Sociological Perspectives of Childhood

11 Key excerpts on "Sociological Perspectives of Childhood"

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  Working with Children and Families

  Knowledge and Contexts for Practice

  • Robert Adams(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  2 Social and Psychological Perspectives on Childhood and Child Development Passage contains an image

  The Social Construction of ChildhoodSociological Approaches to the Study of Children and Childhood

  3

  Michael Wyness

  LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

     understand the contested character of childhood

     appreciate how childhood is a socially constructed and changing concept

     discuss how this perspective on childhood affects approaches to research and practice

  In recent years, childhood has become a far more contested phenomenon, with public commentary shifting between the reporting of its terminal decline through to the promotion of a new pluralized and culturally embedded version of the child. Arguably, it is clear now that policy makers and professionals have embraced the latter view, working alongside children and their families in providing them with the support needed to take more control of their lives (Mayall, 2002). In this chapter, the sociological basis of this approach, the social construction of childhood, is outlined. First, I discuss the importance of the cultural and social dimensions of childhood and go on to explore the implications this has for understanding children’s lives. I then discuss the social construction of childhood in terms of the different ways that we might view children’s lives. Here we can start to talk about the diversity of childhoods. Finally, I explain why an emphasis on the cultural and social realms can lead to insights on children’s identities as relatively independent, rights-bearing members of society. In the final section, by way of a critique of social constructionism, I briefly explore alternative ways of researching children and childhood.

  Culture rather than biology

  The work of Aries (1961) provides the early impetus for social constructionism, in that he challenges the orthodox view that childhood was a universal and ever-present feature of all societies. His often referenced argument is that childhood simply did not exist until around the 16th century. Beyond their physiological immaturity, children in the medieval period were rarely treated differently from adults. There was next to no awareness that children had to be nurtured and guided through a period called ‘childhood’ by responsible adults in order for them to become full members of their communities. While his thesis has been subject to numerous critical reviews, his work clearly establishes a distinction between ‘biological immaturity’ and the ways that this has been understood within specific societies and historical periods (Archard, 2004; Gittins, 1998). Childhood in modern Western societies is viewed as a set of powerful sentiments and ideas that have fundamental consequences for the way we view, treat and relate to children.

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  Legal Concepts of Childhood

  • Julia Fionda(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Sociological perspec-tives on childhood, although they share certain basic premises concerning the fundamentally “social” and even “social structural” character of their object of attention, are nevertheless divided from the level of metatheory to the level of methodology. It is also the case that many theorists do not see these models as standing in splendid isolation and routinely combine elements across the bound-aries. I shall attempt here to elucidate some of the commonality between these as well as expressing the sources of their differences. Sociological Perspectives and Media Representations of Childhood 33 29 A Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Oxford, Polity, 1991). The socially developing child Sociologists have always been concerned with the development of the child inas-much as that their theories of social order, social stability and social integration depend upon a uniform and predictable standard of action from the participat-ing members. In this sense then, they begin with a formally established concept of society and work back to the necessary inculcation of its rules into the con-sciousnesses of its potential participants—these are always children. The process of this inculcation is referred to as socialisation. The direction of influ-ence is apparent; the society shapes the individual. Sociologists are not ignorant of the biological character of the human organism but are singularly committed to an explication of its development within a social context. The socially devel-oping model of childhood does share certain chronological and incremental characteristics with the naturally developing model but it largely avoids, or indeed resists, the reduction to explanation in terms of natural propensities or dispositions.

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  Learning Theories in Childhood

