Childhood

Question 1

Childhood as a social construct

Answer 1

• sociologists see childhood as socially constructed; in other words, as something created and defined by society. They argue that what people mean by childhood, and the position that children occupy in society, is not fixed by differs between different times, places and cultures. We can see this by comparing the western idea of childhood today worth childhood on the past and other societies

Question 2

The modern western notion of childhood

Answer 2

• it is generally accepted in of society today that childhood is a special time of life and that children are fundamentally different from adults. They are regarded as physically and psychologically immature and not yet competent to run their own lives. There is a belief that children’s lack of skills, knowledge and experience means that they need a lengthy, protected period of nurturing and socialisation before they are ready for adult society and its responsibilities
• as pilcher notes, the most important feature of the modern idea of childhood is separateness. Childhood is even as a clear and distinct life stage, and children in our society occupy a separate status from adults
• this is emphasised in several ways, for instance through laws regulating what children are allowed, required or forbidden to do. Their difference from adults is also emphasised through differences in dress, especially for younger children, and through products and services specially for children, such as toys, food, books, entertainments, play areas and so on

Question 3

The modern west notion of childhood - the ‘golden age’

Answer 3

• related to the separateness of children’s status is the idea old childhood as a ‘golden age’ of happiness and innocence. However, this innocence means that children are seen as vulnerable and in need of protection from the dangers of the adult world so they must be kept in ‘quarantined’ and separated from it. As a result, children’s lives are lived largely in the sphere of the family and education, where adults provides for them and protect them from the outside world. Similarly, unlike adults, they lead lives of leisure and play and are largely excluded from paid work.
• however, in this view of childhood as a separate age status is not found in all societies. It is not universal. As wagg says ‘there is no single universal childhood, experienced by all’
• this means that, whole all humans go through the same stages of physical development, different cultures construct or define this process differently
• in western cultures today, children are defined as vulnerable and unable to fend for themselves. However, other cultures do not necessarily see such a great difference between children and adults. We can see this by looking as examples both from other cultures today and from European societies of the past

Question 4

Cross cultural differences in childhood

Answer 4

• a good way to illustrate the social construction of childhood is to take a comparative approach - that is, to look at how children are seen and treated in other times and places than our own. The anthropologist Benedict argues that children in simpler, non industrial societies are generally treated differently from their modern western counterparts in three ways:
• they take responsibility at an early age: e.g, punch’s study of childhood in rural Bolivia found that, once children are five years old, they are expected to take work responsibilities in the home and in the community . Tasks are taken on without question or hesitation.
• less value is placed on children showing obedience to adult authority - e.g, firth found that among the tikopia of the western pacific, doing as you are told by a grown up s regarded as a concession to be granted by the child, not a right to be expected by the adult
• children’s sexual behaviour is often viewed differently - e.g, trobriand islanders of the south west pacific, Malinowski found that adults took an attitude of ‘tolerance and amused interest’ towards children’s sexuality explorations and activities
• Benedict argues that in many non industrial cultures, there is much less of a dividing line between the behaviour expected of children and that expected of adults. Such evidence illustrates the key idea that childhood is not a fixed thing found universally in the same form in all human societies, but is socially constructed and so differs from culture to culture

Question 5

The globalisation of western childhood

Answer 5

• some sociologists argue that western notions of childhood are being globalised. International humanitarian and welfare agencies have exported and imposed on the rest of the world, western norms of what childhood should be - a separate life stage, based in the nuclear family and school, in which children are innocent, dependent and vulnerable and have no economic role
• e.g, campaigns against child labour, or concerns about ‘street children’ in developing countries, reflect western views about how childhood ‘ought’ to be - whereas in fact, an important preparation for adult life. In this view, western style ‘childhood’ is spreading throughout the world. However, arguably such campaigns have little impact on the position of children in developing countries

Question 6

Historical differences in childhood

Answer 6

• the position of children differs over time as well as between societies. Many sociologists and historians argue that childhood as we understand it today is a relatively recent ‘invention’
• the historian Aries argues that in the Middle Ages, ‘the idea of childhood did not exist’. Children were not seen as having a different ‘nature’ pr needs from adults - at least not once they had passed the stage of physical dependency during infancy
• in the Middle Ages, childhood as a separate age stage was short. Son after being weaned, the child entered wider societies on much the same terms as an adult, beginning work from an early age, often in the household of another family. Children were in effect ‘mini adults with the same rights, duties and skills as adults. E.g, the law often made no distinction between children and adults, and children often faced the same serve punishments as those meted out to adults
• as evidence of his view, Aries uses work of art from the period in these, children appear without ‘any of the characteristics of childhood: they have simply been depicted on a smaller scale’ the paintings show children and adults dressed in the same clothing and working and playing together
• parental attitudes towards children in the Middle Ages were also very different from those today. Shorter argues that high death rates encouraged indifference and neglect, especially towards infants. E.g, it was not uncommon for parents to give a newborn baby the name of a recently dead sibling, to refer to the baby as ‘it’s, or to forget how many children they has had.

