Bringing Up Baby
Bringing Up Baby
The Construction of Childhood
This chapter focuses on the construction of childhood as the adult defined, historically and culturally constructed state of being a child, as distinct from the experiences, biology, and psychology of children. It explores the emergence of the modern concept of idealized childhood and juxtaposes it to anti-childhood, which is an equally idealized concept of a child in absolute want. Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy whose drowned body washed up on a Turkish beach and became a viral image, serves as a case study for the dichotomy between idealized childhood and anti-childhood. The social implications of notions of childhood are explored with reference to social debates over child soldiers and the legal age for marriage.
Keywords: childhood, child psychology, anti-childhood, Aylan Kurdi, child soldiers, legal age for marriage
California Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.