Has Childhood Improved

• March Of Progress View


  •Over the past few centuries, the position of children has improved.•Today children are more valued, better cared for, protected etcThe family and society have become more child centred, and this has improved children’s quality of life
• Child liberationists

  •Held by Marxist and feminists•View society as based on inequality- dominant group oppress the subordinate•Argue that the ‘march of progress’ view of childhood is based on a false and idealised image that ignores INEQUALITIES (among children and between children and adults)!#
• 1.Gender differences – Traditional gender expectations may limit children’s freedoms (especially girls).
• -Hillman (1993) found that boys are more likely to be allowed to cross or cycle on roads, use buses and go after dark unaccompanied.-Bonke (1999) found girls do more domestic labour – particularly in lone parent families where they do five times more housework than boys.
• 1.Ethnic differences –-Brannen (1994) studied 15-16 year olds girls and found Asian parents were more likely to be strict towards their daughters.-Bhatti (1999) found “izzat” (family honour) could be a restriction, especially on the behaviour of girls.
• Class Differenes are also significant

  1.Poor mothers are more likely to have low birth weight babies, which is linked to delayed physical and intellectual development. 2.Children of unskilled manual workers are more likely to have hyperactivity or conduct disorders than the children of professionals. 3.Children born into poor families and more likely to die in infancy or childhood, to suffer longstanding illnesses, to be shorter in height, to fall behind in school and to be placed on the child protection register.
• –There is increasingly tight surveillance over children in public spaces such as shopping centres.  Fears over road safety and ‘stranger danger’ have led to more and more children being driven to school.
• ––Adults control children’s daily routines, including the time when they get up, come home, go out, play, watch TV and sleep.  Adults decide whether a child is too old or too young for a particular activity or responsibility and thus decide when they are ‘grown up’.•
• Inequalities 


  •Adult control children’s spaces – for example the posters they’re allowed to have in their rooms, if they’re allowed their bedroom door closed etc.••Children have limited access to resources, as they cannot work.  Pocket money given by parents may be dependent upon good behaviour.
• Age Patriarchy


  •This term describes inequalities between adults and children.  Like feminists argue men have control and domination over women, child liberationists argue that children are dominated by adults.  •Children may resist the status of child and the restrictions that go with it e.g. they may ‘act up’ i.e. act like adults by doing things they are not supposed to such as swearing, smoking drinking alcohol etc, or ‘act down’ by adopting behaviour of much younger children like baby-talk (Hockey and James 1993).•
• Conflict View A03

  Strength - It draws attention to the lack of control children have in society – this is relevant in UK society where until recently  child abuse has gone on undisturbed because children either do not question adults or when they do are not believed.

  Weakness – it overlooks the fact that in most cases parental restrictions on children are in the interests of safety and protection as children are unable to protect their own interests. Children also have legal rights as established by the 1989 Children Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of the child.
• This approach links with the personal life perspective, and is interested in understanding how children experience childhood themselves, rather than simply how adults view them.