Question 7

The modern cult of childhood

Answer 7

• according to Aries, however, elements of the modern notion of childhood gradually began to emerge from the 13th century onwards:
• schools came to specialise purely in the education of the young. This reflected the influence of the church, which increasingly saw children as fragile ‘creatures of god’ in need of discipline and protection from worldly evils
• there was a growing distinction between children’s and adults clothing. By the 17th century, an upper class boy would be dressed in ‘an outfit reserved for his own age group, which set him apart from adults’
• by the 18th century, handbooks on childrearing were widely available- a sign of the growing child centredness of family life, at least among the middle classes
• according to Aries, these developments culminate in the modern ‘cult of childhood’. He argues that we have moved away from a world that did not see childhood as in any way special, to a world that is obsessed with childhood. He describes the 20th century as ‘the century of the child’

Question 8

Criticisms of Aries

Answer 8

• some sociologists have criticised Aries for arguing that childhood does not exist in the past. Pollock argues that it is more correct to say that in the Middle Ages, society simply had a different notion of childhood from todays
• however, Aries work is valuable because it shows that childhood is socially constructed: he demonstrates how ideas about children and their social status have varied over time

Question 9

Reasons for changes in the positions of children

Answer 9

• there are many reasons for the changes in the positions of children. These include the following changes during the 19th and 20th centuries:
• laws restricting child labour and excluding children from paid work - from being economic assets who could earn a wage, children became an economic liability, financially dependant on their parents
• the introduction of compulsory schooling - in the 1880 had a similar effect, especially for the children of the poor. The raising of the school leaving age has extend those period of dependency
• the growth of the idea of children’s rights - e.g, the children’s act defines parents as having ‘responsibilities’ rather than ‘rights’ in relation to children, while using the untied nations conventions on the rights of the child lays down basic rights such as entitlement to healthcare and education, protection from abuse and the right to participate in decision that affect them, such as custody cases
• declining family size and lower infant mortality rate - have encouraged parents to make a greater financial and emotional investment in the fewer children that they now have
• children’s development became the subject of medial knowledge- donzelot observes theories of children development that began to appear from the 19th century stressed that children need supervision and protection
• laws and policies that apply specifically to children - such as minimum ages for a wide range of activities, from sex to smoking, have reinforced the idea that children are different from adults and so different rules must be applies to their behaviour

Question 10

Reasons for changes in the positions of children - industrialisation

Answer 10

• industrialisation - most sociologists agree that the process of industrialisation - the shift front agriculture to factory production as the basis of the economy - underlines many of the changes. E.g, modern industry needs an educated workforce and this requires compulsory schooling of the young
• similarly, the higher standard of living and better welfare provision that industry makes possible lead to lower infant mortality rates. Industrialisation is thus a key factor in bringing about the modern idea of childhood and the changed status of children

Question 11

The disappearance of childhood - the future of childhood

Answer 11

• one influential view of the future of childhood is put forward by postman. Postman argues that childhood is ‘disappearing at a dazzling speed’. He points to the trend towards giving children the same rights as adults, the disappearance of children’s traditional unsupervised games, the growing similarity of adults and children’s clothing, and even to cases of children committing ‘adult’ crimes such as murder
• in postman’s view, the cause first of the emergence of childhood, and now its disappearance, lies in the rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture
• during the Middle Ages, most people were illiterate, and speech was the only skill needed for the participation in the adult world. Children were able to enter adult societies from an early age. Childhood was not associated with innocence, nor the adult world with mystery. There was no division between the world of the adult and that of the child

Question 12

The information hierarchy

Answer 12

• postman argues that childhood emerged as a separate status along with mass literacy, from the 19th century on. This is because the printed word creates an information hierarchy: a sharp division between adults, who can read, and children who cannot.
• this gave adults the power to keep knowledge about sex, money, violence, illness, feather and other ‘adult’ matters a secret from children. These things became mysteries to them, and childhood came to be associated with innocence and ignorance.
• however, television blurs the distinction between childhood and adulthood by destroying the information hierarchy. Unlike the printed word, tv does not require special skills to access it, and it makes information available to adults and children alike. The boundary between adult and child is broken down, adult authority diminishes, and the ignorance and innocence of childhood is replaced by knowledge.
• the counterpart of the disappearance of childhood is the disappearance of childhood is the disappearance of adulthood, where adults and children’s attest and styles become indistinguishable.

