Applying material from Item D and your knowledge, evaluate the view that UK society has become more child-centred

Last Updated on November 14, 2026 by Karl Thompson

This is the 20-mark Families and Households essay question from the June 2020 AQA A-level Sociology Paper 2 (7192/2), which was sat in November 2020. Below you’ll find the question and Item D exactly as AQA printed them, what the question wants, how it’s marked, an essay plan and a full answer.

In short, the answer argues that:

1. The march of progress view is right that UK society has become more child-centred: there are more laws protecting children, children have rights, and parents have fewer children and spend more time and money on each of them.
2. HOWEVER, child-centredness is not the same as children being better off. Critics such as Furedi and Palmer argue that some forms of child-centredness, such as over-protection and commercialisation, harm children.
3. And as Item D says, the extent of child-centredness is exaggerated: inequalities, abuse and adult control mean that for some children childhood is a negative experience.

An A-level sociology essay written for the AQA’s 7192 specification, exam paper 2 (Topics in Sociology), Families and Households section.

The question and Item D

Item D

Some sociologists argue that UK society has become more child-centred. Children today are more privileged than they have ever been. There are a large range of laws and policies in place to protect them and there is an increasing emphasis now placed on children’s rights.

However, other sociologists argue that the extent of child-centredness is exaggerated, and that childhood can be a negative experience for some children.

06 Applying material from Item D and your knowledge, evaluate the view that UK society has become more child-centred. [20 marks]

What the question is asking you to do

“Child-centred” means that children and their needs are at the centre of family life and of society: that adults organise their time, money and decisions around children’s welfare. The view in the question is the march of progress view of childhood.

“Evaluate the view” means weighing up the arguments for and against it and reaching a judgement. A one-sided answer can’t reach the top band, however much it knows.

Item D gives you hooks on both sides. For the view: children are more privileged than ever, laws and policies protect them and there’s more emphasis on children’s rights. Against it: the extent of child-centredness is exaggerated and childhood can be a negative experience for some children. A good answer applies all five, and says which part of the Item it’s using as it goes.

Notice the wording: the question asks about UK society, not just the family. So you can use evidence about the state, schools, the law and the media as well as about parents. And there’s a second, subtler debate you can use for evaluation: even if society has become more child-centred, is that actually good for children?

How the question is marked

Every Paper 2 20-mark question is marked the same way. The marks are split across the three assessment objectives like this:

Assessment objective	What it rewards	Marks
AO1	Knowledge and understanding	8
AO2	Application (including applying the Item)	6
AO3	Analysis and evaluation	6
Total		20

Essay plan (the short version)

• Introduction: define child-centredness and the march of progress view (Cunningham); say the answer will judge how far, and whether it’s good for children.
• Laws and policies protect children (Item D): restrictions on child labour, compulsory schooling, the Children Act 1989. Evaluate: protection is also control (Gittins’ age patriarchy; Holt and Firestone).
• More emphasis on children’s rights (Item D): the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children’s wishes in court decisions. Evaluate: rights are exercised through adults.
• Smaller families, more time and money per child (“more privileged”, Item D): falling fertility, rising parental time, the cost of a child. Evaluate: Furedi’s paranoid parenting – child-centred but harmful.
• The extent is exaggerated (Item D): Palmer’s toxic childhood; Postman’s disappearance of childhood. Evaluate: moral panic; Opie.
• Negative for some children (Item D): poverty, abuse, the “dark side” of the family; divorce and changing gender roles (New Right v feminists).
• Conclusion: more child-centred than ever on most measures, but unevenly, and not always in children’s interests.

Introduction

A child-centred society is one in which children’s needs and welfare come first: in family life, in the law and in social policy. The march of progress view argues that UK society has become steadily more child-centred over time. The historian Hugh Cunningham (2006) argues that children now occupy a central place in families and in society, and that they’re valued for who they are rather than for the work they can do.

As Item D suggests, supporters of this view point to children being more privileged than ever, to the laws and policies that protect them and to the growing emphasis on children’s rights. HOWEVER, conflict sociologists argue that the extent of child-centredness is exaggerated, and that childhood can be a negative experience for some children. In this essay I evaluate the main evidence for child-centredness and then the arguments against it, before reaching a judgement on how far UK society has become child-centred, and whether that’s good for children.

Laws and policies protect children

Point: As Item D says, there are a large range of laws and policies in place to protect children, and this is strong evidence that society has become more child-centred.

