Conclusion
Cannan (1992: 123) contends that it is not changing family structures
which cause social problems, but the relationship between the family
and the state, and policies and practices which the state implements to
support or undermine certain family forms. This is a very important
message to end with. We need to critically examine social work poli-
cies and interventions to consider where and when 'traditional' nuclear
family arrangements are indeed being privileged over other family
forms. We must be prepared to value other family patterns, and work
with service-users to support them. Finally, we must hold to the fore
the reality that there is no singular 'family perspective' or 'family
needs'. On the contrary, members of a family are likely to have very
different positions and perspectives, structured as they are by wider
forces of oppression including gender, age, 'race', sexuality and
disability.
Recommended reading
Bernardes, J. (1997) Family Studies: An Introduction, London:
Routledge (a readable book with strong opinions on the nuclear
family).
Elliot, ER. (1996)Gender,FamilyundSociety,Basingstoke: Macmillan
(provides good theoretical material and an analysis of statistical
data).
* Muncie, J., Wetherell, M., Dallos, R. and Cochrane, A. (1995)
Understanding the Family, London: Sage (an edited collection with
many interesting and highly relevant chapters).
3 Childhood
Introduction
It has been widely acknowledged that until the mid 1980s, there was
surprisingly little sociological interest in childhood, either by classical
sociologists or by North American sociologists (Qvortrup 1995).
Where children appear in the main body of sociologicalwriting, this is
largely in the context of a wider investigation of something else, most
frequently the family, the community or the educational system.
Children :merge in the-literature as adjuncts of their parents, their
carers---.or their teachers, with little recognition that they might have a
&ice of their own in sociological knowledge and enquiry Sociological
surveys and official statistics frequently did not consider even the pres-
ence of children in their data collection and analysis, further increasing
their invisibility in sociological discourse (Qvortrup 1994).' The
absence of an analysis of childhood in sociological writing is not only a
historical phenomenon. Two recently published textbooks on sociology
make no mention of childhood: children are again sidelined in discus-
sions of education, childcare and changing family patterns (Bilton et al.
1996,Marsh et al. 1996).
The 'am~m:-(Alanen 1994) in sociology has important conse-
-*"---
CJ~~LEC~~ for sociology and for social work. Most importantly, the
absence of children in sociological discourse presents a,fsignificant gap
in knowledge and understanding of society. This can b e X e s O Z e
m ~ a ~ ^ p ~ ~ i o nof women- within sociology. Feminist sociologists---..---- - -
have argued that traditional sociology is not simply sexist, it is flawed
sociology; its knowledge base and its research practices lack validity
because they have ignored or sidelined the experiences of women
(Harding 1991, Stanley 1990). Feminist sociologists have struggled
over the last twenty years to put women and women's experiences onto
the sociological map: to challenge conventional 'malestream' sociology
58 Childhood
Alll Definitions of childhood
and to build a new sociological theory and practice which has as its
core the experiences and 'standpoints' of women. Sociologists inter-
ested in children and childhood are similarly working today to make
sociology reflect the experiences and perspectives of children and
young people.
The lack of a sociological analysis of childhood means that ~a$mic-
and :cldc~?-re--- around childhood and children has been
created on the basis of ideas and models which g e larg-hh
ical in derivation. Much of what we understand about childhood is
rooted in psychological ideas about child development, adolescence
The starting-point must be an attempt to define childhood - here our
difficulties begin. We can be fairly certain that childhood begins at
birth, or perhaps even at the end of infancy. But when does childhood
end and adulthood commence? By looking at this more closely, we
find that definitions and expectations of age groups are not fixed: they
Childhood 59
and socialisation, often described in functionalist, positivist language.
The individualising approach in psychology makes it difficultC-II-I--9Y to---^-- see-
that issues a-nd difficulties faced by children and young p ~ l emay be_ . # --- --- " i- -.. -- --_. _# --4- ,-
structural in-orjgiii, located i n ' t z s ~ ~ ~ p o s ~ t l o n____._of children-_."__-as a_subordinated maiginalised gx~p,_rat_h_er_t-h?gin igdivi_duaLp_e_rrso,n-
% -#s-s.&G. .% --~-->
* - - -
.-ar~typrde~elo~mentat~~ta~e- _ __--- Qaporiti 1994). More than this, Mayall
(1994) argues that psychological discourses which aim to classify,
divide up and control children may oppress children in practice.
The implications for social work are self-evident. Most of what
social work knows about childhood is informed by psychology: ask any
social work student what they can tell you about children and young
people and they will probably come up with notions about 'ages and
change over time and among cultures, especially between rich. and
-
ence what we expect of children living-e streets
may be very different from our expectations of chil-
ass families living in suburban villas in the United
Kingdom or France or the United States.
stages' or 'needs of children', demonstrating little awareness of the
partial and normalising nature of the frameworks they are using.
Similarly, dominant theoretical perspectives in social work with chil-*--*_ _ _ _ = - --_alr __ -- _*_----_. _ __ __---
dren__-tend- -t_o_ 3 E n d i v i d u ~ l s t l cin- nature, seeking causes and<- .--.----- - wxr---- I_C__---- -
ZfiIanations in_ .i i d h i d ~ ~ lr -... personality-- orfaGily_j_ _-pathoGi_._- I -rather thih
iin-strdcfural issues such as class, pov&& or inequality.*'*
This chapter will examine two phases of soc~ologicalenquiry into
childhood: first, sociology's early (and continuing) interest in socialisa-
tion; and second, sociology's more recent concern with the
institutionalisation of childhood. Before going on consider sociological
approaches to childhood, it is necessary to set the parameters of the
discussion: to ask, what is childhood?
Legislation exemplifies this lack of clarity about childhood by
failing to delineate the ~~i~&~_~Q(d/adg~;&d-boundar~r~in---+7&-=- any precise
way. This means that in the UK, there are different ages for marriage,
for voting in elections, for having sexual intercourse (heterosexual and
homosexual), for driving a car, for buying cigarettes or alcohol, and for
claiming social security benefits. Pilcher (1995) sets out the official
ages of adulthood in modern Britain, as shown in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Official ages of adulthood in modern Britain
Context
Age of criminal responsibility(Scotland)
Age of criminal responsibility(Englandand Wales)
Minimum age for employment
Own an air rifle
Pay adult fare on public transport
Leave school
Heterosexual age of sexual consent
Buy cigarettes
Marry (Scotland)
Marry with parental consent (England and Wales)
Hold a licence to drive a moped
Eligible for full employment
17 Hold a licence to drive a car
18 Vote in elections
Buy alcohol
Watch films and videos classified as '18'
Homosexual age of sexual consent
Marry without parental consent (England and Wales)
Adult levels of Income Support
Adult in Housing Benefit rules
Source: Pilcher 1995: 62,Table 4.1.
I
1
60 Childhood Childhood 61
Convention on the Rights of the Child has developed a set of recom-
mendations in response to the sexual exploitation of children, which
its signatories are obligated to fulfil. These recommendations are
framed under the assumption that childhood is defined as up to eigh-
teen years of age and young people as eighteen to twenty-one years.
