Is Childhood for Children, Essay Example

Introduction

The question of childhood as existing for children ostensibly provides its own answer; as the state of childhood may be experienced only by children, it would appear inevitable that it must then exist for them. To some extent, certainly, this is true. Nonetheless, as children grow, the actual nature of childhood is distanced from them, even as it remains largely undefined within a child’s mind during these early years. Then, definition becomes wholly an adult responsibility, one marked by varying philosophical and pragmatic assessments over history. If more recent years have seen an adult emphasis on childhood as a natural state to be respected, extensive traditions hold the child as inherently unformed, existing as a representation of both “folly” and the opportunity to develop into a decent individual with a sense of the essence of things (Ryan, 2013, p. 121). What all of this establishes is a foundation for the reality: childhood, no matter idealized views of it entertained by adults, is a stage of life in which specific forms of adult development are encouraged, if not demanded. As the following will support, and with the meaning of childhood as being “for” anyone understood as expressing ownership and autonomy, childhood is primarily not for children, but for the adults who insist upon translating the state into desirable development.

The State of Childhood

Before there can be any real understanding of why childhood does not exist for children, it is necessary to comprehend the precise nature of the state. On one level, this poses no challenge. Generally speaking, childhood is defined as the state of life between infancy and the age of eight, during which the child is simultaneously vulnerable and rapidly engaging in development. As Piaget observes, the relationship between the chronological age and the development is critical and exponential, as the child takes in immense sensory information in these years (Gullo, 2005, p. 5). Consequently, and in more pragmatic terms, childhood is that stage wherein the individual most requires protection and care, and is most susceptible to external influences of any form.

The clinical nature of this definition, however, by no means distances it from more ideological interpretations. More exactly, philosophers have traditionally isolated childhood in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is. While there is widespread thinking holding that innocence marks childhood, it is the absence of mature thought or feeling that is held as defining the state. Augustine essentially creates the philosophical template by asserting that there is little point to contemplating the mind and soul of a child, for these are things which must remain unknown to adults, and which are forgotten as children grow. Over the centuries, this form of dismissal would be more elucidated by thinkers such as Descartes, who holds that childhood is in fact a state of deficiency (Krupp, 2009, p. 24). This is in turn reflects Plato and Locke, who assert that childhood is immensely valuable because it permits the unfolding of moral reason (Wall, 2010, p. 27). Consistent in all of this, then, is an emphasis on abnegation; the child is perceived even by the philosopher, not as an entity unto himself, but as a thing that may be.

Childhood Across Time

Childhood Value

It is inevitable that the value of childhood is linked to social perceptions of the state, which both in turn exponentially go to children’s rights. Moreover, when all components are examined, there is then the potent case made that childhood most definitively does not exist for children. With regard to value itself, it must be reiterated that this is determined by adult authority and perception. History uniformly reveals, at least in Western cultures, a value primarily based on what may be “made of” the child in terms of functionality and adherence to cultural norms. As will be evident elsewhere, value is esteemed, not by the individual child experiencing childhood, but by projections as to usefulness.

On one level, and irrefutably, the value of childhood translates directly to the immediate environment. More exactly, the precise social value of children has often been, not unexpectedly, derived from the social sense of the child’s representing its family. The worth of the child’s life has typically been defined by the economic and social standing of the parents. For example, privileged American mothers of the late 19^th nd early 20^th centuries consistently demeaned the wet nurses they employed (Wolf, 1999, p. 110), indicating a social “ownership” of the child perceived as violated by the assistance of lower-class women hired to breastfeed. This determination of value as linked to the parents is also regrettably evident in the early 20^th century American addressing of the accidental deaths of children in the cities, killed by streetcars. Children of poor workers were invariably these victims; they were usually left to their own devices and, as immigrants, they were unfamiliar with the cities and the language. It would be decades before social protest arose to object to the disregard of the deaths, yet there was as well a strong cultural impression that the tragedies were the result, not of irresponsible civic authorities, but of negligent parents and foolish children (Zelitzer, 1985, p. 47). As Zelitzer emphasizes, and directly going to value, this attitude betrays as well a sense of the child as dispensable.

