March of progress view- Childhood

• What is the March of progress view of childhood?

  • Functionalists say the change in childhood since the 19th century has been ‘the march of progress’.
  • (Shorter)- modern childhood has a functional fit with our modern industrial economy with more complex jobs. So people needed to be more educated to those jobs. There also had to be a fall in infant mortality rates so children could be educated to do those jobs. This therefore highlights a clear progression to meet the new needs of social change and society as a whole.
• What has the reduction in child mortality rates done to the family?

  • The reduction in child mortality rates has led to more child centred families as parents feel more comfortable growing emotional attachments to their children.
  • More attention can be given to children as there are also less children in the family.
  • Children have become financial burdens instead of assets with changes in labour laws and attitudes in which we should care and nurture children, which has led to smaller family sizes.
• What is the main idea of Gittins' evaluation of the March of progress view of childhood?

  Adults maintain authority over children by fostering dependency
• How do Hockey & James view childhood?

  As an oppressive phase that children seek to escape from.
• What does Palmer oppose from the March of Progress view?

  (Palmer)- They are far from being protected and nurtured like Shorter suggests, modern day children are suffering under Toxic childhood in which children are becoming increasingly obese and are exploited by advertisers and are spending far too long on screens rather than interacting with other humans.
• What is Furedi’s evaluation of the March of progress view of childhood?

  -(Furedi)- Childhood today is effected by paranoid parenting, where the media and policy makers pit the blame of social problems on parents. Therefore, parents are increasingly anxious that they are doing something wrong in bringing up their children, and so they shield and shelter them, diminishing the child’s experiences of childhood.