In What Ways Can Childhood and Youth be Understood as Social Constructions - Case Study Example

In what ways can ‘childhood’ and ‘youth’ be understood as social constructions? Introduction According to Article 1 on the United Convention of the Rights of the Child, the term child is taken to refer to every person below the age of 18 years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier. On the other hand, childhood is the time span extending from birth to adolescence being divided into play age (early childhood), school age (middle childhood), and adolescence in developmental psychology studies. The definition of childhood seems to vary depending on the developmental, biological, and legal perspective. However, the universality is meted in the period between infancy and adulthood (Montgomery, 2009) In recent times, questions about childhood and its meaning have interested a number of historians with a raging debate on whether or not the reigning idea of childhood is just something constructed in recent centuries with some theorists claiming that the idea of childhood was non-existent to our ancestors. These theorists argue that fit was not until the 1900s that the idea of childhood was invented attributing this to the French author, Philippe Aries through his book L’Enfant et la Vie Familial sous l’Ancien Regime, translated to Centuries of Childhood in 1960s. According to Aries (1962), childhood was an individual transition state around which the whole structure of the family had come to operate with the modern society unit being viewed as constructed around a separate isolated family unit seen to be existing solely to meet the needs of the child. The idea was synonymous with France, Britain, and the United States where modernisation of the social structure in compulsory schooling, provided by the government had redefined childhood (Kehily, 2004). Social construction of childhood and youth Since the Eighties, childhood has been seen as a social position to study alongside established disciplines such as education, history, sociology, and sometimes anthropology. It is noted that Aries extended the first argument that childhood is historically and socially constructed. According to Kehily (2004), the idea of childhood emanated from the middle class as its members first advanced laws that limit child labour and promoted education, as well as, the protection of children. The shift of children from economic to emotional contributors was seen to take place among the middle class boys and would later form the basis of expectations for all children irrespective of the social class, political dispensation, or gender. Thus, child poverty and ill health are viewed as social problems against which the society and stakeholders should join hands to protect children. Childhood as an independent stage of life is portrayed in the children’s books. The stamp that children should be recognised as an autonomous community that is free of all adult concerns. The social phenomenon advocates that childhood and youth be filled with their stories, rituals, rules, and social norms (James & James, 2008). Sociologists have since employed the social construction approach, drawing from social interaction theory to comprehend children’s agency, daily activities, experiences and the networks within which they are embedded. Evidence shows that young children add meaning and will design peer cultures and groups within institutional and social settings such as schools and clubs. For example, observations of toddler peer groups showed that preferences for sex emerge by two years of age with race being distinguished by three years of age (James & James, 2008). Among the youths, racism and social class stratification patterns are no different with each knowing to identify with “their” people. Children and youth have continued to be seen as independent consumers since the first childhood journal in 1917. By the early 1960s, the child had become an independent consumer with his or her fashion statements, motivations, and needs that were divided along gender and age lines in the clothing departments. In recent times and the height of consumerism, children and the youth have a legitimate voice as any social group would have. From the foods, schools, entertainment, communication in chat rooms, emails and television, they have identified a niche only exclusive to them that marketers have to bend themselves backwards to research on and fulfill (Jenks & Bohm, 2005). They have continually shaped what the adults think, have been able to revolutionize technology and culture stratospheres while negotiating power and prestige amongst their peer groups. How childhood and youth are understood in the middle ages Aries (1962) claims that there was no place for childhood in the medieval world saying it was a phase of “transition that passed quickly and one that was quickly forgotten.” (Aries, 1962, p.137). In fact, part one of Centuries of Childhood begins thus “in medieval society, the idea of childhood did not exist.” (Aries, 1962, p. 15). It is not to suggest that children were neglected, forsaken, or despised. The idea of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children: it corresponds to an awareness of the particular nature of childhood, the particular nature that distinguishes the child from the adult, even the young adult. In medieval society, this awareness lacked (Goldberg & Riddy, 2004). According to Goldberg and Riddy (2004), the paradigm changes in the 13th century when children start appearing in the art as adolescent