Childhood as Socially Constructed
Social construction is the way that something is created through
individual, social and cultural interpretations, perceptions and
actions of people.
Because the definition and state of childhood has not stayed the same
throughout history and varies from culture to culture, it is not
possible that childhood is biological, therefore it must have been
socially constructed for a particular societies needs at a particular
time.
The roles of children have changed dramatically in the UK alone in the
last four hundred years.
Children from the pre-industrialisation era were economic assets to
the family. It was vital that they helped provide for the family by
working and earning a wage. As a result of their work they had little
or no education, what they knew was taught by the family, they had a
very different socialisation process than what it is familiar in
today’s society. The children were seen as adults and were actively
involved in the adult world, they socialised with adults and were not
shielded by activities that would now be deemed unsuitable. There has
been evidence to suggest that children as young as five were subject
to sexual relations. This is no longer socially acceptable and would
be seen as a form of abuse.
Phillip Aries feels that industrialisation was the primary factor for
the change in children’s positions. During the industrial revolution
education became readily available to the middle class. This extended
the period of time before a child had to work which therefore
pro-longed the length of time before a child became an adult. It was
no longer vital for children ...
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... is America because each state has it’s own rules and guidelines.
I have come to the conclusion that the state of childhood is socially
constructed because of the huge variations between each country today.
There are immense numbers of children still working in less developed
countries whereas in western culture children are in full time
education until they reach the age of sixteen, where they can make a
decision to carry on learning. This is because in western society
children are not needed to work which is where the difference lies
with that of children in places like Africa, this comes back to the
meaning of socially constructed. Throughout time childhood has
adjusted to meet societies needs which is why four hundred years ago
children in England would have been working instead of being in full
time education.
While William Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence was written before the French Revolution and Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience was written after, creating obvious differences in formal structure; these poems are also uniquely intertwined by telling the same story of children arriving to church on Holy Thursday. However, each gives a different perspective that plays off each other as well the idea of innocence and experience. The idea that innocence is simply a veil that we are not only aware of but use to mask the horrors of the world until we gain enough experience to know that it is better to see the world for simply what it is.
For the first time in history children were an important factor of the economic system, but at a terrible price. The master of the factories employed children for two reasons. One, because of their small body which can get inside the machines to clean it and use their nimble fingers. Second, the masters use to pay low wages to the children who could be easily manipulated. The average age for the parents to send their children to work was ten. Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice. The author goes further and places child employees into three groups, according to the kind of jobs that were available in their neighbourhood. First group composed of children living in rural areas with no domestic industry to work in. Therefore, the average of a child to work in rural area was ten. Before that, farmers use to assign small jobs to the children such as scaring birds, keeping sheep
In Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, Annette Lareau discussed the extensive amount of research she conducted employing observational and interview techniques. She collected data on the middle class, working class, and poor families. She was trying to understand the impact of a child’s early parental guidance on the child’s life. She was able to conduct this research with 12 families, all of whom had fourth graders. She gathered enough information to conclude the major differences in the parenting styles of each type of family, which was directly correlated to socioeconomic status. Annette Lareau opens her book with two chapters to give the reader an idea on what the examples she gives will detail.
The childhood of the past has changed through many eras of time. The labor work of children is not needed in a great deal no more. The 1800s was a time of labor for children. Families would have more children than now, because without a child many families could not survive. Children were needed to bring home money and feed the family. The girls were used to do the chores around the house, while the boys were used to do outside work, like cut wood. Children were influenced to do labor. They would not believe in an education, both rural and urban children. Through the industrialization children started working in family farms or in small workshops. Boys and girls would find work at mines or large factories. Children were seen as the important economic survivals to their families. By the 1890s, Canada ...
Compared to people in the twenty-first century, with all their modern conveniences and technological advances, the life of any early-American seems difficult. However, the lives of children were among the most arduous. Linda Pollock states in her book Forgotten Children that between 1660 and 1800 families -and society in general- became more affectionate, child-oriented, and permissive of uniqueness and unstructured time (67). Although this may be true, many other sources depict the lives of children as taxing and oppressive at best. Children of the time were either forced to abandon education for their family contributions, or had to balance school with a full day's work ("Education"). Even when they were not in school or doing manual labor, their day-to-day lives were uncomfortable and harsh (Kids). Social status, as is expected, was a key factor in determining how hard a child's life would be (Murray 9). Although many children at the time had it easier than others they were all asked at an early age to take on adult responsibilities. The lives of all children in 1800 were mundane and difficult due to family and societal expectations for labor, schooling, and maturity.
The various essays comprising Children in Colonial America look at different characteristics of childhood in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Children coming to the American colonies came from many different nations and through these essays, authors analyze children from every range of social class, race, and ability in order to present a broad picture of childhood in these times. While each essay deals with an individual topic pertaining to childhood, they all combine to provide a strong argument that children were extremely valued in society, were not tiny adults, and were active participants in society.
