Topic 1

Question 1

Pilcher- golden age

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Wagg- social construct

Answer 2

“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”

Question 3

Benedict - taking responsibility at a young age

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Punch - Bolivia

Answer 4

found rural Bolivia that children worked from the age of 5

Question 5

Firth - tikopia

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Malinowski - children’s sexual behaviour

Answer 6

found amongst the Trobriand Islanders adults took an attitude of tolerance and amusement towards children’s sexual explorations and
activities

Question 7

Aries - historical differences - Middle Ages

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

Shorter- historical differences

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

Aries - historical differences - cult of childhood

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Aries - historical differences - century of the child

Answer 10

According to Aries we are now in a world that is obsessed with childhood and he calls this ‘the century of the child’.

Question 11

Pollock - A03 of historical differences

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

Laws restricting child labour and excluding children from paid work

Answer 12

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

Question 13

The growth of the idea of children’s rights

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

Declining family size and lower infant mortality rates

Answer 14

Have encouraged parents to make greater financial and emotional investment

Question 15

Children’s development became a subject of medical knowledge

Answer 15

Donzelot observes how theories of child development began to appear from 19th century

Question 16

Laws and policies that apply specifically to children

Answer 16

Minimum age laws from sex to smoking have reinforced the idea that children are different from adults

Question 17

De Mause - march of progress

Answer 17

“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”

Question 18

Aries and shorter - march of progress

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Palmer - toxic childhood

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Gender - hillman

Answer 20

boys are more likely to be allowed to cross or cycle on roads, use buses, and go out after dark

Question 21

Bonke - gender

Answer 21

Girls do more domestic labour especially in lone parent families - 5x more than boys

Question 22

Brannen - ethnicity

Answer 22

Asian parents were more likely than other parents to be strict towards daughters

Question 23

Bhatti - ethnicity

Answer 23

Found izzat (family honour) could be a restriction on the behaviour of girls

Question 24

Child liberationsim - neglect and abuse

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Child liberationsim - control over children’s space

Answer 25

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%

Question 26

Child liberationsim - control over children’s time

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Child liberationsim - control over children’s bodies

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Child liberationsim - children’s access to resources

Answer 28

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’

Question 29

Gittens - Age patriarchy

Answer 29

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.

Question 30

Humphrey’s and Thiara - age patriarchy

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

Hockey and James - acting up and down

Answer 31

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)

Question 32

Postman - disappearance of childhood

Answer 32

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.

Question 33

Opie - A03 of disappearance of childhood

Answer 33

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.

Question 34

Jenks - childhood in postmodernity

Answer 34

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.

Question 35

Mayall -new sociology of childhood

Answer 35

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.

Question 36

Smart - child’s point of view

Answer 36

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.

Question 37

Mason and tipper - child’s point of view

Answer 37

findings show children create their own definitions of who is family – which may include people who are not ‘proper’ aunts, uncles, grandparents etc.

Question 38

Smart et al - child’s point of view

Answer 38

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.