Topic 1 Flashcards
Pilcher- golden age
Most important feature of modern childhood is SEPERATENESS.
• Childhood is a CLEAR and DISTINCT life stage
• Golden Age of HAPPINESS and INNOCENCE
• INNOCENCE means adults must protect children from the adult world - they must be quarantined
• Excluded from paid work the emphasis for children is HAPPINESS through leisure and play
• Their dress is different, as are products and services such as toys, food, books, entertainments and play areas etc.
Wagg- social construct
“Childhood is socially constructed. It is, in other words, what members of
particular societies, at particular times and in particular places, say it is. There is no singular universal childhood, experienced by all. So, childhood isn’t ‘natural’ and should be distinguished from mere biological immaturity”
Benedict - taking responsibility at a young age
argued children in simpler, non-industrial societies are generally treated differently than their western counterparts in 3 ways: They take responsibility at a young age, Less value is placed on children showing obedience to adults, Children’s sexual behaviour is often viewed differently
Punch - Bolivia
found rural Bolivia that children worked from the age of 5
Firth - tikopia
found in the Tikopia tribe doing as you are told by a grown up is
regarded as a concession to be granted by the child not expected by the adult
Malinowski - children’s sexual behaviour
found amongst the Trobriand Islanders adults took an attitude of tolerance and amusement towards children’s sexual explorations and
activities
Aries - historical differences - Middle Ages
• The idea of childhood did not exist
• Children were not seen as different to adults once they had passed the stage of physical dependency
• Worked from an early age
• The law made no distinction between children and adults and children often faced the
same severe punishments as those meted out to adults
Shorter- historical differences
argues that high infant mortality rates meant parents did not form emotional attachments to their children, which encouraged indifference and neglect. For example parents often gave babies the same name as a deceased sibling or forgot how many children they had had.
Aries - historical differences - cult of childhood
Aries argues that this is when the modern view of childhood starts to emerge.
Schools started to specialise in education just for the young
This reflected the influence for the church where children were seen as the ‘creatures of god’
Growing distinction between children’s and adults clothing
By the 18 th century handbooks on child rearing had started to emerge – showing childcentredness
Aries - historical differences - century of the child
According to Aries we are now in a world that is obsessed with childhood and he calls this ‘the century of the child’.
Pollock - A03 of historical differences
Pollock criticises Aries for saying childhood did not exist in the middle
ages, she simply says the notion of childhood was different.
However Aries’ work is very valuable for showing how childhood is socially constructed.
Laws restricting child labour and excluding children from paid work
Children went from being economic assets to liabilities • The introduction of compulsory schooling 1880
Mean that poor children also got access to education. Raising the leaving age has also extended this dependency
The growth of the idea of children’s rights
Children Act defines parents having responsibilities not rights
UN convention on the Rights of a Child 1989 – lays down basic rights to healthcare and education, protection from abuse etc.
Declining family size and lower infant mortality rates
Have encouraged parents to make greater financial and emotional investment
Children’s development became a subject of medical knowledge
Donzelot observes how theories of child development began to appear from 19th century
Laws and policies that apply specifically to children
Minimum age laws from sex to smoking have reinforced the idea that children are different from adults
De Mause - march of progress
“The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of childcare, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorised and sexually abused”
Aries and shorter - march of progress
Aries and Shorter, who we have already looked at, also hold a march of progress view. They say children today have better childcare, healthcare, education and rights than ever before.
• There are now smaller family sizes in 1860 - 5.7 births per woman, in 2014 – 1.83 so parents can afford more
• On average parents will have spent £227,000 by the time their child reaches their 21st.
• Family has become more child-centred they are both financially and emotionally
invested in their children
• Children are protected from harm there are now laws against child abuse and child
labour
Palmer - toxic childhood
Palmer (2010) argues that the UK today is experiencing a ‘toxic childhood’. She says that changes such as:
• Junk food
• Computer games and social media – the ‘electronic village’
• Intensive marketing to children
• Long working hours of parents
• Growing emphasis on testing in education
Have resulted in damaged physical, emotional and intellectual development. UK Youth have higher rates in international tables for:
• Obesity
• Early sexual experience
• Teenage pregnancies
• Self-harm
• Drug alcohol abuse
Gender - hillman
boys are more likely to be allowed to cross or cycle on roads, use buses, and go out after dark
Bonke - gender
Girls do more domestic labour especially in lone parent families - 5x more than boys
Brannen - ethnicity
Asian parents were more likely than other parents to be strict towards daughters
Bhatti - ethnicity
Found izzat (family honour) could be a restriction on the behaviour of girls
Child liberationsim - neglect and abuse
This can include physical neglect or physical, sexual or emotional abuse. 2013 43,000 children were subject to a child
protection plan.
