Childhood Review Questions
Please answer the following questions as fully as you:

1. Explain what is meant by ‘childhood is a social construction’
This means that childhood is a stage of life that we have attached certain labels to. These labels include the view that children are dependent on adults to survive and the fact that children have less abilities to work than adults. It is also the view that a child's role in society and the rules that they are meant to follow are created and learnt by socialization.

2. Explain what is meant by the term ‘loss of childhood’
The term loss of childhood means that childhood is disappearing which means that children and adults are becoming more and more similar. This is due to way that children now act. For example, in Britain, more children are having sex at a younger ages which is proved by the statistic that Britain has the most teenage pregnancies. Children also have a greater access to the adult world through things such as the internet and television which make it exceptionally easy for children to access adult content. This view is supported by Postman who said that ‘childhood is disappearing at a dazzling speed’

3. Suggest two reasons why childhood is a relatively modern invention.
One reasons that childhood is a relatively modern invention is that we know, through the research done by Philippe Aries, that childhood did not exist past physical dependency in the middle ages. This is a reason because in todays society, childhood is a stage of life that goes on far past this stage.
Another reason is that Aries also says that we have moved from a world that didn’t view childhood as anything particularly to a world that is obsessed with childhood.

4. Suggest two ways in which the position of children could be said to have improved over the last fifty years.
One way in which the position of children has