The New Sociology Of The Childhood Sociology Essay

While the concern of sociology with childhood is far from new, what is noticeable is the remarkable surge in the sociological interest and attention in this area commencing in the last decade (Brannen 1999). What clearly stands out and is novel in this sociological interest and attention is the determination to make childhood itself the locus of concern rather than seeing it subsumed under the umbrella concepts of family or schooling which has been the trend in such studies (Scott 2005).A rise in this view of the child is attributed to the systematic move to re-democratize modern society and to disassemble all the remaining covert forms of stratification (James et al 1998:21). Whereas classical sociology attended primarily to the stratification wrought through social class, modern sociology has begun to address all those areas that have been treated as “natural” or only “human nature” (Jenks 2001). Thus, race, sex, sexuality, age, physical and mental ability, all have come under scrutiny and have all been shown to derive their meanings from their social context (Jenks 2001). Childhood is rather late in gaining the fashion and attention but it has finally arrived (James et al 1998:31). In reaction to the deterministic concept of socialization and the developmental paradigm of children as a state of becoming (Frankenberg 1993), the new approach views childhood as a status rather than a transitory period and considers children to be reflexive social actors (Jenks 2001). This constitutes a new development termed as a new sociology of childhood, one which entails seeing children as active agents and distinctive groups in their own right.

The Socialization theory

Theories of social order, social stability and social integration presume a uniform and predictable standard of action from participating members. Following from this assumption, sociological theorizing begins with a formally established concept of society and works back to the necessary internalization of its norms and values into the consciousness of its potential participants (James et al 1998). There are always children and the process of this internalization is known as socialization. The direction of influence is evident – the society influences the child (James et al 1998:23).

This is not to imply that sociologists are unaware of the biological character of human organisms. As a matter of fact, the model of the “socially developing child shares chronological and incremental characteristics with the naturally developing model”(James et al 1998:23).However, to concentrate on its development within a social context, explanation in terms of natural propensities and dispositions are resisted in the sociological account. The socially developing model is focussed on what society naturally demands from the child rather than focussing on what the child naturally is (James et al 1998:23).

Socialization is a concept that has been thoroughly employed by sociologists to delineate the process through which children, in some cases adults learn to conform to social norms (Elkin &Handel 1972). In this respect, sociologists’ understanding of social order, its reproduction and continuation has largely depended on the effectiveness of socialization to ensure that societies are able to sustain themselves through time. This involves the successful transmission of culture from generation to generation (James et al 1998:23).

Ritchie and Kollar (1964:117) define socialization as:

“The central concept in the sociological approach to childhood is socialization. A synonym for this process may well be acculturation because this term implies that children acquire the culture of the human groupings in which they find themselves. Children not to be viewed as individuals fully equipped to participate in a complex adult world, but as beings who have the potential for being slowly brought into contact with human beings.”

James et al (1998) argue that the process of socialization has been conceived in two ways by sociologists. First is what they have termed as “Hard way” or what Wrong (1961) referred to as the “over socialized conception of man in modern sociology”, socialization is seen as the internalization of social constraints, a process occurring through external regulation. This conception is majorly derives from structural sociology and Parson’s systems theory, who defines socialization as:

“The term socialization in its current usage in the literature refers to the process of child development…However; there is another reason for singling out the socialization of the child. There is reason to believe that, among the learned elements of personality, in certain respects the stablest and most enduring are the major value- orientation patterns and there is much evidence that these are ‘laid down’ in childhood and are not on a large scale subject to drastic alteration during adult life”(1951:101).

What Parsons achieves in his theory of the social system is a stable, uniform and exact correspondence between individual actors and their particular responsibilities and the society itself. They are both cut to a common pattern. What he also achieves is the universality in both the practice and experience of childhood, because the content of socialization is secondary to the form of socialization in each and every case (James et al 1998). The potential for the expression of the child’s intentionality is thereby constrained through the limited number of choices that are made available in social interaction. These Parsons refers to as pattern variables. In this way the model achieves a very generalized sense of the child at the level of abstraction and one that is determined by structure rather than pronounced through the exercise of agency(James et al 1998). And, as this model is also based on developmental scheme, the child is necessarily considered to be incompetent or to have only incomplete, uninformed or pro-competencies. Therefore, any research following from such a model cannot attend to the everyday world of children, or their skills in interaction and world-view, except in terms of generating a diagnosis for remedial action (James et al 1998:24-25).

