Childhood (being a child A child is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. "Child" may also describe a relationship with a parent or authority figure, or signify group membership in a clan, tribe, or religion; it) is a broad term usually applied to the phase of development Human development is the process of growing to maturity. In biological terms, this entails growth from a one-celled zygote to an adult human being in humans A human is a member of a species of bipedal primates in the family Hominidae . DNA and fossil evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago. When compared to other animals and primates, humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection and problem solving. This between infancy A human infant less than a month old is a neonate. The term "newborn" includes premature infants, postmature infants and full term newborns and adulthood The term adult has at least three distinct meanings. It can indicate a biologically grown or mature person. It may also mean a plant, animal, or person who has reached full growth or alternatively is capable of reproduction, or the classification legal adult, generally determined as a person who has attained the legally fixed age of majority; as.

Age definition of a child

In many countries there is an age of majority The age of majority is the threshold of adulthood as it is conceptualized in law. It is the chronological moment when a child legally ceases to be considered a minor and assumes control over their persons, actions and decisions, thereby terminating the legal control and legal responsibilities of their parents or guardian over and for them. The when childhood ends and a person legally becomes an adult. The age can range anywhere from 13 to 21, with 18 being the most common.

Research in social sciences

In recent years there has been a rapid growth of interest in the sociological study of adulthood. Reaching on a large body of contemporary sociological and anthropological Anthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time. Anthropology has its intellectual origins in both the natural sciences, and the humanities. Its basic questions concern, "What defines Homo sapiens?" "Who are the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens?" "What are our physical traits?" "How do research, people have developed key links between the study of childhood and social theory An essential tool used by scholars in the analysis of society, social theories are interdisciplinary, drawing ideas from and contributing to such disciplines as anthropology, economics, history, human geography, literary theory, mass communications, philosophy, sociology, and theology, exploring its historical, political, and cultural dimensions in ethiopia.

Background and history

Philippe Ariès Philippe Ariès was an important French medievalist and historian of the family and childhood, in the style of Georges Duby. Ariès has written many books on the common daily life. His most prominent works regarded the change in the western attitudes towards death, an important French medievalist Medievalism is the system of belief and practice characteristic of the middle ages or devotion to elements of that period, which has been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy and various vehicles of popular culture . Since the eighteenth century a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model and historian A historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time. If the individual is concerned with events preceding written history, the, published a study in 1961 of paintings, gravestones, furniture, and school records. He found that before the seventeenth century, children were represented as mini-adults The term adult has at least three distinct meanings. It can indicate a biologically grown or mature person. It may also mean a plant, animal, or person who has reached full growth or alternatively is capable of reproduction, or the classification legal adult, generally determined as a person who has attained the legally fixed age of majority; as. Since then historians have increasingly researched childhood in past times.

Before Ariès, George Boas George Boas was a Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He received his education at Brown University, obtaining both a BA and MA in Philosophy there, after which he studied shortly at Columbia, and finally at UC Berkeley, where he earned his PhD in 1917 had published The Cult of Childhood.

During the Renaissance The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the, artistic depictions of children increased dramatically in Europe. This did not impact the social attitude to children much, however -- see the article on child labour Child labor, or child labour, refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries. Child labour was utilized to varying extents through most of history, but entered public dispute with the beginning of universal schooling,.

The Victorian Era The Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 to January 1901. This was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed a large, educated middle class to develop. Some scholars would has been described as a source of the modern institution of childhood. Ironically, the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transportation had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain. The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world. The onset of the during this era led to an increase in child labour, but due to the campaigning of the Evangelicals Note that the term "Evangelical" does not equal Fundamentalist Christianity, although the latter is sometimes regarded simply as the most theologically conservative subset of the former. The major differences largely hinge upon views of how to regard and approach scripture , as well as construing its broader worldview implications. While, and efforts of author Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens, FRSA , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era and one of the most popular of all time. He created some of literature's most memorable characters. His novels and short stories have never gone out of print and others, child labour was gradually reduced and halted in England via the Factory Acts The Factory Acts were a series of Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to limit the number of hours worked by women and children first in the textile industry, then later in all industries of 1802-1878. The Victorians concomitantly emphasized the role of the family and the sanctity of the child, and broadly speaking, this attitude has remained dominant in Western The term Western world, the West or the Occident can have multiple meanings dependent on its context (e.g., the time period, the region or social situation). Accordingly, the basic definition of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting over time, in relation to various historical circumstances. Some historians[who?] societies since then.

