Modernity, Postmodernity and The Family

Last Updated on May 28, 2015 by Karl Thompson

Modernity, Postmodernity and The Family is one of the most difficult topics for students to get their heads around – The first thing to understand is that modernist social theories (Functionalism and Marxism) are OLD – and were theorising about the family over 50 years ago.

The second thing is that Postmodern theories aren’t really theories – they just think that structures have disappeared and so Sociology should go all journalistic and just sort of marvel at the diversity of family life. IMO Postmodernism is not really Sociology at all, it’s (lame) lifestyle journalism.

Anyway, it’s on the spec, the mind map below is an overview of how Modernity, Postmodernity and ‘theorising’ about the family all fit together. Use in conjunction with my other posts on Post and Late Modernism for more depth.

Click to enlarge/ Save

Modernity postmodernity Family

Related Posts

Postmodern perspectives on the family

Why Do so Many Twenty Somethings Live with Their Parents?

27% of young adults live with their parents.

Last Updated on June 8, 2023 by Karl Thompson

27% of 20-34 year olds lived with their parents in 2022, just over one in four adults.

Some of the reasons for this include structural factors such as low wages for younger people and high house prices, but also cultural factors such. as uncertainty over relationships.

This post is designed to help you revise the ‘increasing family diversity‘ of the AS Sociology families and households module

Statistics on young people living with their parents

According to the Office for National Statistics the proportion of 20-34 year olds living with their parents in 2022 was

  • 27% of 20-34 year olds in total
  • 31% of males
  • 22% of females.

So there was a significant gender divide!

The numbers have increased for every age category since 2011, again according to the Office for National Statistics, the number of young adults living with their parents by age in 2021 compared to 2011 was:

  • 56% of 20 year olds, up from 52% in 2011.
  • 37% of 25 year olds, up from 28%.
  • 16% of 30 year olds, up from 12%.
  • 7% of 35 year olds, up from 6% in 2011.

Diversity of experience

However – Not all ‘Kippers*’ are the same! (*Kids living in their parents’ pockets)

It is important to keep in mind that not all ‘adult kids’ are the same; experiences of living at home with your parents into your 30s will vary.

For example, the experience of being a NEET and living at home with your parents may well be different to being one of the ‘Boomerang Kids’ – who move out to go to university but then move back in with their parents afterwards

Some adult kids would have lived at home continuously, but many would have moved out for a period with a partner, and then moved back in again.

Adult-Kids will also vary as to the extent to which they are forced into living with their parents due to financial reasons, or choose to do so for ‘lifestyle reasons’.

Experiences will also differ depending on parental attitudes to having their adult children living with them.

Why are more young adults living with their parents?

We can break this down into two broad sets of explanation:

  • structural structural
  • cultural changes

Structural changes

Many commentators stress that young adults have no choice but to live with their parents, focusing on structural (mainly economic) reasons that force people to live with their parents.

The following structural changes mean it is harder for young people to transition to independent living.

The expansion of higher education

The massive expansion in higher education has seen the number of undergraduate students triple since 1970, from 414,000 to 1.4 million in 2022. This means more young adults are not in work and economically dependent on their parents for longer.

The cost of Living Crisis

The recent sharp increase in young people living with their parents maybe due to the high inflation rates since 2021.

Young people generally earn less and live in rented accommodation and the cost of food, energy and rent prices would have driven many back to live at home with their parents.

Rising house prices

House prices in the UK have risen massively since the 1990s and today less than 50% of 18-35 year olds own their homes compared to to almost 70% in the mid 1990s.

Many will stay living at home longer in order to save up a deposit to buy a first home rather than waste money on rent.

Cultural changes

There are also cultural changes which mean young adults are more likely to choose to live with their parents even when they could move out.

More uncertainty about what a ‘normal relationship’ is.

Changing roles of men and women and changing expectations of relationships and family life result in young people being more reluctant to settle down in a classic long term relationship.

Changing norms about age

The meaning of ‘being 20 something is different today to what it was in the 1970s. Today, we simply want to ‘settle down’ later in life – 20s have become about ‘pulling and dating’, ‘30s about serious long term relationships, and late 30s about children. Of those 20 somethings who do flee the parental nest, they are increasingly likely to either live alone or share with friends. The number of young couple households has been decreasing in recent years.

High rates of relationship breakdowns

The increasing number of ‘kippers’ might also be linked to the increasing instability of relationships. There are plenty of late 20s and 30 somethings who have previously moved in with a partner for a few years, suffered a relationship breakdown, ended up back with their parents and are now reluctant to recommit!

