Chapter 1

What is ‘childhood studies’?

Heather Montgomery
 Chapter 1 What is ‘childhood studies’?

Chapter 1 What is ‘childhood studies’?

The Reader Introduction explained how we use the term ‘perspective’ to
refer to the two major academic disciplines that you learn about in this
module: childhood studies and child psychology.
Chapter 1 begins your investigations into childhood studies and will
consider these main points:
Childhood ‘as a social construction’: what does this mean? What
is childhood? This may seem like an obvious question. Yet your
parents or grandparents may hold a different view to you of what
childhood means, and of a child’s place in the family and society. We
say that childhood is a social construction because our view of it, and
how we expect children to live, is influenced by the societies we live in,
and it changes over time and place.
Ideas about the nature of children. These ideas vary historically
(over time) and culturally (from one place or group to another).
Children might be viewed as naturally wicked, or naturally good. Both
still occur, and they affect how adults interact with children.
Children’s rights. Children have international rights to protection,
provision and participation. These are set out in the 1989 United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The idea that children ‘have agency’. Having agency means that
children have the capacity to influence their own and others’ lives.
They do not just passively receive adult care and instruction, but rather
their actions, thoughts and feelings influence their lives and those
around them.
How childhood studies considers children’s development.
Childhood studies covers the years from birth to eighteen. However, it
does not focus on children’s change over time. That is a core interest
of the other key perspective on children and childhoods: child
psychology, which you will encounter in Chapter 2. Childhood studies
is more interested in how children and societies interpret and
experience childhood.

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An introduction to childhood studies and child psychology

Learning outcomes
When you have studied this chapter, you should be able to:

. discuss the main features of childhood studies as an area of

study
. evaluate the claim that ‘childhood is socially constructed’
. describe the different historical ideas about the nature of
childhood
. discuss issues around children’s rights and children’s agency
. compare and contrast the different ages and stages of children’s
lives covered by childhood studies.

Introduction
Childhood is a universal experience: we have all been children and
think we know a child when we see one. Both internationally and for
each country of the United Kingdom, the legal definition of a child is
anyone under the age of 18. Article 1 of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child states that a ‘child’ means
‘every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the
law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier’ (United Nations,
1989, ratified by the UK government in 1991). The differences
between adults and children are taken to be well established: children
are smaller, biologically and psychologically more immature, politically
powerless and, to many people, more precious. There are so many
aspects of childhood that we take for granted, it can be hard to realise
that there are in fact multiple theories of childhood which are based on
very different ideas about the nature of children. Childhood studies
looks at all aspects of children’s lives, covers the entire age range of
childhood from 0 to 18 and draws on work from numerous academic
subject areas, including law, sociology, history, anthropology, education,
health and social care, psychology and medicine. It is a relatively new
subject for study – a recognisable field that only developed in the
1980s – but it has grown rapidly as more and more people want to
understand children’s lives for both personal and professional reasons.

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This chapter provides an introduction to childhood studies, and

discusses some of the key themes and approaches that remain
important to understanding the lives of children. There are many ways
of studying childhood and many reasons for doing so. For some
people there is a general interest in why children act in certain ways or
why adults hold particular views about children, while for others there
is the need to do research on childhoods and children’s lives in order
to find ways of making those lives better. Some people are interested
in how childhood today seems so different from what it was in the
past. Having all been children ourselves once, it is hard not to make
comparisons between what we experienced as children and what we
see happening now in our own families or communities. As a field of
study, childhood studies helps us to put this personal experience in
context and make sense of these comparisons. As this chapter will
discuss, childhood studies does not provide definitive answers about
how best to bring up children, how far the state should intervene in
their lives, what they should learn at school or at what age they should
become independent. Instead, it raises broader questions about the
nature of childhood and the contexts in which children live their
everyday lives.