Question 13

Evaluation of the future of childhood

Answer 13

• unlike postman, opine argues that childhood is not disappearing. Bases on lifetime of research into children’s unsupervised games, rhymes and songs, conducted with her husband opie, she argues that there is strong evidence of the continued existence of a separate children’s culture over many years
• postman’s study is valuable in showing how different types of communication technology, such as print and television can influence the way in which childhood is constructed. However, he over emphasises a single cause - television - at the expense of other factors that have influenced the development of childhood

Question 14

Childhood in postmodernity

Answer 14

• unlike postman, jenks does not believe childhood is disappearing, but he does believe it is changing
• jenks agrees with Aries that childhood was a creation of modern societies. For jenks, modern society was concerns with ‘futurity’ and childhood was seen as a preparation for the individual to become a productive adult in the future. To achieve this, the vulnerable, undeveloped child needed to be nurtured,, protected and controlled, especially by the ‘child centred’ family and by the education system, which imposed discipline and conformity on children
• now, however, jenks argues, childhood is once again undergoing changes as society moves away from modernity to postmodernity. In modern society, adulteration relationships were more stable, but in postmodern society, the pace of change speeds up the relationships become more unstable. E.g, divorce becomes much more common
• this generates feelings if insecurity. In this context, relationships with their children become more important as a source of adults identity and stability. While your marriage may end in divorce, you are still the parent of your child
• in postmodern society, relationships with their children thus become adults last refuge from the constant uncertainty and upheaval of life. As a result, adults become even more fearful for their children security and even more preoccupied with protecting them from perceived dangers such as child abuse
• this further strengthens the prevailing view of children as vulnerable and in need of protection that we have already seen in the modern notion of childhood, resulting in even greater surveillance and regulation of children’s lives
• for this reason, jenks does not agree with postman that we are seeing the disappearance of childhood. Childhood continues to be a separate status, and the legal and other restrictions placed on what children can do continues to mark them off from adults.

Question 15

Evaluation of postmodernity

Answer 15

• evidence both for against jenks is limited. There is some evidence that parents see their relationship with her children is more important than that with their partners, and that parents are very concerned about the risks they believe their children face. However, the evidence co,es from small, unrepresentative studies.
• jenks is guilty of over generalising. Despite the greater diversity of family and childhood patterns found today such as lone parent families, he makes rather sweeping statements that imply all children are in the same situation

Question 16

Has the position of children improved

Answer 16

• there are important differences between childhood in western societies today as compared with both present day developing countries and European societies in the past. E.g, in the Middle Ages, child labour was a basic fact of life for almost all children, while schooling was available to only wealthy

Question 17

The march of progress view

Answer 17

• these differences raise the questions of whether the changes in the status of childhood that we looked at earlier represent an improvement. The march of progress view argues that, over the past few centuries, the position of children in western societies has been steadily improving and today is better than it has ever been. This view paints a dark picture of the past.
• writers such as Aries and shorter hold a march of progress view. They argue that today children are more values, better cared for, protected and educated, enjoy better health and have more rights than those of previous generations
• e.g, children today are protected from harm and exploitation by laws against child abuse and child labour, while an array of professionals and specialists caters for their educational, psychological and medical needs. The government spends a huge sums on their education
• better healthcare and higher standards of living also mean that babies have a much better chance of survival now than a century ago. In 1900, the infant mortality rate was 154 per 1,000 live births, today it is 4 per 1,000

Question 18

The child centred family

Answer 18

• higher living standards and smaller family sizes also mean that parents can afford to provide for children needs properly. According to one estimate, by the time a child reachers their 21st birthday, they will have cost their parents over £227,000
• march of progress sociologists argue that the family has become child centred. Children are no longer to be ‘seen and not heard’, as they were in Victorian times. Instead they are now the focal point of the family, consulted on many decisions emotionally as awl as financially, and often have high aspirations for them to have a better life and greater opportunities than they themselves have had
• furthermore, it is not just the family that is now child centred; so is societies as a whole. E.g, much media output and many leisure activities are designed specifically for children

Question 19

Toxic childhood

Answer 19

• as against the view that the position of children now is better than it has ever been, some writers suggest that children in the uk today are experiencing what palmer calls ‘toxic childhood’. She argues that rapid technological and cultural changes in the past 25 years have damages children’s physical, emotional and intellectual development. These changes range from junk food, computer games, and intensive marketing to children, to the long hours worked by parents and the growing emphasises on testing in education
• concerns have also been expresses about young people’s health and behaviour. E.g, uk youth have above average rates in international league tables for obesity, self harm, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, early sexual experience and teenage pregnancies. A UNICEF survey in 2013 ranked the uk 16th out of 19 for children’s well being.

