Disappearance & Future of childhood

• Postman 1994: ''Childhood is disappearing at a dazzling speed''
• Examples of the disappearance of childhood

  • Disappearance of children's traditional unsupervised games
  • Growing similarity of adult's and children's clothing
  • Children now committ more adult crimes such as murder (knife crime in youth has increased)
• Cause of emergence/disappearance of childhood


  Fall of printed news culture and rise of television culture, blurred information hierarchy.

  Boundary between child and adulthood is broken down.

  With the increase of learner voice - student voice and student panels etc
• During middle ages, most people were illiterate and speech was only a necessary skill. Children were able to enter adult life from an early age. Childhood was not associated with innocence, nor the adult world with mystery. There was no division between adult life and children.
• Childhood emerged as a separate status along with mass literacy, from the 19th century onwards.
• Printed word creates information hierarchy

  Gives adult power to keep knowledge about sex, money, violence and other adult matters a secret from children. These things became mysteries to them and childhood became associated with ignorance and innocence
• Opie: Childhood isn’t disappearing 


  Lifetime of research: strong evidence of the continued existence of childhood/ separate children’s culture.
• Jenks: isnt disappearing, it’s changing

  • 20th ventures is concerned with ‘futurity’ - preparation for adulthood.
  • children need protection = child cantered family.
  • PM society - relationships of adults are unstable = insecurity so adult & child relationships are more protected and important
  • Laws seperate children from adults.

  AO3:

  • evidence is limited - small, unrepresentative generalisations - not all children are the same