The second and somewhat ‘softer’ way in which socialization process has been conceived by sociologists is as an essential element in interaction, which is a transactional negotiation that occurs when individuals strive to become group members. This is the version of socialization that stems from the symbolic interactionism of G. H. Mead and the Chicago school and involves a social psychology of group dynamics. This is really, however a perspective on adult socialization. The median analysis of child development is much more a thesis in materialism (James et al 1998). The basic theory of the acquisition of language and interactional skills is based very much on an unexplicated behaviourism, and the final resolution of the matured relationship between the individual and the collective other (that is the ‘self’ and the ‘other’) is a thinly disguised reworking of Freud’s triumph of the super ego over the Id. Thus, generating a wealth of sensitive ethnographic studies from the baseline of adult interactional competence. At this level, it falls in line with the socialization theory espoused by Parsons and the structural sociology.

To a large extent, this accounts for sociology’s neglect of the topic of childhood and also demonstrates why children were only ever considered under the broadest of umbrellas, namely the sociology of family. In all the manifestations of the model of the socially developing child (that is, socialization theory) as they have appeared in many forms of sociology, little or no time is given to children.

Children as the developing unit

The above section elucidates that sociology has viewed chidren’s socialization deterministically, often within the functionalist framework (Silva &Smart 1999: 146). This trend is visible in the childhood studies that have been done. Ambert’s (1993) survey of classical sociological texts and North American journals revealed an absence of children, while post war texts on the family proved hardly better. They make only passing reference to children themselves, subsuming them under the heading of Socialization, Child Rearing or Education. The concepts of family socialization and childhood “are moulded together into one piece that cannot be broken into parts for separate consideration” (Alanen 1992:91).In any discussion of family of course, children are deeply implicated, they are the defining feature of familial ideology, the quintessential blood tie (Makrinioti 1994).But, as such, children are on the recieving end of family values. They are objectified as the rationale for the (adult) “doing of family life, rather than seen as ‘doers’ of family life in their own right. Young and Willlmott’s (1997) classic study of family and Kinship in east London, for example explores relationship between spouses and their wider kin and the respective roles of adult family members, including the work on child rearing. The parents talk of gendered nature of parenting, their methods of discipline and their aspirations for their children’s high schooling and their future careers. The children themselves are brought into picture only as raison d’etre for family life, the ‘project’ around which the families cohere. This tendency to submerge children in their families has been called ‘familialization’ of childhood (Makrinioti 1994: 268-71).Children, it seems are presumed to belong to their parents. Their social identity is thought to mirror that of their parents and when they have become the targets of social approval or criticism, despite numerous intervening influences on their lives, their parents receive the credit or blame. The concept of family seen in functionalist or essentialist terms is often equates with parental agency alone. It is commonly said for example that the family sit her to care for children and if the children were a mere extension of their parents. Statistically speaking, children do not seem to count either. In both research and policy context, talking to children about family life has been conventionally seen as inappropriate. Children are rarely asked to speak for themselves for it is presumed that their parents can speak for them (Brannen 1999). They are described and examined as a by product of the family unit rather than treated as units of observation in their own right (Qvortrup 1997).In these ways children have been fused with their parents into an idealized , inseparable family unit. The studies based on this model of childhood have contributed to marginalization of children in family sociology.

Challenges to this model of childhood began to emerge in the 1970’s in anthropological, social historical and feminist writings and in the interactionist and phenomenological schools of sociology. Researchers from these varied disciplines sought to establish the social condition for children’s childhood to offer a new model of childhood based on the view of children as persons with agency (i.e. with the capacity to act, and influence their social worlds).These ideas were consolidated into new sub- discipline of childhood studies. This new sub discipline is not solely the preserve of sociologists of course. It is an interdisciplinary endeavour that has brought about developments in psychological, historical, pedagogical social policy and in legal thinking about children (Brannen 1999).Perhaps the overarching feature of the new discipline in the recognition that childhood is not simply a natural or universal state arising out of biological condition, but also a social construct which is culturally variable (Prout & James 1997).In the following section, I will discuss this new sociological thinking about childhood which is the contemporary trend.

Social Constructionism

Social constructionism is a new departure the understanding of childhood. This approach has three major landmarks in the works of Jenks (1982), Stainton Rogers et al (1989) and James and Prout (1990).The growth of this perspective complemented the growing liberalism ad relativism that were seeping into the academy in the wake of the 1960’s when the dominating philosophical paradigm shifted from the dogmatic materialism to an idealism inspired by the works of Husserl and Heidegger (James et al 1998: 26).