Question 20

The conflict view

Answer 20

• the March of progress view is that the position if children has improved dramatically in a relatively short period of time. However, conflict sociologists such as Marxists and feminist dispute this. They argue that society is based on a conflict between different social groups such as social classes or genders. In this conflict, some groups have more power, status or wealth than others. Conflict sociologists see the relationship between groups as one of domination and subordination, in which the dominant group act as oppressors
• conflict sociologists argue that the march of progress view of modern childhood is based on a false and idealised image that ignores important inequalities. They criticise the march of progress view on two grounds:
• there are inequalities among children in terms of the opportunities and risks they face: many today remain unprotected and badly cared for
• the inequalities between children and adults are greater than ever: children today experience greater control, oppression and dependency, nor greater care and protection

Question 21

Inequalities among children

Answer 21

• not all children share the same status pr experiences. E.g, children of different nationalities are likely to experience different childhoods and different life chances. 90% of the worlds low birth weight babies are born in developing countries
• there are also gender differences between children. E.g, according to Hillman, boys are more Isley to be allowed to cross or cycle on roads, use buses, and go out after dark unaccompanied. Bonke found that girls do more domestic labour - especially in lone parents families, where they do five times more housework than boys
• similarly, there are ethnic differences. Brannens study of 15-16 yr olds found that Asians parents were more likely than other parents to be strict towards their daughters. Similarly, bhatti found that ideas could be a restriction, particularly on the behaviour of girls

Question 22

Class inequalities between children

Answer 22

• poor mothers are more likely to have low birth weight babies, which in turn is linked to delayed physical and intellectual development
• children of unskilled manual workers are over three more likely to suffer from hyperactivity and four times more likely to experience conduct disorders than the children of professionals
• children born into poor families are also more likely to die in infancy or childhood, to suffer longstanding illness, to be shorter in height, to fall behind at school, and to be placed on the child protection register.
• thus we cannot speak of ‘children’ in general as if they were all equal - social class, gender and ethnic differences affect their life chances

Question 23

Inequalities between children and adults

Answer 23

• there are also major in inequalities of power between children and adults. March of progress writers argue that adults use this power for the benefit and protection of children, e.g, by passing laws against child labour
• however, critics such as firestone and holt argue that many of the things that March of progress writers see as care and protection are in fact just new forms of oppression and control. E.g, firestone argues that ‘protection’ from paid work is not a benefit to children but a form of inequality. It is a way of forcibly segregating children, making them more dependent, powerless and subject to adult control than previously
• these critics see the need to free children from adult control, and so their view os described as ‘child liberationism’. Adult control takes a number of froms

Question 24

Neglect and abuse

Answer 24

• adult control over children can take the extreme form of physical neglect or physical, sexual or emotional abuse. In 2013, 43,000 children were subject to children protection plans because they were deemed to be at risk of significant harm - most often from their own parents. The charity child line receives over 20,000 calls a year from children saying that the have been sexually or physically abuse. Such figures indicate a ‘dark side’ to family life of which children are the victims

Question 25

Controls over children’s space

Answer 25

• children’s movements in industrial societies such as Britain are higher regulated. E.g, shops may display signs such as ‘no school children’. Children are told to play in some areas and are forbidden to play in others. There is increasingly close surveillance over children in public spaces such as shopping centres, especially at times when they should be in school
• similarly, fears about road safety and ‘stranger danger’ have led to more and more children being driven to school rather than travelling independently. E.g, in 1971, 86% of primary school children were allowed to travel home from school alone. By 2010, this had fallen to 25%. According to Cunningham, the ‘home habitat’ of 8 year olds has shrunk to one ninth of the size it was 25 years earlier
• this control and surveillance contracts with the independence of many children in developing countries today. E.g, Katz describes how rural Sudanese children roam freely both within the village and for serval km outside it

Question 26

Controls over children time

Answer 26

• adults in modern society control children’s daily routines, including the times when they get up, eat, go to school, come home, go out, play, watch television and sleep. Adults also control the speed at which children ‘grow up’. It is they who define whether a child is too old or too young for this or that activity, responsibility or behaviour. This contrasts with holmes finding that among samoans, ‘too young’ is never given as a reason for not letting a child undertake a particular task.