The same, dismissive thinking would be carried well into the mid-20^th century. As Kafka makes clear, the “bad mother” became a socially perceived archetype responsible for delinquent children (2008, p. 198), which reinforces a lack of identity or value as existing within the child. Today, concerns of value tend to center on the single-parent home, or the home with both parents employed, as negatively affecting the child’s development and consequently altering their value. The mother remains central, as she is still expected to be the primary caregiver, no matter other demands (Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004, p. 9). All of this supports that children’s value was and is ascertained as an extension of the parents’, which in turn indicates a disregard for any individual worth. The child remains defined today, if to a lesser extent than in the past, as lacking intrinsic worth because actual value cannot be determined until adulthood, just as the actual state of being of the child is attributed wholly to the parents.

Linked to this determination of value through adult influence is the historical trajectory holding that a child’s worth resides in manifestations of adult appearance, ethics, and behavior, and as soon as possible. 10^th century artists, for example, were capable of depicting children only as miniaturized adults, as more recent eras have witnessed a striking regard, if not reverence, for the state of childhood (Aries, 1962, p. 10). If, as Aries holds, cultures have shifted in their views of children, there remains the traditionally consistent emphasis on “shaping” the child to reflect adulthood. In the long centuries of the Middle Ages dominated by monastic life, even lay parents were urged to raise their children to behave as sober, solemn Christians (Classen, 2005, p. 77). No matter the era, then, value derives from adult judgment, and entirely so. This is likely related to an adult failure to comprehend childhood in any meaningful way. More to the point, the component of desired adulthood has historically often completely dispensed with childhood itself, as it has promoted children as “miniaturized” adults.

Social Perspectives

As noted, concepts of value here are virtually synonymous with social perceptions, and the value perceived as deriving from adult potential from the child is shaped by perception, even as it is influenced by it. This in turn is linked to the pivotal component of the parents. Social perspectives invariably and widely attach different meanings and processes to child-rearing, the common goal of developing a rational and culturally correct adult notwithstanding. As Illick records, for example, the ways in which children were regarded and raised in 18^th century America were marked by a duality; those European immigrant parents holding to intense spiritual ideologies felt the need to forge the intrinsically “depraved” child into a model of goodness, while new, secular thinking allowed for a less rigorous treatment (1997, p. 313). The latter would come to fruition in a late 19^th and early 20^th century emphasis on the child as a product of nature, and a regard for a child’s natural inclination to joy (Onion, 2011, p. 442). The former, however, most certainly reflects the widespread Puritanism that largely defined New England culture of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, which in turn derived from the English ideologies in place. In this view, children were inherently not so much innocent as inclined to evil. This was in essence a conviction that the child was inevitably a product of original sin unless salvation in the form of church conscription was administered (Moran, Vinovskis, 1985, p. 26).

Vast study of Early American parenting, in fact, consistently reflects what may be termed an endemic fear in both parent and culture. While the child could normally enjoy a tranquil first year of life, the first signs of a developing identity, typically manifested by a normal child’s aggressive behavior as they adapt to their surroundings, were to be repressed as harshly as possible. Beales makes the compelling argument that this created in effect a cycle of Puritan shame; children were viewed as prone to wickedness and stubbornness, these perceptions generated severe repression, so the child grew to maintain a sense of personal autonomy as sinful, even as the sense would seek to assert itself (1975, p. 381). It is interesting, too, that some scholars perceive the more harsh Puritan view of children as having been realistic. The Puritan inclination to hurry the child as quickly as possible into adulthood, no matter the spiritual fears generating the impulse, at least acknowledged an investment in the child’s future and identity within the material and social culture, an investment absent in more secular trends to encourage the “natural” child (King, 2007, p. 395). Put another way, the New England emphasis more honestly, if ruthlessly, addressed the New England reality as maintained by the adults.

Earlier, Victorian England adhered to a perspective based more on preparing children to be useful. Social and commercial utility, in fact, may be termed the guiding ideology in rearing children in this era. Tellingly, schooling was dismissed as idleness by the millions of working-class parents at the time; widespread economic hardship demanded assistance from any quarter, so the child able to work was ethically responsible to work (Lassonde, 1996, p. 840). Moreover, this social value placed on children as useful was both widespread and evident in more pernicious forms and in other places and eras. As the horrors of the international slave trade appall modern cultures, it is less known that children were regarded as a particularly valuable commodity, and for the obvious reason of a greater likelihood of a lengthier service to be gained from the child slave. It is estimated that 12 percent of the West Africans abducted to serve as slaves in America between 1663 and 1700 were young boys and girls, and records survive of slave traders instructed ships’ captains to make an effort to procure children of a certain age (King, 2011, p. 3). The agenda was, moreover, not shirt-lived; when the slave ship, the Margarita, left Africa in 1734, 87 percent of the 93 Africans were younger than 16 (Ibid, p. 15). It is difficult to conceive of perceptions translating to agendas more completely denying childhood in favor of utility.

