Childhood Centerdness

Palmer 2007 'Toxic Childhood'

  • Adults increasingly using technologies to act as an alternative to traditional childrearing practices 'electronic baby sitters'
  • Put into front of TV
  • Children are deprived of traditional childhood (No talking,reading)

  • More developmental disorders e.g ADHD/Autism


  • Movement into child bedrooms and news destabilises children

  • American 80s 1 in 50,000 autistic
  • 2004 1 in 166

Deborah Chambers 2012

  • value children from economic benefits to emotional reasons

Falling Birth rates = Smaller families

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Pester power, children now consumers, growing materialism

Contraception 1960

  • choose people to have less children, more invested in them

Government Policy

2004 Children Act

  • Every child matters, focuses on well being of children. Birth to 19

Child Support Act 1991

  • Care and upbringing of children

Butler Act 1994

  • Promised secondary education for all

Foster Education Act 1870

  • Compulsory Education

Increased Paranoid Parenting

  • Media shows e.g super nanny
  • Bad events

Increased standards of living

  • Less illness, industrialisation changed modern attitudes of childhood

Jenks 2005

  • Threat to childhood innocence as media is used to create identities (Commercialisation of childhood)

INTRO:
Willmott and Young

  • Stratified Diffusion, distinction between child and adult first appeared in Upper class.
    Children of the rich got superior education. Some laws, but children still worked for adults income.
  • Status of being a child differs between cultures, especially evident in poorer countries

Postman (1994)

  • Child/adult line blurred, exposed to adult world earlier.
  • Children have access to adult media e.g tv, pornography

Kirsty Young 2010

  • Children dominate family hierarchy
  • Government became family and child focused (end of 20th century link to policies)

Aries (1973)

  • 18th + 16th century
  • Little adults
  • Didnt live long so treated poorly
  • Economic asset
  • Childhood not innocent
    (French and Spanish Royalty. Not taboo to be sexual with children)



  • Unit of consumption from unit of production

Tim Gill "No fear" 2007

  • Children growing up faster not correct
  • Parental fears dont allow them to grow up
  • not given independence

Furedi

  • IVF children not living up to parent standards
  • Paranoid parents deprive children of experiences

Advantages:

  • Conc of resources
  • Concerns about wellbeing
  • Protection from dangers of adult world
    -

Disadvantages:

  • Golden child syndrome
  • not able to become an individual due to pressure from parents
  • helicopter parenting
  • paranoid parenting
  • overly protected

sexual consent now 16

leave home at 18 or more