Yet Kelly et dl. point out that few countries use these definitions, and
The high degree of variability demonstrated in Table 3.1 suggests that
I there is no agreed point in a child's life when childhood ends and
1
I adulthood begins. This is not a politically neutral state of affairs. On
the contrary, there has been (and will undoubtedly continue to be)
contestation over particular areas within this. Two recent examples of
1 this include the campaign waged throughout 1998 to try to persuade
the UK Parliament to standardise the age of sexual consent to sixteen
1 1 years for both homosexual and heterosexual sexual intercourse; and the
II dispute over the age of criminal responsibility which re-emerged with
I1 the conviction of two ten-year-old boys for the murder of two-year-old
James Bulger in 1993. (I will discuss this more fully later in the
1I
chapter.)
Regulations concerning the minimum school leaving age and enti-
tlement to welfare benefits serve as indicators about current societal
I expectations of the boundary between childhood and adulthood.
I
I Nevertheless, there are discernible differences even here. The child-
hood of a middle-class child is expected typically to continue at least
to university and often beyond, evidenced by the reduction in grants
1, for students in higher education (Roberts and Sachdev 1996). Similarly,
the removal of entitlement to social security benefits for sixteen- to
eighteen-year olds has increased the dependency of all children on
I parents and reduced their scope for self-sufficiency. In contrast, the
childhood of a child who has experienced family breakdown and has
een 'looked after' by the local authority ends at eighteen years of age
as a result it i s unlikely that information is kep
using these classifications.
I
Historical accounts of childhood
I n Scotland (twenty-one in England and Wales) when the young
I
person is expected to be old enough to look after her or himself. (See
Historical analyses of childhood (offered by both historians and sociol-
ogists) are useful for our consideration for three main reasons. First,
they provide further evidence with which to challenge the idea that
there is a distinct chronological time which we can point to and call
'childhood'. Second, they make it clear that contemporary ideas of
childhood as a time of separateness and difference from adult activities
and preoccupations cannot be taken for granted. Third, the disputes
that occur between those interested in historical perspectives demon-
strate that the study of childhood is, in Frost and Stein's language, an
'ideological battleground'; studies of childhood, like studies of the
family, thus reflect a political agenda (1989: 16).
It was the French historian Philippe Aries (1962), who first drew
attention to the idea that childhood, rather than being 'natural' or
innate, was socially constr"U"SraaGd that attitudes to childhood? ," - -<*-- - --A+& L
changed over ttme (Gittins 1998: 26). Aries contrasts what he sees as
I4 Children (Scotland)Act 1995, Children Act 1989.)
A consideration of official reaction to children involved in prostitu-
11 tion demonstrates society's uncertainty over the boundary between
childhood and adulthood, and a major degree of ambivalence towards
1I children and childhood. Children as young as ten years of age have
indifference to children (or 'ignorance of childhood') in the tenth
century with the 'obsession' with childhood in modern societies. He
writes:
I
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 child-
hood, that particular nature which distinguishes it 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 ... he belonged to adult society.
(1962: 125)
been cautioned for soliciting for the purposes of prostitution, and
many more aged fourteen and over have been convicted of similar
Aries based his ideas on the portrayal of children in medieval paintings
and poetry. Here children from about five years of age could be found
Ii offences (Home Office figures, England and Wales, quoted in Lee and
O'Brien 1995). Yet the behaviour of these chtldren, if witnessed in the
context of the family rather than the street, would be liable to be
rl wed as indicative of sexual abuse rather than prostitution. Childcare
ies have been campaigning to encourage the police to see these
11 ren as victims of crime rather than criminals (Communtty Care,
-25 November 1998: 9).
111 Kelly et al. (1995) point out that there is no consensus on an inter-
1111
national level about a definition of childhood. The United Nations
Ilj
wearing adult clothes and taking part in the full range of adult activities.
Thev were. Aries contends, to all intents and purposes small adults,- -
and, given high rates of child mortality, parents had no special-.-"
rigs identifies a shift from
hildren became increasingly\
1/11 1 '' ' differentiated from adults, with their own clothing, literature and
I//I
-
I!Il
activities. The advent of formal education outside the home in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries then consolidated the concept of
I ,
childhood as a distinct phenomenon. Aries identifies two distinct
dimensions to the new consciousness about childhood: first, he
' describes a new awareness of, and enjoyment in children by adults; and
d, he outlines a new conceptualisation of childhood as a time-for
. phy_sjcal, intellectual and social development-
~ r i e sis clear that the new ;Lder&ndings about childhood did not
act on all children at the same time. On the contrary, he perceives
ed class and gender differences in the experiences of children. It
s the new middle classes, he maintains, who were in the forefront of
he drive to introduce education for boys. Upper-class boys in the
eenth and seventeenth centuries received little formal schooling
and could be army officers by the age of fourteen and even as young as
eleven years on occasions. Aries reports that girls from all classes had
no formal schooling and many were married and running households
by fourteen years of age. By the eighteenth century, most aristocratic
children (both boys and girls) received some schooling, though girls'
education finishedearlier than boys.Working-classchildrencontinued to
work to supplement family incomes late into the nineteenth century,
and to have life experiences which were very similar to those of their
parents. What this suggests is that the construction of childhood as a
special category was targeted first and foremost at middle-class boys;
subsequently, other children have been accommodated Into this charac-
terisation at different times and to different degrees.
Aries locates the lengthening of childhood in changes in ideological
beliefs. The Reformation had brought with it ideas about a disciplined
life, while Calvinism had stressed the notion of original sln: children
were doomed to depravity unless controlled and trained by parents and
schools. Then in the eighteenth century, Enlightenment ideas placed
on members of society the responsibility that they should seek to
contribute to the good of society through attaining rationality: education
was to play a major part in this.
Frost and Stein state chat Aries' work has been 'central in helping us
to build a conception of the historical variability of Western child-
hood' (1989: 12). There are, however, a number criticisms of Aries'
Childhood 63
work, criticisms which suggest that he may have been mistaken in his
ideas that children joined adult society at the age of five years, or that
parents were less attached emotionally to their children in the past
(Pollock 1987). Sociologists such as Thane (1981) argue that Aries
underplayed both the importance of the Renaissance and its new ideas
of individualism, and the significance of economic change and more
-specifically, the rise of capitalism. Thane links the emergence of
+ I- - , .-modern age groups firmly to the birth and deGieldpment7ofEuropean_----_.-" --_---.- -
capitalism. She argues that the new middle classes were striving to""-A
--m a x i their control over their wealth and propertv; adult life too
- A -
was becoming more demanding, so that more skill was required for
those directly involved in commerc occupations
such as the law. The consequence of factors was
the emergence of schooling and the lengthening of childhood. These\;----I-1-4 -
pressures were;according to Thane, felt less acutely by both landowners
and by the landless labouring poor. Thane suggests that it was only
when landowners felt the pressure of competition for power and wealth
from the rising middle classes, and later still, when changes in
economic and work practices led to the need for a different kind of
worker, both literate and numerate, that education became more
widely available. By the end of the nineteenth century, the new fear of
the 'dangerous classes' led to the introduction of both factory and
education-F-+---J-- -,-+-,-. legislation- -%-,. .----aimed at taking working-class children out of the
adult world of work and into the children's world of school. Thane
concludes that there was a clear correspondence between the birth of
capitalism, modern classes and modern age groups (1981: 11).
