What factors have contributed to the prolonging of childhood in Britain?

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Cheryl Rackstraw A338386X

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What factors have contributed to the prolonging of childhood in Britain?

To better understand what factors have contributed to the prolonging of childhood in Britain, it is important to have an understanding of what is meant by the term childhood.  When we think of a person’s childhood we tend to conjure up images of children from toddler age to around early to mid teens. The old fashioned postcards from the Victorian era depicting images of fresh faced children, gathering flowers or playing with soft fluffy animals might enter into our minds when we think of the work childhood. A childhood should involve play and education, provided in a structured setting such as schooling.  The social surroundings that children grow in all play a large part in the shaping of children and this allows children to focus on their education without taking on the responsibilities of an adult.  However, there is a positive to children taking on some of the responsibilities, as this helps them develop life skills which play a large important part in adult hood.

Looking back through history, childhood was not always thought of in a positive way. Schooling was for a very brief time, usually until the child/children were old enough to go out to work, or schooling was never even attended.  Many families had children so that they could go out to work and help bring in an income to the family unit and it is from here we can obtain evidence about child labour to back this suggestion.  Britain was the first country to combat the problem about children working in factories and mines, these prompted long discussions about the type of schooling which should be made available and the amount of education that each child should have.

In pre-industrial Britain, there were no laws which governed young people in the work place, this meant that when families wanted to send their children out to work they could freely do so and send them wherever they wished them to.  The manufacturers or farm owners had no rules in which to follow to protect these young children at work and so many were forced to partake in roles which needed physical strength and stamina, roles which were much better suited towards fully developed adults.    The impact working from such a young age would have an effect on the child’s development, both physically and mentally.  For example, a child sent out to work could have had an impairment on their growth and also would not be able to comprehend simple mathematical questions or even read or write.  Some novelists at around this time attempted to bring the plights of child labour to people’s attention.  Charles Dickens was renowned to write about the plights of the working class family.

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The people who ran the factories and other places of work where child labour was used claimed that children were ideal for their employment roles because they could squeeze themselves into smaller spaces or fit their delicate hands into small parts of machinery to mend or fix them, as opposed to adults whose hands and body size was considerably bigger.  Nowadays, we would view child labour as being wrong and almost as a type of abuse of children, this is because as a society we hold stronger values on childhood and what it means to be a child.  

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