Essay On Social Construction Of Childhood

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The world we live feels usual, commonplace. It feels like this is just how our parents exist and always have being existed. But never have a child lived in a world as sophisticated and engineered as today. What is childhood? Many throughout history have written on its definition while many more have partaken in its problematic way of viewing modern day childhood. How do we develop or construct our understanding of childhood? This are some of many fundamental question that would help us to truly understand the basic form of our humanity. From Clark’s “The origin of childhood” and Pressler “Construction of childhood” are just few examples the would help us understand some modification of the true importance of the development of a child and its discontents to the contribution of society. I questioned if childhood is a constructive development of my environment, or the embodiment of nature? To truly answer this question, I would need the help of Pressler. Pressler proved some characteristic of the development of a child and their relationship between the child and the parents “in medieval society the idea of childhood did …show more content…

Pressler state “this also needs to be considered in the light of the dramatic decline in infant mortality without accepting the view that high infant mortality inevitable correlates with parental indifference or lack of affection…one or two children are easier to focus on and idealize than eight or nine.” (John Clarke, 2010 p.11) this means, that People had babies all the time and didn’t expect those babies to live to adulthood. In ancient times people didn’t invest paternal love to their child. which we now see is completely vital to child. However, this idea of childish innocence seems to be born out of privilege. We are afforded the privilege of giving our children our childhood or at least what we’ve constructed to be a