This account confirms that childhood is not only historically vari-
**- ---%- *L, =- -. .
able, but also varies a_cyossgender a_na~la~s-~roufin~s'.Jamieson and
p&. - 1 u - F --..--
oynbee s (19927 ~ c ~ ~ l o ~ ~ c a l ' i n v e s t i ~ i o nof children growing up in
rural communities in Scotland between 1900 and 1930 sheds further
light on the real-life complexities which are concealed by the catch-all
concept 'childhood'. Jamieson and Toynbee contend that a major
feature in the lives of children of crofters and farm servants in the early
years of the twentieth century was not separateness from adults as we
might have anticipated. Instead, children's lives were characterised by
continuities between themselves and adults: they rose at the same
time, worked together, and went to bed at the same time. Children
had few toys and were expected to perform a variety of tasks for their
parents, both inside and outside the house. Income earned by children
was not for their personal consumption: it was a contribution to the
family economy. Household membership carried with it 'expectations
of contributing one's labour, in the same way that membership of the
64 Childhood
community created ties of economic and social reciprocity' (1992: 31).
Explaining the implications of this more fully, Jamieson and Toynbee
write:
these children had no childhood in the sense we understand the
word today - as a particular special time free from the responsibil-
ities of adulthood, deserving tolerance and indulgence from adults,
and allowing time to develop one's potential as an individual.
Parents had limited freedom to choose how their children should
be brought up; the economic circumstances of some parents
demanded that they use what resources they had to survive, in
particular the services of their children in the household and what-
ever else they could be usefully sent to earn. Few parents could
afford to give their children treats in the form of pocket money,
toys or excursions, even if they wanted to. And very few parents
would have been comfortable with the laxity of allowing their
children to behave as they wished, not least because this would fly
in the face of convention.
(1992: 166)
Although there may have been similarities between the lives of chil-
dren and adults, however, they were not the same. On closer
ction, it IS evident that there was a clear demarcation between
t were regarded as 'children's' and 'adults' ' tasks; and within this,
rences too between the jobs of boys and girls, reflecting the divi-
sion of labour between adult men and women. Boys did not drive
cattle, look after cows or fetch water, but were expected to tether rogue
sheep; girls never did this. Fis_hingwas an exclusive~ymale activity,
and it was rare for men or boys _to do housework.l--.--.-Jamieson and
Toynbee-(1992)-oGdiG thipattern of work-connected-with the collec-
tion of peat as an example of the age and gender divisions. It was men's
job to mark and cut the peat; women's to carry it home; and children's
to stack it.
We can now argue that childhood is historically variable, it differs
I
I across class and gender, and that there are important continuities in
I experience between adults and children across generations. In an earlier
1 publication, Jamleson and Toynbee (1990) pinpoint the post-Second
World War period as a key moment in the creation of a new idea of
, , childhood and a new relationship between parents and children.
A I Changes in the nature and distribution of goods for consumption in
period after the end of the Second World War meant that working-
class 'children's jobs7(daily shopp~ng,collecting fuel, cleaning cutlery,
Childhood 65
polishing brasses) largely disappeared. At the same time, many more
women were working, so that work around the home became a 'main
leisure time activity for a significant minority of men and women'
(1990: 95). New ideas also emerged in the relationship between adults
and children, with parents seeking a more democratic relationship
with their children, in contrast to the more authoritarian attitudes of
the past. Jamieson and Toynbee locate these changes in increased afflu-
ence, the cult of leisure and the development of mass consumption,
mass media and mass culture: the shift to the 'aMuent c-on-swer
yciety' was associated 'not only with the multiplication of goods
provided for children by patents, but also a reduction_in the contribu-----
and youni peSple -LO ~heirfaam$? ho~EEi'012, - .
These historical accounts demonstrate that any idea of childhood i s
a fixed, chronological period with a universal, agreed conceptualisation
is untenable. In practice, childhood as it is currently envisaged in-
be a compaztively recent phenomenon, created
cio-economic and political world, as well as by
about the 'needs' of children as distinct from
analysis, however, also demonstrates significant
connection and overlap between the experiences of adults and
. This leads Frost and Stein (1989) to assert that there is no
le history of childhood. Instead, there have always
been diverse experiences of childhood across class, culture and g e s -_ I -.-* -
ra hy and diverse accounts of family life, illusirating the capacity forA=---4.w-3----, ---- _---,-I-. --.
both affection and cruelty across generations (1989: 18). Cross-cultural
studies extend the discussion further.
. >
r
,'$ L P J F - . - ,-
Cross-cultural differences in childhood M -
I have already stated that poverty and wealth have a major impa'ct on
children's experiences of childhood throughout the world. In addition,
cross-cultural studies suggest that there are widespread differences in
child-rearing and in the social organisation of childhood in different
cultural and ethnic settings. Some of the key differences are reported
by Hill and Tisdall (1997) in their review of anthropological studies.
Hill and Tisdall identify that, while in some cultures children spend
considerable amounts of time apart from adults, in others children are
involved from an early age in work-related activities alongside adults.
(This confirms our earlier observations about children in rural Scotland
in the early years of the twentieth century.) Research also highlights
communities across the world in which the care of young children,
66 Childhood
rather than being restricted to a nuclear family model, is shared among
a wide set of people, often female kinfolk. Hill and Tisdall suggest that
ideas of.f:a~mil~identity--..-a-I- in these settings may be more important than
those of;~i;$~dualpersonality (1997: 16). Hill and Tisdall also point
to societies in West Africa where it is common practice to foster chil-
dren from five years onwards with relatives. This is not perceived to be
an act of rejection on behalf of parents (as a white European perspective
might assume), but is instead valued as a positive service to the chil-
dren, who are able to gain wider social links as well as specificskills.
Rogers (1989) considers the varied experiences of children growing
up in minority ethnic families in the United Kingdom, and finds that
their expectations and norms about what childhood is may at times be
very different to the traditional white, Eurocentric model. Although it
is important that we should not fall into the trap of stereotyping black
families, it is nevertheless also important to draw attention to the
continuing reality that there are different ways of thinking about chil-
dren and childhood. Rogers suggests that traditional families whose
origins are in South Asia have ideas about independence and depen-
dence which are deeply at variance with white norms, so that group
loyalty and interdependence are valued far more highly than indepen-
dence and individual freedom (conventionally seen as attributes of
being 'grown up'). Children may be expected to contribute in some
way towards the management of the household and even the family
business at an early age. There may be significant differences in terms
of expectations of girls and boys, with girls and boys spending increas-
ingly segregated time as they grow up, girls with their adult female
relatives and boys with their adult male relatives. Again this is at odds
with expectations about age-specific activities in a conventional white
childhood.
