When a public organization launches a consultation on childhood and parenting, the immediate question is about the scale: how many people respond, what profiles do they have, and what do we actually do with the results? The survey Let’s Talk About Childhood, conducted by the Office of Birth and Childhood (ONE) in 2025, provides actionable data on these three points.
Multilingual and multimodal consultation: what sets Let’s Talk About Childhood apart from a traditional survey
Most institutional surveys are limited to an online questionnaire in a single language, targeting an adult audience. Let’s Talk About Childhood has taken a different path on several technical axes.
| Criterion | Traditional institutional survey | Let’s Talk About Childhood (ONE, 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum age | 18 years | 13 years |
| Available languages | 1 to 2 | 9 languages |
| Response modes | Written form | Written or voice message |
| Anonymity | Variable | Anonymous questionnaire |
| Collection duration | Several months | From October 1 to November 3, 2025 |
| Number of respondents | Several thousand (order of magnitude) | More than 10,000 people |
The voice format deserves special attention. It allows parents who are uncomfortable with writing, young people, or those for whom French is not their native language to express themselves without editorial filtering. 9 languages and a voice format open the consultation to audiences usually absent from family surveys.
Among the news on Let’s Talk About Childhood, there is the progressive publication of results and resources from this collection, accompanied by thematic analyses.
Participation of young people aged 13 to 18: a fully recognized audience
About 700 young people aged 13 to 18 participated in the consultation. This number may seem modest compared to the total of 10,000 respondents, but it reflects a methodological choice: the ONE did not merge adolescent voices with those of adults.
The contributions from young people were analyzed separately. Their concerns focus on topics that parents do not always address in the same way: screen usage from the inside, academic pressure, and the relationship to digital as a social space rather than just a risk.
Screens and digital: a perception gap between generations
Parents responding to this type of consultation often express concern about screen time. In contrast, young people themselves describe digital as a tool for autonomy and social connection, while also acknowledging negative effects on their concentration.
The gap between parental perception and adolescent experience of digital is one of the most actionable insights for public policy. Effective regulation on children’s access to apps and social networks cannot be built solely from the adult perspective.
Twelve insights and a management contract: the concrete follow-up to the consultation
The synthesis published in early 2026 highlighted 12 key insights from the consultation. Among the recurring themes:
- The inseparable nature of child well-being and parent well-being, treated as a duo rather than two separate issues
- The question of rhythms imposed on families (school hours, activities, travel time) and their impact on the daily lives of young children and those in preschool
- The demand for accessible parental support, both online and in-person, tailored to different family contexts
These results do not remain in a report. They feed into the preparation of the future management contract of the ONE, the document that sets the priorities and resources of the institution for the coming years. This direct link between citizen consultation and institutional programming gives the exercise a weight that opinion surveys generally lack.
Family services: what areas for improvement emerge
Several contributions point to a need for centralized information. Parents report the difficulty of navigating between available services (prenatal consultations, daycare follow-up, parenting support) without a single entry point.
The other notable area concerns the digital practices of young children. Families request concrete guidelines, not injunctions. What age is appropriate for a first educational app? How to support a preschool child in facing screens without resorting to total prohibition or complete laissez-faire?
Families are asking for concrete guidelines on digital, not general injunctions. This formulation appears in many open contributions and distinguishes the ONE consultation from a simple opinion barometer.
Resources and news on childhood: where to follow the evolution of the issue
The publication of detailed results is done by themes. Data on the profile of respondents is already accessible, and sectoral analyses (early childhood, adolescence, parenting) follow a progressive schedule.
For early childhood professionals, preschool teachers, or youth sector actors, these results provide a working basis. They allow for calibrating activities offered to children and young people based on what families actually express, rather than what institutions assume.
More than 10,000 respondents and a questionnaire in 9 languages give this consultation a statistical foundation that few similar exercises achieve in the Walloon-Brussels Federation. The fact that the results are directly injected into the ONE management contract transforms a participatory approach into a lever for public decision-making.