See this Guardian post for further info

Perspectives on the ‘not quite children’

Most of the commentary on this social trend seems to be negative – focussing on such things as:

Some research, however, suggests that adults living at home with their parents can be a positive thingAs this research, based on 500 ‘adult-kids’ in the USA suggests

‘Few 20-somethings who live at home are mooching off their parents. More often, they are using the time at home to gain necessary credentials and save money for a more secure future.

Helicopter parents aren’t so bad after all. Involved parents provide young people with advantages, including mentoring and economic support, that have become increasingly necessary to success.’

Signposting

This is one of the topics within the families and households module, typically taught in the first year of A-level sociology.

Sources/ Find out More

Nice blog post on ‘how returning to live with our parents in our 30s benefited both sides

Barbara Ellen of the Guardian really doesn’t approve – NB most of the commentators don’t approve of her views either!

HESA: Student Higher Education Numbers 2022.

AS Sociology 7191 – Families and Households – A Visual Overview

Last Updated on August 8, 2016 by

Here’s a quick visual overview of how I’m intending to teach the new (although not that new given the relatively minor changes made) AS Sociology AQA 7191 Families and Households Option. (Click to enlarge/ save).

AS Sociology Families and Households

NB – This isn’t in the same order as the Scheme of Work on the AQA’s web site, but the content is the same. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with the AQA’s SOW, it’s just that I don’t see the need to change what I’ve got!

Positivism, Sociology and Social Research

Born out of the Enlightenment Positivists believe sociology is scientific and that it can be a force for social progress.

Last Updated on August 19, 2021 by

This post provides a brief overview of Positivist Research Methods, which consist of a scientific approach to social research using quantitative data to ensure objectivity and reliability. (In contrast to the Interpretivist approach to research which favours qualitative data.)

Positivism

The historical context of Positivism is that it emerged out of The Enlightenment and The Industrial Revolution….

The Enlightenment  refers to a period of European history spanning from 1650 to 1800. During this time, the authority of the church was challenged as people started to believe that knowledge should be derived from science rather than from God. The Enlightenment witnessed the birth of modern science which lead to massive social changes. The following three core beliefs (there were others too!) emerged out of The Enlightenment:

  • Underlying laws explained how the universe and society work (wasn’t just God’s will)
    Scientific study could reveal these laws.
  • All men could understand these laws (unlike religious belief – God’s will is unknowable)
  • Laws could be applied to society to improve it (the belief in progress and the pursuit of happiness).

The Enlightenment, Industrialisation, ‘Progress’ and the Birth of Sociology

The 18th and 19th centuries saw a number of new scientific discoveries in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology. Most notably for students of Sociology, scientific discoveries lead to new technologies which in turn lead to industrialisation, or the growth of factory based production and the building of such things as railways.

This in turn lead to much social transformation – such as Urbanisation and the growth of what Marxists called the Proletariat. Many commentators from the early 19th century onwards were disturbed by the contradiction between the huge advances, or progress being made in science and industry and the apparent worsening of the lives of the majority. As hundreds of thousands of people flooded into expanding industrial city centres such as Manchester and elsewhere in Britain and Europe, these new urban centres were plagued with new social problems – most notably poverty, unemployment, and social unrest.

It was in this context that August Comte founded Sociology – Comte basically believed that if we can use scientific findings to bring about improvements in production through industrialisation then we can study the social world and figure out how to construct a better society that can combat social problems such as poverty, lack of education and crime.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857): The Founder of Scientific Sociology (aka Positivism)

August Comte - The Founder of Positivist Sociology
August Comte – The Founder of Positivist Sociology

Comte introduced the word “Sociology” in 1839. The term “Sociology” is derived from the Latin word Socius, meaning companion or associate, and the Greek word logos, meaning study or science. Thus, meaning of sociology is the science of society.

Comte concentrated his efforts to determine the nature of human society and the laws and principles underlying its growth and development. He also laboured to establish the methods to be employed in studying social phenomena.

Comte argued that social phenomena can be like physical phenomena copying the methods of natural sciences. He thought that it was time for inquiries into social problems and social phenomena to enter into this last stage. So, he recommended that the study of society be called the science of society, i. e. ‘sociology’.

The General Ideas of Positivism – or The Scientific Method Applied to the Study of Sociology

1. Positivists believe that sociology can and should use the same methods and approaches to study the social world that “natural” sciences such as biology and physics use to investigate the physical world.

2. By adopting “scientific” techniques sociologists should be able, eventually, to uncover the laws that govern societies and social behaviour just as scientists have discovered the laws that govern the physical world.

3. Positivists believe that good, scientific research should reveal objective truths about the causes of social action – science tells us that water boils at 100 degrees and this is true irrespective of what the researcher thinks – good social research should tell us similar things about social action

4. Because positivists want to uncover the general laws that shape human behaviour, they are interested in looking at society as a whole. They are interested in explaining patterns of human behaviour or general social trends. In other words, they are interested in getting to the ‘bigger picture’.

