Historical and Philosophical Views on Childhood

  • What is a child/childhood?
    • Two key findings in recent studies of childhood
      • Childhood is a social phenomenon
      • Biological immaturity is assigned social meanings depending on the  cultural setting.
    • Socially constructed: gender, birth order, ethnicity…  their place in wider social and political system, household structure …..
      • Those have impact on children’s experiences of childhood and conceptualization of childhood.
    • “Childhood is the privilege of the rich” – Goldstein
    • CHILDREN AS INCOMPETENT OR SUBORDINATE
      • A sense of wrong and right
      • A sense of appropriate behavior
      • Knowledge of their status
      • Their role in the community
    • Examples; 
      • Tongo (insane, ignorant, at the bottom, mischievous), 
      • Canda (in the process of acquiring thought, knowledge, understanding, – tolerate their behavior),  
      • Japan (double suicide- just extension of parent = ayoka shinju), 
      • Taiwan (contradicting ideas; person before birth but informed & incompetent – obey parents but be independent willful child)….
    • CHILDREN AS EQUALS
    • CHILDREN AS A MEANS OF FORMING FAMILIES AND GIVING STATUS
    • CHILDREN AS ECONOMIC INVESTMENT
    • UNWANTED AND NONHUMAN CHILDREN
  • Given these issues and different conceptualizations of children within cultures & societies what similarities and differences could you find in your own culture/society/family?
  • VoC – Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı also contributed to this international comparative study with The Model of Family Change.  
    • Family structure 
      • Nuclear in structure
      • Functionally extended (much social supp. & interac. btw relatives)
      • Generational hierarchy (basic structural feature of  the Turkish fam.)
      • Gender hierarchy ( male dominance norm- father= authority in fam.)
  • Differentiated among different aspects of value of children
    • Economic value
    • Social value
    • Psychological/emotional value
  • Economic values of children were higher in poor countries than in economically advanced countries. Psychological value of children were higher in economically advanced countries than in poor countries.
  • Three main prototypes
    • the traditional family of interdependence
    • the family of independence 
    • the family model of pyschological interdependence
  • Considering the characteristics of Turkish family how would describe yours? How would your friend describe his/hers? How do you think these research findings would help you with teaching young children?

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