Constructions of Childhood in India

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravneet Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Constructions Of Childhood

Iconographies of ‘Childness’ and the Contemporary British Novel: Book Covers, Discourses, and Cultural Models

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (4) ◽  
pp. 710-738
Author(s):  
Ralf Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Models ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
British Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Fiction ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood ◽  
The Many ◽  
Post Industrial

Abstract A sizeable segment of the contemporary British fiction market for adult readers consists of novels that focus on children and childhood. In accordance with interdisciplinary Childhood Studies, such texts can be understood as contributions to the social construction of children and childhood, or ‘childness’. Such constructions appear to be in particular demand in this phase of late modernity, when childhood is conceptualized as an antidote to the many uncertainties contemporary post-industrial societies are faced with. While on the level of societies, public constructions of childhood are best understood in terms of a Foucauldian notion of discourse, discourses are not what individual readers and book-buyers actually have in their minds when choosing a title. Rather, this article argues that the cover illustrations of these novels both activate and reinforce cultural models of ‘childness’ that readers have stored as schemata shared with their cultural community. On the basis of this alignment of discourse theory with a concept from cognitive anthropology, the article demonstrates that book covers play a role in maintaining particular conceptions of ‘childness’, and in feeding them back into the minds of the readers. Furthermore, the relevance of the book as a material artefact is once again acknowledged.1

scholarly journals PLAYING ON UNCLE SAM'S TEAM: AMERICAN CHILDHOODS DURING WORLD WAR I

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mischa Honeck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
World War I ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood

If World War I has interested historians of the United States considerably less than other major wars, it is also true that children rank among the most neglected actors in the literature that exists on the topic. This essay challenges this limited understanding of the roles children and adolescents played in this transformative period by highlighting their importance in three different realms. It shows how childhood emerged as a contested resource in prewar debates over militarist versus pacifist education; examines the affective power of images of children—American as well as foreign—in U.S. wartime propaganda; and maps various social arenas in which the young engaged with the war on their own account. While constructions of childhood and youth as universally valid physical and developmental categories gained greater currency in the early twentieth century, investigations of young people in wartime reveal how much the realities of childhood and youth differed according to gender, class, race, region, and age.

scholarly journals The Sleeping Lives of Children and Teenagers: Night-Worlds and Arenas of Action

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 133-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Moran-Ellis ◽  
Susan Venn
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Sleep Time ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood ◽  
The Uk

Most research into sleep, even that which includes a sociological dimension, tends to focus on sleep outcomes, in effect following an agenda set by the natural sciences and psychology. The work reported in this paper engages with the material and social dimensions of sleep from within social constructionist and interactionist frameworks, seeking to explore and theorise the meaning and experience of sleep from the perspective of the sleeper. In doing this, we examine how contemporary constructions of sleep and constructions of childhood and adolescence arise and are linked in the UK context. Sleep time tends to be constructed as empty of activity other than sleeping and devoid of the sorts of interactions that characterise wakeful day-time. However, a grounded analysis of qualitative data generated with 9 children and 20 teenagers suggested that the assumption of absence of activity and interaction was misleading: their nights were populated by a range of actors, presences and activities. Placing our focus on these aspects of our participants’ accounts of their sleep we found that the temporal, spatial and interactional dimensions of routine sleep served to create a definable arena of action (Hutchby and Moran-Ellis 1998) which was marked out both materially and socially. We conceptually frame this arena of sleep as a night-world (Moran-Ellis, 2006).

Supporting the development of sexuality in early childhood: The rationales and barriers to sexuality education in early learning settings

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210034
Author(s):  
Alice-Simone Balter ◽  
Deborah Gores ◽  
Tricia van Rhijn ◽  
Adam W.J. Davies ◽  
Taylor Akers
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Personal Safety ◽  
Safety Skills ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood ◽  
Learning Professionals ◽  
Learning Frameworks

Learning about sexuality is an important part of development in early childhood but is not formally considered in early learning settings. This makes sexuality education for young children both rare and inconsistent across early learning settings. The purpose of this paper is to provide a unique contribution and inform the state of sexuality education in early learning settings in Canada, which is currently an understudied area. We describe the Canadian context of sexuality education in early learning settings and examine its presence in provincial and territorial early learning frameworks. We advocate for the inclusion of sexuality education in early learning settings because it can support children’s development and construction of sexuality, is a critical factor in providing children with personal safety skills and a part of child sexual abuse prevention work, and also sets the foundation for equity and social justice in teaching children about diversity as a norm. We discuss the barriers which act to exclude sexuality education in early learning settings including a lack of curriculum and policy to guide early learning professionals in addressing and supporting this domain, fear of parent reactions, and theoretical constructions of childhood innocence. We conclude with practice and policy recommendations to move the field forward.

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