London - Girls are often not as happy as boys – but they make up for it with hard work and ambition, a study has found.
Girls are less likely to be happy with their looks than boys in their late childhood and early teenage years.
They are also less likely to say they are happy in their family or draw contentment from their possessions, the Office for National Statistics data shows.
But in terms of ambition, girls spend more time on the computer doing homework – while boys tend to use it to play games.
And girls are markedly more likely than boys to decide before the age of 15 that they want to go to university. The findings are part of an ONS scheme to measure the nation’s well-being.
Its report was based on large national surveys combined with charity and academic research.
It said: “Children’s well-being is an important part of the nation’s well-being. A significant minority of UK children suffer from low well-being, which impacts on their childhood and life chances.”
The report did not take into account the kind of family that children came from, for example whether their parents were married. It focused instead on issues that were seen as important to young people.
It identified satisfaction with appearance as a key aspect of overall well-being, adding: “Lower levels of satisfaction could be linked to the high importance of image in the current culture, or greater public scrutiny occurring from increasing use of various media.”
Between the ages of ten and 15, girls were more than twice as likely as boys to feel unhappy with their appearance.
Almost one in five girls – 17 percent – said they were unhappy with how they looked, compared to just eight percent of boys.
Fewer girls than boys were happy with their family life. Nearly two-thirds of boys rated their happiness with their family as high – 62 percent – while 56 percent of girls said the same.
And some 66 percent of boys were happy with their possessions, against 61 percent of girls.
But the report found evidence of greater determination to work hard among girls. Some 83 percent of girls said they wanted to go to university. Only 69 percent of boys agreed.
Nearly three out of four girls, 73 percent, used the family computer to do homework at least once a week, compared with 67 percent of boys. When asked how long they spent playing computer games on a typical school night, 73 percent of boys said it was up to three hours, while only 67 percent of girls said the same.
Boys were nearly twice as likely as girls to spend more than four hours playing computer games – nine percent against five percent.
The report found that almost all children played some sport. Among 11 to 15-year-olds, 99 percent of boys and 95 percent of girls had played sport in the month before the survey.
Half of all children in the age group played football.
The ONS said that more children now talk to their mother once a week about things that matter than did so in 2002: 61 percent compared to 51 percent.
It also estimated that around one in eight children are frequently bullied. But three quarters say their happiness and life satisfaction are high. - Daily Mail