Childhood and Adolescence

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Childhood and Adolescence
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The discovery of childhood

• Childhood is a new concept
• Didnt exist in the medieval period (800 1500)
• Grew into existence in the upper classes in
  16th-17th centuries.
• 20th century in both upper and lower classes.
• Centuries of Childhood
• French social historian, Philippe Aries
• Analyzed works of art to determine when childhood
  as a stage came into existence.

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• Madonna and Child
• 1300
• Duccio di Buoninsegna

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• Madonna and Child
• Early 1520s
• Bacchiacca (Francesco d'Ubertino)

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• Bia, Daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici
• 1542
• Agnolo Bronzino

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• Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (16141673), and
  Their Son Peter Paul (born 1637)
• 1630s
• Peter Paul Rubens

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• The Holy Family with Saints Anne and Catherine of
  Alexandria
• 1648
• Jusepe de Ribera

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• Prince Baltasar Carlos, in hunting dress
• 1600s
• Diego Velázquez

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• Mrs. Francis Brinley and Her Son Francis
• 1729
• John Smibert

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• Daniel Crommelin Verplanck
• 1771
• John Singleton Copley

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• Manuel Orsorio Manrique de Zuniga
• 1790s
• Spanish

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What do families do for children?

• Socialization
• Language, norms, values, manners, customs,
  behaviors, rules
• Support
• Low, affection, warmth, nurturing, acceptance
• Control
• Coercive vs. inductive
• Provide for basic needs
• Food, clothing, shelter

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Styles of parental behavior

• Authoritative
• Permissive
• Authoritarian

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Socialization and social class

• Social class and parental values
• Working class is highly supervised at work
• More likely to focus on obedience and conformity
• Middle class is less supervised at work
• More likely to focus on independence and
  self-direction

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What differences do fathers make?

• When fathers were more involved, children
• Were more responsible
• Had fewer behavior problems
• Got along better with others
• Fathers play more rough and tumble
• Helps with regulation of emotion
• Leads children to have more friends and more
  self-control
• How fathers act toward their children not how
  much time they spend with them makes a
  difference.

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The origins of adolescence

• Age-graded schooling
• Age restrictions on employment
• Age of consent

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The naming of adolescence

• The term adolescent was coined in 1904
• Book by G. Stanley Hall Adolescence It
  psychology and its relations to physiology,
  anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion,
  and education.

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What is adolescence?

• Age?
• Physical changes?
• Adoption of adult social roles?
• Important institutions that help us decide when
  adolescence ends.
• End of schooling, self-sufficiency (work), family
  formation, prison

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What do families do for adolescents?

• Limited socialization
• Increasing independence from family and salience
  of peer groups.
• Make large decisions like school choice, curfews,
  neighborhood selection.
• Structure activities for oversight.
• Adaptations to onset of adolescence
• Absence of clear-cut norms in society, so
  families are critical to help young people set
  their agenda.

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Lessons adolescents learn

• Autonomy, competence, participation
• Acquire cognitive skills and resources
• Psychological skills
• Social skills

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How are the lessons shaped?

• Social class
• Neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, health care,
  advanced education
• Race
• Criminal justice system
• 20 of all black men go to prison
• 60 of black men who drop out of high school go
  to prison
• Gender
• Home is a gender factory routine interactions
  reinforce gender identities. (e.g., teenage boys
  do less housework than small children!)

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Adolescent risk behaviors

• Declining risk of adolescent pregnancy.
• Smoking, alcohol and drug use have increased.
• Rates of smoking, drinking and drug use
  substantially higher for whites than for
  Hispanics or African Americans.

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Child (and adolescent) well-being
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1960s paradox

• Declining fertility fewer children.
• Private family investment in children increases
  among the affluent.
• Relative public investment in children declines.
• Since 1973, increasing family income inequality
  overall.

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Effect of changes in family structure

• Since 1960, more children live in
• single parent families
• cohabiting couple households
• Private (i.e. family) sources of support for
  these children are more precarious.
• Greater need for public support, but childrens
  share of public goods is declining.

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Trends in childrens living arrangements

• Movement away from two-parent families.
• Greatest change occurred from 1970-1980.
• Since 1995, trend has stabilized.
• Large, persistent racial-ethnic differences
• Percent children in two-parent families, 1998
• African-American 36
• Hispanic 64
• White 75

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Fewer children living with both biological parents

• Why does this matter?
• Children living with step-parents get less
  parental investment
• Biological fathers spend more time with their
  children
• Cinderella phenomenon Step-children get fewer
  doctor and dental visits.
• Adopted children treated like biological kids.

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Children in gay/lesbian-parent households

• Based on children in lesbian families
• Non-representative samples
• Shows little/no difference from other kids in
• Personality and self-concept
• Peer relations
• Sexual identity
• Risk of sexual abuse

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Children and poverty

• Throughout the 1980s-90s, rates 20
• Poverty has become juvenilized
• Partly due to improving fortunes of other groups
  (i.e., the aged)

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The most severe hardships have been lessened

• Vast improvements in housing relative to turn of
  the century
• Fewer children in homes without indoor plumbing,
  no central heat, crowded housing conditions.
• Poor children today also
• More likely to receive health care (success of
  Medicaid)
• Immunized
• live in homes with basic consumer goods (phones,
  TVs, air conditioning)
• Less extreme material hardship than in the past

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Negative consequences of todays poverty

• Unsafe neighborhoods (higher crime rates)
• Food insecurity
• Among kids in poor, single parent households
• Lower educational attainment
• Higher rates of teen parenting
• Idleness (dropout, jobless)

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Effects of mothers employment

• Overall, mothers today spend as much time with
  their children as did Baby Boom mothers.
• Married fathers today spend more time with
  children.
• Given smaller families today, parents probably
  spend more time per child today than in 1960.

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Schooling

• Increase in nursery school and preschool
  enrollment.
• Higher among Hispanics and Blacks
• Lower among the very affluent
• Kindergarten programs have become more academic
  as a result.
• Near-universal K-1st grade attendance (95 vs. 80
  in 1960).
• Increase in 16-17 year-olds still in school.

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Health

• Infant and child mortality rates have dropped
  since 1960.
• Eradication of many serious childhood illnesses
  (polio, diphtheria, measles).
• Increase in low birth-weight babies.

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How do children themselves feel?

• Surveys show that most kids report healthy, happy
  lives and satisfaction with their families.

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For Wednesday

• We will be doing group work pertaining to Lareau
  readings.
• Divide into 3 groups to assign chapters.