5. To do this, positivists use quantitative methods such as official statistics, structured questionnaires and social surveys. Statistical, numerical data is crucial to Positivist research. Positivists need to collect statistical information in order to make comparisons. And in order to uncover general social trends. It is much more difficult to make comparisons and uncover social trends with qualitative data.

6. These methods also allow the researcher to remain relatively detached from the research process – this way, the values of the researcher should not interfere with the results of the research and knowledge should be objective

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) – Positivism and Quantitative Sociology

Emile Durkheim - Founding Father of Sociology
Emile Durkheim – Founding Father of Sociology

The modern academic discipline of sociology began with the work of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). While Durkheim rejected much of the details of Comte’s philosophy “positivism”, he retained and refined its method. Durkheim believed that sociology should be able to predict accurately the effect of particular changes in social organisation such as an increase in unemployment or a change in the education system.

Durkheim believed the primary means of researching society should be the Comparative Method which involves comparing groups and looking for correlations or relationships between 2 or more variables. This method essentially seeks to establish the cause and effect relationships in society by comparing variables.

Durkheim’s Study of Suicide (1897)

Durkheim chose to study suicide because he thought that if he could prove that suicide, a very personal act, could be explained through social factors, then surely any action could be examined in such a way.  Durkheim’s method consisted of comparing the incidence of various social factors with number of cases of suicide.  Durkheim did this work so well, that seventy years later his study was still being cited in textbooks as an excellent example of research methodology

The starting-point for Durkheim was a close analysis of the available official statistics, which showed that rates of suicide varied:
• From one country to another – countries experiencing rapid social change had higher suicide rates.
• Between different social groups – The divorced had higher suicide rates than the married.
• Between different religious groups – Protestants had higher suicide rates than Catholics

Durkheim noted that these rates were relatively stable over time for each group. The rates may have gone up or down, but the rates remained stable relative to each other. Durkheim theorised that if suicide was an entirely individual matter, untouched by the influence of social factors, it would be an astonishing coincidence if these statistical patterns remained so constant over a long period of time.  Entirely individual decisions should lead to a random pattern.

Durkheim used his data to derive his now famous theory – that suicide rates increase when there is too little or too much social regulation or integration. Social Regulation is the extent to which there are clear norms and values in a society, while social integration is the extent to which people belong to society.

Even though this study is now almost 120 years old it remains the case that suicide rates still vary according to the levels of social integration and regulation.

Positivism and Social Facts
Durkheim argued that social trends are ‘social facts’ – they are real phenomena which exist independently of the individuals who make them up. He claimed that by if sociology limited itself to the study of social facts it could be more objective. He argued that these facts constrain individuals and help us to make predictions about the way societies change and evolve.

Some Criticisms of the Positivist Approach to Social Research

  • Treats individuals as if they passive and unthinking – Human beings are less predictable than Positivists suggest
  • Interpretivists argue that people’s subjective realities are complex and this demands in-depth qualitative methods.
  • The statistics Positivists use to find their ‘laws of society’ might themselves be invalid, because of bias in the way they are collected.
  • By remaining detached we actually get a very shallow understanding of human behaviour.

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle 

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of  A level sociology papers 1 and 3.

Contents include:

  • 74 pages of revision notes
  • 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
  • Five theory and methods essays
  • ‘How to write methods in context essays’.

Signposting and Related Posts 

This post was primarily written for students studying the second year compulsory Theory and Methods module.

Positivism is often contrasted to Interpretivism – and a summary of the differences can be found here: Positivism and Interpretivism – A Very Brief Overview.

They generally regard sociology as a science and the material above can be used on essay on that subject, and in a similar vein they also believe that sociology can be value free.

Functionalists are generally regarded as positivists, especially Emile Durkheim who was a student of Comte.

Positivists generally prefer quantitative data and so another related post is Official Statistics in Sociology

Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research

Positivists believe society shapes the individual and use quantitative methods, Interpretivists believe individuals shape society and use qualitative methods.

Last Updated on February 3, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Positivism and Interpretivism are the two basic approaches to research methods in Sociology. Positivist prefer scientific quantitative methods, while Interpretivists prefer humanistic qualitative methods. This post provides a very brief overview of the two.

positivism-interpretivism

Positivism

  • Positivists see society as shaping the individual and believe that ‘social facts’ shape individual action.
  • Sociology can and should use the same methods and approaches to study the social world that “natural” sciences such as biology and physics use to investigate the physical world.
  • By adopting “scientific” techniques sociologists should be able, eventually, to uncover the laws that govern societies just as scientists have discovered the laws that govern the physical world.
  • Positivists prefer quantitative methods such as social surveys, structured questionnaires and official statistics because these have good reliability and representativeness.
  • The positivist tradition stresses the importance of doing quantitative research such as large scale surveys in order to get an overview of society as a whole and to uncover social trends, such as the relationship between educational achievement and social class. This type of sociology is more interested in trends and patterns rather than individuals.
  • In positivist research, sociologists tend to look for relationships, or ‘correlations’ between two or more variables. This is known as the comparative method.
Positivists step back from society and try to get an overview of social trends in a detached way.

