Evaluating the march of progress

• Child liberationists argue that children are too protected: their rights are restricted and they are oppressed. Gittins talks about age patriarchy: adults make children helpless and dependent in order to maintain authority. Hockey and James (1993) points out that children themselves often see childhood as an oppressive period of life from which they wish to escape.
• Sue Palmer (2007) suggests that, far from a specially privileged time, childhood is toxic. Children are becoming obese, anxious, overly-tested, and lacking in social skills/experiences (partly because of screen time)
• Critics of Palmer point out that a real toxic childhood is that experienced by people making the iPads and so on, rather than those enjoying them
• Frank Furedi (2001) argues that childhood is blighted by paranoid parenting - parents worried that they were being judged by society.
• Jacques Donnelly makes the related point that there is state surveillance of parenting: parents are controlled through social policy, children’s health, health visitors, etc
• Somme New Right thinkers like Melanie Phillips, argue children have too many rights and as such are not sufficiently controlled and do not have enough respect for their parents: children are “feral”, joining gangs, engaging in crime, etc