In the contemporary era Joe L. Kincheloe Joe Lyons Kincheloe, , was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He died of coronary artery disease on December 19, 2008 in Kingston, Jamaica. He wrote or edited more than 60 books, numerous book-chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical and Shirley R. Steinberg have constructed a critical theory In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory is the examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social sciences and humanities disciplines. The term has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. Though of childhood and childhood education that they have labeled kinderculture. Kincheloe and Steinberg make use of multiple research and theoretical discourses (the bricolage Bricolage, pronounced /ˌbriːkoʊˈlɑːʒ/, /ˌbrɪkoʊˈlɑːʒ/ is a term used in several disciplines, among them the visual arts and literature, to refer to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the French word) to study childhood from diverse perspectives—historiography, ethnography, cognitive research, media studies, cultural studies, political economic analysis, hermeneutics, semiotics, content analysis, etc. Based on this multiperspectival inquiry, Kincheloe and Steinberg contend that new times have ushered in a new era of childhood. Evidence of this dramatic cultural change is omnipresent, but many individuals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have not yet noticed it. When Steinberg and Kincheloe wrote the first edition of Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood in 1997 (second edition, 2004) many people who made their living studying, teaching, or caring for children were not yet aware of the nature of the changes in childhood that they encountered daily.

In the domains of psychology, education, and to a lesser degree sociology and cultural studies few observers before kinderculture had studied the ways that the information explosion so characteristic of our contemporary era (hyperreality In semiotics and postmodern philosophy, the term hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. Hyperreality is a means to characterise the way consciousness defines what is actually "real" in a world where a multitude of media can) had operated to undermine traditional notions of childhood and change the terrain of childhood education. Those who have shaped, directed and employed contemporary information technology have played an exaggerated role in the reformulation of childhood. Of course, information technology alone, Kincheloe and Steinberg maintain, has not produced a new era of childhood. Obviously, numerous social, cultural, and political economic factors have operated to produce such changes. The central purpose of kinderculture is to socially, culturally, politically, and economically situate the changing historical status of childhood and to specifically interroge the ways diverse media have helped construct what Kincheloe and Steinberg call "the new childhood." Kinderculture understands that childhood is an ever-changing social and historical artifact—not simply a biological entity. Because many psychologists have argued that childhood is a natural phase of growing up, of becoming an adult, Kincheloe and Steinberg coming from an educational context saw kinderculture as a corrective to such a "psychologization" of childhood.

See also

• List of child related articles Baby hatch - Boarding school - Breastfeeding - Child - Child discipline - Child rearing - Day school - Family - Family planning - Family Ties - Father - Nuclear family - Convention on the Rights of the Child - Mother - Maternal bond - Homesickness - Paternity - Parenting - Parental supervision - Homeschooling - Nanny - List of traditional children'
• Childhood and migration Childhood and migration has long been a neglected issue in social sciences despite the fact that children make up a large proportion of migrants and take on important roles in mediating between their world of origin and their host society. Through school and other child-specific institutions and contact zones children are often more involved in
• Early childhood Early childhood is a stage in human development. It generally includes toddlerhood and some time afterwards. Play age is an unspecific designation approximately within the scope of early childhood

Footnotes

Further reading

• Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.
• Boas, George. The Cult of Childhood. London: Warburg, 1966.
• Brown, Marilyn R., ed. Picturing Children: Constructions of Childhood between Rousseau and Freud. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
• Buckingham, David. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. Blackwell Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0745619339.
• Bunge, Marcia J., ed. The Child in Christian Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001.
• Calvert, Karin. Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood, 1600-1900. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992.
• Cleverley, John and D.C. Phillips. Visions of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock. New York: Teachers College, 1986.
• Cannella, Gaile and Joe L. Kincheloe Joe Lyons Kincheloe, , was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He died of coronary artery disease on December 19, 2008 in Kingston, Jamaica. He wrote or edited more than 60 books, numerous book-chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical. "Kidworld: Childhood Studies, Global Perspectives, and Education". New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
• Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500. London: Longman, 1995.
• Cunnington, Phillis and Anne Buck. Children’s Costume in England: 1300 to 1900. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965.
• deMause, Lloyde, ed. The History of Childhood. London: Souvenir Press, 1976.
• Higonnet, Anne. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1998.
• Immel, Andrea and Michael Witmore, eds. Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800. New York: Routledge, 2006.
• Kincaid, James R. Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.
• Knörr, Jacqueline, ed. Childhood and Migration. From Experience to Agency. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005.
• Müller, Anja, ed. Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century: Age and Identity. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.
• O’Malley, Andrew. The Making of the Modern Child: Children’s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge, 2003.
• Pinchbeck, Ivy and Margaret Hewitt. Children in English Society. 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1969.
• Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-child relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Postman, Neil. The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1994.
• Schultz, James. The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages.
• Shorter, Edward. The Making of the Modern Family.
• Sommerville, C. John. The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
• Steinberg, Shirley R. and Joe L. Kincheloe. Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood. Westview Press Inc., 2004. ISBN 081339157.
• Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.
• Zornado, Joseph L. Inventing the Child: Culture, Ideology, and the Story of Childhood. New York: Garland, 2001.

External links

• World Childhood Foundation

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