Childhood as social construction

For some scientists, childhood is a ‘natural’, biological state of being
which simply reflects the biological immaturity of children. Childhood
studies, however, understands childhood somewhat differently and
emphasises the notion that childhood is a ‘social construction’. This is
a complex and contested term throughout the social sciences, but at a
basic level it means that childhoods are different depending on where
and when they happen, and that children’s lives are affected by wider
political, social, cultural and economic factors. A social constructionist
view of childhood looks at how particular categories such as ‘boys’,
‘girls’, ‘children’ or ‘youth’ are seen and understood in any given
society, and how bodies of knowledge are built up or constructed.
Social constructionism recognises that ideas about children change over
time and place, and it looks at the consequences of those ideas and the
impact that they have on children. To give a simple example, there was
a common saying in Britain until the 1950s that ‘children should be
seen and not heard’; that is, children had little of interest to say to
adults, and so deference and quietness in front of adults were the
ideals to which children should aspire. In contemporary Britain, such

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An introduction to childhood studies and child psychology

ideals are rarely invoked; children have a different place within the
family, ideas of equality are much more common, and a view that
children should not be heard seems, to many, old-fashioned and
unnecessarily authoritarian.

Figure 1 Groups of schoolchildren in the United

Kingdom and Colombia. While they are all children
according to legal definitions, they will all have very
different childhoods depending on where they grow up,
their gender and ethnicity, as well as their familial, social
and cultural background

Childhood means many different things to different people. Both

adults and children have complex and often conflicting ideas about
childhood, what it is and what it should be, and how children should
be treated as a result. In the UK, we may look back with horror and
disgust at child-rearing practices of our own past – such as sending
children out to work at a very early age, or sending them away to be

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breast-fed by other women (the practice of wet nursing) – and

congratulate ourselves on how far we have come, without ever
stopping to think that what seems good and normal to us appals other
people. Practices such as putting young children to sleep in their own
rooms rather than with their mothers, feeding to a schedule rather
than when the baby wants to, or even strapping babies in pushchairs
rather than carrying them, are viewed extremely negatively by parents
in other countries, who conclude that some British parents know
nothing about childcare and do not love their children.
At the same time, we have a tendency to be nostalgic, to romanticise
the past and see childhood as being in a state of decline. We may
mourn the freedom and simplicity that children’s lives used to have,
looking back to a time when parents and children had very different
relationships, when childhood seemed easier and somehow better. This
has caused some people to argue that contemporary childhoods are in
a state of crisis.

Figure 2 Girls playing with, and looking after, younger children

in the 1950s. Until very recently, older girls would have been
expected to look after their younger siblings and to help around
the house

The differences in how children are viewed and understood are even
more apparent when we look cross-culturally. In the modern UK,
many would argue that childhood is a time for play and that children
should have few responsibilities. Childhood is seen as precious and
childhood innocence as worth protecting. Childhood is thought of as a

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time for play and fun, when a child’s life is centred on the home. But
in other parts of the world, childhood is not understood in this way;
rather, it is often seen as a time of preparation, when children can
learn useful skills that they will need when they are older and when
they are expected to be able to look after themselves at an early age.
For example, the Hadza, a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer group, expect
children to forage for themselves by the age of 3 and to gather half
their own food needs by the time they are aged 5 (Lancy, 2008).
Children are seen as having responsibilities to their families, and are
expected to share the family workload as soon as they are able.
In many parts of the world, children work alongside their parents in
fields, shops or market stalls, fetching water or doing household tasks.
When, in Liberia, mothers were asked by one researcher what made a
‘good’ child, they said, ‘What makes a child good? If you ask her to
bring water, she brings water. If you ask her to cook, she cooks, if you
tell her to mind the baby, she does it. When you ask her to plant rice,
she doesn’t complain’ (Lancy, 2008, p. 103). Many young girls spend
much of their days caring for their younger brothers and sisters – a
situation that was common in the UK until the 1960s. This is not
because their parents are uncaring or do not wish to protect their
children; rather, it is that they have very different views of children’s
roles and capabilities, and very different needs in terms of the day-to-
day reality of trying to make ends meet while maintaining a home. The
vast majority of parents cherish their children and want to bring them
up the best they can, but their child-rearing is based on very different
ideas about the nature of childhood, in vastly different social contexts,
with varying pressures, constraints and opportunities.
Another example of how child-rearing differs cross-culturally can be
seen in a study of upper-middle-class children in the USA, in a suburb
of New York City called Parkside, where parents express very different
views of childhood and child-rearing, and where childhood is seen in
terms of competition:

By age three Parkside children were already considered little

competitors – small but complete ‘little people’ with their own
tastes, desires, needs, and wants. All of the Parkside parents I
interviewed had their children enrolled in private pre-schools …
competition to get in … was fierce … Many parents experienced
a great deal of angst over whether their child would perform well
during the interview process … [A father saw similarities] …

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between the venture capital business and the upbringing of a

child … [and a mother] … said there was nothing that would
stop her children from being the best, and though developing the
child through various lessons and classes cost quite a lot, it was
what must be done.
(Kusserow, 2004, quoted in Lancy, 2008, p. 78)

Definitions of childhood change over time and place, so understanding

childhood as a social construction means that we can also recognise
the varieties of childhood within cultures. One of the most obvious
ways that children’s lives differ within cultures is in terms of their
gender. One of the first questions asked when a child is born is
whether they are a boy or a girl. Gender differences are key to
children’s and parents’ experiences and expectations of childhood. It
may be tempting to think that differences between girls and boys are
innate and biologically determined, but this is very hard to prove, and
social norms and social conditioning play an important role. There are,
of course, biological differences between girls and boys, but childhood
studies is more interested in the social meanings given to these
differences and the impact they have on children.
In the 1970s, Phyllis Katz and her colleagues from the City University
of New York carried out a famous experiment called the ‘Baby X
experiment’ (Seavey et al., 1975). In this study, a 3-month-old baby,
dressed in a yellow babygrow, was introduced to volunteers as either
‘Mary’ or ‘Johnny’. The volunteers were asked to play with the baby,
using a choice of three toys left in the room – a rag doll, a football
and a teething ring. Katz found that none of the male volunteers
presented a football to what they supposed was a female baby, but that
89% of them presented her with a doll; meanwhile, 80% of the women
gave ‘the boy’ a football and 75% presented ‘the girl’ with a doll.
When the experiment was repeated ten years later, the results were
almost exactly the same. In another experiment, two female and two
male babies were dressed first in either pink or blue clothes and then
in gender-neutral clothes, but were given a gender-appropriate name.
Women whom the babies had not met before were then asked to play
with them. The researchers found that when the women believed they
were playing with a boy, they responded much more to the babies’
movements, encouraged their physical activity and praised their
physical abilities. Meanwhile, they tended to soothe and quieten girls,
and to play with them in a less boisterous way. Although participants

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An introduction to childhood studies and child psychology

in the research sometimes tried to act in a gender-neutral way, many

wanted to know the sex of the child or assigned a sex to it, based on
stereotypical attributes such as strength (which they associated with
boys) or quietness (which they believed indicated the babies were girls).
These studies are important because they show that people’s beliefs
about the nature of boys and girls have an impact on how they treat
children. This research did not prove that biological differences
between boys and girls did not exist; rather, it emphasised the
importance of social construction and how people’s beliefs about
childhood – influenced by the media, advertising, their own upbringing
and their personal and political beliefs – affected the ways they
interacted with children.

Figure 3 Children’s gender is marked immediately after birth,

when they are often dressed in either pink or blue to indicate their gender

Key points
. Childhood changes across time and place.
. Childhood means many different things to different people and
cannot be fully understood as a biological, universal stage of life.
. Ideas about childhood are influenced by societies and individuals
identifying a particular stage of life and giving it particular meanings.
. Cross-culturally, children lead very different lives, and their parents
have very different ideas about their nature and their needs.
. Social constructionism looks at the social meanings given to
biological differences.