Adolescence, of course, presents further issues regarding social perceptions. In his insightful analysis of G. Stanley Hall’s Adolescence, Joseph Kett notes shifts in regard to teens in the 19^th century. Hall’s work reflects values and perceptions dating back to Medieval views of children, if with a singular difference; puberty is seen as dangerously interfering with a child’s entry into proper adulthood. Hall essentially invented adolescence as a concept, and in a way both greatly influential and reinforcing how physical changes in children at this time must be addressed through a relaxation of adult pressures, such as employment, combined with an emphasis on encouraging the adolescent – and particularly the male – to strive to overcome base longings (Kett, 203, p. 58). Once again, the child is set aside in favor of molding the desired adult.

Childhood Rights

The actual concept of children having rights is strikingly modern. In the High Middle Ages, it was ordinary practice for very young children to marry, to serve the familial interests. Records reveal how Grace de Saleby was widowed twice before her third marriage at the age of 11; John Rigmarden, aged three, was carried to the altar to be married, and agreed to recite the vows only on the assurance that he could play afterward (Power, 1963, p. 127). The Church of the era did allow for such unions to be dissolved if the parties so desired when they reached their majority, but the implacable reality is that the child had no rights as such, and their being was directed to serve was adult interests in social and economic terms.

In the early 20^th century, there are interesting variations on this denial of being. Virtually all normal activities engaged in by young boys were perceived – and often addressed – as marginally criminal behaviors. As Zelitzer notes, 415 children in 1914 were arrested for the offenses of playing ball and shouting in the streets, while in the summer of the same year alone 655 children were arrested as “criminals” in the District of Columbia for similar offenses (Zelitzer, 1985, p. 38). The author’s emphasis is clear; the childhood activity of play, construed by the adults as lacking value, went to a denial of rights because, essentially, children were not behaving in adult ways. This pervasive cultural condition would be, ultimately, addressed by the immense interest in promoting education in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries. As societies determined that children require learning to evolve, they were granted recognition in this regard, which may be interpreted as a right.

The efforts themselves are, in a word, remarkable, particularly when set against earlier social ideologies demanding utility and denying the status accorded by rights. There are issues; illiteracy remains a global concern, with one in five adults limited by it, and gender parity in education is far from achieved. Nonetheless, between 1999 and 2005, the number of children not attending school dropped by nearly two-thirds, owing to internationally cooperative measures, and: “Twenty-three countries that lacked legal provisions for compulsory education in 2000 have since established them” (EAMR, 2008). There is, however, an irony in modern and international efforts to facilitate education for children. While it is irrational to assert that education is not for a child’s good, it exists at the same time as a mechanism to serve the culture, rather than the child. The international ambitions, in fact, are pragmatic and take into account the cyclical benefits when educated children become parents, particularly in deprived nations: “Parents’education and literacy translates into healthier lives, reduced fertility and children who are less disease prone” (EAMR, 2008). If this is admirable, it also ignores anything beyond the needs of the society. If education is a measure of committing to children’s rights, it does so primarily as earlier societies promoted other means of inculcating the child into adulthood. It creates the adult, but it leaves the child and childhood behind.

Conclusion

It may well be that the nature of childhood is too ephemeral to ever be comprehended by adults, as the inability of philosophers to recognize it with any clarity supports. As noted, only a child may know the experience and, as children mature, the experience is lost. Meanwhile, adults think in terms of a functionalism that cannot accommodate the interaction between fantasy and reality so basic to childhood (Fass, Grossberg, 2012, p. 39). Yet it is nonetheless important to understand that a historically consistent and widespread discarding of the nature of childhood may be explicable, bur still not right. That cultures have invariably held to perceptions and values regarding children largely as a population of worth only in terms of adult potential is clear, even when these perceptions do not go to actual abuse. It is what is unseen, then, that takes on import, and childhood remains as unknown to societies today, intently promoting education as a path to a better adulthood, as it was in the Middle Ages. Most crucially, it exists to serve societal and adult agendas. Ultimately, childhood is not for children at all, but for the adults who insist upon translating the state into desirable development.

References

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