Childhood: A homogeneous generational group?

Abstract

This paper reports several findings of a survey on children aged 5–13¹ years focusing on their daily lives. The aim was to test the assumption, claimed in New Childhood Sociology, that children are a generational group so strictly dependent on adult society that they have little autonomy in their daily behaviour. Moreover, although they are a social group that is different from that of adults, they are so diversified internally that it seems more appropriate to speak of diversified childhoods (James, Jenks & Prout, 1998; James & Prout, 1990; Qvortrup, 1991; Hengst & Zeiher, 2004). Our first objective in this paper was therefore to improve the rather scarce knowledge of children's everyday lives in post-industrial Western societies and then to analyse to what extent these were connected with those of adults. Finally, we wished to detect the degree and patterns of differences in the children's lifestyles.

Citation

Carmen Belloni, M. and Carriero, R. (2008), "Childhood: A homogeneous generational group?", Leira, A. and Saraceno, C. (Ed.) Childhood: Changing Contexts (Comparative Social Research, Vol. 25), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 293-324. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0195-6310(07)00010-5