Hill and Tisdall (1997) stress the impact of growing up in a racist
society on black and minority ethnic children in the UK. They may
grow up legally, and in some respects culturally, British but have their
own distinctive religious and cultural influences - influences which are
routinely marginalised, discounted and discriminated against (1997:
17).This means that for them, oppression and discrimination may be a
large part of their experience of childhood. Meera Syal (1996), in a
deeply evocative novel, tells the story of a black girl from a Punjabi
family growing up in a white mining community in the English
Midlands in the 1960s. The girl at the centre of the story moves in and
out of different social and cultural groups at home, at school and in the
neighbourhood, as she successfully negotiates her passage from child-
hood into adulthood.
Childhood 67
Summary
I have argued that the idea of childhood as a specific age grouping is
not sustainable. An investigation of differences between children
socially, culturally and historically reveals that childhood is a socially
and historically specific construction; definitions vary between classes,
ethnic groupings and genders as well as across time. James and Prout
(1990) put this succinctly:
Childhood is understood as a social construction ... Childhood, as
distinct from biological immaturity, is neither a natural nor
universal feature of human groups but appears as a specific struc-
tural and cultural component of many societies. Childhood is a
variable of social analysis. It can never be entirely divorced from
other variables such as class, gender or ethnicity. Comparative and
cross-cultural analysis reveals a variety of childhoods rather than a
single and universal phenomenon.
(1990: 8)
68 Childhood
Sociology and childhood:traditionalperspectives
Hockey and James (1993) point out that when we think about
childhood, we tend to see it not as a entity in its own right, but
instead as a preparation for adulthood, that is, for what is regarded
as the central stage of the life course. Socialisation into adulthood
therefore becomes a key sociological concern. Socialisation is
commonly presented as 'the process whereby individuals in a society
absorb the values, standards and beliefs current in that society'
(Coleman 1992: 13). Two major perspectives have dominated sociali-
sation theory: the normative perspective, which locates power within
societal structures, and the interpretive paradigm, which locates
power within the individual. Grbich (1990) identifies a third posi-
tion developing, one which comprises various conceptualisations of
the two, viewing both individual and society as potentially powerful
(1990: 5 17).
The normative perspective
For those working from a normative paradigm, socialisation is viewed
as a passive process over which we have little or no control. For func-
tionalists such as Durkheim and Parsons, it is seen to be achieved by
the internalisation of commonly-held, societal values and norms
through the agency of the family, school, community, workplace, etc.
A Marxist or radical feminist viewpoint assumes that it is enforced on
individuals by the regulatory mechanisms of society, such as the courts,
Childhood 69
police, education system, etc., which reward certain behaviours and
punish others or through the workings of patriarchy and the sexual
division of labour. Socialisation is thus envisaged as a mechanism
either for transmitting the social consensus or for enforcing social
conformity. It is concerned with the social and cultural forces which
impinge on us from birth, beginning with 'primary socialisation' in
the family (as the child learns how to behave through the intimate
relationships of the family) and progressing to 'secondary socialisation'
which occurs in the school, peer group and wider community, as the
child (and later adult) learns to deal with and become a member of the
outside world.
This conceptualisation of the socialisation process has been criti-
cised for being determinist and absolutist in emphasis. For example, in
an influential essay, Wrong (1961) describes this as an 'over-socialized
conception of man'. Critics have pointed out that socialisation is never
a one-way street; there are always counter-cultures at odds with the
'dominant' view. Willis' celebrated study of working-class boys (1977)
takes issue with those who see school as an inculcator of middle-class
values that are supposedly absorbed unconsciously by working-class
children. He points instead to the vast numbers of kids who do not
conform, and who actively resist attempts to incorporate them into a
dominant middle-class culture. He argues that for many children,
their counter-culture is what matters most, and that this is a working-
class culture with profound similarities to shop-floor culture. This is
not a defeated culture, but one which has rules and skills all of its
own.
The interpretive perspective
The normative perspective, I have suggested, minimises individual
'agency' and the capacity of the individual to interact with and influ-
ence his or her social environment. Interpretive sociologists, in
contrast, present socialisation as an interactive process. It is still
accepted that we enter a pre-given social world, but individuals are no
longer seen as wholly constrained by societal structures. Instead, it is
pointed out that individuals (children and adults) try out new
behaviour and build on previous experiences of given situations,
bringing meaning and purpose to their actions.
American social psychologist George Herbert Mead (1934) has had
a major influence on thinking about the interactive nature of the
socialisation process. He argues that there is no 'self' or personality
that exists at birth. Instead, the self is constituted throughout life,
70 Childhood
confirmed and transformed by a sequence of negotiations with others
who are themselves on life's journey. The 'self has two components:
first, the self is subject ('1') as we initiate social reaction; and second,
the self is object ('me'), because in taking the role of another, we form
impressions of ourselves. Social experience is thus the interplay of the
'I' and the 'me: our actions are spontaneous yet guided by how others
respond to us (Macionis and Plummer 1997: 138). Socialisation is
understood as the process of learning to take the role of the other;
Mead suggests that this process continues throughout life, as changing
social circumstances reshape who we are.
Symbolic interactionists leading on from Mead stress the impor-
tance of the 'roles' which we play: the primary task for a child in order
to make sense of, and influence, the world is to learn to take the role of
the 'other' (for example, mother, father, sibling). By adapting and
submitting to the demands of the social world, the child learns to
become a tole player in different settings at different times. It is
argued that each of us learns a slightly different combination of roles
that will always be defined in slightly different ways (see Berger and
Luckmann 1967).
Some sociologists, however, have criticised what is seen as over-
determinism in the presentation of roles and how they work. Connell
(1983), for example, argues that, because we all hold countless roles,
all of which have different expectations of them, no generalisations can
be made here. He also disputes the claim that role (and the idea of
internalisation of role prescriptions) can explain social learning and
personality formation. He writes that role cannot explain 'the opposi-
tion with which social pressure is met - the girls who become
tomboys, the women who become lesbians, the shoppers who become
shoplifters, the citizens who become revolutionaries' (1983: 202). In
other words, role cannot explain resistance. Goffman is also interested
in the ways that people actively resist, refuse or manipulate their given
roles. In his (1968) study of asylums he argues that even in institutions
with the most rigid rules, there is still a process of negotiation: a
twisting of the rules, an unwritten contract between warder and
patient.
Socialisation a s a m a p
This leads us to Grbich's third conceptualisation of socialisation: that
it is a map, not a blueprint; it can never be a single, total process, and
expectations others have of us will always be conflicting, loose and
obscure, differing from situation to situation. There are also many
Childhood 71
areas of life where there are no established rules and expectations,
where we have to make independent assessments. In the 'postmodern'
world, socialisation can never be a complete, all-encompassing process.