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Ideas about the nature of children

If we understand childhood as a socially defined period of life, it is
apparent that different people will give different meanings to it and,
inevitably, some of these ideas will differ. Although many of these
ideas are highly individual, some have similarities, and it is possible to
highlight certain ideas that are prevalent in contemporary thought. In
particular, there are two traditional views that present conflicting ideas
of children – the first is the view that children are naturally good and
innocent; and the second is the view that children are amoral and
uncivilised, and have sinful desires and tendencies.
Relatively few people today would see children as evil – mischievous
maybe, or lacking reason and restraint possibly, but not innately
wicked. Yet for many years, children were seen as sinners even while in
the womb, a view which persisted well into the eighteenth century and
which still has some repercussions today. This is often called the
‘Puritan’ view of childhood, after the strict English and American
Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who believed
that children were born in a state of sin and had to be taught
obedience and brought to God through physical punishment. Even
when ideas about the innate wickedness of children began to subside,
children were still likely to be disciplined through fear and force.
Historians of childhood have shown that whipping, caning and other
forms of corporal punishment have a very long history in British
society, and have only very recently started to die out (Brockliss and
Montgomery, 2013). The great English Methodist John Wesley issued
the following advice to parents:

Make him do as he is bid, if you whip him ten times running to

effect it. Let none persuade you it is cruelty to do this; it is
cruelty not to do it. Break his will now, and his soul will live, and
he will probably bless you to all eternity.
(Wesley, as quoted in Brockliss and Montgomery, 2013, p. 81)

While this may be seen as a historical curiosity – based on a faulty

knowledge of childhood or outdated religious beliefs – the idea that
children need controlling and discipline in order to grow up properly
remains current. Parents in England and Wales are still allowed to
smack their children if they feel it is necessary and so long as it does
not leave a mark.

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In complete contrast, the Romantic view of childhood understands

childhood as a stage of life characterised by innocence, goodness and
separation from the adult world and its concerns about work, sexuality,
money or death. This view of childhood is rooted in eighteenth-
century French philosophy, especially that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712–1778) who believed that children were naturally innocent and
were born good but, through life, learned evil. In 1762, he published a
treatise called Emile, or On Education, in which he argued that children
should be allowed to develop at their own rate in natural surroundings,
shielded from civilisation and oppressive adult authority which
corrupted them and turned good into bad. For Rousseau, childhood
was a period of idyllic innocence when the child should be free ‘to run
and jump all day’. He wrote:

Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful

instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when
laughter was ever on our lips, and when the heart was ever at
peace? Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly,
of that precious gift which they cannot abuse?
(Rousseau, quoted in Brockliss and Montgomery, 2013, p. 84)

His ideas were extremely influential on the Romantic poets of the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as William Wordsworth
and William Blake, who enthusiastically promoted the idea of
childhood innocence, believing that children were imaginative and
joyful in a way that was lost by rational, jaded or cynical adults. These
poets believed that, through children, adults could rediscover a sense
of wonder; by celebrating and protecting children’s innocence, adults
could recapture some of their own joy.
Although the majority of children may not have experienced such a
time of freedom either now or in the past, Rousseau and his followers
established a set of ideas about childhood that continue to resonate to
this day.

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Contemporary constructions of childhood

The continuing influence of both Puritan and Romantic ideas about
childhood was shown by Jane Ribbens in a 1994 study that asked
mothers how they viewed their children and what they thought
about raising them. Ribbens looked at different ideas about children
and at the longevity of the Puritan and Romantic theories about the
nature of children. Some mothers described their children as
naturally innocent – as one mother said, ‘Children are different,
they’re loveable little beings … you just think they’re the most
wonderful thing that’s come on earth’ (Ribbens, 1994, p. 148).
Another claimed that ‘It is important to respect and protect the
child’s childhood, it will never come back again, when it’s gone it’s
gone and they can never catch up’ (p. 148). Other mothers,
however, saw their children as more wilful and potentially
disruptive: ‘[if] you just give into them all the time … as soon as
you start doing that they just push you, and push you, and push
you, until they’re doing the most awful outrageous things, and
you’re not able to control them at all’ (p. 150). Another stated, ‘it’s
the trend nowadays, isn’t it, not to be too strict. Free-thinking, and
let them do what they like. Let children rule. You wonder what’s
going to happen, don’t you?’ (p. 150).
Many parents expressed both points of view simultaneously or at
different times, depending on how their children were behaving.
While none of them explicitly mentioned Puritan or Romantic ideas
about children, it is evident they were still drawing on these ideas
to describe their children.
Knowing how parents and other adults conceptualise their children
is important because it affects the ways that children are treated
and the types of care they receive. This is not to claim that some
parents love their children more than others or raise them better.
What it does mean is that the social and cultural ideas about the
nature of childhood and the responsibilities that children and
parents have to each other vary widely and make the search for
wide generalisations almost impossible. To understand childhood,
we must see it in context and understand that while almost all
parents want what is best for their child, what constitutes ‘best’ is
open to great interpretation.