ChildLine receives over 20,000 calls a year from children saying they are being physically and sexually abused
Child liberationsim - control over children’s space
Children’s movements in industrial societies like Britain are highly regulated Shops often have signs saying ‘no school children’
Children are told to play in certain areas and not in others
Increasing close surveillance of children in public spaces Fears about road safety and stranger danger
1971 86% of children walked to school alone, 2010 this was 25%
Child liberationsim - control over children’s time
Adults control children’s daily routines
Incl. what time they get up, eat, go to school, come home, play, watch TV,
sleep
Also control the speed in which children grow up – when a child is too old for something or too young
Compared to Holmes who found Samoans were never deemed as too young
Child liberationsim - control over children’s bodies
Incl. how children sit, walk, run, what they wear, their hairstyles, whether or not they can have their ears pierced
Taken for granted that children’s bodies can be touched: they are
washed, fed and dressed, have their heads patted and hands held, are pickedup,cuddledandkissedandtheymayevenbesmacked
Child liberationsim - children’s access to resources
Children have limited opportunity to earn money so remain dependant on adults
Labour laws and compulsory schooling excludes them from most work Child benefit goes to patents
Pocket money is given deemed on whether the child deserves it – ‘have they been good enough’
Gittens - Age patriarchy
calls the inequalities between adults and children ‘age patriarchy’. Just as feminists use patriarchy to describe male domination, age patriarchy describes the domination of children by adults. Gittins makes the link that quite often the family is dominated by the male and he has power over both women and children.
Humphrey’s and Thiara - age patriarchy
found that a 1⁄4 of 200 women in their study left abusive relationships because they feared for their children’s safety. This supports the idea by Gittins that patriarchy effects and oppresses children as much as women.
Hockey and James - acting up and down
Acting up – acted like adults by doing things they were not meant to do e.g. smoking, drinking, swearing. Also they often exaggerate their age (I’m nearly 10)
Acting down – behaving in ways expected by younger children (e.g. reverting to baby talk or insisting on being carried)
Postman - disappearance of childhood
Postman (1994) about the future of childhood is that it is disappearing at a ‘dazzling’ rate. He says the boundary between childhood and adulthood is becoming increasingly blurred:
• Trend towards giving children the same rights as adults
• There is a disappearance of childhood games
• Growing similarity of adults’ and children’s clothing
• Even cases of children committing adult crimes such as murder
The main reason why childhood is disappearing according to Postman is the rise of television culture and the fall of print culture.
Opie - A03 of disappearance of childhood
argues childhood is not disappearing at all, following evidence that suggests there is still an existence of separate childhood culture over many years. They argue that unsupervised childhood games, songs and rhymes still exist.
Jenks - childhood in postmodernity
Jenks (2005) does not believe that childhood is disappearing, unlike Postman. He agrees with Aries that childhood was a creation of modern society. Jenks says modern
society was concerned with ‘futurity’ and that childhood was a preparatory stage for the
future. A child needed to be nurtured by the family and the education system in order to produce effective adults.
Jenks however argues childhood is now undergoing a further change as we move from modernity to postmodernity. In modernity adults’ relationships were more stable but in postmodernity relationships are less stable e.g. divorce is more likely to occur.
Mayall -new sociology of childhood
Whilst the risk that children are seen merely as passive puppets or mere socialisation projects for
this helps in our understanding of how childhood has changed Mayall (2004)
argues it runs adults to mould.
Smart - child’s point of view
says that this approach aims to include the views of children whilst they are living through childhood. Smart agrees with Mayall who says we need to understand the present tense of childhood.
Mason and tipper - child’s point of view
findings show children create their own definitions of who is family – which may include people who are not ‘proper’ aunts, uncles, grandparents etc.
Smart et al - child’s point of view
study of divorce found that children were actively involved in trying to make situations better for everyone, as oppose to being passive victims.
These studies used unstructured interviews as an informal method to empower children to express their own views.
New sociology of childhood theorists argue that there are diverse and multiple childhoods e.g. there are disabled childhoods, Chinese childhoods, girls’ childhoods, the childhoods of adopted children, poor children etc.