Bauman (1990) writes:
Being free and unfree at the same time is perhaps the most
common of our experiences. It is also, arguably, the most
confusing ...much in the history of sociology may be explained as
an on-going effort to solve this puzzle.
(1990: 20)
Bauman goes on to explore more fully the idea of freedom and inde-
pendence. We are free to make choices and decisions, but the choices
and decisions which we can make are constrained in various ways: by
those who set the rules about the choices we can make; by qualifica-
tions and personal resources, financial and otherwise; by class, gender,
ethnicity. The groups of which we are members enable us to be free
and at the same time constrain us by drawing borders on that freedom.
It is therefore important to ask whose interests are being met in the
sustaining of particular class, gender and racial inequalities. There
needs to be an adequate analysis of how power works in society; of how
the status quo is maintained and why.
The fundamental question for sociologists now changes. Instead of
asking 'how does society socialise individuals?' it is necessary to ask
'who socialises society?' This raises much larger questions about the
ways in which society works: about whose interests are met in the
status quo, with all its particular class, gender and racial inequalities.
Writing about gender socialisation, Mackie (1987) argues that gender,
age, and sexuality are all social constructs that are built upon relatively
minor biological and psychological differences between the sexes. The
main purpose of gender socialisation, in her view, is to perpetuate the
inequality between women and men. A host of agenciesare involved in
this process: the mass media, films, newspapers, employers, govern-
ments, the law, the education system, the police, social workers. (See
also Sharpe 1976 and Lees 1986 on the ways that girls learn to be
women.)
While I wholly accept that gender inequalities are structured into
society, I find this approach too pessimistic, ignoring as it does the
potential for contradictory discourse and the importance of resistance.
Historical studies of socialisation and the creation of gender identity
demonstrate that what is considered permissible behaviour for women
and men has changed considerably in the last fifty years or so (Moore
72 Childhood
1993). It has changed too at particular moments because of political
exigencies such as the Second World War, where women found them-
selves in many positions in society formerly occupied only by men.
Women today receive very mixed messages about their rightful situa-
tion. They are encouraged onto the labour market to carry out what are
often low-paid, part-time insecure jobs. At the same time, government
cutbacks have led to a reduction in nursery places, and community care
planning has been built on an assumption that women will continue to
be primary carers (Finch 1984). (This issue is discussed more fully in
Chapter 6.)
A parallel point can be made about cultural specificity in relation to
gender socialisation. Different cultures have assumed different tole
models for women and men. Men have not always been hunters and
gatherers, just as women have not always been principally involved in
childcare. There has been extensive anthropological research in this
area (e.g. Oakley 1972). Studies of masculinity have similarly indi-
cated that there are many different ways of behaving 'like a man' across
cultures. Tolson (1977) demonstrates that definitions of 'masculine'
conduct vary between cultures and societies, hence Italian men are
allowed (and encouraged) to be emotional and passionate while
English men are expected to be inexpressive and cold.
Brittan and Maynard (1984) are also interested in the origins of
socialisation, in this case, the ways in which children acquire racist and
sexist beliefs and attitudes. Brittan and Maynard argue that racism and
sexism exist not because of socialisation; on the contrary, 'socialisation
reproduces what is already there' (1984: 111).This does not lead them,
however, to be despairing about change. Instead, they point to the
capacity of Black Power and Black Consciousness movements in the
United States and South Africa to reclaim negative images of what it is
to be black in a racist society and recreate them in a powerful and posi-
tive way.
I have argued that there are pitfalls in a sociological perspective which
is only interested in children as 'becoming adults'. This approach may
undermine the importance of conceptualising childhood as a social
category, and may lead us to undervalue children as social actors in
their own right. In addition, normative sociological theories of sociali-
sation are inherently conservative: as Mayall states, they assume that
society is a 'given', and that children are 'to be taught how to fit in'
(1996: 54). I have stressed that socialisation is better understood as a
Childhood 73
two-way process: we (as children and as adults) interact with the world
as it does with us. Socialisation should not be seen as a stereotyping,
for we are all different, and bring to every situation our unique age,
gender, ethnic, cultural, class, familial and historical position. This
means that we should not make assumptions based on our own experi-
ences of socialisation. Instead, we should be open to the possibilities
which individual history and agency, structural position and cultural
differences bring. Moreover, an analysis of power is essential in under-
standing the paradox of freedom and dependence.
Sociology and childhood: more recent perspectives
Since the mid 1980s, there has been an explosion of interest in the
sociology of childhood as sociologists have sought to redefine children
as the subjects of research and at the same time understand the ways in
which childhood is socially constructed by adult society. There is still
much work to be done here: Chisholm suggests that the sociology of
childhood is still very much 'in its own infancy' (Chisholm et al. 1990:
5). Nevertheless, a number of key debates of relevance to social work
74 Childhood
and childcare emerge in the new sociological interest in childhood and
children. These include:
The regulation of childhood.
Childhood - lengthening or disappearing?
Children - individual consumers or members of an oppressed
class?
Children - angels or demons?
The regulation of childhood
Ennew (1986) argues that the most important feature of childhood
today is the idea of 'separateness'. She sees this in two parts: first, the
idea that children should be 'quarantined' away from various 'nasty
infections' of adulthood, such as sex, violence and commerce; and
second, the notion that childhood should be a happy, innocent, free
stage of life - a time of play and socialisation, rather than work and
economic responsibility (1986: 33).
The notion of childhood as something separate from adulthood is, as
we have already considered, a relatively new phenomenon. Children in
the UK in the middle of the nineteenth century lived lives that were
much closer to those of their parents, working, eating and sleeping
together, with little scope for play or age-segregated recreation. With
industrialisation and urbanisation came the creation of a new wage-
earning class, and with this, a concern about the behaviour and habits
of what became known as the 'dangerous' classes (Pearson 1983).
Children, themselves a constituent part of the new working class, were
central to this concern. Factory legislation to limit the working hours
of children and women was accompanied by legislation to introduce
full-time education for all children. Children were literally swept off
the streets and into new controlled settings: schools, reformatories,
children's homes and youth organisations. The impulse to prevent the
contamination of urban poverty and delinquency was so strong that
thousands of city children were 'rescued' from their old worlds and
either 'boarded out' with families in remote crofts and farms (see
Abrams 1998) or transported to the 'new' worlds of Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and South ~ f r i c a . ~
Pearson (1983) argues that it is not simply the behaviour of chil-
dren that changes over time, but public reaction to that behaviour. In
his vivid account of the nineteenth-century moral panics about
working-class children, he demonstrates that what had previously been
regarded as 'normal' childhood activity became criminalised. For exam-
Childhood 75
ple, it had in the past been considered acceptable, 'normal' behaviour
for children to sell goods in the street. But during the nineteenth
century, this behaviour became relabelled as delinquent and punish-
able.* From this he infers that an examination of 'bad' children tells us
more about current perceptions of safety, 'dangerousness' and law and
order than it does about children and young people themselves.
