The Noughties

Noughties - download the full report in pdf format Click on the accompanying image to download and read the full document using Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

Featured

Motherhood in Western Europe

Insights from Western European Mothers

The changing face of motherhood — Western Europe

The accompanying reports combine a review of existing literature with an analysis of original quantitative data derived from a poll of 9,582 mothers from 12 countries in Western Europe, making it one of the largest studies of this kind ever conducted

Child Obesity and Health

An analysis of the latest available data from the Health Survey for England (HSE)

Child Obesity and Health — download the full report in pdf format

In this ‘National Childhood Obesity Week’, the SIRC report, Children, obesity and heath: Recent trends, holds up a true mirror, accurately reflecting the trend towards slimmer, healthier children. more

The Future of Freemasonry

An examination of the role of Freemasonry in the 21st century

Freemasonry

This report is, as far as we know, an account of the first ever study that has been commissioned by Freemasons from a non-Masonic body. None of the SIRC members involved in the project are Freemasons, a fact that evoked surprise and welcome in equal measure from the Lodge members we met. more

The Changing Face of Motherhood

Insights from three generations of mothers

Motherhood

The report seeks to answer some specific questions about the changing face of motherhood and determine the extent to which modern ‘solutions’ to motherhood are more or less beneficial than the solutions of the past. more

The Noughties

The decade of diversity

We are now a little over halfway through the first decade of the 21st Century. The memories of parties on New Year’s Eve 1999 are beginning to fade — perhaps even on the first day of 2000 they were already lost in the fuzzy blur that can result from too much champagne and jollity. But most of us will remember the sense of anticipation — perhaps even a little nervous trepidation — that marked our transition not just towards a new decade, nor just a new century, but into a new millennium.

The ‘Noughties’ is the name that has stuck for the decade but not only does a decade need a name it also needs a description. We have, for example, a clear vision of the 60s even if we were not even born then. The images of Carnaby Street, free love, The Beatles and Woodstock endure as reminders of halcyon days against which later decades are unfavourably compared. We reflect on the 80s, the Thatcher years, as an age of greed and self-interest. The ‘loads-a-money’ mindset, red braces, yuppies and conspicuous consumption as expressed by Porsche and Rolex. While the 70s passed by as an age of Glam Rock and flared trousers, interrupted from time to time by industrial unrest and football hooligans. The 90s managed to eschew the trappings of superficial disposable income to reinvent ourselves as caring, green and touchy-feely nice people who constantly ‘empathised’ with those around us. Parodies? Of course. But like all parodies, with at least a grain of truth.

So how will people remember the Noughties? Egg commissioned the Social Issues Research Centre to look at the social trends and patterns of behaviour that would define the era. And importantly how these would impact the lives of those growing up in the first decade of the 21st Century.

24.10.2005