Interpretivism

  • Interpretivists, or anti-positivists argue that individuals are not just puppets who react to external social forces as Positivists believe.
  • According to Interpretivists individuals are intricate and complex and different people experience and understand the same ‘objective reality’ in very different ways and have their own, often very different, reasons for acting in the world, thus scientific methods are not appropriate.
  • Intepretivist research methods derive from ‘social action theory
  • An Interpretivist approach to social research would be much more qualitative, using methods such as unstructured interviews or participant observation
  • Interpretivists argue that in order to understand human action we need to achieve ‘Verstehen‘, or empathetic understanding – we need to see the world through the eyes of the actors doing the acting.
  • Intereptivists actually criticise ‘scientific sociology’ (Positivism) because many of the statistics it relies on are themselves socially constructed.
Interpretivists are interested in micro sociology. They want to understand the intricate complexities of human interactions, feelings and motives.

Positivism and Interpretivism Summary Grid 

Positivism and Interpretivism

Positivism and Interpretivism FAQ

What is the difference between Positivism and Interpretivism?

Positivism is a top down macro approach in sociology which uses quantitative methods to find the general laws of society, Interpretivism is a micro approach which uses qualitative methods to gain an empathetic understanding of why people act from their own understanding/ interpretation.

What is Positivism?

Positivism is a scientific approach social research developed by August Comte in the mid-19th century and developed by Emile Durkheim. It involves using quantitative methods to study social facts to uncover the objective laws of society.

What is an example of Positivism?

Durkehims’ study of suicide is a good example of a Positivist research study. He used official statistics and other quantitative data to analyse why the suicide rate varied from country to country.

What is Interpretivism?

Interpretivism is an approach to social research first developed by Max Weber in early 19th century. He believed we needed to understand the motives for people’s actions to fully understand why they acted, aiming for what he called Verstehen, or empathetic understanding. Intepretivists use qualitative research methods as they are best for getting more in-depth information about the way people interpret their own actions.

What is an example of Interpretivist research?

Any study which aims to understand the world from the point of view of the participants, so most participant observation studies are examples, such as Paul Wills’ Learning to Labour and Venkatesh’ Gang Leader for a Day.

Can Positivist and Interpretivist Methods be used together?

Absolutely, yes. In fact many contemporary research studies combine elements of quantitative and qualitative research to achieve greater validity, reliability and representativeness.

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of  A level sociology papers 1 and 3.

Theory Methods Revision Cover

Contents include:

  • 74 pages of revision notes
  • 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
  • Five theory and methods essays
  • ‘How to write methods in context essays’.
Signposting and Related Posts 

Links to more detailed posts on Positivism and Social Action Theory are embedded in the text above. Other posts you might like include:

Positivism in Social Research 

Max Weber’s Social Action Theory

The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, A Summary

Links to all of my research methods posts can be found at my main research methods page.

Is Childhood Disappearing?

A summary of Neil Postman’s theory with supporting evidence and criticisms.

Last Updated on September 5, 2023 by Karl Thompson

There is an argument that childhood as we know it is disappearing with the the distinction between adulthood and childhood narrowing. Neil Postman (1994) argued that childhood is ‘disappearing at a dazzling speed’.

book cover: Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood.

As supporting evidence Postman looked at the trend towards giving children the same rights as adults, the growing similarity of adult and children’s clothing and even cases of children committing ‘adult crimes’ such as murder and rape.

Postman’s theory is based on the view that communications technology is the primary thing which shapes society.

Following Aries, he suggested that in the middle ages most people were illiterate (they couldn’t read or write) and speech was the main form of communicating, thus there was hardly any distinction between adults and children.

Postman argues that childhood emerged along with mass literacy. This was because the printed word created a division between those that could read (adults) and those that couldn’t (children). This division emerged because it takes several years to master reading and writing skills, and those years of ‘not being able to read and years spent learning to read and write’ became the childhood years.

HOWEVER, Postman argues that in contemporary society, new technologies like television and the internet blur this separation and that children are now much more able to access the ‘adult world’. As a result, childhood as we know it is disappearing.