Although Foucault was not primarily interested in a study of child-
hood as such, his analysis of what he sees as a shift in disciplinary
mechanisms in society (1977) provides further information about the
development of childhood as a distinct, regulated phase. Foucault
identifies a shift in techniques of punishment from the surveillance of
bodies to the surveillance of minds; from the control of the problem to
the control of the problem-doer (the individual or the family); from a
traditional form of law based on juridical rights to a colonisation by
the 'psy' complex (psychological and psychiatric ideas and practices)
and the criteria of 'normalisation'. The 'psy' discourse, according to
Foucault, created the categories which it then used to classify and
divide up individuals, and regulate and control behaviour.
Donzelot (1980), working from Foucault's ideas, examines the
development in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of a
sector which he defines as 'the social'; neither public nor private, inde-
pendent from and connected with other sectors (juridical, educational,
economic and political). A new series of professions assembled under
the common banner of 'social work' and took over the mission of 'civil-
ising the social body' (1980: 96). As a consequence, children and the
family are 'policed' today to a degree that would have been unimagin-
able one hundred years ago. Teachers, health visitors, social workers,
* ~011thleaders, counsellors, psychiatrists, ministers of religion, child-
care 'experts' all have a say in regulating childhood and in maintaining
children as innocent, asexual, dependent and in need of protection, as
do education and welfare systems. Theories of child development and
socialisation thus constitute the childhood which we take for granted
at the same time as they set the parameters for 'normal' and 'abnormal'
children's behaviour: in Foucault's conceptualisation, they create child-
hood.
It is not only ideas about childcare that have set the boundaries of
childhood. Parton (1985) argues that child abuse tragedies have played
a major part in educating society about what childhood is and should
be. Over the last twenty-five years since the public enquiry in 1973
into the death of Maria Colwell, there have been almost forty public
enquiries in the UK into child abuse. These enquiries have presented
good parenting and the love of children as the norm; any deviations
76 Childbood
from this have been presented as individual aberrations which should
be treated as such. The focus for social workers working with families
and children has therefore been to identify the small numbers of chil-
dren who are seen as 'at risk' in families, and allocate resources
accordingly (see also Rodger 1996).
Reviewing this period, Parton et al. (1997) suggest that a shift has
taken place from child abuse being constituted as an essentially
medico-social reality with the expertise of doctors as central, to a new
position where it is now seen as a socio-legal problem, with legal
expertise as pre-eminent (1997: 19). At the same time, there has been
a move away from a discourse centred on child abuse to one which is
built around the much broader idea of child protection: not only the
protection of the child, but also 'the protection of parents and family
privacy from unwarranted state interventions' (1997: 41).
This can be understood as the latest compromise position in a battle
which has been fought over the last hundred and fifty years or so
between those who have wished to promote greater state involvement
in the lives of families and children and those who have believed that
regulation was a matter for the individual, not the state (Cree 1995).~
Childhood -lengthening or disappearing?
While childhood has been constituted as a separate phase, so children's
dependent state has been stretched far longer than in the past:
although children may reach puberty at ten or eleven years, they may
not be seen to enter adulthood until finishing full-time education aged
twenty-one and upwards. Sociological studies in recent years have
sought to explore this so-called lengthening of childhood: to examine
children's activities in school, employment and leisure, their relation-
ships with older generations, their dependency and independence,
their legal status, and the impact of gender, 'race' and class (see
Chisholm et al. 1990, Coleman 1992, Mayall 1994, Qvortrup et a/.
1994). This research demonstrates that children's lives have become
increasingly age-segregated and partitioned off from those of adults,
thus increasing both their isolation and their dependency. Moreover,
children are spending more and more time in institutional and organ-
ised settings, from pre-school to school and after-school care. As a
consequence, they can be understood as inhabiting a separate and
exclusive sphere in which they are protected from, and at the same
time controlled by, the adult world.
Ennew (1994) sees connections between the 'curricularization' of
children's lives and the compartmentalised lives inhabited by adults.
Childhood 77
Just as adults move from different spheres of home, work, shopping
and leisure, so the school timetable has been extended outside the
walls of the classroom and into the whole of childrenPsexistence.
Ennew identifies this as a feature of modern lives: 'Leisure and play, far
from being separate and different from work, are now timetabled
according to the same criteria and the same units of time' (1994:132).
The curricularising of children's lives increases both the protection of
children and their dependence on adults, as adults ferry children to and
from the various cultural and sporting activities which fill their out-of-
school hours. Within their tight schedules, Ennew argues, children
make superficial and fragmented social relationships with other chil-
dren and adults, and the idea of 'free time' disappears as children are
confronted with the imperative to organise and structure their time
'constructively'. Qvortrup (1995) suggests that, from this perspective,
childhood is becoming a shorter and shorter phase of a person's life
(1995: 195).
Ennew's account has clear resonance for the lives of many middle-
class children living in western Europe or the United States. How
transferable the scenario is to working-class children and parents in the
same countries is less certain. Families on low incomes and without
transport will be much less able to make use of the many and varied
social and cultural activities which are routinely available to more
mobile, middle-class families with much greater disposable income.
Because of this, working-class children are much more likely to
continue to take part in unsupervised play around their streets and
neighbouthoods. In addition, there is some research evidence that it is
middle-class families who make most use of external childcare
resources such as nurseries and paid child-minders. Working-class
families still rely more heavily for childcare on the extended family
network, including parents, siblings and close neighbours, suggesting
that the influence of family members (rather than paid adult carers)
may continue to be prominent in their lives (Hill 1987).
Studies of children's unsupervised play activities demonstrate the
continuing vibrancy of the parts of children's lives that have not yet
been colonised by adults. Opie's research (1993) into children at play
suggests that games, rhymes, jokes and songs in streets and play-
grounds are still an important part of childhood. In addition, Ennew
(1994) identifies a small number of studies which suggest that chil-
dren will resist and take charge of their own time, in whatever ways
they can. The main force of their resistance, she argues, is to hide from
adults what they do in their own time: that is, what children do when
they tell us they are doing 'nothing'.
78 Childhood
Children involved in unstructured play continue, however, to be
seen as a threat to others and to themselves. The curfew on children
under ten years of age playing outside after 9 p.m. first introduced in
1997 to three council housing estates in the town of Hamilton, in
Scotland, and extended in 1998 to other cities in the UK bears witness
both to a continuing street life for working-class children, as well as to
public anxiety about the potential 'dangerousness' for children of unre-
stricted time, particularly unscheduled time in the evenings
(CommunityCare, 5-1 1 November 1998).
Boyden (1990) is highly critical of the ways in which the 'official'
Western view of childhood is being disseminated internationally to
countries and cultures which may traditionally have very different
ideas about the capabilities and competencies of children. Children on
the streets, out of school and away from home are being targeted for
intervention by welfare and aid agencies. Yet the activities of these
children may be understood as mechanisms of survival, performing the
important function of preparing them for adult life.
