Childhood as a social construct

Question 1

What is the general western notion of childhood?

Answer 1

children lack skills, knowledge and experience

need a period of protection

Question 2

What is Jane Pilcher’s view of childhood?

Answer 2

SEPARATENESS
-separate status
emphasized by ….. child laws, child products, culture and dress

Question 3

What is the consequence of childhood being a ‘golden age’ of innocence?

Answer 3

• children seen as vulnerable and in need of protection from dangers of the adult world
• as a result: children’s lives mainly revolve around family and education
• lead lives of leisure and play rather than work

Question 4

Who stated that ‘there is no universal childhood’?

Answer 4

Stephen Wagg

Question 5

Which sociologist argues that children in simpler, non industrial societies are treated differently from those in western societies?

Answer 5

Ruth Benedict

Question 6

What difference from western culture did Samantha Punch find about rural Bolivian children?

Answer 6

• expected to take work responsibilities from age 5 without hesitation

Question 7

What difference from western culture did Lowell Holmes find in his study of a Samoan village?

Answer 7

-‘too young’ never used as an excuse

Question 8

What difference from western culture did Raymond Firth find in Tikopia?

Answer 8

-Doing as you were told by a grown up not expected

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Question 9

What difference from western culture did Bronislaw Malinowski find when studying the Trobrinad islanders?

Answer 9

-adults took an attitude of ‘tolerance and interest’ towards children’s sexual explorations and activities

Question 10

What do the 3 examples of differences of culture show?

Answer 10

• much less of a dividing line between adult and child in non western cultures
• childhood is not a fixed thing … universally different

Question 11

Who argued that ‘the idea of childhood did not exist’ in the middle ages?

Answer 11

Historian, Philippe Aries

Question 12

What was childhood like in the middle ages?

according to Aries

Answer 12

• soon after being weaned, regarded as adults in wider society
• children were in effect ‘mini adults’
• the law made no distinction between adult and child- they often faced the same punishment as those adults received
• Aries evidence = art work .. children appear without any characteristics of childhood (same clothing and activities - just smaller)

Question 13

What does Edward Shorter think the reason for indifference/neglect of infants was in the middle ages?

Answer 13

High death rates
- it meant it was not uncommon for parents to give a newborn baby the name or a recently dead sibling or just refer to it as it

Question 14

What notions of modern childhood began to emerge after 13th century according to Aries?

Answer 14

• schools created purely with purpose to educate the young. as a religious institute they reflected the church’s view that children were fragile ‘creatures of god’
• Growing distinction between children’s and adult’s clothing. By 17th century an upper class boy would wear an outfit appropriate for age that set him apart from adults
• 18th century .. handbooks on child rearing widely available .. sign of growing child centredness of family life

Question 15

Who stated there has been a modern ‘cult of childhood’ and what do they mean by that?

Answer 15

Philip aries (1960)

• moved from a society that did not see childhood as in anyway special to one that is obsessed with it
• 20th century = century of the child

Question 16

How did Linda Pollock criticize Aries?

Answer 16

She thinks that really it is simply that in the middle ages there was just a different notion of childhood rather than that childhood didn’t exist