To describe childhood, or indeed any phenomenon, as socially constructed is to suspend belief in or a willing reception of it’s taken- for granted meanings. Though, quite obviously we all are know what children are or what childhood is like, for social constructionists this is not a knowledge that can be reliably drawn upon. Such knowledge of the child and its life world depends on the predispositions of a consciousness constituted in relation to our social, political, historical and oral context. Their purpose is to go back to the phenomenon in consciousness and show how it is built up. So, within a socially constructed idealist world there are no essential forms or constraints. (James et al 1998: 27).Childhood does not exist in a finite and identifiable form. Aries (1962), Margaret Mead and Martha Wolfenstein (1954) have demonstrated this in their work which move us to multiple conceptions of childhood. Social constructionism therefore stresses the issue of plurality and, far from the model recommending a unitary form; it foregrounds diverse constructions (James et al 1998:24).

This approach is therefore dedicatedly hermeneutic. It also erodes the conventional standards of judgement and truth. Therefore, if for example, as many commentators have suggested child’s abuse was rife in earlier time sand fully anticipated feature of adult child relations, then how are we to say it was bad, exploitative or harmful? Our standards of judgement are relative to our world view and therefore we cannot make universal statements of value. What of infanticide in contemporary non-western societies? Is it immoral criminal act or an economic necessity? Is it extensions of western belief of women’s right to choose? Such questioning demonstrates social constructionism’s intense relationship with cultural relativism and how, as an approach, it lends itself to cultural studies style of analysis, or the now fashionable analysis of modes of discourse whereby children are brought to being. (James et al 1998: 27).

Children within this approach are therefore clearly unspecifiable as an ideal type. Childhoods are variable and intentional. In direct refutation to the socialization model of childhood, there is no universal child with which to engage. Such a perspective demands a high level of reflexivity from its exponents. It is also the case that social constructionists, through their objections to positivist methods and assumptions, are more likely to be for the view that children are not formed by natural or social forces but that they inhabit a world of meaning created by themselves and through their interaction with the adults.(James a al 1998: 28).

The significance of social constructionism lies in its political role in the study of childhood. It is well situated to prise the child free of biological determinism and thus to claim the phenomenon in the realm of social. However it is important to emphasize that it is more than a theory of ideational. It is also about practical application of formed mental constructs and the impact that this phenomenon has on the generation of reality and real consequence. (James et al 1998:28).We shall now explore the studies done with this approach and the insights they give us.

Children as sociological agents

This new thinking opened up a wealth of possibilities. Once the social nature of childhood was recognized it became possible to think beyond the development/socialization framework for understanding children. This approach became one of the prominent approaches to conceptualize childhood. Children no longer had to be seen as empty vessels, but could be conceptualized as active and interactive practitioners of social life. A small but growing industry of research began to explore children’s agency in a variety of contexts, focussing on children negotiate rules, roles and personal relationships, how they create autonomy and balance this with their (inter) dependence, how they open as strategic actors in different contexts and how they take responsibility for their own well being an that of others. (Smart et al 2001:12).In the process, children have emerged as more than unspecified actors: they have become visible as workers, soldiers, consumers, carers, counsellors and clients of a whole variety of services (Brannen 1999).

Given such a climate, childhood researchers sought to explore children’s own social world’s concentrating on informal settings such as street or playground that children control for themselves and where they could freely exercise their agency (Brannen 1996).

Research on children as workers for example, has uncovered the substantial contribution that children make to modern domestic economies and to the labour market (Morrow 1994) and have reconceptualised children’s schooling as unpaid work that they are required to undertake on a daily basis( Qvortrup 1985).It may be the case that because of exposure to family disruption and family diversity, they perform more of emotional labour- for instance, in supportive roles such as parental confidante- at quite young ages. Certainly, the children of immigrants are often called on, in both routine and emergency situation, to act as “language brokers” on behalf of their parents (Scott 2005). In a study of home staying children in Norway (children who spend a great deal of time at home, unsupervised, while parents are at work), Solberg (1990) notes how by “looking after themselves” and by contributing to homecare children are able to negotiate an enhanced “social age”. Solberg puts a positive spin on children spending more time by themselves, suggesting that children can benefit from parental acknowledgment of their autonomy. Hochschild (1997:229) sees “home alone” children in a less positive light. She argues that rationalizing parental absence in the name of children’s independence is yet another twist on the varied ways of evading the time bind. Children in this instance are being asked to save time by growing up fast.

