Reviewed works: Rethinking children’s rights by S. Welch and P. Jones: Children’s
lives, children’s futures: a study of children starting secondary school by P. Croll, G.
Attwood and C. Fuller: Children as decision makers in education. Sharing experiences
across cultures by S. Cox, A. Robinson-Pant, C. Dyer and M. Schweisfurth
Childhood is big business. The life phase defined broadly as 0-18 years is characterized as a period of dependency, an apprenticeship for adulthood, bolstered by a range of products, services, and expert advice. From general provisioning to niche marketing, growing up in the West brings children and parents into contact with expanded forms of consumption that may involve big spending–school fees, a family car, and a home in the ‘right’ neighborhood.
The growth of the child market is runs in parallel with a surge of academic interest in childhood itself. Recent developments in education and the social sciences have seen the growth of childhood studies as an intellectual project. The meaning of childhood has become an identifiable area of research and pedagogic practice, reflected in the success of publications such as James and Prout’s (1997) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers’s (1992) Stories of Childhood, Woodhead and Montgomery’s (2003) Understanding Childhood, and Kehily’s (2009) An Introduction to Childhood Studies. A growing body of literature to the importance of childhood as a conceptual category and a social
position for the study of a previously overlooked or marginalized group–children.
Notes
In this review, I found new sources regarding children´s rights, behavior, education, and economic issues regarding childhood. According to the statements presented in the review the works presented are in the sociology and pedagogy field. Some commentaries about the book Children’s Lives, Children’s Futures, collaboratively authored by Paul Croll, Gaynor Attw caught my attention. Research with children between 11 yo and 13 yo
- Most children have a strong sense of personal agency and a largely positive, instrumental approach to the world of school and work.
- They appreciate the value of qualifications and accept that credentialism is universal and necessary.
- Children largely present themselves as future-orientated and ambitious, optimistic about their goals and their chances of realizing them.
The findings serve as an antidote to media-generated commentaries on contemporary
childhood as ‘toxic’, contaminated by consumer culture, new media technologies amid pressure to meet educational targets and parental expectations.
I was published 13 years ago. How has this been perceived nowadays after global pandemics? Is there any recent research in the field?
Reference
Kehily, M. J. (2011). The business of childhood [Review of Rethinking children’s rights; Children’s lives, children’s futures: a study of children starting secondary school; Children as decision makers in education. Sharing experiences across cultures, by S. Welch, P. Jones, P. Croll, G. Attwood, C. Fuller, S. Cox, A. Robinson-Pant, C. Dyer, & M. Schweisfurth]. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(4), 669–676. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41237691
