The Future of Childhood

Question 1

Outline the disappearance of childhood

Answer 1

Neil Postman (1994) argues childhood is ‘disappearing at a dazzling speed’.

Question 2

Describe ways that childhood is disappearing

Answer 2

• Postman points to the trend that children are given the same rights as adult.
• Children are on social media, an unsupervised and uncensored world where children can see unlimited adult content, it ruins innocence and is to blame for increased mental health issues
• Children increasingly act and dress like adults, many children mimic what they see in the media
• Children committing ‘adult’ crimes’, such as the James Bulger case.
• Children exposed to alcohol and drugs. Britain has one of the highest rates of drug abuse amongst teens in Europe

Question 3

What has been the cause of childhood disappearing?

Answer 3

Postman argues, the emergence and now its disappearance is due to the rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture.

Question 4

What is the information hiearchy?

Answer 4

Postman argues that childhood emerged as a separate status along with mass literacy. The printed word creates an information hierarchy, a divide between adults who read and children that don’t

Question 5

What does the information hierarchy do to adults and how does it affect children?

Answer 5

Gives adults power to keep knowledge on ‘adult’ matters e.g. sex, death. These then become a mystery to children, and childhood is associated with innocence and ignorance

Question 6

How does television affect the information hierarchy?

Answer 6

• It blurs the distinction between childhood and adulthood by destroying the information hierarchy
• It doesn’t require a special skills to access. The boundary between the two is broken down, adult authority diminishes and innocence is replaced with knowledge

Question 7

Give evaluation for the disappearance of childhood

Answer 7

• Opie (1993) argues childhood isn’t disappeared. Based on research into children’s unsupervised songs, games and rhymes, she argues there’s evidence of a continued separate children’s cultures
• Postman’s study shows how technology can influence the way childhood in constructed. However he over-emphasises the single cause of TV at the expense of other factors that have influenced the development of childhood

Question 8

Outline Jenks’ argument of childhood

Answer 8

Jenks argues childhood isn’t disappearing, it is just changed

Question 9

What is modern society concerned with according to Jenks?

Answer 9

• For Jenks, modern society (20c) was concerned with ‘futurity’ and childhood was seen as a preparation for the individual to become an adult.
• To achieve this, the vulnerable child needed to protected, by the ‘child-centred’ family and the education system, which imposed discipline and conformity on children

Question 10

Describe childhood in postmodernity

Answer 10

Jenks argues that in post modern society relationships are unstable (divorce is more common). This means that adults relationship with their children become their source of security. As a result, they become protective over their child’s safety.
- This strengthens the view that children are vulnerable and resulting in greater regulation of children’s lives.
- Therefore, Jenks doesn’t agree with Postman as childhood isn’t disappearing. It’s a separate status, the legal and other restrictions marks them off from adults

Question 11

Give evaluation for childhood in postmodernity

Answer 11

• Both for and against Jenks is limited.
• There’s some evidence that parents see their relationship with their children as more important of that with their partners, and that they’re concerned about the risks children face. However, the evidence comes from small, unrepresentative studies.
• Jenks is guilty of over-generalising. Despite greater diversity of family patterns today, he makes sweeping patterns that imply that all children are in same position