To what extent has children's development been seen as a social process?

TMA 1 Option 1

To what extent has children’s development been seen as a social process?

The process of children’s development changes depending on culture, personal or society’s perspectives. This has been a continuous occurrence throughout history. Childhood is a social category and it defines activities they undertake or experiences they have at different times in their lives. Childhood also gives children their role and status within our community. The circumstances in which children grow up, the people they interact with and the beliefs and attitudes of those people can influence the way children develop to a certain degree. Four different lines of argument for children’s development: development as control and discipline, development as natural stages, development as experience, and development as interaction can be looked at to conclude whether a child’s development is predominantly a natural process of maturation, a result of environmental influences or is it an interaction between the two.

Whether childhood is a recent invention has been a fiercely debated issue through history. Phillipe Ariès was a historian who argued that “children were regarded as miniature adults” (Woodhead, 2005, p.18) up until the end of the fifteenth century in Western Europe. Ariès found no difference between children and adults in drawings and diaries from the medieval times due to the fact that they shared the same type of work and activities. Ariès felt that after the fifteenth century, children were seen as different from adults - he argued that this was due to a new image being portrayed of children showing that they had different needs and a special nature about them. Ariès’ methods for gathering his views were criticised by other historians as they felt he was depending too much on resources that were biased towards the wealthy as the children that were painted or written about were not the poorest children in society.

Children in a poorer society have a long standing tradition of playing a functional role within a home which essentially meant that they were contributing to the household income through work and they were referred to as ‘the useful child’ (Woodhead, 2005, p.19). In the sixteenth century, children as young as 9 left the family to work as servants for the wealthy or to start an apprenticeship. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century children were working long hours in mines, quarries, workshops and factories at which time people started wondering whether working long hours would have a detrimental effect on the children’s physical growth. Children received legal protection from exploitation within workplaces with the implementation of the Factory Act of 1833 (Woodhead, 2005, p.19). Children were expected to have time for playing and education regardless of their social class and as a result initiating them into the workplace became less of a priority for families. Childhood became an “extended phase of dependency, development and learning.” (Woodhead, 2005, p. 19). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, “the useful child” has been a hotly debated subject especially as a large amount of children are subjected to child labour (Cunningham, 2003) and this is an image which the majority of western society are no longer accustomed to as the children in their society are in school for the majority of their time.

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In 1833 with the the Factory Act being passed, part time schools were established and this enabled children to be a useful source of income for the family as well as gaining an education to improve their prospects for the future. The number of children attending schools was very low in the decade after the legislation was passed and if they did attend, they would probably have left by their tenth or eleventh birthday. In Britain this changed significantly by the end of the nineteenth century and school was an image and institution people associated with children without giving it a second thought. Previously, attending school was for the privileged and wealthy, whereas now all children were expected to spend their time in classroom learning. Children now had different lives to adults and were not part of the domestic routine or financial input at home as a ‘norm’. There was now the adult world of work and the child’s world of school.

Some theories of development have emphasised natural progression of development and in contrast there are other theories that emphasise more on external influences of experiences and learning. Social and cultural processes within a specific community can introduce their personal values on ways of thinking and behaving. Children themselves are also responsible for their development and are not passive agents in their childhood. They have ideas and beliefs of their own which influence their development. James and Prout stated that “childhood is … constructed and reconstructed both for and by children” (James and Prout, 1997, p. 7) and this should be remembered when considering to what extent a child’s development is a social process as they have an active role in their surroundings and interactions with others.

