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Introduction to childhood as a modern construct
Childhood in different contexts
Introduction to childhood as a modern construct
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Contemporary anxieties about childhood have often fuelled the incentive into historical research on the subject, with childhood enjoying a high status in our social, political and cultural debates. This has been reflected in what can be described as a ‘lively field’ of historical investigation , aiming to give us a wider perspective on the changing conceptions of childhood, and an understanding of the experiences of children through time. The publication of Philippe Ariès’ L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien regime in 1960 helped to stimulate an upsurge of interest in the field, with Ariès managing to convince most of his readers that childhood had a history, and that ideas about childhood and the experience of being a child had changed over time and in different cultures.
In this area of study, there has often been a belief that the ‘true nature’ of childhood emerged in the eighteenth century, and has since been established as a norm in Western European societies . Many of our modern ideas about childhood are indebted to eighteenth century thinkers, such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many of our modern perceptions of childish ‘nature’ can be embodied in art of the time, such as that of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. It is therefore unsurprising that we often locate the discovery of childhood in this century, as it seems to symbolise the origin of our contemporary beliefs. Many historians repudiate this ‘true nature’ approach; Colin Heywood considers childhood not as ‘a timeless category waiting in the wings of history to be discovered’ , but as a cultural construct which is deeply determined by its historical, social and economic context. Distinctions are also drawn between the history of ch...
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Anja Muller ‘Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century’ (2006) pp.5
Hugh Cunningham ‘Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500’ (2005) pp.17
Gerrard Winstanley ‘Education of mankind, in Schools and Trades’ Chapter 5 (1652)
Anthony Flectcher ‘Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500-1800’ (1999) pp. 217
Hugh Cunninham ‘The Invention of Childhood’ (2006) pp.66
William Sloane ‘Children’s Books in England and America in the Seventeenth Century’ (New York, 1955)
Clifford Orwin and Nathan Tarcov ‘The Legacy of Rousseau’ (1997) pp.xiv
Christoph Houswitschka ‘Locke’s Education or Rousseau’s Freedom’, Essay published in ‘Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century’ (2006), pp.82
Locke, 1690/1947, bk. II, chap. 1, p.26
Desiderius Erasmus ‘Collected works of Erasmus’ 1531 Edited and translated by Clarence H. Miller (2012) pp.305
Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000
In modern society, both the abstract and concrete representations of children are intertwined with the themes associated with happiness, innocence, ignorance, gullibility, and the allure of youth. But, if I may for a moment mimic Caroline Vout’s presentation of her arguments by asking, how does today’s current view of children differ from the non-linguistic representations of children in ancient times? If one was to rewind time while focusing solely on the exemplification of children in ancient Greek and Rome, they would discover that presumably there is a degradation of the importance of the child in society. The previously mentioned Caroline Vout supplies the fact that the great philosopher Aristotle believed that “[children were] virtually denied human status on the grounds of their diminished faculty of deliberation.” This thought process is obviously contradictory to the widely accepted opinion of children in today’s modern society. With the assistance of multiple sculptures, frescos, and drawings, Vout utilizes rhetorical questions to engage the reader in her arguments concerning the portrayal of children during the Hellenistic period.
Children were strong and ambitious. They were the money makers of the family. This paper will argue how the mindset of a child has advanced in Canada, through the 1800s to the present era, in representing a different perspective of how a child evaluates the perception of how they approach life. Canada holds many histories of the past. The differences with children from to the past to the present are that children worked and produced a lot of labor, to keep the families from starving through the 1800s, present children rarely need to work. The educational system of the past has differed a great deal from the system they have created thought out the times that have developed. Children would use their imagination to create games and play, until the generation of television came into effect. Times have changed and children are one of the many. The social construction of childhood from the 1800s is a whole lot different from the construction of childhood from the 1970s. The agenda of children have changed and adults are not concerned with children working because the standard of living in families has developed a whole new concept, for how families should live life.
Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000
Jean Jacques Rousseau in On Education writes about how to properly raise and educate a child. Rousseau's opinion is based on his own upbringing and lack of formal education at a young age. Rousseau depicts humanity as naturally good and becomes evil because humans tamper with nature, their greatest deficiency, but also possess the ability to transform into self-reliant individuals. Because of the context of the time, it can be seen that Rousseau was influenced by the idea of self-preservation, individual freedom, and the Enlightenment, which concerned the operation of reason, and the idea of human progress. Rousseau was unaware of psychology and the study of human development. This paper will argue that Rousseau theorizes that humanity is naturally good by birth, but can become evil through tampering and interfering with nature.
Maybin, J. &Woodhead, M. (2003). Childhoods in context. Southern Gate, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Spilka, Mark. "Victorian Childhoods." Michigan Quarterly Review 39.2 (2000): 411-21. ProQuest. Web. 7 May 2014.
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.
Erasmus, Desiderius. In Praise of Folly. Trans. Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970.
A famous Swiss educator, Rousseau was considered to raise the Copernican Revolution after he came up with a theory “children-centered”. In his famous book Emile, he severely criticized rigid and inflexible traditional education which seriously distorted and suppressed the natural world of children. He called for “regard children as children” and asked people to teach children according to children’s physical and mental development rule. (Liu, 2014)
The child has not been perceived like an individual until the work of eighteen century philosophers Locke and Rousseau, who expressed their thoughts on paper about the child's ability to interact with the surrounding world (Cunningham, 1993). The research on child development has commenced followed by the observational work of changing behaviours in organisms by Charles Darwin.
New York: Twayne, 1996. Print. " Characteristics of Victorian Literature." Homewood City Schools.
Childhood is a highly contested model because its meaning and interpretation varies from person to person as it is influenced by cultural-heritage, family-background and experiences (Alderson, 1995). For instance, the United Nations’ Convention on Rights of the Child (1989) defined children as everyone under the age of eighteen. Additionally, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (2005) postulated that the period of childhood is a special period during which a child should learn how to live and survive the world through schooling, playing, as they grow strong and develop their confidence with the affection and support fr...
There are proponents of the debate that childhood is disappearing which will be discussed in this section which include Postman (1983), Elkind (1981) and Palmer (2006). In considering these points of view which are mostly American, one must firstly set in context what is meant by the disappearance or erosion of childhood. This key debate centres on Postman (1983) who wrote “The disappearance of childhood” which is a contentious book about how childhood as a social category which is separate from adulthood is eroding. He defines a point where childhood came into existence, which was treated as a special phase in the middle ages based on the work of Aries in his book “Centuries of childhood” (1962, cited in Postman 1983). According to Postman, a major influence on how childhood was perceived differently to adulthood was the invention of the printing press and literacy in the mid sixteenth century. That is to say children had to learn to read before the secrets of adulthood in particular sex and violence was available...
Abstract In this essay, I intend to explain how everyday lives challenge the construction of childhood as a time of innocence. In the main part of my assignment, I will explain the idea of innocence, which started with Romantic discourse of childhood and how it shaped our view of childhood. I will also look at two contradictory ideas of childhood innocence and guilt in Blake’s poems and extract from Mayhew’s book. Next, I will compare the images of innocence in TV adverts and Barnardo’s posters. After that, I will look at the representation of childhood innocence in sexuality and criminality, and the roles the age and the gender play in portraying children as innocent or guilty. I will include some cross-cultural and contemporary descriptions on the key topics. At the end of my assignment, I will summarize the main points of the arguments.