The Future Of Childhood

If childhood is socially constructed, what can we expect it to do?

Continue to change in the future as society itself changes, for example from modern to postmodern society.

What does Postman argue?

That childhood is ‘disappearing at a dazzling speed‘. He points to the trend towards giving children the same rights as adults, the disappearance of children’s traditional unsupervised games, the growing similarity of adults’ and children’s clothing, and even to cases of children committing ‘adult crimes‘ like murder.

In postman’s view, what is the cause of the emergence and disappearance of childhood?

The rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture.

In the Middle Ages, could people read?

Most people were illiterate, and speech was the only skill needed for participation in the adult world. Children were able to enter adult society from an early age. Childhood was not associated with innocence, not the adult world with mystery. There was no division between the child and adult worlds.

What does Postman argue that childhood emerged as?

A separate status, along with mass literacy, from the 19th century on. This is because the printed world creates an information hierarchy: a sharp division between adults, who can read and children, who cannot.

According to Postman, what does the information hierarchy give adults?

The power to keep knowledge about sex, money, violence, illness, death and other ‘adult‘ matters a secret from children. These things became mysteries to them, and childhood came to be associated with innocence and ignorance.

What does television blur the distinction between?

Childhood and adulthood, by destroying the information hierarchy. Unlike the printed word, TV does not require special skills to access it, and it makes information available to adults and children alike. The boundary between adult and child is broken down, adult authority diminishes, and the ignorance and innocence of childhood is replaced by knowledge and cynicism.

What is the counterpoint of the disappearance of childhood?

The disappearance of adulthood, where adults’ and children’s tastes and styles become indistinguishable.

Unlike Postman, what does Opie argue?

That childhood is not disappearing. Based on a lifetime of research into children’s unsupervised games, rhymes and songs, she argues that there is strong evidence of the continued existence of a separate children’s culture over many years.

What is postman’s study valuable in showing?

How different types of communication technology, such as print and television, can influence the way in which childhood is constructed. However, he emphasises a single cause - television - at the expense of other factors that have influenced the development of childhood.

Unlike Postman, what does Jenks believe?

That childhood is not disappearing, but it is changing.

What does Jenks agree with Aries about?

He agrees that childhood was a creation of modern society. For Jenks, modern society was concerned with ‘futurity‘ and childhood was seen as a preparation for the individual to become a productive adult in the future. TO achieve this, the vulnerable, underdeveloped child needed to be nurtured, protected and controlled, especially by the ‘child-centred‘ family and by the education system, which imposed discipline and conformity on children.

What does Jenks argue?

That childhood is once again undergoing change as society moves from modernity to postmodernity.

What do adult’s relationships look like in modern and postmodern society?

In modern society, adults’ relationships were more stable, but in postmodern society, the pace of change speeds up and relationships become more unstable. For example, divorces become more unstable.

What does the instability of adults’ relationships in postmodern society generate feelings of?

Insecurity. In this context, relationships with their children become more important as a source of adults’ identity and stability. While your marriage may end in divorce, you are still the parent of your child.

In postmodern society, what do adults’ relationships with their children become a last refuge from?

The constant uncertainty and upheaval of life. As a result, adults become even more preoccupied with protecting them from perceived dangers such as child abuse.

This further strengthens the prevailing view of children as vulnerable and in need of protection that we have already seen in the modern notion of childhood, resulting in even greater surveillance and regulation of children’s lives.

Why does Jenks disagree with Postman?

Childhood continues to be a separate status, and the legal and other restrictions placed on what children can do continues to mark them off from adults.

What evidence supports Jenks’ argument?

There is some evidence that parents see their relationship with their children as more important than that with their partners, and that parents are very concerned about the risks they believe their children face. However, the evidence comes from small, unrepresentative studies.

What is Jenks guilty of?

Overgeneralising; despite the greater diversity of family and childhood patterns found today (such as lone-parent families, stepfamilies, ect) he makes rather sweeping statements that imply that all children are in the same position