Development as control and discipline is a perspective that children are born with sin inside them and it has existed since the fourth century AD (Woodhead, 2005, p.30) in Christian circles. Christians were taught that children were naturally sinful and needed to be disciplined. Puritans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries “believed that children had to learn obedience to God through obedience to their parents” (Woodhead, 2005, p.30). Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher, expanded on this view of a child’s natural action to commit acts of sin which needed to be curtailed through thorough discipline. In the beginning of the nineteenth century this view was voiced by Hannah More - she believed that children should not be thought of as innocent but as human beings that are born with a natural evil inside them. Education was the answer to correcting this evil nature that children were born with (Woodhead, 2005, p 30). Theorists believed that children’s nature was a very powerful thing and the way they act is predominantly down to natural impulses. Sigmund Freud believed that these impulses could only be controlled through developing the child’s conscience which is carried out via the parent. The extent of children’s development through control and discipline is something which may be effective while a child is in its early years and also as they transition through various stages. Contemplating that control and discipline is the most important factor in a child’s development should be considered naïve as external sources are going to affect how well these techniques work within different cultures. The child’s voice is not heard with this line of argument and there seems to be fixed ideas where a child is controlled and disciplined and no other surrounding factors are taken into consideration.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had opposing views to this Puritan view of children being born sinful. He viewed and thought of a child’s development as natural stages. Rousseau saw nature as something positive in the development of a child and believed that a child had “a natural sense of right and wrong” (Woodhead, 2005, p. 31). Children are born as innocent and good and it is in fact society that affects children and causes them to act inappropriately or badly. Rousseau believed that “children’s natural innocence should be respected” (Woodhead, 2005, p.31) and that they are different to adults. He believed that children should be free to play and essentially not have any of the responsibilities that adults have. From birth to the age of twelve, children are innocent and they should also be protected. Development as natural stages is an idea that gave various agencies the scientific basis for practice that is “developmentally appropriate” (Woodhead, 2005, p. 31). This has been seen more recently with the introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage which enables the child to learn through play or other various activities. (Directgov, 2011)

Physician and English philosopher, John Locke, saw development as a process of experience and believed that at birth a child is like a blank slate or in Latin a ‘tabula rasa’ (Woodhead, 2005, p. 31). John Locke believed that a person acquires knowledge through experiences in life, the people they interact with and the environment in which they grow up and in turn the blank slate is slowly written on and filled up as the information is acquired. This is in great contrast to the view of Plato, a Greek philosopher who believed that development and learning is based on knowledge that a person is born with but which has not yet been made apparent to them. This knowledge becomes apparent through “logical deduction” (Woodhead, 2005, p. 31). Locke believed that children need the right environment and schooling so that they can develop their ways of thinking and understanding to gain a higher state of morality for everyday issues. Experiences and the child’s nurturing are what essentially shape a child’s development, be it in a positive or a negative way.

Development as interaction is the fourth line of argument that can be considered when looking at children’s development and this is combining the natural nature of a child with its nurturing. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher believed that we are born with a certain mental structure and the way a child interprets things derives from interaction with the environment and it is through this that a child puts order and organisation to things that he or she is learning. Kant believed that there is interaction between the child and the external sources which shapes the development of a child. Children have an effect on everything they come into contact with e.g. a child’s parent behaves a certain way in reaction to how the child is interacting with them. Children’s skills develop as they grow up and they make independent choices about their lifestyle, activities they undertake and they select the locations of these occurrences.

The ‘developmental niche’ (Woodhead, 2005, p.44) is a positive framework that shows the power of cultural differences in beliefs and discourses in understanding the way children’s development is shaped. The framework takes into consideration three components that every child is subjected to regardless of where they live: their living and social space, cultural customs and differences in childhood practises, and the beliefs of parents and other agencies in contact with the children. The differences in societies and cultures need to be considered as the development of children is a social process for most of the children that are in Western societies as they are allowed to play and interact with the world around them to enjoy their childhood as a time of no responsibility. A child in poorer economic standing would not have this option as they are learning ways to provide income for the family through the developing and learning process e.g. watering crops (Woodhead, 2005, p. 45). If a child in a wealthier country was watering plants in the garden it would be merely seen as a play activity. In a nursery, watering plants would be a learning activity for children related to hand and eye co-ordination. This framework shows how the same activity in three different contexts can be understood very differently dependent on situation and interaction with the environment or the people they come into contact with.

In conclusion, children’s development is a social process to a great extent but many issues contribute to how the development progresses such as location, a child’s opportunity to play, culture, an individual’s beliefs, the era they live in, along with many others. The social process of development in a child is dominant in Western cultures as children have more opportunities to be a ‘normal child’ with time for play, interacting, and exploring. Development as control and discipline and development as natural stages are quite narrow minded and don’t give much scope to the external factors that would affect a child’s development. These factors are important to remember as customs in different cultures mean that they give priority to other elements of child development before they turn their attention to what we would consider priority for a child’s development.

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References

Woodhead, M. (2005) ‘Children and development’, in Oates, J., Wood, C. and Grayson, A. (eds) Psychological Development and Early Childhood, Oxford, Blackwell/The Open University.

Cunningham, H. (2003), cited in Woodhead (2005) p. 19.

James, A. and Prout, A. (1997), cited in Woodhead (2005) p. 15.