The disappearance of childhood: supporting evidence

Some examples which may support the view that the boundary between adulthood and childhood are disappearing include:

  • Children now spend a lot more time online without parental supervision. This means they are more exposed to adult themes at a younger age. Sue Palmer’s work on Toxic Childhood generally supports this.
  • The ‘Learner Voice’ in education. There is more of an expectation that adult teachers will listen to their students and consider their needs. Children are even being used on interview panels for new teachers in some schools.
  • Children have the same rights as adults (The UN’s rights of the child)
  • The growth of ‘Kidults’ means adults becoming more like children. One aspect of this is younger adults spending longer living with their parents.

The Workout Kid

The Work-out Kid is one example which suggests childhood may be disappearing…

Criticisms of the theory that childhood is disappearing

Jenks (2005) suggests that while there are increased concerns among parents about the impacts technologies such as the internet are having on children, this hasn’t resulted in the disappearance of childhood as such.

Rather, such technological changes have led to parents thinking children and childhood need to be more protected that ever – as evidenced in the increase Paranoid Parenting and social policies surrounding safeguarding.

Most of the evidence supporting the March of Progress View of Childhood criticises the idea that childhood is disappearing.

The legal age of marriage was recently raised from 16 to 18, which moves the boundary of adulthood later.

Signposting/ Related Posts

This post has been written primarily for students of A-level sociology. The childhood topic is part of the families and households module. You might also like the related posts below….

Please click here to return to the main ReviseSociology home page!

Sources:

Jenks (2005) Childhood.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Inequalities between children in the United Kingdom

There are several inequalities between children including those based around social class and income, gender and ethnicity.

Last Updated on October 12, 2023 by Karl Thompson

The March of Progress view of childhood argues that childhood has gradually improved over the last century or so.

However, conflict theorists argue that this view is too rose tinted. It ignores the fact that there are significant inequalities between children. Social policies designed to benefit children have not helped all children equally. 

We can point to at least the following significant inequalities between children…

  • income based inequalities
  • gender based inequalities
  • Inequalities related to ethnicity
  • Inequalities in child protection services.

The effects of income inequalities on child development 

Nearly 80% of children from the richest fifth of households are read to daily at age 3, compared to only 40% of children from the poorest fifth of households (2).

bar chart showing how many hours parents read to children.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (1) these inequalities which start at home persist through education:

  • Only 57% of English pupils eligible for free school meals reached a good level of development at the end of Reception in 2019, compared with 74% of their better-off peers. 
  • Only 40% of disadvantaged pupils go on to earn good GCSEs in English and maths compared to 60% of the better-off students.
  • Ten years after GCSEs, just over 50% of the richest fifth of students have graduated from university compared to fewer than 20% of the poorest fifth of students

Gender inequalities in childhood 

Girls suffer more problems in childhood than boys

In the year ending March 2019, the CSEW  (3) estimated that women were around three times as likely as men to have experienced sexual abuse before the age of 16 years (11.5% compared with 3.5%).

Some more historical evidence shows that girls have to negotiate the psychological pressures of ‘objectification’ much more than boys:

  • A 2016 survey found that 29% of girls reported having experienced unwanted sexual touching in school. 
  • The same report found that 70% of girls and boys reported hearing on a regular basis  words such as ‘slag’ or ‘slut’ to shame girls 
  • A 2007 survey of Brownies aged 7-10 were asked to describe ‘planet sad’ – they spoke of it being inhabited by girls who were fat.
  • A 2009 survey found that a quarter of girls thought it was more important to be beautiful than clever. – Youngpoll.com
  • 16% of 15 -17 year old girls have avoided going to school because they were worried about their appearance
  • One further consequence of objectification is that girls face sexual abuse from boys. (nspcc)

Ethnic inequalities in childhood 

Exclusion rates are higher for White Gypsy and Roma pupils (0.39%), Traveller of Irish Heritage pupils (0.27%), Black Caribbean pupils (0.25%) and Mixed White and Black Caribbean children (0.24%) (4). 

Exclusions for racial incidents in schools were up 40% in 2020. 

Based on a recent poll of 400 BAME teachers, 54% said they had experienced actions they believed were demeaning to them because of their ethnicity. (4)

Child Protection services fail to protect many children from harm

The most horrific example of this is from the town of Rotherham where gangs of Asian men groomed, abused and trafficked 1400 children while police were contemptuous of the victims and the council ignored what was going on, in spite of years of warnings and reports about what was happening.

A recent report commissioned by the council, covering 1997 to 2013, detailed cases where children as young as 11 had been raped by a number of different men, abducted, beaten and trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England to continue the abuse.

It said that three reports from 2002 to 2006 highlighted the extent of child exploitation and links to wider criminality but nothing was done, with the findings either suppressed or simply ignored. Police failed to act on the crimes and treated the victims with contempt and deemed that they were “undesirables” not worthy of protection.

