Childhood As A Social Construct
Childhood as a social construct refers to the idea that the concept of childhood is not universal or natural, but rather shaped by social and cultural factors. It emphasizes that childhood is defined and understood differently across societies and historical periods, and is influenced by social norms, values, and expectations. This perspective challenges the notion of childhood as a fixed and unchanging stage of life.
7 Key excerpts on "Childhood As A Social Construct"
eBook - ePub- Karen Wells(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...Childhood is socially constructed, and children’s lives are profoundly shaped by constructions of childhood – whether in conformity, resistance or reinvention. The new social studies of childhood, whether from a historical, spatial or social perspective, have established that children’s lives are shaped by the social and cultural expectations adults and their peers have of them in different times and places; what concept of childhood prevails in any specific time or place is shaped by many factors external to a child, including the complicated intersections of age with ‘race’, gender and class. Sociology of childhood The new sociology of childhood established a field of inquiry about children (the lived experiences of children) and childhood (the concept that informs expectations and attitudes towards children) that sought to understand children’s lifeworlds as they were lived (Jenks 1982, 1996; James and Prout 1990; James et al. 1998). This focus on children as they are, rather than how their childhood experiences might shape the adults they may become, differentiates the sociology of childhood from other social science disciplines, particularly education and developmental psychology, that have been most engaged with the academic study of children and childhood. James and James contend that ‘“childhood” is the structural site that is occupied by “children” as a collectivity. And it is within this collective and institutional space of “childhood”, as a member of the category “children”, that any individual “child” comes to exercise his or her unique agency’ (James and James 2004: 15). They argue that the term ‘child’, which is often used, especially in policy discourse, in place of ‘children’, as if all children’s experience could be collapsed into a singular, uniform experience, dismisses the multiplicity of childhoods...
eBook - ePubConstructions of Childhood in India
Exploring the Personal and Sociocultural Contours
- Ravneet Kaur(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge India(Publisher)
...The section that follows presents some of them, particularly those that impacted the envisioning of the research undertaken. The text that follows begins by deconstructing the myth of the universality of childhood, focuses on multiple childhoods and presents arguments in support of socially and historically constructed notions about childhood. 1.1 Childhood as socially constructed This approach to the study of childhood is committed to the view that “child” is not just a “biological” category and childhood is not necessarily a “natural” phenomenon (Aries, 1962). It emphasizes that children are socially constituted (Jenks, 1992 ; Qvortrup, 1993 ; Stainton Rogers, Hevey, Roche, & Ash, 1991), and childhood is a culture-specific (Misra & Srivastava, 2003) socially constructed “construct”. This approach anchors to the work of James and James (2004) who explicated the socially constructed nature of childhood. It finds roots in the new paradigm of childhood studies (James & Prout, 1990). It highlights the view that it is not possible to imagine universal and invariant characteristics of childhood (Aries, 1962 ; Gergen, Gloger-Tippelt & Berkowitz, 1990), neither can childhood be seen as static and timeless. Childhood varies as a function of time period and space (James, Jenks & Prout, 1998). The notions of childhood thus need to be situated and understood through a cultural lens, its varying social contexts (Jenks, 1996) and processes through which human development takes shape (Sharma & Chaudhary, 2009). There is no finite form of childhood and this has been established historically (Aries, 1962) and cross-culturally (Mead & Wolfenstein, 1954 ; Whiting & Whiting, 1975). James and Prout (1997) support this by explaining that the immaturity of children may be a biological fact of life, but the manner in which this immaturity is understood and provided with a meaning depends on the cultural context in which it is situated...
eBook - ePub- Alan Clarke(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...From a sociological perspective childhood is viewed as a social construct. There is no one universal definition of childhood. Its definition can vary from one society to another and from one period in history to another. The notion of childhood with which we are familiar today is very much a twentieth century invention. Traditional approaches, such as the functionalist perspective, view childhood as a critical stage in the socialisation process. The child is portrayed as a pre-social being who plays a passive role in learning to embrace the norms and values of society. This is described as a crucial step, which serves to ensure that the individual becomes a conforming member of society. Whilst not denying the existence of child socialisation, critics maintain that functionalism tends to overlook the fact that children are active participants in primary socialisation. Until fairly recently, the process has been explored from the point of view of parenting and the needs of society, thus effectively ignoring the possibility of taking the child’s view of the world as the focus of study. According to the new paradigm for the sociological study of childhood, children are not ‘passive socialisation vessels’ but active social participants. In the context of health care, children are depicted as ‘embodied actors, seeking to maintain their health’ (Mayall, 1998a, p. 276). Children’s claims to the sick role are subject to evaluation by adults. Mothers are the primary carers of sick children and research shows that they are aware that how they deal with claims to sickness is interpreted as a measure of their maternal competence. Like childhood, adolescence can be seen as a social construct. However, some social scientists prefer to use the term ‘young people’ instead of ‘adolescents’ or ‘adolescence’, on the grounds that the latter ‘tend to have a somewhat derogatory meaning – that the essence of being a young person is not in being but in becoming ’ (Brannen et al., 1994, p...