angels, the infant Jesus and the soul of man portrayed as a naked child. It extends to narrative genres, whereby, children appear alongside adults in plays watching or helping them play. In the fifteenth century, childhood is being represented in child portraits seen in mortuary effigies and putti. Away from Aries, how did medieval Europe understand children and the youth? Literal evidence supports the recognition of positive qualities especially the very young. However, the adolescents were seen to be looked at with contempt by the clerical figures on grounds of their carnal lust and licentiousness. A French survey would then claim that the child has never been as celebrated as it was in the Middle Ages. Evidence is drawn from the personage of Leo the Great who preached in the fifth century “Christ loved childhood, mistress of humility, rule of innocence, model of sweetness” (Berryman, 2009, p. 85). The innocence of children was interpreted to mean that they could receive celestial visions, serve as intermediaries between Heaven and Earth, and sometimes, denounce criminals. Other authorities, however, depict childhood as a process of development rather than a fixed state. From the 13th century, female saints such as Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila are seen to follow a designated pattern of spirituality. Between the ages of four and seven, girls grasped what society had in store like courtship, marriage. and motherhood. The literary construction of a child as a figure of authority during the Middle Ages and the inherent tensions are depicted in fourteenth century texts such as Pearl, Westminster Chronicle (1381-94) and the Anonimalle Chronicle (1333-81). Writers here discuss challenges seen in the need to establish the authority of the child. Key challenges to how childhood & youth was understood One of the challenges in understanding medieval childhood and youth was that most authors opted to write about adulthood, with particular emphasis to the male adulthood neglecting the childhood and adolescence (James & James, 2008). An investigation on English literature points towards a thousand-year silence from St Augustine and the Reformation with the exception of the poem Pearl that focuses on the death of a child (Goldberg & Riddy, 2004). In addition, adults reflecting on their religious experiences are documented as having conventions that emphasised on maturity. Margareta Ebner, in the later German Middle Ages states that, “I cannot describe how I lived for the previous twenty years” before her mystical experiences “because I did not take note of myself then.” (Heywood, 2013, p. 163). Another challenge is that the medieval sources are often very vague in estimating ages, which is further worsened by ambiguities surrounding languages in certain geographical areas. A “boy” was used to mean a mature adult slave in the United States or Garcon to a mature server in a French café showing that the words for “child” were often used to show servility and dependence. This ambiguity might then see the word used for adults as well as young adults. According to Jean-Pierre Culliver, childhood in Germany during the early Middle Ages was “an apprenticeship in the conduct of a caste.” Goldberg & Riddy (2004) take this to mean that one generation shaded unobtrusively into the next. Finally, with most people in a village or neighborhood undergoing similar experiences as both farmers and artisans, they were rarely encouraged to engage in debates concerning the nature of childhood with the social conditions encouraging and reinforcing a particular idea of childhood (Montgomery 2009). Key developments of 19th century Kassem, Murphy, and Taylor (2013) discuss childhood and youth during the nineteenth century. According to the text, the growth of industrial production in the form of mines, shipyards, and factories accompanied by the movements of populations and growth of towns and cities bred an intensification of the wretchedness of the lives of many children. With the industrial revolution, those that worked in far places had to leave the poverty and hardship in the agricultural society and plunge to travelling for long hours. It marked the separation of the workplace and the family and home. Kassem, Murphy, and Taylor (2013) opine that this change in paradigm was particularly significant to the children and the youth. Employers opted for child workers because they were inexpensive, flexible, and easy to manage as compared to the adult workers. The exploitation of the child is seen to contrast sharply with the notion created by Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Blake. Employment of children would then agitate various campaigns that ran throughout the 19th century to control and eventually abolish child labour with the Factory Act setting limit to children’s working hours as well as the minimum age for work. The state’s sense of duty to the children was then seen to be parallel along child-related philanthropy and charitable initiatives notably the Barnardo’s in 1870. The other half of the century saw the introduction of compulsory state schooling across Europe, removing children from the workplace into schools with modern methods of public schooling, compulsory attendance, and educated teachers first emerging in Prussia and slowly permeating to the United States, France and Britain. The market economy during the 19th century also enabled the concept of childhood as a phase of fun and happiness. Factories made dolls and dollhouses that were used by the girls as play items (Montgomery, 