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An introduction to childhood studies and child psychology

Key points
. The Puritan view of childhood regarded children as wicked and
potentially out of control. It viewed children as needing firm discipline.
. The Romantic view of childhood regarded children as naturally good
until they were corrupted by the adult world.
. Both views of childhood continue to have resonance in today’s
society.
. How we regard children has an impact on how we treat them.

Children have rights

The idea that children have rights is a central proposition of childhood
studies. This was partly inspired by the 1989 United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (or UNCRC; United
Nations, 1989) which is made up of 54 legally binding articles covering,
among other things, children’s rights to healthcare, education,
nationality and legal representation. The fundamental principle behind
the Convention is stated in Article 3, which reads, ‘In all actions
concerning children … the best interests of the child shall be a
primary consideration’. The rights set out in the UNCRC are often
grouped into three categories known as the ‘3 Ps’ of children’s rights:
their right to provision (i.e. their rights to food, housing or education);
their right to protection (against exploitation and abuse); and, the
most controversial, their right to participation (the right of children
to take part in decisions made on their behalf). The UNCRC is the
most ratified convention in the history of the United Nations, ratified
by every country in the world except the USA and Somalia.
According to one commentator, the UNCRC introduced a view of
childhood that was based on respect for children’s dignity and shifted
the emphasis, when intervening in children’s lives, ‘from protection to
autonomy, from nurturance to self-determination, from welfare to
justice’ (Freeman, 1992, p. 3). The UNCRC emphasised that children
not only had rights to protection and provision but they also had
rights to participation – to be consulted about decisions made about
them and to have their opinion listened to and taken into account.
However, participation rights have been particularly contested because
they represent a profound shift in relationships between adults and

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Figure 4 UNICEF, the United Nations’ Children’s Fund, promotes children’s

rights throughout the world. This booklet is designed especially for children
so they can know about and claim their rights

children, and challenge conceptualisations of children as unknowing,

passive and needing adults to act in their best interests. They can also
conflict with rights of provision – such as in the case, for example, of
compulsory schooling: the UNCRC gives every child the right to go to
school but does not give children the right to refuse to go to school. If
their rights to make decisions about their own futures were absolute,
then children should, surely, be allowed to decide for themselves as to
whether or not they go to school? As a consequence of some of these
potential tensions, participation rights have been seen as threatening
and upsetting to the status quo. Indeed, it was the rights of
participation that caused the most controversy over the 1989 Children
Act, the first piece of legislation brought in by the UK government in
response to the UNCRC. Some child advocacy groups (particularly
those that supported the UNCRC) were very enthusiastic about the
level of autonomy the Act sought to offer children, and viewed the
Children Act’s support for children’s participation in decision making
very positively. Others were concerned about the potential for the Act
to undermine parental responsibility and adult power over children.
When it was first made law, some commentators called it a ‘Brat’s
Charter’ and warned of children divorcing their parents because they
did not have enough pocket money (Lansdown, 1994). While this never
happened, there remains a cultural battle over children’s rights to
participation and to having their voices heard, and there is still an
intense debate over children’s autonomy and their role in families and
in wider society. There are still instances where, regardless of young

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people’s right to express an opinion, this right may be contested by

adults who feel that children cannot always be expected to know what
is in their best interests and that they (adults) must sometimes
intervene, for the good either of the child or of the family.

Key points
. Children’s rights are set out in the 1989 United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
. The Convention states that children have rights to protection,
provision and participation.
. Participation rights have been controversial because they challenge
the power relationships between adults and children, and because
they can clash with rights of protection and provision.
. There is a cultural battle over children’s rights to participation and
over their role within families and society.

