Bring up your kids in the countryside if you dare

After a recent poll found a preference for raising children in rural areas, Will Gore experiments in a Welsh wood

A whopping 44 per cent of adults think children would have a better upbringing in the country (Getty)

Social media has been abuzz this week. I mean, that’s hardly unusual I suppose, but it has felt particularly so in recent days. We’ve had the reaction to Emily Maitlis’s comments on the BBC; a woman went viral for confronting the health secretary, Steve Barclay, outside a London hospital; and Liz Truss’s hint that Emmanuel Macron might be foe rather than friend caused further uproar.

But amid spiky debates about the energy crisis, the Tory party leadership, striking barristers and the rest, one question seemed to especially inflame passions: is it better to raise kids in an urban environment or in the country?

A YouGov poll had asked where, in general, do you think children would have a better upbringing: 6 per cent of respondents plumped for the city, 26 per cent said town, and a whopping 44 per cent argued for the countryside – despite 82 per cent of the UK population living in urban areas. Oddly, the remaining 24 per cent didn’t know what to think.