Britain is in danger of becoming a society of infantilised adults who are abusing their own children by default, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said today.

He condemned the "malign" obsession with testing in schools and issued a clarion call for the British people to grow up.

"When adults stop being infants, children can be children," he told an audience of headmasters, church and mosque leaders, community workers and academics in east London.

Toddlers and babies were being "shunted off" to nurseries and day care or being "plonked" in front of videos so their parents could get on with their own concerns, causing abuse by neglect, the Archbishop said.

A "culture of work" was contributing to the neglect of the family, by neglecting the need to create a stable and secure environment. Meanwhile, society was consumed by a "culture of gossip and rhetoric and apathy."

"We live in a debased environment of gossip-inflicted rhetoric, non-participation, celebrity obsession and vacuous aspiration," Dr Williams said.

In this environment, the "haste to consumerise and sexualise childhood" had become more and more hectic. Some "very, very tough" questions needed to be asked about children and advertising. The need for a regulatory regime for advertisements aimed at children had to be addressed with "urgency".

Attacking the programme of testing in schools, Dr Williams said: "We ought to be educating in emotional and communicative literacy as well as other kinds of literacy."

Dr Williams was speaking after a hectic few days where he attended the funeral of the Pope in Rome and then conducted the service of prayer and dedication for the newly-married Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.

The event at Queen Mary, London University, was organised by the Citizen Organising Foundation, a community organisation made up of Christian and Muslim clergy and congregations, community leaders, parents, shop stewards and teachers.

Dr Williams accepted an invitation to speak long before the date of the General Election was known. Nevertheless, although not party political, the Archbishop was clearly aware in his address of the sensitivity of the present political climate.

The speech represented his concern that individual adults throughout the country to take responsibility for themselves.

He said: "We want to see a society which is composed of adults, people who can choose and act and change, who can hope, who can make a difference, who can be sorry when they fail, who can empathise, who can continue learning. It does not happen by accident. If we go on producing grown-up infants we can hardly wonder why different sorts of violence and dysfunction persist in our society."

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