Sociology of Children and Childhood

Sociologyindex, Sociology of Family, Sociology Books 2009, Syllabus, Prayer Before Birth, Sociology of Children and Childhood

I was not a wandering soul in search of a body. I am a victim. - vpr

We had laws to protect animals before we had them to protect children. The laws against cruelty to children that were enacted in the United States after 1875, at which time the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals demonstrated that it was possible to prosecute parents for the abuse of children under laws against cruelty to animals.

Sociology of Children and Childhood is about children’s “nature,” needs, interests, values, morals, and capabilities.

An examination of the changing social circumstances of contemporary children’s lives, social class differences in children’s life experiences, traditional and emerging perspectives on childhood socialization, recent research on gender and racial socialization of children, methodological issues involved in studying children and peer cultures created by children.

Sociology of Childhood puts all aspects of children’s lives at the center of investigation. And, rather than assuming that children are passive participants in interactions that involve adults.

The new Sociology of Childhood starts from the assumption that children are active participants; rather than simply responding to the demands, instructions, or interpretations of adults.

Children make independent contributions to social life which may affect adults. - Dr. Constance L. Shehan - clas.ufl.edu/users/shehan/spring2005/sya4930/

Until the late 1980s, sociologists tended to include children in studies as passive objects in an adult-controlled process of socialization and as causes or victims of social problems.

Lenzer, Gertrud "Children's Studies: Beginnings and Purposes"
The Lion and the Unicorn, The Johns Hopkins University Press
Excerpt:
"The real question is whether it is still normal for a schoolchild to live for years amid irrational terrors and lunatic misunderstandings. And here one is up against the very great difficulty of knowing what a child really feels and thinks. A child which appears reasonably happy may actually be suffering horrors which it cannot or will not reveal. It lives in a sort of alien under-water world which we can only penetrate by memory or divination. Our chief clue is the fact that we were once children ourselves, and many people appear to forget the atmosphere of their own childhood almost entirely." 
"Treacherous though memory is, it seems to me the chief means we have of discovering how a child's mind works." 
"The child and the adult live in different worlds." 
--George Orwell, "'Such, Such Were the Joys'"

Objectives of a course on sociology of childhood: -

• To become familiar with research that describes changes in the societal definitions of childhood and children’s “place” in society.
• To become aware of the methodological issues associated with research about children that puts their own perspectives at center stage.
• To become more familiar with qualitative or interpretive research methods (e.g., ethnographies, case studies, participant observations).
• To acquire in-depth knowledge about the social, emotional, and economic circumstances of children’s lives today and to learn how to find valid and reliable statistical information about children on an aggregate level.
• To understand more fully the differences between sociological and psychological perspectives on childhood.
• To have the opportunity to read original research about children that puts their perspectives rather than adult perspectives at the center of analysis.
• To become familiar with examples of cultural artifacts created by, for, or with children.

Prayer Before Birth - Louis MacNeice

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.