Children and Childhood
"Children and Childhood" refers to the study of the social, cultural, and psychological aspects of children's lives and experiences. It encompasses the examination of children's development, rights, and roles within families and societies. This field of study explores how childhood is constructed and understood within different historical, cultural, and social contexts.
8 Key excerpts on "Children and Childhood"
...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 - ePubA Case of Neglect? (1996)
Children's Experiences and the Sociology of Childhood
- Ian Butler, Ian F Shaw(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Presently, we may need to be content with a weaker sense of authenticity in which previously unexplored or unreported aspects of childhood are made available and previously mute children empowered to speak … (James and Prout 1991: 27) More positively, it is possible to outline other essential dimensions of a sociology of childhood from a child’s standpoint. For example, such a sociology needs to establish a different relationship with family sociology. Growing awareness of and interest in the family as the site, not only of parental nurture but also of parental exploitation of children for economic as well as sexual gratification clearly argues for a differentiation of the interests of adults and children in thinking about families. As well as being relational, such a sociology will also be structural in its analytical orientation. This is to recognise that childhood is a persistent social form. Whilst individual children grow up and out of childhood, others take their place and continue to occupy a recognisable social category or form. Thus childhood can be studied intergenerationally: how do the social significance and life circumstances of children vary in relation to those of other age groups? Childhood can also be studied interculturally: how does childhood in one country compare with that in another? Childhood can also be studied historically: how do larger historical processes impact on children and the experience of childhood. It may be necessary to argue, as Quartrup does (Quartrup 1994) that children studied in this way, as a ‘collectivity’, can not allow of too much internal differentiation, by gender, for example, but that remains an open question. Conclusion Mention has already been made of the way in which the institutionalisation of hegemonic ‘truths’ about childhood make the production of other ‘truths’ problematic. The history of the study of childhood is the history of adults’ study of childhood...
eBook - ePubConstructions of Childhood in India
Exploring the Personal and Sociocultural Contours
- Ravneet Kaur(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge India(Publisher)
...These claims made on childhood through common-sense reasoning appear conventional rather than disciplined (Garfinkel, 1967 ; Schutz, 1964). What came to the fore as universally acceptable was the view that childhood is an important period of life since childhood experiences are known to impact adulthood as a life stage as well. Another important view that found articulation was that childhood in itself is not a homogeneous category (Buckingham, 2000), and there are many contradictions in formulating a single, binding definition of childhood and its usage for different memberships and privileges. The present chapter aims to introduce the conceptual framework which guided the research undertaken to explore the personal and social constructions of childhood. The insights gained from the research become the core matter of this book. Most of the theory has been drawn from Childhood Studies, Developmental Psychology, studies in the Sociology of Childhood and from the lived experiences and ground realities of children’s lives. Among the dominant ways of understanding childhood, the major paradigm for studying children got established through Developmental Psychology (Walkerdine, 2009 ; Woodhead, 2003), where there is extensive reliance on the development metaphor (Hogan, 2005). Taking this ahead, Burman (2008) has highlighted that within the academic imagery of the disciplines of Developmental Psychology, Child Development and Education, childhood has traditionally been understood in terms of development and progression. Most educational policies across the world rest on the developmental approach to childhood (Woodhead, 2006). This approach largely draws on the works of Piaget (1968), Kohlberg (1969, 1971) and Erikson (1950) among others, in which, universal features of change and growth through predictable chronological age and stage-based theories are identified and described...
...There are also some clear examples of policy borrowing from the academy. Take, for example, UNICEF's citing of Hart's work referred to in Chapter 3. Moreover, researchers within the field of children's participation have taken a much more explicitly political role in promoting children's rights, particularly children's rights to participate. Most of the contributions in Percy-Smith and Thomas' (2010) collection of papers on participatory contexts and initiatives in a wide range of international settings are explicitly advocating more democratic relations between children and adults. Conclusion A renewed interest in the concept of childhood and the lives of children has generated a complex array of disciplinary focal points and professional practices. In some cases these have been disciplinary claims on the nature of childhood and the wellbeing of the children. These claims have brought psychology into conflict with sociology. Developmental assumptions are questioned as sociologists discover practices in which children routinely belie their developmental age and position. Furthermore, a more global focus has made it much more difficult for the developmental frame to have sufficient authoritative resonance in a number of disparate cultural contexts. In Foucauldian terms development as a ‘regime of truth’ is challenged. The new childhood studies has often been seen as an epistemological break, with the old biological assumptions about childhood giving way to more social and cultural approaches that stress the construction of childhood. However, revisions of the field have argued that a bio-social dualism has been overstated. Given the higher political, professional and academic visibility of children as global investments and agents, there is arguably much more commitment to childhood as a bio-social nexus...
