Families And Households - The Future Of Childhood

Question 1

Toxic childhood

Answer 1

Rapid technological change and cultural changes have damaged children’s health, emotional and psychological development.

Question 2

Child centredness

Answer 2

Children become the centre of decision making in the family.
Decisions are made with the best interests of the child in mind/ children maybe consulted on family decisions and parents invest much more time and money in their children.

Question 3

Information hierarchy

Answer 3

A division between those who can access info and those who can’t.
Prior to the invention of the internet this was much more pronounced.

Question 4

Disappearing childhood thesis - Postman - overview

Answer 4

Childhood as we know it is disappearing at a rapid rate due to the collapse of the info hierarchy.

Question 5

Evidence of the disappearing childhood thesis

Answer 5

• Growth of tech gives children much more access to info and ways to participate in the adults world.
• Children given the same rights as adults.
• The blurring of adult and child culture with adults taking up elements of children’s culture and children participating in adult culture.
• Criminlaity of children - the committing of ‘adult’ crimes such as murder/ rape.

Question 6

Evaluation of disappearing childhood thesis

Answer 6

• Opie - childhood is not disappearing but changing.
  There is still evidence of a separate children’s culture of unsupervised games, rhymes and songs.
• Postman’s theory is reductionist as it places the cause of the disappearance of childhood on three rise of television.

Question 7

Who was the thinker of the toxic childhood thesis?

Answer 7

Palmer

Question 8

Toxic childhood thesis - how

Answer 8

Childhood has become damaging to the physical, psychological and emotional health of young people.
There is evidence by the:
- Increase in ADHD,
- Increases in substance abuse and self-harm.
- Increase in mental health problems.
A UNICEF survey in 2013 ranked the UK as the 16th out of 29 for children’s wellbeing.

Question 9

Toxic childhood thesis - why

Answer 9

According to Palmer the trend to ‘toxic childhood’ is the result of:
- Unhealthy food
- Lack of play in natural surroundings.
- Little time to interact within the family.
- Decline in emotional security.
Every year children become more distractable, impulsive and self-obsessed.
They are less able to learn, enjoy life and thrive socially.

Question 10

Evaluation of toxic childhood thesis

Answer 10

• Ethnocentric - only looks at western ideas of childhood and can’t be applied to many developing nations.
• This isn’t a new phenomenon but we now have a better understanding of mental health and wellbeing so it appears more toxic.
• More info availability has made dancers more well known which has led to more paranoid parenting.

Question 11

Universal childhood - West

Answer 11

Western notion of childhood is spreading around the world.

Question 12

Evidence of universal childhood

Answer 12

• Campaigns for universal education.
• Charities focused on helping street children and preventing child labour.
• Globalised TV and media.

Question 13

New sociology of childhood

Answer 13

Current studied of childhood have been outside looking in and rarely include children in their data collection.
Mayall - children as socialisation projects.

Question 14

New sociology of childhood - smart

Answer 14

Need to include the children in the study of childhood.

Question 15

New sociology of childhood - Mayall

Answer 15

Focus on the present tense of childhood from a child’s perspective.

Question 16

New sociology of childhood 2

Answer 16

Children are active agents playing a major part in creating their own childhoods using unstructured interviews to allow children to express their views.
This approach is favoured by child liberationists.