Signposting

This post has been written primarily for A-level Sociology students, studying the Families and Households module. Many of the examples above are related to the topic of Toxic Childhood.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

sources 

  1. IFS (2022) Lack of progress on closing educational inequalities disadvantaging millions throughout life.
  2. Nuffield Foundation (2022) Little Change to Early Childhood Inequalities
  3. CSEW 2022  Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales. 
  4. Barnardos: How systemic racism affects young people

Toxic Childhood

Examples include more screen time, less outdoor play, and more anxiety.

Last Updated on September 5, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Toxic Childhood is where rapid technological and cultural changes cause psychological and physical damage to children

The concept of Toxic Childhood is one of the main criticisms of the March of Progress view of chilhood. It is especially critical of the idea that more education and products for children are necessarily good for them.

Sue Palmer, a former primary school headteacher invented the term toxic childhood. Her theory is outlined in her 2006 book: Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About It‘.

toxic-childhood-book

In the book, Palmer argues that a toxic mix of technological and cultural changes are having a negative impact on the development of a growing number of children, and she outlines six main ways in which childhood has become increasingly toxic over the years.

Six examples of toxic childhood

A few years ago Sue Palmer’s Web Site had a very clear summary of six social changes which were damaging children’s early development, listed below….

  1. The decline of outdoor play – linked to increased childhood obesity.
  2. The commercialisation of childhood – linked to children being exploited by advertisers.
  3. The ‘schoolification’ of early childhood – which reduces independence.
  4. The decline of listening, language and communication skills – because of shortened attention spans.
  5. Screen saturation – reduces face to face interaction.
  6. Tests, targets and education – increases anxiety among children.

Below I summarise some of the ways aspects of childhood today may still be toxic!

The decline of outdoor play

According to Early Years Matters play underpins every aspect of children’s development. Children develop intellectual, language, social, emotional, and creative skills through play.

It is through play that children explore the world around them, take risks and develop their imaginations.  

However outdoor play for children has declined significantly in the last decades. Save the Children recently reported that only 27% of children play outside regularly. This compares to 80% 55-64 olds when they were children.

Outdoor play generally provides children with more freedom than indoor play, allowing children to develop a greater sense of independence and self-reliance than with indoor play which is altogether more controlled and monitored by adults.

The decline of outdoor play also means children are getting less exercise today and it is correlated with increasing childhood obesity. It could also be having a detrimental impact of children’s mental health.

According the interactionist theory of socialisation play is central to the development of the self in childhood. So the decline in outdoor play may even be preventing children from becoming fully social beings.

The commercialisation of childhood

Childhood has become increasingly commercialised over the last few decades. This is where children are turned into consumers from early years into their teens. This is achieved mainly through advertising products and brands to children through television and more recently social media.

While the number of adverts children watch on television has decreased since 2013, social media is a different story.

Children are increasingly being bombarded with content marketing on social media: funny videos and memes which link to products. Children may also follow minor celebrities who promote certain brands and products.

With such marketing techniques children may not even be aware they are victims of commercialisation.

The ‘schoolification’ of early childhood

Childhood has become increasingly regulated and there is an expectation that children should always be learning at a standardised pace to keep up with ‘ordinary’ child development.

For example the baby centre has milestone charts for children in different age brackets outlining what most, half, and ‘advanced’ children can do by certain ages.

There is thus more pressure on parents and child carers to be teaching language, numeracy, or motor skills to very young pre-school children rather than just allowing them freedom to explore and enjoy their childhoods.

The government has also recently announced an increase to the amount of time children should spend in school. From September 2024 children should be. in school for 6.5 hours a day or a minimum of 32.5 hours a week.

The decline of listening, language and communication skills

The number of children estimated to be behind with language and communication skills in England and Wales increased to 1.9 million in 2023, up from 1.7 million in the previous year.

Combined with the above point this means we are setting more and more targets but children are just failing to reach them. This will then probably mean more catching up in school rather than modifying the targets.

All together we seem to have constructed a set of rules for children than sets many of them up to be failures from a young age.

Screen saturation

One study (reported 2020) based on a sample of 3000 10-16 year olds found that half of them were online for more than 5 hours a day.

However the study above finds mixed results for the positive or negative consequences of increased screen time on child development, physical health and mental well-being.

Tests, targets and education

Marketisation from 1988 has greatly increased the role of testing in schools. This has led to a narrowing of the curriculum as more time is spent on teaching children to jump through the hoops required to pass exams.

More testing and exam pressure is also correlated with increasing anxiety among children.

More Recent Books on Toxic Childhood

Sue Palmer has published two more books, focusing on boys, in 2007, and on girls, in 2014.