eBook - ePub- 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 - ePubFamily Studies
An Introduction
- Jon Bernardes(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This issue is parallel in many ways to recent debates in sociology about the place and role of subjects. It seems clear and obvious that we should begin to devote a great deal more effort to children’s own accounts of family pathways. This argument is not without a major difficulty. Modern societies have constructed children to have different understandings, interests and preoccupations to adults. This means that adult researchers may well face considerable problems in understanding children’s own accounts just as parents often find themselves unable to understand a child’s anger, sadness or tantrum. Ask ten children what they think is the ‘most important thing’ in their lives. The experiences of childhood have a very clear effect on adult life. Whilst it is plainly not as easy as saying that abused children will become abusers or that children of poorly educated parents will themselves do poorly at school, clearly a child’s experiences are vital for the rest of his or her life. It is astonishing that complex modern societies do very little in the way of systematic preparation or education to ensure that parents or carers are aware of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practice. The concept of childhood It is vital, at the outset, to clarify the point that the very idea of childhood is located in history and culture; different cultures have treated children rather differently in various historical periods. One major theory derives from the work of Phillipe Aries who argued in 1960 that childhood as we understand it in the West emerged after the medieval period when children were portrayed primarily as ‘little adults’ (see Aries, 1986)...
- Daniel Thomas Cook(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...It also examines the influence of international conventions concerning children and global influences. This entry further considers the powerful ethnographic and qualitative methods that have influenced the field and some of the major topics and issues that the anthropology of childhood has addressed over time, including children as social actors; peers and children’s play; attachment and social trust; language socialization; and child refugees and migrants. This entry begins by examining five key assumptions underpinning the anthropology of Children and Childhood. Five Key Assumptions Robert A. LeVine proposed five basic assumptions for the anthropology of Children and Childhood. First, all cultures recognize a period of childhood as distinct from adulthood, with children maturing as they age. Cultures vary, however, in the specific stages and competencies ascribed to different ages. Second, children engage in activities deemed important to their cultural belonging and development. In Eurocentric societies, this centers on schooling, and while formal schooling has expanded around the world, children elsewhere may engage in a range of play or subsistence and work-related activities...
eBook - ePubRethinking Children as Consumers
The changing status of childhood and young adulthood
- Cyndy Hawkins(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 1 Children, young people and their changing status in society An introduction Cyndy Hawkins The title of this book sets out the current paradoxical position in which children and young people are currently placed in modern society today. On the one hand children appear to be growing up more quickly than ever before, yet once mature, seem to be held back from achieving full autonomous lives. Thus the authors in this book attempt to demarcate this uncharted position by examining the changing status of children and young people’s lives and how it impacts on them in their role as consuming citizens. The debates in this book are derived from the field of education and social sciences and thereby take an interdisciplinary approach in their perspectives on childhood and youth. The book is foremost intended for undergraduates and postgraduates studying interdisciplinary programmes such as Early Childhood Studies, Childhood Studies and Youth Studies, or a combination of programmes. The study of childhood, youth and society is of growing interest to students, academics and policy-makers and it is hoped that this book will make an additional contribution to existing fields of knowledge. A number of books in these areas of study tend to focus on one aspect such as early childhood or youth. In this book we differ in the sense that the authors extend the discussion to include early childhood, childhood, youth and society in their analysis of contemporary debates. The collaboration for the book was formed to provide a critical analysis of children and young people from a consumer perspective, examining their position, power and status in a range of consumer contexts. Through the book we problematise some of the issues surrounding the changing nature of children and young people’s position, power and status, and explore the most significant issues that affect them...