  • Colette Gray, Sean MacBlain(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Learning Theories in Childhood 154 According to Muñoz (2006, p. 10), childhood studies has three key aims: 1. It seeks to contribute to the social sciences in general by incorporating the voice of one of the most frequently forgotten groups in society: the child. 2. It aims to contribute to the multidisciplinary approach needed to address a complex phenomenon such as childhood by providing a sociological explanation. 3. It makes children visible as active members of society, according to the principles of the UNCRC; it recognizes children as individuals with rights. Thus far, sociologists informed by this rights-based approach have focused on socialization processes or on the analysis of institutions responsible for this social- ization: the family and schools. In adopting this perspective, sociologists focus on the processes that shape childhood rather than on childhood per se. The most influ- ential approaches, to date, include: • The sociology of childhood: Theorists working within this theoretical framework believe that the child should be the unit of investigation. Children are perceived as social actors and therefore researchers should focus on the relationships between a child’s social world and the world of other children and adults. • The deconstructionist sociology of childhood: This approach explores societal beliefs about children and childhood. To understand the construct of childhood, these theorists attempt to understand how society transmits its notions to the child. • The structural sociology of childhood: This perspective considers childhood to be a distinct period in life. Researchers link significant aspects of the child’s life (such as poverty) with macro-level contexts and attempt to explain them in terms of their significance to macro-level mechanisms (Muñoz, 2006). Corsaro (2014) suggested another approach, termed interpretive reproduction. Advocates of this approach view the child as actively interpreting their cultural practices.

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  The New Family ?

  • Elizabeth Silva, Carol Smart, Elizabeth Silva, Carol Smart(Authors)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  10 RECONSIDERING CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD: SOCIOLOGICAL AND POLICY PERSPECTIVES Julia Brannen After many lean years, family life research in the UK has become something of a boom area. A focus on parenting, especially in the context of changing family forms, is a popular policy and academic topic. Even more recently there has been a surge of interest in childhood, especially work which examines the world from the perspective of children. Recently, research funding bodies have followed one another's example in supporting research in this area and with this perspective. The study of 'normal' childhoods, not only the problematic childhoods of the few, constitutes a growth area especially within sociology. 1 Sociologists' new interest in childhood has emphasized children's agency in the outside world, as well as inside families and other adult-dominated institutions. In reaction to the deterministic concept of socialization, these sociologists have sought to uncouple children from the nuclear family and to re-frame them conceptually both as subjects of research and as subjects who construct their own consciousness and life trajectories. They have argued that sociology's refusal, until recently, to consider children as an active and distinctive group of research subjects lies in its theoretical assumptions concerning children. These assumptions have failed to question the dominant developmental paradigm of childhood as a state of 'becoming' (Frankenberg, 1993) and have located children in the originary contexts of family life, assigning them dependency status under the umbrella of the moral and economic responsibility of their parents. This positioning of children has obscured them rather than made them visible Qames and Prout, 1990; Alanen, 1992).

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  A Universal Child?

  • Roger Smith(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  This kind of approach, drawing on sociological and anthropo-logical traditions, tends to highlight the distinctive aspects of being a child rather than those features which might be held in common, or consistently observed across other boundaries. Additionally, influenced by postmodernist interest in diversity and atomization, recent sociological writings have sought to distinguish themselves from previous approaches to the subject (for example, Corsaro, 1997; James et al ., 1998; Thomas, 2000; Prout, 2005). The emergence of this new perspective is captured thus: ‘Both the form of childhood as a social and cultural institution and the process of ‘growing up’ became seen as dependent on their context rather than naturally unfolding processes’ (Prout, 2005, p. 1). The logic of this argument has led also to the contention that children should not be seen in terms of their ‘incompleteness’ or as adults-in-training, but as autonomous individuals in their own right. Thus, by extension, the activities, experiences and characteristics of children should be attrib-uted equal validity to those of adults (see Corsaro, 1997). Theoretical constructs of childhood have thus begun to try to develop frame-works for understanding not just the direct experiences of children, but also the ways in which they had previously been defined, or ‘constituted sociologically’ (James et al ., 1998, p. 26). One such model suggests four ways in which children could be conceptualized (‘tribal child’, ‘minority child’, ‘social structural child’ and ‘socially con-structed child’). This framework enables us to recognize that diver-sity is a central feature of children’s lives, both in terms of their own experience and the ways in which they are categorized: this neces-sarily leads to a ‘deconstruction of childhood’s conventional, singular and reductive form’ (James et al ., 1998, p. 34).

