on private schools, we want to see an increased child allowance of 250 kroner a month which will then be continuously adjusted up with inflation, free school breakfasts throughout the country, crisis allowances for families with children, rent deductions and priority access to first-hand contracts in municipal housing queues, free entry for families with children at bathhouses and museums and much more.
With early and relatively cheap interventions, we can meet the demands we face, where we give more children the conditions for a safe upbringing.
The government could only pick and choose the proposals from child rights Sweden.
Unfortunately, the right-wing government's redistributive political ambitions are completely non-existent. Instead of investing in the children and counteracting the consequences of the crisis, lower taxes are prioritized for those of us with already quite thick wallets and continued gains in welfare.
It is shameful that a welfare state has a government that does not want to help the most vulnerable, but turns its back on them when they most need support.
Do they not see, or simply do not care about those struggling with scarce resources?
Unga Örnar will continue to do what we can to give all children meaningful free time. So that more children can feel what I felt when I had the opportunity to attend my first summer camp as a child. But we cannot solve all the big problems that the crisis brings with it for our children and young people. There, governing politicians must dare to set the priorities.
In one weighing scale are our children and young people and their entire future. In the second, tax cuts for the rich. For me, the choice is simple. It should also be the case for the government.
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