Toxic Childhood: Criticisms

There are several criticisms of the view that childhood has become increasingly toxic:

  • This could be an example of an adult ‘panicking’ about technological changes, maybe children are more adaptable than Palmer thinks?
  • Taking the longer term view, childhood may well be more commercialised today, but surely children are better off today as consumers rather than producers (child labourers)?
  • This article by Catherine Bennett is worth a read – it reminds us that ‘in the good old days we just had to endure beatings’, although in fairness to Sue Palmer I don’t think she actually romanticizes the past, she’s really just pointing out the new and different problems children now face in a post-modern age.
Find out More

You might like to visit Sue Palmer’s Web Site.

Palmer’s Web Site used to be well organised, and used to have a lot of links to recent research on Toxic Childhood..

Unfortunately the and the free information (arguably like childhood) has disappeared, and it now just links to her books, which you have to pay for. (I guess times are hard for adults as well as children, especially when you’re used to a headteacher’s salary!)

Having said that some of her most recent books on child development and education are worth a read. Her most recent publication argues for raising the school starting age to seven!

Related Posts 

This material is relevant to the families and households module, usually taught in the first year of A-level sociology.

Other related posts include:

Toxic Childhood in The News

More Evidence of Toxic Childhood

Inequalities between children

The reasons for and consequences of changing patterns of migration

Trends in migration

  • From 1900 to the Second World War the largest immigrant group to the UK were Irish, mainly for economic reasons, followed by Eastern and Central Europian Jews, who were often fleeing from persecution.
  • Before the 1950s very few immigrants were non-white.
  • By contrast, during the 1950s, black immigrants from the Caribbean begain to arrice in the UK, followed during the 1960s and 70s by South-Asian immigratnts from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
  • Since 2001 the main sources of immigration to the UK have been as follows:
    15% UK citizens returning home-ownership
    30% from the European Uniion (mainly Polish)
    30% from New Commonwealth countries such as india

To what extent is migration responsible for UK population growth?

  • In short, it’s not all about increased immigration, it’s more complex!
  • For most of the 20th century, the growth of the UK population was the result of natural increase (more births than deaths). Until the 1980s the numbers of people emigrating was greater than the number of people immigrating
  • More recently, however, and especially since the turn of the Millennium (around the year 2000), there has been an increase in net migration, reaching a peak in 2011 of just over 250, 000. However, this recent increase in net migration is mainly due to the decrease in emmigration, rather than an increase in immigration.
  • Finally, there has been a mini baby boom in the UK since the year 2000 which is responsible for about a third of the increase in recent population growth. However,

Explaining the reasons for immigration to the UK

In order to explain immigration, you have to look at both push and pull factors.

  • Push factors are things llike escaping poverty, unemployment or persecution.
  • Pull factors include things like better opportunities for jobs, study, a higher shtandard of living, more political and religious freedom and joining relatives.

The main pull factors to the UK in recent years have been:

  • To study at university (and also resulting in short term immigration only)
  • For employment – NB historically this is the major reason, and yes this does explain Polish immigration to a large extent but it’s also worth noting that many early migrants from the Caribbean and South-Asia were recruited by the British government to fill labour shortages in the UK – so quite literally pulled to the UK.
  • To be with family members.
  • The most significant push factor has been to seek asylum from Persecution. The most significant recent wave of this type was when 30 000 East African Asians escaped racist persecution by Iid Amin in Uganda in the 1970s. More recently Britain has accepted thousands of refugees fleeing persecution from several countries.
  • Another significant push factor is the high levels of unemployment in some southern and eastern European countries – Spain for example has youth unemployment of around 50%.

Explaining the reasons for emmigration from the UK

Historically the UK has been a net exporter of people. Two of the main reasons for emmigration include:

  • To take advantage of better employment opportunities
  • To have a higher standard of living – To benefit from the lower cost of living abroad in retirement.
  • If we go back into long term history, we could even add ‘colonial conquest’ to list – much early emigration was linked to the British Empire’s desire to control resources in other parts of the world.

The consequences of immigration for the United Kingdom

To follow!

The radical feminist perspective on power and control in relationships

Last Updated on October 3, 2023 by Karl Thompson

The Radical Feminist viewpoint is that relationships are the primary means through which men control women and maintain their power over them in society.

Probably the most shocking evidence which supports this view is the continued prevalence of domestic violence. According to the Crime Survey of England and Wales (2022) 7.9% of women were victims of domestic abuse in the year ending March 2022. This compared to only 3.5% of men.

Graph showing that women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse than men. England and Wales 2006 to 2022.

The radical Feminist explanation for Domestic Violence is that it is an inevitable feature of a patriarchal society. It is part of a wider system that helps maintain male power over women, the key division in society.

Just to demonstrate that this Radical Feminist views didn’t disappear in the 1980s. Here is a recent Radical Feminist view on domestic violence…

“Domestic violence against women by men is “caused” by the misuse of power and control within a context of male privilege. Male privilege operates on an individual and societal level to maintain a situation of male dominance, where men have power over women and children. Domestic violence by men against women can be seen as a consequence of the inequalities between men and women, rooted in patriarchal traditions that encourage men to believe they are entitled to power and control over their partners.”