The child focussed research, described above in context of children’s work looks at children as beings in the present. In both US and UK, there has been an extraordinary output of work on the cause and consequences of child poverty. While most of the earlier research was couched in terms of “what works for children” (e.g. Chase-Lansdale and Brooks- Gunn 1995), now it has been recognized that children’s interests, family interest and societal interests may well be different (Glass 2001).For example, policies aimed to reduce poverty may not necessarily be consistent with the desire to strengthen family ties or to prioritize parental care for young children. One of the few studies done to look at household income from children’s perspective suggests that children as young as seven are good tacticians in persuading parents to buy things they want. Nevertheless, although parents are often willing to make financial sacrifices to protect children from some or more visible aspects of poverty, children like others suffer from relative deprivation. Children’s consumption ideas are shaped by affluent images portrayed in media and comparison with more fortunate peers (Middleton Ashworth, and Walker 1994).

Another study done by titled “children’s perceptions of family and family change” tends to explore children’s responses to the changes they are exposed to under the wave of second demographic transition. The researcher interviewed children on their feelings relating to parental separation, domestic violence, conflict, living in lone parent households and their views on marriage. The author concludes that there is a clear developmental progression in the understanding of children. Physical ways give way to of understanding give way to psychological bases. He also claims that children show a remarkable adaptability to survive the transitions in family settings. He suggests that informing children about the causes of disruption in family life, for instance, the letting the children know the reason of divorce or separation among the parents will help children better cope up with the situation than otherwise. His research also reveals that children find the source of support in grandparents when their own parents are too disturbed or ailing from the broken family.

Studying children’s lives in times of extreme social, economic and cultural upheaval can be a useful way of learning how external risks affect the vulnerability and resilience of children (Scott 2005).It can also help identify the factors that accentuate or minimize the risk. The study Children of the Great Depression done by Elder (1999) examined archival data on children born in Oakland, California. It showed the impact of economic depression during the depression was felt mainly through children’s changing family experience, included altered family relationships, and different division of labour and enhanced social strain.

Elder also took a comparative study, using a group of children from Berkeley born just eight years later in 1928-29.This showed marked differences between the way economic depression affected the children of the two birth cohorts. The Oakland children encountered the Depression hardships after a relatively secure phase of early childhood in the 1920’s.By contrast, the Berkeley group spent their early childhood years in families which were under extraordinary stress and instability. The adverse effects of depression were far more severe for the Berkeley group, particularly for boys. The Oakland cohort were old enough to take on jobs outside the home and they could enhance their status within families. This would have been particularly true under conditions of economic hardship, when children earning money could be vital to their family’s welfare (Scott 2005).

This study underlines the need to recognize children as agents of their own family experience and to take account of the multiple relationships which defines patterns of family adaptation in hard times.

This new paradigm of thinking has created a climate in which the insights of childhood and family research can be productively combined. This new field of research has been characterised as the study of ‘children’s family’ rather than families of children (Brannen and Obrien 1996) reflecting a new status that has now to be accorded to the perspectives and standpoint of children. Explorations have been made of children’s values about family life, how they conceptualize family structures, roles and relationships and engage with parents, siblings and wider kin, how in countless way they actively practise contribute to and influence family life (Smart et al 2001: 18).However, this approach has been critiques by some scholars to have led to blurring of boundaries between adulthood and childhood and also has methodological constraints.

Diminishing Childhood

Scott (2005) argues that viewing children as prospective adults – the workers, parents, citizens or dropouts of the future – can inadvertently diminish the importance of children as children. Interviewing children may also raise certain methodological issues that may impinge on the quality of the data. In particular, survey techniques might not be appropriate for very young children because of their cognitive and language limitations (Scott 2000).Young age may be a barrier to data quality.

Conclusion

The way childhood is conceived, in a particular time and place frames our knowledge and understanding. In sociology, until quite recently, children were subsumed under family and households and cot considered as actors in their own right. This is the socialization model which had its roots in the Functionalist theory of sociology. The post modernist view has led to the emergence of new sociology of childhood which rightly emphasises that children are agents. They are not passive victims of circumstance; they act and exert influence on the lives of others around them and they make choices, within that opportunities and constraint that contemporary life brings (Scott 2005).

These are the main themes emphasized in the essay along with the discussion of the studies that have been done by authors and researchers following this new approach and the insights that they have generated into the realm of childhood.