childhood Flashcards
Pilcher
The most important feature of the modern idea of childhood is separateness. Childhood is seen as a clear and distinct life stage and children in our society occupy seperate stages from adults.
Golden age of happiness and innocence
Wagg
childhood is socially constructed meaning that there is no single, universal childhood.
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.
e.g. campaigns against child labour or concerns about street children in developing countries reflect western views about what childhood ought to be.
Aries
we have moved from a world that did not see childhood in any way special to a modern cult of childhood
laws and policies
laws restricting child labour and exluding children from paid work
1989 children act making welfare of child the fundamental principle underpinning work of agencies such as social services.
Donzelot - theories of child development that began to appear from the 19th century stressed that children need superision and protection.
postman
childhood is disappearing at a dazzling speed
children given the same rights as adults
disappearance of children’s traditional unsupervised games
growing similarity of child and adult clothes.
lies in rise of television culture where the information hierarchy is destroyed and the barrier between adult and children is broken down.
AO3 of postman
Opie - there is strong evidence of continued existence of separate children’s culture over many years based on study of unsupervised games, rhymes and songs.
Jenks
childhood is undergoing change as society moves from modernity and postmodernity. In modern society, adults were more stable.
In postmodernity, a lack of stability creates insecurity and relationships with children become more important a source of adults’ identity and stability.
helicopter parenting
cotton wool parenting
Aries and shorter’s march of progress view
today’s children are more valued, better cared for and have more rights.
The family has become child centred.
how much money do children cost their parents by their 21st birthday
by the time a child reaches their 21st birthday, they’d have cost their parents £227,000
palmer
toxic childhood caused by rapid technological and cultural changes damaged children’s physical, emotional and intellectual development.
Class differences in childhood
poor mothers are more likely to have low birthweight babies which in turn is linked to delayed physical and intellectual development.
Children of unskilled manual workers are 3x more likely to suffer hyperactivity and 4x more likely to experience conduct disorder.
Firestone and holt
many of the things that MOP writers see as care and protection are in fact just new forms of oppression and control.
Adult control
in 2020, 50,000 children were subject to child protection plans because they were deemed at risk of significant harm
Children’s space is controlled
Katz - sudanese children roam freely around the village and for several kilometers outside of it
control over time and routines
Control over bodies
Control over children’s access to resources.
Age patriarchy
Gittens - the father controls children
