Using examples from item 2 and information from elsewhere, explain why sociologists regard childhood as being socially constructed

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Cathy Jones

Sociology-Family essay

Using examples from item 2 and information from elsewhere, explain why sociologists regard childhood as being socially constructed

Sociologists believe that children are not natural in society, that they do not behave naturally but that society has made children act as they do, and that there parents teach them how to act and make their personality for them at an early age. However childhood ‘differs enormously according to time and place’ so Philippe Aries believes. Children are treated differently to each other in different parts of the world, for example in India when a girl is 16-17 years old she is forced into an arranged marriage by which her parents arrange. That type of responsibility on a girl of that age is a lot, and most Indian girls refuse and end up running away from home or worse still killing themselves, but in their culture at that age they are seen as adults. Also in China girls are made to bind there feet up at an early age so that there feet do not grow any bigger. Some people may see this as a form of child abuse, but in China, that is what is expected of them. So there are quite a lot of differences in the upbringing of children. Not every child will turn out the same, all children will vary and that is to the way that they are bought up by there parents.

        It is not just the different cultures, which varies, but also the different social classes have a different way of bringing up children. The upper social class tend to spoil their children to a certain extent because they can with all the money that they have. This socially constructs the child to grow up with a spoilt nature, and would maybe affect the rest of his life because he will believe that he can get whatever he wants. This goes for ‘designer babies’ as well. ‘Designer babies’ is when the parents of the child materialise the child’s upbringing with buying expensive designer clothes and all types of accessories for the child, and so this will make the child spoilt for the rest of its life because it will expect to get its own way all of the time. Whereas on the other hand the poorer classes will not have a great deal of money and so therefore the child would have to make do with what it was aloud. This means that the child misses out on what the other children are having and so that may have an affect on the child because it might feel neglected and as if he is not worthy of what the other children have.

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        In the old days and in some parts of the world it is still happening today, children are being exploited and forced to do child labour instead of getting an education and having fun like the other children are doing. Some parts of the world believed that children should work as soon as they are able. Some children are forced to work so hard that they get really ill and are unable to survive, that is in poorer parts of the world mainly, where parents have sold their children to labourers. This means that children didn’t really get a childhood ...

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