Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And What We Can Do About It

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Colwyn Trevarthen Professor (emeritus) of child psychology and psychobiology, University of Edinburgh According the interactionist theory of socialisation play is central to the development of the self in childhood. So the decline in outdoor play may even be preventing children from becoming fully social beings. The commercialisation of childhood In the video and in this article there are several examples in the United States of the Police being called because of kids being unsupervised – in one example a teenage boy was chopping wood in his own yard with an axe, someone saw it, called the police, and they confiscated the axe, returning it to his parents.

This established juvenile courts, so that children would be prosecuted according to different standards from adults. Point 1 – Child welfare policies protect children in the family – Laws prevent them from working, children MUST go to school, children have rights, social services can intervene if necessary. Evaluation – It is possible to interpret these laws as preventing the family from being more child centred – e.g. compulsory schooling. During the early 19 th Century, many working-class children worked in factories, mines, and mills. They often worked long-hours and in unsafe conditions, which had negative consequences for their health, and could sometimes even result in children suffering injuries or dying at work.It’s now 20 years since Furedi wrote Paranoid Parenting, but today it seems more relevant than ever. Anxiety is the buzz word of the moment, but the anxiety which stops children going to school is different to butterflies in tummies before going on stage at the school play. The word covers both, a human experience we all feel and a clinical diagnosis. This could well be the most significant change in social attitudes to childhood, specifically in relation to the family. Andrew Samuels Professor of analytical psychology, University of Essex; former chair, UK Council for Psychotherapy The increased control and surveillance that comes with Paranoid Parenting is a reduction in the amount of opportunities for children to develop independently – thus children remain children for longer because they are not allowed the freedom to take risks and make indpenedent choices that are required for transition to adulthood.

Education – The introduction of compulsory education and the increase in both funding of education and the raising of the school leaving age. This article by Catherine Bennett is worth a read – it reminds us that ‘in the good old days we just had to endure beatings’, although in fairness to Sue Palmer I don’t think she actually romanticizes the past, she’s really just pointing out the new and different problems children now face in a post-modern age. Along with changing attitudes, social policies and specialist institutions emerged which gradually changed the status of children. This post mainly adopts a March of Progress perspective, with the critical perspectives dealt with in my other posts on ‘Toxic Childhood’ and ‘Paranoid Parenting’. I wrote this post primarily for students studying the Families and Households option for A-level Sociology. Childhood in Victorian TimesItisclearthatchildhoodhasimprovedsincethemiddleages.Societyhasrecognisedthatchildrenneedtobetreateddifferentlytoadultsandtheintroductionsofvariouslawsareevidenceofthis.Howeveritisparentswhohavefullcontroloverchildrenandhowtheychoosetouseitwillaffecttheirindividualexperiencese.g.someparentsmaynotcareabouttheirchild’swelfareandleavethemoutonthestreet.Butassocietyhasbecomemorechild-centredsuchastheexistenceofvariouscharitiesliketheNSPCCthelivesofchildrencanbetransformedandtheycanbepreventedfromsuchdangers. The argument of childhood as a social construct suggests that the concept of childhood is created by society and not determined by biological age. An example of the social construction of childhood is the idea that children should be educated and should not be responsible for earning money. All together we seem to have constructed a set of rules for children than sets many of them up to be failures from a young age. Screen saturation