The personal choices that a child makes can have a lasting effect on their life. Both smoking and drinking alcohol can become addictive. | Being in Care System | Social Factor | Being in the Care System is a Social Factor because this can result in the child being more withdrawn from others and in some cases less trusting. Due to poor relationships with their parents/adults, which is the foundation of making relationships and friendships with others. | Poverty | Economic Factor | Poverty is an Economic Factor because without the money to pay for good education or extra support the child may not do very well academically it has been proven that children who live in poverty do not perform as well as more affluent children.
In this essay I intend to evaluate and examine the different sociological views on changes in the experience over the past 50 years or so. There are several different sociological views on whether these changes have been beneficial to children or not. In the pre-industrial society childhood did not exist. Children were seen as little adults and this means that they took part in the same jobs as the adults like working in mines, farms and factories and bringing income in to the family in the pre-industrial society the main idea about children was that they were seen as an economic asset to the family. Being seen as little adults children did not have specialised toys, TV programmes which were specifically for children.
This can cause them to drop out and not Finnish there education so they would only being able to get a working class job. In a recent survey 77% of children from a higher professional background will achieve 5 or more A*-C GCSE’s, wear as only 33% of children from a routine background will achieve 5 or more A*-C GCSE’s. There are three main areas of cultural depravation. Intellectual development, language and values. Intellectual development is how your parents develop their children’s minds.
Benedict has suggested that in simpler pre-industrial societies there are three main differences in the ways that children are treated compared to modern western societies, claiming that responsibility is taken at an earlier age, for example Punch’s study in Bolivia found that children from around the age of 5 are expected to work. One sociologist, Aries, found the changes throughout history of childhood. Aries found evidence that children had the same values as adults, from evidence he found from paintings before the 1600 to children being shown no affection in the 1700-1800. But from the 1800 children’s rights in the work place were changed along with education, which became compulsory, and child protection laws were all changed for the better. Aries believes that we now live in a child centred society due to these changes.
For example, a 7 year old could be hung for stealing. The two main factors that were established by Aries explain why society disregarded children as objects of devotion and love. These factors are: there was an extremely high level of infant mortality, so children had to work in order for the family unit to survive. According to Item A, Industrialisation “brought major changes to the position of children”. The development of an industrial society illustrates how the attitude of middle class parents towards their children, altered from hatred and disgust to affection and care.
For example children in simpler, non-industrial societies are treated differently from their modern western counterparts, especially in Asian countries where children have more responsibility at home and work, and less value is placed on obedience to adult authority. During the industrialisation, children weren’t seen as children but young adults, therefore they were put to work at an early age, especially in factories to work on big machines where they’re suitable to get into machines if there was problem. Children who work in factories often had injury and accidents that result in high child death rates. This encourages indifference and neglect, especially towards infants. This results in the modern notion of childhood, which began to merge when they introduce the factory act (1860) protecting children in factories.
Assess the view that children today are the victims of adult oppression. Conflict theorists, such as Marxists and Feminists, and childhood liberationists believe that in 2013 children are the victims of adult oppression, however, March of Progress theorists would argue that they are being protected to a necessary extent and not oppressed. One main view that Conflict theorists have is that due to the fear created by the media through stories such as Madeline McCann and Holly and Jessica, parents are now controlling their children to an unnecessary extent. For example, before these events many more children were allowed to play in the streets at a young age, however, now many children stay indoors and ‘speak’ to their friends through social
Sue Palmer is another sociologist that believes the increasing impact of technology and the media over the past 50 years is causing childhood to deteriorate. Palmer argues that in modern society there is a ‘toxic childhood’ due to an excessively screen-based culture which she feels is why there has been an increase in developmental conditions in children. She has reasons for some of these conditions, for example ADHD could be caused to screen saturation as the rapid changes of images on TV can make an immature brain go into overdrive resulting in the child seeing real life as boring. Palmer also believes the increase in screen-based activities has made it more difficult for children to develop literacy skills. Also Palmer
Students who tried running away from school were also severely punished, and were often whipped or bound and left out in the hall for the rest of the students to see them (Ketteringham, 2007). Generally, there were three main types of schools: off reservation boarding schools, day schools and reservation boarding schools. The Federal Indian Policy ordered the removal of Indian children from their families and required them to go to government schooling (Ketteringham, 2007). At the time, the most frequent type of school used was the off reservation boarding school because it was thought that the children could be subjected to a complete transformation to become “Americanized.” However, it was expensive to maintain off reservation schooling,
Trachoma and tuberculosis was among disease that killed children in the boarding schools, some even committed suicide from not being able to adapt and from being so lonely. The government tried so hard to Americanize the American Indians. They went as low as taking children from their families to try to force American ways into them at an early age. In a sense it was kind