Postman (1983) has very different ideas about childhood in modern
industrial societies. Far from lengthening, he argues, childhood is in
fact disappearing, because the dividing line between childhood and
adulthood is being rapidly eroded. Postman sees this as a wholly
disagreeable state of affairs. He illusrrates his argument by pointing to
the children who commit 'adult' crimes and the increasing similarities
between the worlds of children and adults: schools are becoming indis-
tinguishable from places of work, and adults and children now share
the same consumer culture. Postman blames the media, and in partic-
ular television, for this state of affairs, because television has removed
the 'mysteries and secrets' which kept children innocent and separate
from the adult world. Historical analysis suggests that Postman is
wrong: that some children have in the past committed 'adult' crimes
(Pearson 1983)and that children have not always been kept apart from
adult sexuality (Aries 1962). Nevertheless, there does seem to be
widespread agreement amongst sociologists that there has been a 'blur-
ring of the category of childhood', visible not only in children's
activities, but also in the current debates about the interests and rights
of children, and in arguments which press for the independence, the
enfranchisement and the economic autonomy of children (Jenks 1996:
119). This perspective will be explored more fully in the next section.
Childhood 79
Children - individual consumers or members of an
exploited class?
As childhood has become more regulated, and as children's lives have
been seen to adopt patterns which resemble more closely those of
adults, so some sociologists have stressed the increasing individualisa-
tion of childhood; others have explored the emergence of children as a
separate, exploited class.
Frones (1994) argues that childhood has become more individu-
alised: as children's lives have become increasingly compartmentalised,
they have become consumers in their own right, with their own special
clothes, books, games and television programmes. Frones locates this
development in the context of the emergence of the individual in
modern society. This process, he suggests, involves two dimensions:
individuation (that is, the tendency of the modern state and organisa-
tional system to treat the individual as the basic unit) and
individualisation (that is, an emphasis on the individual as a psycho-
logical personality) (1994: 147).
Frones argues that the individualisation of children is a postwar
development, which can be identified first with teenagers and then
later with ever-younger groups of children. Qvortrup (1995) puts this
graphically:
children are being individualised in a way themselves - exactly as
parents and other adults have been individualised. Children spend
more and more time as representatives for themselves rather than
for their family; they have their own ID-card, their own key, their
own money, and some experiments have already been made with
plastic cards to be used each day for children in kindergartens to
control children's time use for economic reasons.
(1995: 196)
The individualisation process can be clearly demonstrated in the move-
ment for children's rights. From the 1970s onwards, campaigners for
child liberation have fought for children to be treated the same as
other people (that is, adults), with the same rights and privileges,
including the right to vote, work, own property, and rights to make
sexual and guardianship choices. In contrast, others have argued that
children cannot be seen as self-determining agents; they cannot make
rational choices and adults must therefore make decisions in their best
interests (Archard, 1993, calls this the 'caretaker thesis').
Pilcher (1995: 50) claims that the 'liberationist' perspective is
80 Childhood
gaining ground. She evidences this in the emergence of organisations
which seek to listen to children's grievances, such as Childline; in the
redefinition of corporal punishment as physical violence; and in the
legislation which promotes the rights of the child (for example, the
Children Act of 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights
of the Child by which the UK government in 1991 agreed to be
bound).
Oldman (1994) presents a very different approach. He argues that
children's experience is best understood as the experience of a subordi-
nate class, exploited by an adult class. Their activities are structured so
as to serve the economic interests of adults; their work at home and
school is no less 'work' than that of adults. Oldman suggests that the
two basic mechanisms of the exploitation of children by adults are the
unsupervised activity of children (which frees parents from childcare)
and formal supervision outside the family (which provides adults with
paid 'child work'). Ennew (1994) gives support to this conceptualisa-
tion. She writes:
By trivializing childhood activities, marginalizing and economi-
cally devalorizing children, adults in industrial societies reproduce
the power relations that enable them to take hold of children's
time, organize it, curricularize it and simultaneously control the
next generation on behalf of an economic system that depends for
its very existence on the subdivision of human energy into units of
labour time.
(1994: 143)
Social work and children's rights
Although recent childcare legislation in the UK illustrates an accep-
tance of the idea of children as individuals with rights and choices,
how far this has actually developed in practice remains open to ques-
tion. The Children Act of 1989 and the Children (Scotland) Act of
1995 both place the child at the centre of the legislation. The child's
welfare is said to be paramount and must be considered in context of
hidher physical, emotional and educational needs, age, gender, back-
ground, and the capacity of hislher caregivers to perform their task
adequately. There is an imperative on the part of social workers to find
out what the child's wishes are - the child's voice must be heard. But
there is also an expectation that parents and other significant adults
will be given increased respect and consideration, thus giving addi-
tional support to the status quo in terms of balance of power between
Childhood 81
adults and children (Colton et al. 1995, Hill and Aldgate 1996, Tisdall
1996). This demonstrates the importance of the context within which
childhood takes place. While the rhetoric of childhood may conceptu-
alise the child as a unique person with rights to claim and choices to
make, those rights and choices may be executed within the context of a
rather circumscribed and limited range of options.
Hill and Tisdall (1997) argue that there are numerous gaps in
meeting children's rights in the UK. Far from moving forwards in
relation to children's rights for protection and provision, they state
that the UK may be seen to be moving backwards, as children's
poverty is increasing; more children are unemployed or under-
employed; more children are to be found homeless and on the street
(1997: 256). Scraton, a Marxist sociologist, is even more critical of the
UK's record on human rights for children. He writes:
whatever the relative material benefits, quality of life and opportu-
nities self-evident within advanced capitalist societies, structural
inequalities, ritualized abuse and the systematic denial of citizen's
rights to all under the age of 18 are deeply etched into Britain's
social and political landscape.
Scraton concludes that an analysis of power is the only way forward:
adults must address their position as oppressors, and expose 'the domi-
nant lie that adult power and its manifestations are conceived and
administered for the benefit of children' (1997: 186).
Children - angels or demons?
Society's ambivalence towards children and childhood is clearly
apparent in the categorisation of children as either innocent victims in
need of protection ('angels') or bad children from whom society needs
protection ('demons'). This dichotomy between children as innocent
victims and children as demons or criminals lies at the heart of child-
care legislation and practice.
We have already considered Ennew's characterisation of childhood as
a time of innocence and separateness from the adult world of sex,
violence and work. Those children who do not conform to this stereo-
type - children who are themselves troublesome and who commit
crime - are demonised as delinquent and 'unnatural'. Davis and
Bourhill (1997) argue that media portrayal of children's involvement
in crime, whether as perpetrators or victims, is 'central in creating and
82 Childhood
reinforcing public perceptions of childhood. While this has conse-
quences for children, individually and collectively, its derivation lies
within a broader context of media and political concern over a
perceived breakdown in law and order' (1997: 29). Davis and Bourhill
locate attitudes to children who commit crime in the context of the
sociological study of moral panics and delinquency, which began with
the groundbreaking investigation by Cohen in the early 1970s into the
explosion of press attention about Mods and Rockers (Cohen 1972).