Children have agency

Linked to the idea of children’s rights, but worth mentioning as a
separate, important strand of childhood studies, is the notion that
children have agency and the capacity to influence their own lives and
the lives of others. Agency involves children’s ability to understand,
make choices and act upon their world, and to be competent and
interactive members of society from birth. The concept of agency also
acknowledges that children are actively involved in the co-construction
of their lives and those of their families, even if they are excluded from
formal political processes. Emphasising children’s agency means
looking at children’s competencies and skills rather than at what they
cannot do. Tim Waller (2009) gives the example of a child walking
unaided at 11 months. A childhood studies perspective, which
acknowledges the child’s agency, would see this 11-month-old child ‘as
playing an important role in influencing the development of this skill
in the particular context of experiences within her family and
community from birth, as opposed to an alternative view which
suggests that the new-found skill is the result of “normal maturation”’
(Waller, 2009, p. 8). Furthermore, recognising and acting upon
children’s agency allows for the development of policies and practices
that take account of the opinions and wishes of children themselves
(see the following box).

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The Mosaic approach

An example of how children’s agency can be acknowledged is
evident in Alison Clark and Peter Moss’s ‘Mosaic approach’, which
they pioneered in the late 1990s as a way of recognising the
agency of young children under the age of 5.
Viewing children as the ‘experts in their own lives’, Clark and Moss
set out a framework for listening to younger children and
incorporating their views into policy, especially policy relating to the
early childhood services they access.

The elements of [the Mosaic approach] are:

. multi-method: recognises the different ‘voices’ or languages of

children;
. participatory: treats children as experts and agents in their own
lives;
. reflexive: includes children, practitioners and parents in
reflecting on meanings, and addresses the question of
interpretation;
. adaptable: can be applied in a variety of early childhood
institutions;
. focused on children’s lived experiences: can be used for a
variety of purposes including looking at lives lived rather than
knowledge gained or care received;
. embedded into practice: a framework for listening that has the
potential to be both used as an evaluative tool and to become
embedded into early years practice.
(Clark, 2005, pp. 30–1)

The Mosaic approach has used techniques such as:

. close observation of children by adults

. short interviews with children which were taped and followed up
several months later, where possible
. giving children cameras, showing them how to use them and
then asking them to take photographs of places they considered
important

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. child-led tours when children would take the adults on, for
example, a tour of their nursery, pointing out places that were
important to them
. nursery mapping where children drew the nursery as they saw
it.
Such techniques have enabled the children themselves to be
experts on their own nursery and the researchers to find out what
children themselves considered to be the priorities in their lives.
They discovered that children’s ideas about space and play were
very different from those of adults; some of the empty spaces that
adults wished to tidy up or turn into something useful were thought
about very differently by the children, who wanted to retain
ownership of these spaces and saw them as significant as they
were. The study also highlighted the importance of friendship to
children and that they considered the social life of the nursery to be
every bit as important as other aspects of their times there.
The Mosaic approach takes children’s own views seriously and was
one of the first to show the importance of adults and children
collaborating on research.

Key points
. Children have agency; this means they have the capacity to influence
their own lives and those of others.
. Agency involves children’s ability to understand, make choices and
act upon their world and to be competent and interactive members of
society from birth.
. Acknowledging children’s agency allows for the development of
policies and practices that take account of the opinions and wishes of
children themselves.

Childhood studies in ages and stages

One criticism sometimes levelled at childhood studies is that the term
‘childhood’ is so broad that it is in danger of becoming meaningless.
While a newborn baby and a 17-year-old are both children in a legal
sense, quite obviously their needs and capacities are totally different,
and they have little in common other than the fact that they are both

