Essay on Social Construction of Child and Childhood

Childhood itself is a slightly ambiguous term, and is not a fixed definite period of life. The book “AS level sociology” written by Rob webb, Hal Westergaard, Kieth Trobe and Liz Steel defines childhood as “ a socially defined age status” going on to say that there are major differences in how childhood is defined, both historically, and culturally, similarly, Stephen Wagg says of childhood;

Describe and explain approaches to the changing social position of children and how it can be researched

Different discourses of childhood have different ideas of childhood which has different implications on the way in which children are treated. Within the social constructionist theory there are 3 main discourses - romantic, puritan and tabula rasa. This essay will look

The expected pattern of children and young people’s development from birth to 19 years has many areas of development, starting from birth.

When an infant arrives in the world they are helpless tiny humans who depend on adults for every need from love, to feeding them. It is amazing how these tiny babies grow into adults able to make decisions and become self-dependent. There are many theories about how children develop and what roles the environment plays, what people affect their lives and how events can shape their personalities. Some of these children have and easy life and some have a harder time making that journey to adulthood.

One of the main features of childhood studies is the idea that childhood is socially constructed. This means that not all childhoods are the same and that it may differ depending on the time in which it is taking place, as well as the social environment or the place that it is taking place. This can be seen at the Museum of Childhood, and how different times have shown changes in the way children act, play, dress, or ultimately are treated in society. Additionally it draws on key differences in the human societies affecting different childhoods in any given period or place, and can examine how the childhood in that given period is constructed. Furthermore a social constructionist looks at the consequences of any given factor and the impact it has on children.

“The social construction of gender comes out of the general school of thought entitled social constructionism. Social constructionism proposes that everything people "know" or see as "reality" is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. To say that something is socially constructed does not mitigate the power of the concept. These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study pertaining to human life, including gender. This is

With the rise of both parents of a child working full time jobs, child care enrolments have increased accordingly. As such, research into how childcare affects the psycho-social development of a child must be assessed so legislative policies could be adjusted to optimise their growth. Development is interactive, multi-dimensional and complex, but this review aims to examine and evaluate the underlying mechanisms that childcare may affect in the overall social-emotional development and attachment styles of a child.

In the contemporary world, there is no standard definition of a child due to the ambiguity of the status. Therefore, the concept of being a child can be viewed from multiple perspectives in a bid to develop standard definition. Another critical aspect of the definition of the child is that it depends on the circumstances as well as history. A person’s conceptualization of a child is affected by the socialization. In turn, the social construction of the concept of a child means that one meaning cannot be applicable across the globe; this, discourses determine the views about childhood. However, despite the ambiguity that characterizes the concept of a child and youth, James and Sprout (2015) defined as social relationships resulting from a negotiated process which constitutes the early years of one’s life. Through this conceptualization, it is apparent that culture influences childhood. This paper explores the importance of the societal construction of childhood as well as evaluated its implications on children.

Examine how social, historical and spatial constructions of childhood and or youth inform the design, practices and values of a selected institution of childhood or young people.

The construction of childhood closely relates to the perspectives of developmental theories that focus on describing and understanding the processes of learning and development for children. The above image represents a group of Chinese young children at age four who are learning how to draw in color markers. It is evidence that these children are drawing the same thing in exactly same color and drawing tools, which symbolise the current situation in Chinese Early Learning Centre. Chinese young children are required to imitate the drawing that educators provided instead of exploring creative drawings using children’s own imagination ability. Thus, the pedagogical principle of Chinese Early Learning Centre is based on the normalisation of imagination

While reading chapter 11, I found the topic of childhood socialization to be very interesting. Childhood socialization uses gender role biases to assert how a male or female child is to act in a society. Based on a person’s culture, one will teach their child certain aspects of gender roles that are specific to their societal values, attitudes, and motivations. In other words, a parent will raise their child based upon the societal norms of how a boy or girl is to act. For example, when one thinks of playing with toy dolls and nail painting, they assert those actions to activities done by girls. Also, actions such as playing video games and watching football are mostly seen as activities done by boys. With this being said, socialization and societal patterns inflict gender roles and child rearing. On another note, when people see children performing behaviors that are not specific to their gender it creates anomie. For instance, a fashion magazine did a cover of a mother playing with her toddler son who was wearing pink nail polish and a princess

Somewhere around the beginning of the seventeenth century, the perception of the nature of childhood -- its duration, its perceived purpose, its requirements, its quality -- changed rather significantly in the Eurocentric world, a period Valerie Suransky identifies as a watershed for the modern notion of childhood (1982, p. 6). Actually, two things seemed to have happened: first, the idea of childhood as a separate developmental stage began to arise; second, the idea of who was deserving of childhood also began to broaden. The pattern was similar in Europe and America, with some minor variations which resulted from geography, religion, etc., but the differences are inconsequential.

Childhood social development is important aspect that impacts a child life early on, it helps them grow and communicate better in life. Socializing is always a good thing to do having your child interact with other kids helps them have a better self-esteem and helps them figure out who exactly they are. Exposing your child to socialization can be as easy as taking your child to the park, scheduling a play date, having them join a team sport or enrolling them in a head start school.

Men and women can often be described as night and day. Men and women just tend to do things in different ways. Studies have shown that something as simple as speech can be performed in surprisingly different ways. From linguistic styles to emotional expression, men and women seem to communicate as if they were different species. A strong attribution to the divide in language patterns between men and women could be the way that gender roles infiltrate every aspect of one’s life.