(Women’s AID Domestic Violence Fact Sheet, 2009).

Criticisms of the Radical Feminist view on Domestic Violence

1. Wilkinson criticises Feminists by arguing that it is not so much Patriarchy, but poverty that causes stress which leads to DV, so this is much less common in more equal, middle class households.

2. Men are also victims of Domestic Violence with some statistics suggesting that men are the victims in as many as 40% of cases of abuse.

3. There is a historical trends towards women having more freedom and control over their sexuality, especially compared to traditional tribal societies, a point elaborated on below.

Women have more sexual freedom today…

In many traditional tribal societies, there is little notion that women should gain any satisfaction out of sex. As one British witness to sexuality amongst the Himba of Namibia put it ‘when the husband wants sex, the woman just opens her legs, he gets on with it. When he’s finished, he just roles over and goes to sleep. There’s no sense of pleasure in it for the woman’.

Moreover, in some societies, especially in East Africa, women’s sexuality is tightly controlled. In extreme cases through Female Genital Mutilation, which removes much of the pleasure associated with sex, and sex remains very much about reproduction only.

The above example stands in stark contrast to modern notions of female sexuality. Since the heyday of Feminism and the sexual revolution in the 1960s, and helped by modern contraception, we now live in the age of what Anthony Giddens calls ‘plastic sexuality’. This is where sex is primarily about pleasure for both sexes rather than just being about reproduction.

Today, women increasingly demand sexual satisfaction as an ordinary part of their relationships, and cultural products such as the recent best-selling novel – ‘50 Shades of grey’ and programmes such as ‘The Joy of Teen Sex’ certainly suggest there is much more open and honest discussion about sex between partners in relationships.

Female sexuality is discussed more today. One 2016 TED talk on the topic by Sarah Barmark has over 40M views.

screenshot of Sarah Barmark's blog about female sexuality and gender.

Further evidence that suggests modern relationships are equal and that women are more empowered lies in the proliferation of advice and discussion sites about relationships. Advice magazines such as seventeen.com suggest girls are more empowered in their relationships than they used to be. Such magazines even have quizzes so girls can assess whether their boyfriend’s up to scratch.

Blogs such as the good men project suggest that men are more prepared to discuss ‘what it means to be a man’ and ‘modern relationships’. This further suggests more equality between the sexes where intimate relations are concerned.

Domestic finances are more equal today

Pahl and Volger (1993) found that ‘pooling’ of household income is on the increase. Pooling is where both partners have equal access of income and joint responsibility for expenditure.

50% of couples pooled their income compared to only 19% of their parents, showing a movement away from ‘allowance systems’ in household expenditure’

Evidence against the view that there is equality in sexual relations

  • women are more likely to be harassed than men.
  • women experience less sexual satisfaction.
  • the mainstream media don’t advertise vibrators.
  • Decision making between men and women may not be equal.

Women are more likely to be sexually harassed than men

According to a 2020 UK government survey women are more likely to be victims of sexual harassment than men. 84% of women said they had experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime compared to 60% of men.

bar chart comparing male and female victims of sexual harassment 2020, England and Wales.

Women experience less sexual satisfaction than men….

Indiana University’s survey found that 91% of men had an org**m the last time they had sex, but only 64% of women did. These numbers roughly reflect the percentage of men and women who say they enjoyed sex “extremely” or “quite a bit”. 66% of women and 83% of men. Only 58% of women in their ’20s had an org**m during their latest sexual encounter.

30-40% percent of women report difficulty climaxing and 33% of women under 35 often feel sad, anxious, restless or irritable after sex, while 10% frequently feel sad after intercourse.”

The mainstream media refuses to advertise vibrators

According to one Feminist blog…“Vibrators still are such a big taboo. The media and films (ie. American Pie) glamourise women’s sexuality. However, they refuses to run ads for vibrators which are very useful tools for helping women understand their sexuality. Yet Viagra ads run on all of these platforms with no problem.

  • All of this serves to reinforce ‘heteronormativity’, or the idea that women need men to give them sexual satisfaction. The problem with this is that the evidence suggests that men are failing to provide satisfaction. Many women report a lack of satisfaction in the bedroom.”

Feminist criticisms that decision making is becoming more equal

While some decisions concerning money are made jointly, these tend to be less important ones – such as what clothes to buy. Men still tend to have the final say in more important decisions such as changing jobs or moving house.

Signposting and Related Posts

This material is relevant to the families and households topic within A-level sociology.

This post covers the difficult topic of Domestic Abuse in more depth.

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Fun Fact: Google regards ‘org**m as ‘objectionable content’ hence the **!