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under the age of 18. Not surprisingly, therefore, there are now
different specialisms within childhood studies which focus on different
ages of life. You will sometimes come across categories such as ‘early
years’, ‘middle childhood’ and ‘youth’. Indeed, early years and youth
studies are sometimes considered disciplines in their own right but can
also be usefully seen as distinctive parts of childhood studies. It is
often problematic to define exactly when each stage starts, as will be
suggested below, but splitting up childhood into different stages can be
useful in terms of policy and practice, and reflects the reality that
children under 5 have very different needs and interests to those
aged 15, even though both are classified as children. In general,
therefore, early years covers the study of children in the first few years
of their lives, but definitions of this period vary. Some organisations
that work with children in the UK see the early years as being within
the age range of 0–5 or the period before children go to primary
school. In Sweden, the early years are seen to refer to children under 7,
while Wales views children under 8 as early years in policy terms. In
schools and nurseries, the Early Years Foundation Stage targets
children under 6. Despite these differences, however, there is a distinct
strand of childhood studies that looks at children in their earliest years,
some time before the age of 8. This strand often focuses on children’s
educational and developmental needs.
Middle childhood is again hard to define. It is often seen as starting
around the age of 6 and ending at puberty, but this is very imprecise.
This is partly because middle childhood starts after the early years, so
the age when the early years are seen to end will have an impact on
when middle childhood starts. Furthermore, puberty differs greatly
between children so that it is very hard to come up with an age that
works for all children. Instead, middle childhood is often seen in terms
of children’s opportunities and new experiences. It is usually the time
that children start primary school, make their own friends and develop
distinct preferences for friends of their own gender. It is the age when
they are building relationships away from the home and their families
(Charlesworth et al., 2008). Although there are many studies of
children at this age, middle childhood is a somewhat neglected area of
childhood studies. Unlike early years or youth, no distinct sub-
discipline has yet developed which looks at children of this age.
Given the problems with definitions discussed earlier, it is not
surprising that youth too is regarded as a problematic category, and
there is little agreement on how the term is used. It is often used to

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An introduction to childhood studies and child psychology

Figure 5 Babies, toddlers, schoolchildren and young people are all defined
as children but have very different needs and priorities. Within the field of
childhood studies, some people specialise in particular stages of childhood
such as early years, middle childhood or youth

refer to children over the age of 12 or 13, but, while childhood is

defined as 0–18 years, youth is often seen as going beyond this age
range, sometimes up to the age of 25 or even 30. There are many
names for this stage of life – usually called ‘adolescence’, a term that
tends to be used by psychologists, health workers and doctors, and
which refers to the period after puberty before full adult growth is
reached. Adolescence is seen as a developmental stage, marked by
particular biological milestones or behaviours (when we talk of
adolescence as a time of ‘raging hormones’, we are using a
developmental approach). In contrast, the term ‘youth’ suggests that
this period of life is partly socially constructed, and youth studies tends
to look at how young people are thought about and treated within
society. Both approaches are necessary for a holistic understanding of
young people’s lives, but they use slightly different terminology.

Key points
. Childhood studies covers the whole age range of childhood from
0 to 18.
. The ages associated with early and middle childhood are often
difficult to define, and middle childhood is often a neglected area of
childhood studies.

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 Chapter 1 What is ‘childhood studies’?

. There are different specialisms within childhood studies, such as

early years and youth studies.
. There is no agreement on which ages these specialisms cover.

Conclusion
This chapter has briefly introduced you to some of the main ideas that
are central to contemporary childhood studies. The first of these is that
childhood is socially constructed, that children’s lives are affected by
wider political, social, cultural and economic factors, and that
childhood is not a single, uniform category based on biological
immaturity. The chapter has emphasised that all childhoods are
different and depend on time, place and social context, as well as on
the child’s age, gender or ethnicity. A key aspect of childhood studies is
the recognition that children have rights to protection, provision and
participation. Children also have agency, which means that they have
the ability to understand, make choices and act upon their world, and
to be competent and interactive members of society from birth. The
concept of agency acknowledges that children are actively involved in
the co-construction of their lives and those of their families, even if
they are excluded from formal political processes. It should also be
clear that while childhood studies represents a rapidly growing
discipline covering the age range 0–18 years, there are other sub-fields
such as early years or youth studies which specialise in their own
particular ages of childhood.

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An introduction to childhood studies and child psychology

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