Sociology Of Childhood Sociology Essay

From my studies of sociology, my previous perspective on childhood has changed. One theme of the course that caused me to view childhood differently was “Childhood as a social construction”. Childhood is a social category that comes from attitudes, beliefs and values of particular societies at particular points in time. Sociology explores the role that larger forces play in shaping our personal lives and the role that individuals play in shaping the course of history (Sociology lecture 19/09/16). I would have always considered childhood throughout the centuries to be similar: a period of innocence, play and freedom. I imagined that children were treated like children and were protected. However, this was not always the case. Within a social constructionist framework, there is not a single absolute conception of childhood, but a multiple, relative and changeable one that varies between cultures and societies (The disablement and enablement of childhood Chi-Ming Lam a a Department of International Education and Lifelong Learning, Hong Kong Institute of Education, New Territories, Hong Kong). If we look into the past historical views of childhood on a basis of the work from Philippe Ariès (1962) in “Centuries of Childhood”, childhood as a distinct social category was absent. For example, in Medieval works of art, children were depicted as smaller, almost deformed adults and were treated this way by others. I find these facts slightly disturbing; a fact that has most definitely changed my previous assumptions of childhood. I

I now understand further the outside factors that have effects on children’s lives. In the first case of childhood as a social construction, I can adhere to this by allowing the children to express themselves in order to feel comfortable in the classroom situation. But at the same time, I will show them that it is important to act like an adult in some