This conception of childhood, often referred to as ‘modern’, comes from the claim that it is the culmination of a development into a better society and can be regarded as the yardstick for a good childhood. The childhood and children’s rights researcher Bob Franklin (2002: 17–18) notes critically:
The modern conception of childhood, which in Europe dates from the sixteenth century and stresses the innocence, frailty and dependence of children, forcefully ejected children from the worlds of work, sexuality and politics – in which previously they were active participants – and designated the classroom as the major factor of their lives. Children were no longer allowed to earn money or to decide how to spend their time, they were forced into dependency on adults and obliged to study or play. … Cute and contented, but dependent on adults and denied autonomy in important decisions concerning their lives, children are encouraged to be ‘seen and not heard’.
The prehistory of the modern conception of childhood sketched out here is certainly not free from romanticization by suggesting that children and adults could have had freedom of choice for work, sexuality, and politics, but it rightly points out that the supposed privileges of modern childhood had to be paid with a high price.
The childhood researcher Alan Prout, who contributed to the emergence of the New Childhood Studies, illustrates the central elements of this childhood conception in a simplified but concise way (see Table 1.1).
Table 1.1 Childhood and adulthood in modern times
| Childhood | Adulthood |
| Private | Public |
| Nature | Culture |
| Irrational | Rational |
| Dependent | Independent |
| Passive | Active |
| Incompetent | Competent |
| Play | Work |
Source: Prout (2005: 10)
It is acknowledged today that childhood can be imagined and ‘constructed’ differently, and that children must be ‘listened to’ (according to Art. 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child), but the basic pattern of separation and dependency is held. This is illustrated by a quotation from a UNICEF publication (UNICEF, 2005: 3):
What then do we mean by childhood? The quality of children’s lives can vary radically within the same dwelling, between two houses on the same street, between regions and between industrialized and developing countries. The closer children come to being full-grown, the more cultures, countries, and even people within the same country differ in their views of what is expected of children and on the level of adult or legal protection they require. Yet, despite intellectual debates about the definition of childhood and cultural differences about what to expect for and from children, there has always been a substantial degree of shared understanding that childhood implies a separate and safe space, demarcated from adulthood, in which children can grow, play and develop.
It should not be disputed here that the distinction between children and adults is not limited to the ‘Western’ concept of childhood that has emerged in Europe. However, it is specifically Western if this distinction is conceived as strict separation and the quality of childhood is measured by whether the children are kept away from adult roles. This is illustrated by another UNICEF publication, entitled ‘Children in adult roles’ (UNICEF, 2006: 62; translated from German):
Childhood should be a separate living phase, clearly separated from the adult world. Children should be able to grow, play, rest and learn. … When children have to take over the role of adults, they are deprived of their childhood.
Such statements are made in order to prevent children from being overwhelmed, exploited or abused but, added together, they attribute passivity and a one-sided dependency relationship between children and adults. They leave no space for the imagination of childhoods or lifestyles of children, which are accompanied by the self-chosen assumption of tasks in the sense of shared responsibility or mutual support (reciprocity). This not only condemns and stigmatizes children’s agency in such contexts as ‘not childlike’ or ‘premature’, but also imposes the Western image of a dependent and all-round cared childhood as the standard for the societies of the Global South. So they have a paternalistic and colonizing function.
Often, the emergence of the Western childhood pattern and its institutionalization in the ‘developed’ societies is attributed to the assumption that, because of the higher level of productive resources, the labour power of the children became unnecessary and a special learning phase has been required in which young people are prepared for their productive tasks. Such an explication assumes that the learning of abilities is in principle only possible beyond productive work. It is ruled out that the work at issue here is work that is subject to the maxims of economic exploitation and embedded in structures which hinder the development of abilities. The separation of a life phase of childhood from that of the adult has also become ‘necessary’ because the ‘gravity of life’, which is proverbial to childhood, is based on the exploitation of human labour, a circumstance that has changed its face but in essence continues to exist.
Already almost half a century ago, US-American women’s rights activist Shulamith Firestone, in a text that influenced the women’s movement, saw the ‘oppression of the children’ principally founded in economic dependence (Firestone, 1970: 95): ‘Anyone who has ever observed a child wheedling a nickel from its mother knows that economic dependence is the basis of the child’s shame.’ Firestone exaggeratedly criticized the widespread notion that the fortune of children had improved and their exploitation had been overcome when they went to school instead of working. According to her, it is precisely the segregation of the world of adults that goes hand in hand with the school, which ‘reinforces the oppression of children as a class’ (Firestone, 1970: 94) and, as a result, the ‘growing disrespect’ and ‘systematic underestimation of the abilities of the child’ (Firestone, 1970: 83). With regard to so-called child labour, we should be aware, according to Firestone (Firestone, 1970: 96; italics in original)
… rather than that children are being exploited just like adults, is that adults can be so exploited. We need to start talking not about sparing children for a few years from the horrors of adult life, but about eliminating those horrors. In a society free of exploitation, children could be like adults (with no exploitation implied) and adults could be like children (with no exploitation implied).
Such considerations are more recent than ever. It is observed worldwide that children no longer live only in the separate worlds that the Western childhood conception provides for them. It is true that the time of children is increasing, especially that in which they stay at school, but at the same time they are increasingly involved in processes and activities that were previously reserved for adults. This applies in particular to the use of new digital communication technologies, which are already presented to children at an earlier age and which they usually use competently for themselves or for the area of the commodity world, where children as consumers as well as innovative designers participate.