Explain: In the early nineteenth century many working-class children worked in factories and mines. The factory acts from 1833 onwards restricted child labour, and today children can’t do most paid work until they are 14 (13 in some council areas), with strict limits on their hours. The 1880 Education Act made school compulsory, and young people in England must now stay in education or training until 18. The Children Act 1989 made the child’s welfare the paramount consideration in court decisions about them, and gave local authorities a duty to protect children at risk of harm. You can find the main policies in date order in my timeline of social policies which changed childhood.

Analyse: These laws reflect a shift in how society sees children: from an economic asset who contributed to the family income to a vulnerable group needing protection and investment. The state now treats childhood as a separate, protected stage of life.

Criticise: Conflict sociologists argue that laws which protect children also control them. Diana Gittins (1998) uses the term age patriarchy for adult domination over children, and child liberationists such as Shulamith Firestone (1970) and John Holt (1974) argue that “protection” from work and the adult world keeps children dependent and powerless. On this view, compulsory schooling is as much about controlling children as about putting them first. So more protection doesn’t necessarily mean more child-centred: it may mean more adult-centred control of children.

More emphasis on children’s rights

Point: Item D also points to the increasing emphasis now placed on children’s rights.

Explain: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), which the UK ratified in 1991, gives children the right to express their views on matters affecting them and to have those views taken seriously. The Children Act 1989 requires courts to consider a child’s wishes and feelings, and England has had a Children’s Commissioner since the Children Act 2004. In schools, school councils and “pupil voice” are now routine.

Analyse: This is a real shift in the status of children. The Victorian idea that children should be “seen and not heard” has given way to the idea that children are people with rights of their own, not the property of their parents. That is child-centredness in its strongest sense: society listening to children, not just protecting them.

Criticise: HOWEVER, children’s rights are mostly exercised through adults. Judges, social workers, teachers and parents decide how much weight a child’s views get, and children have very little control over their own time, space and money. So rights on paper may exaggerate how much children’s voices actually shape decisions.

Smaller families, more time and money per child

Point: Item D says that children today are more privileged than they have ever been. The strongest evidence for this is inside the family: parents have fewer children and invest more in each one.

Explain: The total fertility rate in England and Wales fell to 1.41 children per woman in 2024, the lowest on record (ONS). With fewer children, parents can spend more time and money on each. Studies of time use support this: Dotti Sani and Treas (2016), comparing 11 Western countries including the UK, found that parents spent more time on childcare in 2012 than in 1965, with the biggest increases among highly educated parents. Children are also expensive. The Child Poverty Action Group (2025) estimates that the full cost of raising a child to 18, including housing and childcare, is about £250,000 for a couple and nearly £290,000 for a lone parent. Much of what parents spend goes on products and services designed specifically for children, from toys and clothes to holidays and extra-curricular activities.

Analyse: This fits the march of progress view. Once children are no longer needed for their earnings and most survive into adulthood, parents can invest in them emotionally and financially. Children have become, in effect, the emotional centre of the family.

Criticise: Frank Furedi (2001) agrees that parenting has become child-centred but argues it has become too child-centred. In an age of paranoid parenting, parents exaggerate the risks their children face, from strangers, traffic and the internet, and so supervise them constantly. The result, critics argue, is “helicopter parents” and “cotton wool kids” who are more dependent and anxious, and who may stay dependent into adulthood. So the family may be more child-centred without children being better off. A Marxist would also point out that the higher spending is unequal: affluent parents can invest far more than poor parents can, and much of the spending benefits the businesses that market to children.

The extent of child-centredness is exaggerated

Point: The second half of Item D says that other sociologists argue the extent of child-centredness is exaggerated.

Explain: Sue Palmer (2006) argues that rapid technological and cultural change has produced a toxic childhood. Parents working long hours, junk food, screen saturation, commercialisation and exam pressure are all damaging children’s physical and mental development. On this view, a society that was truly child-centred wouldn’t organise children’s lives around adult work, advertising and tests. Neil Postman (1982) goes further and argues that childhood is disappearing: television has broken down the “information hierarchy” between adults and children, so children have access to the adult world of sex, violence and death, and the line between childhood and adulthood is blurring.

Analyse: If Palmer and Postman are right, UK society is child-centred in its rhetoric but not in its practice. Adults’ needs (work, profit, entertainment) still come first, and children absorb the costs.