(This subject is explored more fully in Chapter 4.)
Bringing the discussion up-to-date, Davis and Bourhill assert that
the abduction and subsequent murder of two-year-old James Bulger in
Liverpool in 1993 by two ten-year-old boys was a key moment which
overshadowed all that had gone before. The fact that the killers were
children themselves led to a new conceptualisation. Not only were the
child killers 'evil', they were indicative of a 'crisis' in childhood. The
solutions proposed were, predictably, reactionary and authoritarian,
leading to sentences of a minimum of fifteen years' imprisonment for
the two boys, and an expansion in secure accommodation for young
offenders more generally.
While accepting the general thesis that children who kill become
symbols of a breakdown in beliefs about children, human nature and
society, the reaction to James Bulger's death was not in fact a wholly
new scenario. An earlier incident of child-killing caught the public
(and the media) imagination in the same way as the Bulger case. The
murder of two boys aged three and four years by Mary Bell in
Newcastle in 1968 received as widespread media coverage (though, of
course, there were undoubtedly fewer televisions in people's homes at
that time). The Mary Bell case continues to exercise public concern, as
evidenced in 1998 by the furore over the publication of Bell's biog-
raphy, Cries Unheard, written by Gitta sereny.'
Taking a very different perspective, Gittins (1998) argues that by
defining children as 'angels', we create a need for devils, 'because those
aspects of children and of ourselves that we cannot accept as good must
be directed, projected somewhere else' (1998: xvi). In her analysis of
fictional literature, she points to the complex juxtaposition of inno-
cence and guilt, good and evil, light and dark, Christ and the devil. By
placing the blame out there, external to ourselves, as 'Other', we hide
from the 'cruelty and corruption within ourselves'. She argues that
only by facing up to this can we begin to move on and change. Gittins
also explores the ways in which children learn and begin to understand
about sexuality and adult morality. She suggests that children perceive
and understand in different ways from adults, and that by trying to
Childhood 83
'protect' children, we may in reality be prolonging not their 'inno-
cence', but their 'dependency, ignorance and disempowerment' (1998:
172).
There is one final point to be made in an analysis of children and
the idea of innocence. Kitzinger's research (1990) into children who
have been sexually abused challenges the mythology around children
as innocent, passive victims. She argues that ideas of innocence titillate
abusers, stigmatise the knowing child and present an ideology of
childhood which is used to deny children power. She demonstrates that
children are anything but 'passive victims': they fight back in what-
ever way they can. This connects with earlier accounts of the
importance of an approach to understanding childhood that takes on
board issues of both power and resistance.
84 Childhood
Conclusion
This chapter has covered a wide range of material in relation to child-
hood and children. I have argued that childhood is a social and historical
construction: that it changes over time, and that it is specific in terms
of class, 'race', gender and culture. Traditional sociological theories
based on ideas of socialisation and children as 'becoming adults' have
been criticised as functionalist and inherently conservative, working
from the basis of a white, Western notion of an idealised childhood. I
have suggested that more recent sociological perspectives offer new
understandings of childhood as a separate, familialised and individu-
alised institution. Because definitions of children and childhood vary
historically, socially and culturally, it can be difficult to quantify the
nature and extent of the issues faced by children and young people
across countries and over time. However, there is an even greater sense
that 'our historical perspectives on childhood reflect the changes in the
organisation of our social structure' (Jenks 1996: 80). In other words,
we build the frameworks that create the very concept of childhood
itself.
Childhood 85
I have asserted that social work practice with children has in the
past betrayed its psychologically based, paternalist and adultist origins.
Pringle (1996, 1998) argues even more forcibly that welfare systems
may actually reinforce and maintain social oppression rather than chal-
lenging it. This is because welfare systems are structured by the same
oppressive power dynamics as societies themselves. In his analysis of
child welfare systems across Europe, Pringle concludes that both the
European model of family support and the English model of child
protection fail to address adequately the issues of structural social
oppression that characterise the lives of children.
I believe that the ways forward for social work with children lie in a
genuine attempt on our part to confront both the diversities of experi-
ences of children, and their shared experience as members of an
oppressed group in society. We must then attempt to redress some of
the inequalities experienced by children: to seek to empower children
to make realistic and positive choices, and at the same time to trust
that children, given the freedom and space to be themselves, will
spend their time in no less creative ways than we might expect of other
human beings. We must also, I believe, seek to challenge poverty and
discrimination in the lives of children with whom we are working.9 By
operating from a critically aware, anti-oppressive framework, I believe
that there are possibilities for the future in terms of the development
of a more empowering practice with children. Waterhouse and
McGhee express this well:
Perhaps the question for the future is not just how we can find
those children who are likely to be seriously injured or abused by
their carers but how all children in need can be supported and
protected in our society.
(1996: 129)
Recommended reading
Cannan, C. and Warren, C. (1997) Social Action with Children and
Families: A Community Development Approach to Child and Family
Welfare, London: Routledge (a good practice guide for social work
with children and families).
Gittins, D. (1998) The Child in Question, Basingstoke: Macmillan
(a thought-provoking, personal and well-theorised account).
Hill, M. and Tisdall, K. (1997) Children and Society, Harlow, Essex:
Addison Wesley Longman (a useful overview of the subject).
86 Childhood
Mayall, B. (1994) Children's Childhoods: Observed and Experienced,
London: Falmer Press (an insight into current sociological
concerns).
Scraton, P. (1997) 'Childhood' in 'Crisis'?, London: UCL Press (an
edited collection, with a strong line of argument expressed
throughout).
4 Youth
Introduction
In Chapter 3, I argued that the study of childhood and children has
been, until recent years, neglected in sociological research and litera-
ture. Nothing could be further from the truth when considering
sociological interest in youth and young people. There has been a huge
investment of sociological time and energy in scrutinising youth,
much of this based on the assumption that youth and young people are
problems requiring analysis. This chapter aims to 'unpack' ideas of
youth as a social problem and young people as 'troubled' and 'trouble-
some', developing further the thesis that age is best understood not
simply as a biological fact, but as a social, historical and cultural
construction, mediated by relations of power in society.
The chapter will outline dominant approaches to youth and young
people, drawing on influential psychologicaland sociological approaches
that have set the parameters for past and current conceptualisations of
youth. It will be argued that our common-sense ideas about youth are
created by the coming-together of psychological and sociological
discourseswhich name andset boundariesonexpectationsand behaviours.
The chapter goes on to discuss current themes in the sociology of
youth, The chapter begins, as ever, with a question: what is youth?
Definitions of youth
If it is difficult to make absolute claims about childhood as a fixed
period in the life-span, then this is even more evident with the notion
of youth. For young people in today's Western world, we might expect
youth to begin with the start of puberty. But when does puberty start?
We know that puberty has lowered by several years because of
improvements in diet and living conditions (Osgerby 1998). We also