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  Global Childhoods

  • Monica Edwards, Chelle Davison(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Critical Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Critical questions This chapter begins with a question – ‘what is childhood?’ . Having read about the historical perspectives of childhood, reflect upon your initial thoughts when presented with this question. How might historical notions of childhood influence your views on contemporary » childhood issues such as play, the media and technology? Why do you think there is a tendency to focus on Western ideas when seeking » answers to these issues? What can the study of non-Western histories teach us about childhood? » How might your answers challenge the way you now approach the study of childhoods? » The study of children’s historical experiences suggests that the century of the child emerged from prior centuries of childhoods framed by Western societies; the garden of delight that Cunningham ( 2005 , p 172) described was clearly not open to all. This leads to the discussion of how childhood as a social construct is influenced by the same factors that influence wider society. This is a discourse that dominates contemporary discussions about childhood. Contemporary perspectives of childhood If childhood is to be considered as a social construct, which contemporary perspectives of childhood invariably do, then this idea of a social construction requires further exam-ination. The social construction of childhood refers to the meaning given to childhood by What is childhood? • 19 the expectations society places on it. So, for example, the previous section discussed how Western societies’ view of what childhood is and what it should look like has shaped the con-struction of childhood through the last two centuries and into contemporary rhetoric. This is significant because the combined influence of globalisation and technology means there is a far wider reach for such ideas. If Western perspectives dominate contemporary social constructions of childhood, they do not do so unchallenged.

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  The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies

  • J. Qvortrup, W. Corsaro, M. Honig, J. Qvortrup, W. Corsaro, M. Honig(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  (Corsaro, 1992, 162) Corsaro gave this approach systematic form in a microsociology of childhood (Corsaro, 2005). A transcendence of the socialization paradigm of childhood is ambivalent. It promises an autonomous field to childhood studies, but carries with it the danger of a self-misunderstanding. This danger consists of confusing the objective and methodological levels of the critique of the socialization paradigm of childhood, and simply reversing the dichotomies in the new framework of childhood, when they approach children as competent social actors, as beings vs becomings, and ‘in their own right’ (James, Jenks and Prout, 1998, chapter 10; Prout, 2005, 62ff.). Childhood socialization is a field of the social construction of childhood, and to that extent a key theme in the social studies of childhood. From the new social studies of childhood to generational studies – and beyond In the context of the social studies of childhood, the question of the child is the question of the observability of children; that is, the question of the child is a methodological question. The concept of childhood operates, correspondingly, as an epistemological construct mediating the distinction between childhood as a symbolic order of knowledge and children as social actors. This distinction makes it possible to make an empirical theme of the relationship between children and adults and the agency of children within a de-naturalizing perspective.

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  Childhood and Society

  • Michael Wyness(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  As I outlined earlier, one of the key themes within the sociology of childhood now is that childhood has been pluralised; that is, we can bring into being an infinite number of constructions arising out of an infinite number of discourses. Social constructionism thus cannot deal adequately enough with universal notions such as children’s needs or children’s welfare . Woodhead ( 1997 ) in his analysis of the concept ‘needs’, argues that in accentuating the cultural origins of ‘needs’ we tend to obscure the possibility of uncovering conditions and problems that most children face at a global level. Thus the problems of child neglect and abuse and child labour can be found in almost all societies, making it difficult to avoid questions about immanent aspects of childhood that put children in more exploitable positions. In these terms, viewing childhood as a construct generates a relativistic view of childhood. To tie childhood wholly to the context within which we find it is to imply that there is little that can be said generally about the nature of childhood, what Qvortrup views (1994, p. 5) as ‘the preponderance of what is unique over what is common’. Children as constructors? A third question turns on the role that children play within the discourse on childhood. One of the key questions running through the book is the role that children play within society as co-constructors. Are children’s lives merely determined by adults, or do children, as Corsaro ( 2017 , p. 18) con-tends, ‘negotiate, share and create culture with adults and each other’? Social constructionists assume the former in that adults are the creative source here. It is important to be clear about this point. Social constructionists are primarily concerned with how the idea of childhood develops through the intersection of a variety of adult interests. The deconstruction of childhood

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  The Future of Childhood Studies

  • Rita Braches-Chyrek(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Verlag Barbara Budrich

    (Publisher)