The dictionary definition of a child is a young human being, an immature person and offspring (Oxford, 1976). This idea is reflected in Mead’s statement ‘that children to adults are representative of something weak and helpless in need of protection, supervision, training, models, skills, beliefs and ‘character’’ (Montgomery et al, 2003, p vii). The emphasis is on the concept of the child by adults rather than the size or mentality raising the notion that a child, and therefore childhood, is not just a biological concept but also an ideological one (Falconer, 2009). This ideology makes an oxymoron of Children’s Literature according to Rose (Hunt, 2009a) as adults write, publish and purchase books with each set of adults having their own ideas about childh...
Also in China girls are made to bind there feet up at an early age so
England was a society dominated by children. During the reign of Queen Victoria one out of three of her servants were under the age of fifteen. Child labor was a prominent issue, because there were no systems to ensure the safety of children. During the start of the industrial revolution, there was a “high demand” for labor (Robson 53). Many families moved from rural areas to new, industrialized cities. After a while things weren’t looking as “promising” as they did before (Boone 23). In order to maintain, families had to put almost all of their family members to work. This led to a rise in the number of child labor. Children were “mistreated, underpayed and overworked” (Kincaid 30). Using children to do all of the hard work, the mining companies believed, was the most sensible and efficient way to get the job done. Because the children were a lot smaller, it was easy for them to “maneuver through tight spaces” and on top of that the children demanded little or no pay at all(Boone 43 ). These wages were enough to persuade companies to use children for all sorts of dangerous jobs such as coal mining and chimney sweeps. Children were called to do many other “horrible” jobs, jobs that adults in this era could not bear, just so long as the bills were paid (Robson 18). The working conditions and treatment of young children during this era was horrible and a lot was done to put an end to it.
While all societies acknowledge that children are different from adults, how they are different, changes, both generationally and across cultures. “The essence of childhood studies is that childhood is a social and cultural phenomenon” (James, 1998). Evident that there are in fact multiple childhoods, a unifying theme of childhood studies is that childhood is a social construction and aims to explore the major implications on future outcomes and adulthood. Recognizing childhood as a social construction guides exploration through themes to a better understanding of multiple childhoods, particularly differences influencing individual perception and experience of childhood. Childhood is socially constructed according to parenting style by parents’ ability to create a secure parent-child relationship, embrace love in attitudes towards the child through acceptance in a prepared environment, fostering healthy development which results in evidence based, major impacts on the experience of childhood as well as for the child’s resiliency and ability to overcome any adversity in the environment to reach positive future outcomes and succeed.
The text depicts a historical perspective on Middle Childhood, as during the twentieth century, children were viewed primarily as an economic source of income, in terms of providing for the family. According to the text this happens often in European counties and in parts of the United States. Elizabeth D. Hutchinson, Dimensions of Human Behavior The Changing Life Course 3rd, 2008. In this short review we will look at how this historical perspective in itself is not a question to how, but when these individual give.
Imagine waking up at five in the morning to walk over a mile to a factory where you work until noon where you get a half hour break for lunch, then it’s back to work until nine or ten at night, when you are finally allowed to go home and you are only eight years old. Today that seems unimaginable, but during the early 19th century it was the everyday life of thousands of children whose ages range from as young as five until you died. During the Industrial Revolution many children were required to work dangerous jobs to help their families.
One of the most significant was definitely having a child. Of course there are less physical changes from my own aspect considering I am not the mother, but as the father there is an entire set of mental and emotional changes you go through and it has definitely changed my life entirely. This is one of the most influential moments of my life and now that I am reflecting on it I am able to see aspects of psychology that were apparent during this event. I believe this experience shows traits of both the psychodynamic and neuroscience perspectives. Having your first child causes your body to start using instincts and behaviors that you hadn’t otherwise until that point as well as causing you to feel many different emotions all at once.
From a very early age, children experience many different stages of life until they become fully-functioning adults with distinguished personalities. Throughout each stage of a child’s life, different socialization agents play a pivotal role in his or her development and transition into adulthood. Throughout this essay, I will discuss what socialization is, as well as implying socialization in terms of the connection between biological development of the individual and individuals learning the norms and customs of society. Furthermore, to accomplish this task, I will describe the four key agents of socialization (family, school, peers, and mass media). I then aim for the audience to comprehend the difference between socialization during other
A childhood is the delicate phase of every adolescent's life where they must mature into their own person, with their own responsibilities. Although every individual will eventually bloom with their own personality, morals, and perspectives, the education and values we learn and see along the way add to the fingers that mold. We begin when we are born, and are taken in by strangers. These priceless people show us love, and just how strong attachments can be. Family ties snare us in their loving webs and become the support network to catch us throughout our youthful falls. They are our first real pictures of people, and their actions and emotions immediately become examples.