Question 27

Controls children’s bodies

Answer 27

• adults exercise enormous control children’s bodies includes how they sit, walk and run, what they wear, their hairstyles and whether or not they can have their wards pierced. It is taken for granted that children bodies may be touched: they are washed, fed and dress, have their heads patted and hands held, are picked up, cuddled and kissed, and they may be disciplined by smacking
• at the same time, adults restrict the ways in which children may touch their own bodies. E.g, a child may be told not to pick their nose, suck their thumb. This contrasts with the sexual freedoms enjoyed by children in some non industrial cultures.

Question 28

Control over children’s access to resources

Answer 28

• in industrial societies, children have only limited opportunities to earn money, and so they remain dependent economically on adults:
• labour laws and compulsory schooling exclude them from all but the most marginal, low paid, part Time employment
• although the state pays child benefit, this gives to the parent not the child
• pocket money given by parents may depend on ‘good behaviour’ and there may be restrictions on what it can be spent on
• all this contrasts with the economic role of children in developing societies today and in European societies in the past. E.g, Katz found that Sudanese’s children were already engaged in productive work from the age of three or four

Question 29

Age patriarchy

Answer 29

• getting uses the term ‘age patriarchy’ to describe inequalities between adults and children. Just as feminist use the concept of patriarchy to describe male domination and female dependency, gittins argues that there is also an age patriarchy of adult domination and child dependency. In fact, patriarchy means literally ‘rule by the father’ and as gittins points out, the term ‘family’ referred originally to the power of the male head over all other members of the household, including children and servants as well as women
• today this power may still assert itself in the form of violence against both children and women. E.g, Humphrey’s and Thiara, a quarter of the 200 women in their study left there abusing partner because they feared for children’s lives. Such findings support gittins view that patriarchy oppresses children as well as women
• evidence that children may experience childhood ad oppressive crime from the strategies that they use to resit the status of child and the restrictions that go with it. Hockey and James describe one strategy as ‘acting up’ - acting like adults by doing things that children are not supposed to do, such as swearing, smoking, drinking alcohol, joy riding and under age sexual activity. Similarly, children may exaggerate their age
• ‘acting down’ - behaving in ways expected of younger children - is also a popular strategy for resisting adult control. Hockey and James conclude that modern childhood is a status from which most children want to escape
• however, critics of the child liberationist view argue that some adult control over children’s lives is justified on the grounds that children cannot make rational decisions and so are unable to safeguard their interests themselves
• critics also argue that, although children remain under adult supervision, they are not as powerless as the child liberationist claim. E.g, as we saw earlier, the 1989 children act and the United Nations convention on the rights of the child establish the principle that children have legal rights to be protected and consulted

Question 30

The ‘new sociology of childhood’

Answer 30

• the views we have examined so far see childhood as socially constructed; that is, shaped by social processes such as industrialisation, laws and government policies, and institutions such as the family and education system
• while this helps us to understand how childhood changes over time, there is a danger of seeing children as merely passive objects who have no part in making their own childhoods. It risks seeing children from what mayall calls an ‘adultist’ viewpoint. That is, it may see children as mere ‘socialisation projects’ for adults to mould, shape and develop, of no interest in themselves, but only for what they will become in the future
• a different view is taken by the ‘new sociology of childhood’. This approach doesnt see children as simply ‘adults in the making’. Instead, it sees children as active agents who play a major part in creating their own childhoods

Question 31

The child’s point of view

Answer 31

• for this reason, as smart says, the new approach aims to include the views and experiences of children themselves while they are living through childhood. As mayall says, we need to focus on ‘the present tense of childhood’ to study ordinary everyday life from the child’s perspective
• e.g, mason and tipper show how children actively create their own definitions of who is ‘family’ - which may include people who are not ‘proper’ aunts or grandfathers etc, but who they regard to as ‘close’
• similarly, smart et al study of divorce found that, far from being passive victims, children were actively involved in trying to make the situation better for everyone
• studies like these use research methods such as informal unstructured interviews, which empower children to express their own views and allow researchers to see the world from the child’s point of view
• this enables sociologists to explore the diverse, multiple childhoods tat exists even within a single society. E.g, as smart notes, there are ‘disabled childhoods, Chinese childhoods, girls childhoods and the childhoods of adopted children, poor children and so on’
• because it allows children to express their point of view the new sociology of children also draws attention to the fact that children often lack power in relation to adults. As such, it is an approach favoured by child liberationist who campaign in favour of children’s rights and priorities