  This implied the necessity to re-conceptualize how children relate to adults, to position children as active social actors, who need to be studied ‘in their own right’ and to foreground children’s own ‘voices’ using the most appropriate research methods to capture their ac-tivities and their own meaning making within the given circumstances. The shift toward a new research program on children and childhood was theoreti-cally founded on a blend of three different sociological strands: From interactionist sociology came the idea of children as agents and actors in the social world [who base this agency on the ability to interpret and make sense of the social world they are part of; AT]. Structural sociology contributed the idea of child-hood as permanent feature of social structure. Whilst from social constructionism, then sweeping through the social sciences, came the notion of the historically and cul-turally specific [and thus variable; AT] constitution of childhood in and through dis-course (James/Prout 2015, viii). To this last point, I would add that constructionism can offer a reading that goes beyond the acknowledgement of contingent socio-cultural variation and context (Hammersley 2017, 118): It is argued that in this sense actors create all phenomena of the social world by their actions – which means that only in these processes do social phenomena become what „they are taken to be” and hence there is no social world beyond these actions (Hammersley 2017: 118). As pioneering authors of this field, James and Prout argue these assumptions inspired many approaches – especially the favored qualitative empirical ones – to children’s lives, experiences and interactions with each other, adults and institutions. Therefore within the broad field of childhood studies this research is seen as having provided „a new lens through which to think about children and childhood” (James/Prout 2015: viii).

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  Children at the Millennium

  Where Have We Come From? Where Are We Going?

  • Timothy J Owens, Sandra L. Hofferth(Authors)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • JAI Press

    (Publisher)

  Aries had made a solid argument that over time children have been conceptualized as qualitatively different from adults. His book tells the history of how the idea of childhood has changed throughout the centuries. His argument – that broad social processes influence the social construction of the concept “childhood,” and that childhood is the result of particular historical conditions, decisions and actions, and economic, political and cultural struggles – strongly influenced social constructionists analyzing children and childhood. Building on the social constructionist approach, John Allan Lee (1982) argues that there are three theoretical paradigms of the social construction of childhood: (1) children as property (a social definition originating in pre-industrial society); (2) protection of children (a concept legitimated by industrialism); and (3) the child as a person (advocated by recent liberation movements). These three models, or paradigms, are the ways in which society has organized its perceptions of childhood, but in reality, they are purely social constructs. This perspective, like many others of this time, is grounded in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s famous assertion that “reality is socially constructed” (1966). Similarly, Anthony Synnott explores some of the themes in the development and construction of thinking about children and childhood from the early modern age to the present in his piece, “ Little Angels, Little Devils: A Sociology of Children ” (1983). He describes several variations of the concept, “childhood,” over time and attempts to explain why they changed based on social, cultural and historical factors. He argues that, 66 HEATHER BETH JOHNSON Surely these constructions of childhood tell us more about the constructors than they do about childhood. Childhood is not a given; it is not a ‘natural’ category.

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  Early Childhood Studies

  A Social Science Perspective

  • Ewan Ingleby(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Learning outcomes After reading this chapter you should be able to: identify what the term ‘sociology’ means; analyse some of the ways that sociology can be used by early years practitioners; critically appraise some of the ways that sociology can be applied to early years. Chapter outline Defining sociology 31 The sociological perspectives 33 Functionalism 34 Interactionism 36 Conflict theory 37 Applying sociology to early years 40 Critical appraisal of how sociological theory can be used by early years 47 Foucauldian shadows of power and oppression 49 2 Sociology and Early Childhood Studies Sociology and Early Childhood Studies 31 The chapter develops your knowledge and understanding of sociology and how it can be applied to the early years context. The chapter provides an introduction to sociology and explores how the discipline can be applied to early years. There are a number of sociological perspectives and each one has a particular understanding of how social factors influence individuals. This understanding is outlined, analysed and critically appraised within the chap-ter. The chapter adopts a similar structure to Chapter 1 as there are formative activities that reinforce learning in relation to the main sociological perspec-tives that are of relevance for early years practitioners. Sociology is a discipline that attempts to explain the social world. In some respects it is similar to psychology as there have been a number of thinkers who have influenced the subject area over time. It is an important academic discipline for early years practitioners because it explains how social factors influence the development of children and families. This chapter explores some of the key perspectives within sociology. Before we look at the main sociological perspectives and discuss how early years practitioners can apply these ideas it is important to identify what the term ‘sociology’ means. Defining sociology The word ‘sociology’ can evoke a number of reactions.

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