Is Childhood Disappearing? Free Essay Example

Childhood cannot easily be defined, since there seems to be no universal beginning or ending to it, however, it commonly describes the period from infancy through to adulthood. Childhood is a recent social construct, as Postman (1983) says; ‘the precise marking of a child’s age in any way is a relatively recent cultural habit, not more than two hundred years old’, therefore it can easily start to disappear from society as it changes.

There are four widely accepted characteristics of modern childhood; schooling; exclusion from paid work, responsibility of parents to their children and that State’s responsibility to children.

Since childhood is a human invention there are always disagreements over the ‘best’ type of childhood but ethnicity and class are easily forgotten. The following essay aims to analyse the contents and boundaries of childhood that have and will change over time and come to some kind of conclusion on the idea of a disappearing childhood.

In order to gain some perspective on modern childhood and the controversial idea of its disappearance, it is essential to follow the evolution of childhood.

Postman (1983) p.68 suggests that the time between 1850 and 1950 was the ‘highest watermark of childhood […], during the same period the symbolic environment that gave life to childhood began to be disassembled slowly and inconspicuously.’

In the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds there is no sign that children were paid attention to. Looking at paintings and statues in order to gain insight into their world, children were not included. According to Aries (1973) so many children died so ‘childhood was simply an unimportant phase of which there was no need to keep any record’.

To illustrate the concept of societal change and changing childhood it is important to look at the decline of Rome, as the birth rate measure decreased it became more important to have children and try and keep them healthy. This changed the moral attitude of parents towards their children, therefore changing childhood altogether.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity and return to civilisation, children became more important. With this change the position of the church became more recognised as pro-family, opposed to infanticide and family violence, and as a promoter of schooling. This is the time when the idea of modern childhood appeared. ‘Adulthood, by definition, excluded children. And as children were expelled from the adult world it became necessary to find another world for them to inhabit’ Postman (1983) p.69. As the demand for business and trade increased the need for a more mobile family did too, this gave way to the rise in nuclear families: based on a central couple and their children.

This unit provided children with a safe and secure environment to grow up in. Firestone believed that the development of modern childhood came with ‘the development of the modern family’ cited Hoyles (1979) p.35. Even so children were only seen as children up until the age of seven, the time when they were able and needed to work in order to provide extra income for the family. Aries (1973) states ‘as soon as the child could live without the solicitude of his mother, his nanny or his cradle-rocker, he belonged to adult society’.

One of the biggest changes for children has been the legislation that has been put in place in order to ensure they are not exploited and are entitled to an education. The introduction of compulsory education in the mid-nineteenth century was not entirely without criticism. Many people believed in the need to shelter children from adult secrets and that sending them to school would give them ideas ‘above their station’. Since industry was developing rapidly it was important for children to be educated and disciplined. However, due to those who believed in children being seen and not heard they held the notion that ‘childhood ends at seven – when they have command over speech – say and understand what adults can say and understand’ Postman (1983) p.13.

The very ‘preoccupation with recording the history of childhood is a sign of the waning of childhood’ Postman (1983) p.5, these recordings all indicate a preference to the disappearance rather than a general change in attitudes due to other changes in society. The fear of childhood disappearing is very distinct since parents of children in the recent era had very different upbringings and childhood’s themselves.

The differences they see in their own children; the way they behave, the games they play and the way in which they address adults are all very clear, this allows for the familiar perception of “its not like it was in my day”. However, childhood is often the projection of what adults would like to be and what they have been so their views will be determined by the way in which they grew up. Many parents of children nowadays were born in the days of Dr Benjamin Spock and his book Baby and Childcare. His ideas of love being more important than discipline and that children should be free of rigid rules would have been practised in many of their households. In turn this would have a knock-on affect on the way in which they bring up their own children; the youth of today.

Winn (1983) p.18 suggests that ‘radical changes that began to take place in American society in the 1960s and 1970s, the sexual revolution, the drug epidemic, the breakdown of the conventional two parent-family, the women’s movement and the growth of the television as a medium of education and socialisation’ all contribute to the loss of childhood. The new ideology of the family, which came from the Reformation, of two parents and their children is gradually disappearing. Couples are becoming increasingly less likely to marry and divorce is also on the increase. One parent families are common and people as young as 13 years old are having children.

There is such a difference in the family unit that children are inevitably going to have a much different childhood than in previous generations. Wyness (2000) p.8 would agree that ‘ children are less childlike because they can no longer be neatly positioned within family and peer group institutions ad structures that typify the essential characteristics of childhood.’ Children spend a lot less time with their parents and therefore lose out on the nurturing they can give. The Miami Education Department (URL included in references) states that ‘in the last twenty or thirty years, as a result of television and major demographic and social shifts in culture, the experiences of children and adults has become less differentiated.’

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