Criticise: Palmer’s argument can be criticised as a moral panic: every generation worries about the effect of new media on children, and much of the evidence is correlational. Iona Opie (1993), who studied children’s playground culture, found that children still have a rich culture of their own, which suggests childhood isn’t disappearing. And the very fact that toxic childhood became a public concern, with campaigns and government inquiries, could be read as evidence that society is child-centred.

Childhood can be a negative experience for some children

Point: Item D’s final claim is that childhood can be a negative experience for some children. This is the strongest criticism, because it shows that child-centredness is not shared equally.

Explain: In 2024/25, 27% of children in the UK (4.0 million) were living in relative poverty after housing costs (DWP). Poor children are more likely to die in infancy, to have poor health and to do badly at school, which I cover in my post on inequalities between children. Conflict theorists also point to the “dark side” of family life: the Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that around one in five adults had experienced some form of abuse before the age of 16 (year ending March 2019).

Analyse: Marxists argue that the march of progress view generalises from middle-class families to all families. Feminists add that girls are more likely than boys to experience sexual abuse and are more closely supervised, so child-centredness is gendered as well as classed. The privileged, child-centred childhood in Item D is real, but it’s not every child’s childhood.

Criticise: The New Right offers its own version of this argument, focused on family change. They argue that high divorce rates and the decline of the two-parent family show that adults increasingly put their own happiness before their children’s. HOWEVER, the number of divorces in England and Wales in 2022 was the lowest since 1971 (ONS), and critics point out that it’s hard to separate the effects of family structure from the effects of poverty. The New Right also argue that mothers’ growing involvement in paid work means less time for children. Feminists reply that working mothers give girls positive role models, and the time-use evidence above suggests parents now spend more time on childcare, not less.

Conclusion

On most measures, UK society has become more child-centred. There are more laws protecting children, children have rights they never had before, and parents have fewer children and invest more time and money in each of them. The march of progress view is right about the direction of change.

HOWEVER, Item D is right that the extent of child-centredness is exaggerated. It is shared unequally, and poverty and abuse mean childhood is still a negative experience for a significant minority of children. And child-centredness isn’t automatically good for children. Furedi and Palmer show that over-protection and commercialisation can harm children even in families that put them first. So the best conclusion is that UK society has become more child-centred, but unevenly, and not always in ways that serve children’s interests.

Families and Households Revision Bundle

Signposting and Related Posts

This post has been written primarily for students studying the childhood topic, part of the families and households module in AQA A-level Sociology. The posts below cover each part of the answer in more depth:

• How has childhood changed over time? – the march of progress view in detail.
• Timeline of social policies which changed childhood – the laws and policies referred to in Item D.
• Toxic childhood – Sue Palmer’s criticism of modern childhood.
• Paranoid parenting – Frank Furedi’s argument.
• Are children too controlled? – age patriarchy and adult control.
• The disappearance of childhood – Neil Postman.
• Inequalities between children – the evidence behind the second half of Item D.
• Evaluate the view that childhood has improved over time – the companion 20-mark essay from June 2025.

For the whole topic, see my sociology of childhood page and the main families and households revision page. For more exam advice, see my page on exams and essay writing.

Sources

• AQA (2020) A-level Sociology 7192/2 Paper 2 Topics in Sociology, June 2020 (sat November 2020), question paper and mark scheme. Item D reproduced for educational purposes. Copyright © 2020 AQA and its licensors. All rights reserved.
• Child Poverty Action Group (2025) The Cost of a Child in 2025.
• Cunningham, H. (2006) The Invention of Childhood.
• Department for Work and Pensions (2026) Households Below Average Income, 2024/25.
• Dotti Sani, G. M. and Treas, J. (2016) “Educational gradients in parents’ child-care time across countries, 1965–2012”, Journal of Marriage and Family.
• Firestone, S. (1970) The Dialectic of Sex.
• Furedi, F. (2001) Paranoid Parenting.
• Gittins, D. (1998) The Child in Question.
• Holt, J. (1974) Escape from Childhood.
• Office for National Statistics: Births in England and Wales: 2024; Divorces in England and Wales: 2022; Child abuse in England and Wales: March 2020 (Crime Survey for England and Wales, year ending March 2019).
• Opie, I. (1993) The People in the Playground.
• Palmer, S. (2006) Toxic Childhood.
• Postman, N. (1982) The Disappearance of Childhood.

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