We’re having a “crisis of childhood”, according to research from the charity Action for Children. Doesn’t sound good – but it’s not a new phenomenon. It doesn’t seem like a day goes by when we aren’t given yet another warning about the bloated horror of modern childhood. Exams, bullying, gaming, social media, climate crisis, the end of human employment, the Momo hoax … everywhere you turn something is threatening our youngsters. But in many ways there has never been a better time to be a child.

It’s not that social deprivation doesn’t have a terrible effect on a young person’s ability to enjoy their early years – it always has and it always will, and growing inequality is among the greatest threats to children’s wellbeing. But as parents and professionals improve their understanding of what it means to raise a child well, the day-to-day things that once affected many children irrespective of social status – such as being smacked, being seen and not heard, being told not to cry or express negative emotions because they were babyish – are now thankfully seen as cruel and outdated.

What’s more, attachment theory – the idea that how we are loved by our caregivers as infants will affect our ability to connect to others our whole life – is becoming part of the mainstream parenting conversation. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad,” wrote Philip Larkin in 1971. Well today, at least they’re trying not to.

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And in particular that applies to the dads. The role of the father as merely “the provider” is over. The number of stay-at-home dads has increased 10-fold between 2000 and 2010. And even if it has dipped of late, a result of a lack of some employers’ inflexibility, suggested a recent study by Deloitte, all the evidence is that, where they can, dads are doing their bit, with the same survey finding that about 64% of fathers have asked for flexible working to fit in with their newborns. Quite aside from Piers Morgan’s bizarre obsession with the “emasculating” sling used to carry infants, we know that children who have more of their primary care needs provided by fathers have stronger bonds with them as they grow older, that they tend to have fewer behavioural problems, according to a study by the University of Oxford and also tend to be smarter, according to research published in the Infant Mental Health Journal.

School, however, is the place where many children come unstuck. Years of formal testing and exam pressures are creating a generation of youngsters who worry about failing at an age when loving to learn should be paramount. And while mental health problems – including low mood, anxiety and eating disorders – are increasing in girls, boys’ behavioural issues and aggression are decreasing. Simultaneously we’ve never talked more about how to support good mental health, particularly in children. Even my five-year-old daughter is being taught meditation at primary school. I love that she’s building her resilience and wellbeing at such an early stage.

As a child growing up in New Zealand in the 1980s, I remember being terribly concerned about the hole in the ozone layer, but not ever doing anything about it (no, not even applying sunscreen). Today, youngsters are actively working on social and political problems – such as Greta Thunberg and the youth movement she has inspired around the climate emergency. Young people are constantly criticised for the fake relationships they engage in via social media and the shallowness with which they seem concerned, but in their politicisation, it seems the opposite is true.

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And another note about social media: as child mental health expert Prof Miranda Wolpert pointed out to me in a recent discussion, strong social pressure to be a certain way from the media is nothing new. Today social media opens up the opportunity to share and celebrate social and physical difference: there is no one size fits all approach. And in their approach to gender, race, disability and tolerance of all kinds of diversity, we are raising a generation that might just turn out to be the most accepting in history.

From increased parental interaction, to a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be both physically and mentally “well”, we are nurturing a more self-aware, compassionate and committed generation that may very well be the foil we need to a stiff-upper-lipped, closed-minded and austerity-soaked culture.

• Rachel Carrell is the CEO of nanny-sharing startup Koru Kids