For anyone studying Families and Households in Sociology at A or AS Level, this document provides a thorough companion to your classes and textbook. Lesson 4/8 focuses on Childhood and its future: views, reasons, case studies and evaluations, as well as all key terms and sociologists specified in a...
Key Terms: Features of childhood in modern Britain:
Social construct- something created by
- Use of technology.
society.
- Less innocence, more dangerous.
Sociologists:
- Less freedom.
Aries
- Image conscious.
Pollock
- Worse diets, high levels of childhood obesity.
- More mental health issues.
- Longer education.
Childhood is a social construct:
- Not a biological or ‘natural’ state.
- Shaped and given meaning by culture.
- Varies between times, places and cultures.
In the UK, childhood can have a different meaning.
27% of children are living in poverty.
Girls have a more restricted childhood than boys.
Richer children are more likely to do physical activities.
Poorer children are more likely to have fewer qualifications.
Aries- studied paintings to learn about childhood in the middle-ages:
- He argued that childhood didn’t exist in the middle-ages.
- High infant mortality rate.
- Low expectation of life.
- Large families.
- Children had little or no education.
- Children started work at six.
- Often went away from home to work.
- Most adults were younger and often had childlike qualities.
Linda Pollock:
- Disagrees with Aries saying society simply had a different notion of childhood than today.
- Childhood in Western cultures is restricted and protected.
- We live in a child-centred society – our society revolves around children.
March of Progress View vs Conflict View:
The march of progress view believes that the position of children has improved dramatically in recent
decades.
The conflict view believes that there is still too much diversity between ethnicity, gender and class to say all
has improved.
Reasons why childhood has improved:
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