...Childhood, as distinct from biological immaturity, is neither a natural nor a universal feature of human groups but appears as a specific structural and cultural component of many societies. Childhood is a variable of social analysis. It can never be entirely divorced from other variables such as class, gender or ethnicity. Comparative and cross-cultural analysis reveals a variety of childhoods rather than a single or universal phenomenon. Children’s social relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right, independent of the perspective and concern of adults. Children are and must be seen as active in the construction and determination of their own social lives, the lives of those around them and of the societies in which they live. Children are not just passive subjects of social structures and processes. Ethnography is a particularly useful methodology for the study of childhood. It allows children a more direct voice and participation in the production of sociological data than is usually possible through experimental or survey styles of research. Childhood is a phenomenon in relation to which the double hermeneutic of the social sciences is acutely present. That is to say, to proclaim a new paradigm of childhood sociology is also to engage in and respond to the process of reconstructing childhood. (James and Prout 1990 : 8–9) Such an approach, in this context, displays a variety of purposes. First is an endeavour to displace the overwhelming claim on childhood from the realm of common-sense reasoning – not that such reasoning is inferior or unsystematic, but that it is conventional rather than disciplined (Schutz 1964 ; Garfinkel 1967). Common-sense reasoning serves to ‘naturalize’ the child in each and any epoch, that is it treats children as both natural and universal and it thus disenables our understanding of the child’s particularity and cultural difference within a particular historical context...
eBook - ePubUnderstanding the Life Course
Sociological and Psychological Perspectives
- Lorraine Green(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...Childhood in this interpretation is, therefore, what we create and validate as childhood. Woodhead (1997) acknowledges that much of what we believe to be natural about childhood is socially produced but he conversely still acknowledges some universal, global childhood needs and behaviours, so his version of social constructionism is weaker. Kitzinger (1997) explains how our socially constructed and sentimentalized views about children’s innocence, passivity and asexuality are a doubled-edged sword in the fight against child sexual abuse. These stigmatize the abused child and the non-abused sexual child and justify adults depriving children of any potentially protective sexual education. Thus, childhood is represented not as a dynamic interactive experience but as a series of qualities, in opposition to adult qualities, which generally we adults glorify and attempt to preserve; but are we referring to the mythical walled Garden of Eden or the prison of childhood? Therefore, the abused child is no longer a child; s/he has been robbed of childhood. Ironically, these adult-idealized qualities, such as innocence and purity, are those fetishized and manipulated by those who sexually abuse children. Children’s smaller size and lesser life experience and less developed cognition do render them more susceptible to abuse, although it is adult generational power and adult ideas about and treatment of children which exacerbate this situation...
eBook - ePub- Leena Alanen, Berry Mayall, Leena Alanen, Berry Mayall(Authors)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...9 Understanding childhoods: a London study Berry Mayall Introduction: contexts for enquiry This chapter explores children’s discourse about childhood, in relation to motherhood, fatherhood and child-parent relationships. A key concept guiding this enquiry is the observation that ‘child’ has to be understood as a relational concept (Aries 1972). We can distinguish at least three sets of relationships. Children are those identified by adults as non-adults, so the social world that adults construct consists of two groups with somewhat separate interests and relationships to the social order. Secondly, children’s lives are structured by adults—by their interests, understandings and goals; the social condition of childhood is defined through adult-child relations mediated through these interests, understandings and goals. Thirdly, the family and to a lesser extent the school operates on the basis of personal including affective relationships between adults and children. Thus, the permanent social category childhood can be seen as structured in relation to adulthood. Of specific interest and usefulness in studying child-adult relations is the concept of generation (see Chapter 2). This throws emphasis on how social forces shape the experiences and understandings of groups of people, which in turn contribute to the character of those child-adult relations (Mannheim 1952 [1928]). The childhoods of today’s children may be seen as shaped by a different constellation of forces compared with those that shaped their parents’ and teachers’ childhoods; yet parents and teachers are currently operating in intersection with the same constellation of forces that impinge on their children. Child-adult relations are therefore structured and operationalised at the intersections of the understandings derived (in part) from social influences, that individuals and groups work with. Education policy in the UK provides an example here...
eBook - ePub- E. Mavis Hetherington, Richard M. Lerner, Marion Perlmutter, E. Mavis Hetherington, Richard M. Lerner, Marion Perlmutter(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...3 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD: Some Contemporary Processes John W. Meyer Stanford University In modern societies, ideas about the individual person in the life course and about the individual as a subjective self are institutions with histories and logics of their own, as well as reflections of individual experience. The agendas of lay and professional psychologies indicate these institutional perspectives on the individual; these agendas change over time with changes in social structure and with alterations in models of this structure. The earlier psychologies of market society constructed general notions of an integrated personality; the more contemporary social structuring of the individual life course, in such areas as education and occupation, differentiates the theory of the individual (and thus psychologies) into socially structured attainment processes and into distinct and enhanced notions of free individual subjectivity (the more modern idea of the self). The notion of the self involved in these later perspectives becomes disconnected from narrower ideas about development as linked to social progress and takes a more subjectivist form. Implications of these changes for the kinds of issues and variables to which psychologists attend and for changed explanatory models are discussed, with special attention to the life-span movement in contemporary psychology. INTRODUCTION Public attention to psychological conceptions and issues is a notable feature of contemporary society. Such matters are discussed in mass media as well as in specialized media, and by technical professionals as well as by many sorts of amateurs. Exotic specialists and common members of society are involved. The intensity and extensity of this public discussion clearly distinguishes modern societies – especially more individualist ones – from others...
