Idea Of Childhood Research Articles

The Establishment and Disestablishment of Childhood: The Mental Hygiene Movement, Education and Social Change from a Postmodern Perspective

Childhood is a liminal state. It is not an absolute either in terms of psychology nor biology but rather it is a sodai and historical construct. Childhood is also a lived experience related to changes in formalized perceptions of who the young are and who they should or can become according to definitions of appropriate or inappropriate behavior, normal and abnormal development. Class and race influence how a child's age-status is perceived. This paper examines the idea of childhood in the United States as an emergent concept as it was socially constructed afier the Civil War in the mid-nineteenth century up to the present construction of a youth crisis in die 1990s. Three shifts in the meaning of childhood as shaped by the policies and practices of adults are described. First, children of low status came under public supervision. The southern states during Reconstruction after the Civil War ended in 1865 up to the First World War are used as a case study where children are divided by class and race. Second, the child became the subject of scientific investigation in the inter-War period. The influence of the mental hygiene movement in establishing middle class Anglocentric standards as a norm is used as a focus. Third, childhood became a “thing-in-itself’ in the last half of the twentieth century both as an object of hope and despair. The discussion begins with an overview of the climate which fostered social policies directed toward controlling children.

PARADIGMATIC MADNESS IN THE PUBLIC REPRESENTATION OF CHILDHOOD

Western images of the child draw on a secure thematic tradition which may be interpreted in terms of an equation that locates childhood on one side and diverse forms of madness on the other. Explicitly within Freud's psychoanalytic theory of id functioning, Piaget's epigenetic studies of children's cognition, and by long standing legal convention, children are understood variously as sub‐rational, pre‐rational, or in some critically relevant sense intellectually deficient. Implicitly a corresponding argument may be discerned both in written text and in pictorial representations of the child in religious, mythological, artistic, and literary sources as well as in the discourses of everyday language. This paper takes up those principal themes within the conceptual substrate of childhood which invest it with madness in one form or other. In particular it explores the extent to which madness, though highly unfashionable as an attribute, appears in commonplace settings as a positive characteristic of children and the idea of childhood.

La télévision et l'intégration des enfants : la fin du secret des adultes

With the electronic media and especially television, children are confronted very early on with all the secrets of adult life that were formerly hidden from them. They learn that their parents play the "role" of parents, while backstage the rules are different. They also become familiar with "adult" social problems related to sexuality, crime and deceit. Television has destroyed the very idea of childhood - in the sense of a world apart, a world to be protected where learning takes place in stages. This is hardly surprising since it was the culture of writing as diffused by printing that "invented" the notion of childhood in the sixteenth century. The author therefore calls into question the current functioning of our school system which remains based on rules of separation between age-groups, established by writing, while television has made the idea of rational and progressives steps towards knowledge of the world obsolete.

Medieval Adolescence: The Claims of History and the Silence of German Narrative

For nearly twenty-five years medievalists have been raising their voices to defend Middle Ages against Philippe Aries and his claim that the idea of childhood did not exist in society.' From Urban Holmes2 to Shulamith Shahar3 scholars have marshaled what evidence they could to counter negative stereotype4 of family first proposed by AriRs, then seconded by Jacques Le Goff and others,5 and to demonstrate that medieval society knew age of childhood.6 Exhilarated by ease with which they were able to restore childhood to Middle Ages, a number of writers have gone on to challenge a less famous claim of AriRs, that before

The Children's "Press Conference" Program of the "Eaglet" Television Studio

We rejoice in childnaivetehood: let children be children. But let the idea of childhood not be carried too far. Don't many youngsters today carry their naivete and innocence beyond the time when they should already be assimilating civic concepts and thinking about their duty to society and their future self-realization in real-life situations? Left happy and protected against adversity and difficulty by their elders, do they not forfeit an awareness of the great sacrifices that have been made on their behalf?

THE CHILD IN MEDIEVAL SOCIETY

As Philippe Aries has dramatically called to our attention, childhood as a phenomenon unto itself is an invention of modern times. He writes: In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist; this is not to suggest that children were neglected, forsaken, or despised. The idea of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children: it corresponds to an awareness of the particular nature of childhood, that particular nature which distinguishes the child from the adult, even the young adult. In medieval society this awareness was lacking. That is why, as soon as the child could live without the constant solicitude of his mother, his nanny, or his cradle-rocker, he belonged to adult society. . . . Language did not give the word "child" the restricted meaning we give it today: people said "child" much as we say "lad" in every day speech. The absence of definition extended to every sort of social activity: games, crafts, arms.