2009). They also organized sports and sporting activities for the boys. Perhaps the most significant achievement for the children and youth was the founding of the Boys Scouts by Sir Robert Baden-Powell that provided young boys and girls with outdoor activities designed to develop character, personal fitness qualities, as well as, a sense of citizenship. Impacts on Western understandings of childhood and youth The impact on Western understanding on childhood and youth are seen largely, and in particular, the social policies as focusing on what the child will become rather than what the child is as a person. It means that they focus on the future as opposed to the here-and-now of childhood and the everyday lives as children. In many western countries, children and young people competence are seen to be measured by the educational attainments that are coined by the adult criteria. These youth and children are then constrained by the various institutions, cultures and structures, geographical locations which in turn shape their experiences while guiding them to adulthood (Kassem, Murphy, & Taylor 2009; Kehily, 2013; James & James, 2008). The news media and the popular culture in the Western countries present stories of children in rather emotional ways with a dominating image of young children as cute and being risk. The youth are depicted as wearing hoodies, out of control and sometimes dangerous. Young women are presented in a sexualised way with much emphasis on the teenage motherhood and a sexual appetite that needs to be controlled (Kehily, 2013). The youth are portrayed as lost in drugs, disillusionment, truancy, and bitterness with one thing or another. Psychologists argue that this social construction either has left the Western parents feeling despondent or in control and the children virtually unable to answer back. However, even in the western countries, the experiences of children and the youth will differ on the basis of class, gender, religious, ethnic, and cultural background (Jenks & Bohm, 2005). These social structures might not necessarily determine an individual’s experiences, but they somehow set boundaries of what is possible, expected, or appropriate. How these contrasts with constructs of childhood and youth in other cultures There are contrasts between the constructions of these and in other cultures. While an average child in the western culture is protected, has access to education and proper housing, millions of children still face mortality, brutalisation, enforced conscription of child soldiers, child labour and abandonment as well as exploitation in other democracies as well as the core of affluent Europe (Kassem, Murphy, and Taylor 2009). Perhaps there is a similarity based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child (UN 1989) that highlighted that children and the youth continue to be subjected to gender-based and sexual violence casting doubt to the ideal image of a nurturing family. While the paradigm in social construction of children might have shifted in the West, some cultures, particularly in less developed countries continue to view the children and the youth as an intrinsic part of the family and the community. The young women and the girls have designated roles such as taking care of the home and other children. Young men and boys are exposed to activities such as fishing, hunting and gathering and given a transition to adulthood (Jenks & Bohm, 2005). In most cases, unless on a government directive, they are not exposed to formal education. However, with the permeation of the Western culture, there has been inculcation of formal education alongside activities such as Female Genital Mutilation and a change in roles in the family. Upholding of values such as chastity and marriage also varies. The western culture advocates for marriage past 18 years of age while in some social constructions, especially African, girls are married off while on the brink of adolescence. Conclusion In conclusion, social policies and constructions require us to consider the intersection of children as dependents, not yet adults, and as people enjoying certain rights but with their special concerns. From Aries to the modern 21st century, the welfare state of children and the youth in need of nurturing, protection, and guidance is advocated. Kehily (2013) asserts that the moral fibre and the construction of crisis should be regulated to contain the wave of panic focusing on violent teen magazines, social networks and the internet bullying in order to enable children to live and enjoy their childhood and youth. References Aries, P., (1962). Childhood of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. Berryman, J W., 2009. Children and the Theologians: Clearing the Way for Grace. Harrisburg: Church Publishing, Inc. Heywood, C., (2013). A history of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times. New York: Wiley. James, A., & James, A., 2008. Key concepts in childhood studies. UK: Sage Publishers. Jenks, C., & Bohm D., 2005. Childhood. United Kingdom: London, Routledge. Kassem, D., Murphy L., & Taylor E. eds., 2009. Childhood and Youth Studies: Critical issues. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Ltd. Kehily, M. J., 2013. Understanding childhood: A cross Disciplinary Approach. London: Policy Press Montgomery, H., 2009. An introduction to childhood: Anthropological perspectives on children’s lives. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Riddy, F., & Goldberg P. J. P., 2004. Youth in the middle Ages. NY: Boydell & Brewer. Read More