Term Paper on "Concept of Childhood in South"

Term Paper 10 pages (3306 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Childhood in South

Childhood Dynamics; Perceptions of Children: Literature Review

Erica Burman: Appealing and Appalling Children, Psychoanalytic Studies

While Burman's title creates a sense that her 14-page research piece in Psychoanalytic Studies will delve in the main on nice and not-so-nice children, a careful read shows that her article is really about adult-child relationships, and adult perceptions of children. The insights that she presents - based on her obviously thorough literature review - provide generous and even provocative food for thought and consumption; some of her material is generalized, and other passages relate specifically to "north" and "south" childhood issues.

She argues on page 285 that current images of the functions of childhood are so "polarized" in our minds that researchers are prevented from truly "addressing the complexity and challenge of dealing with our own investments."

Burman spends substantial time defining the ways in which children and childhood are identified; she begins with Freud (287), who offered three modes of identification: 1) "based on resemblance or assimilation" (where the subject identifies with the other); 2) "as the replacement for the abandoned object choice" (the subject identifies "the other with him/herself"); 3) "identification with others based on a common shared trait" (the desire "to be loved"). A less esoteric approach to identifying childhood dynamics is through images (288), including the following universal images: a) children are appealing; b) the power of the image of a child "occludes the ambivalence" of adults' real interactions with children; c) children, in particular babies, "sell, and sell products"; d) babies "signify happiness, innocence, freedom from responsibility"; e) children invoke the idea of "uncomplicated relationships"; f) adults identify with the nurturing associated with children; g) and, culturally, very young children are positioned "within the domain of asexuality," Burman explains.

Meantime, the above-described model of a childhood as a period of "dependency and immaturity" is both "modern and northern," hence the contemporary northern notion of childhood is in part one linked to the age of industrialization and the advent of schooling that is compulsory (288). That schooling prepares the child for being a dependent, "malleable" worker, rather than a "young and active, economically autonomous" part of a generation, Burman continues. The fact that the contemporary northern approach to raising a child - the model being that the child is "innocent, unknowing," and in need of training and being "contained," is a result of "puritan doctrines of original sin" as well as the practical need in northern society of "regulating families and maintaining social order."

Chris Jenks: Childhood 1996: Sounding a theme similar to Burman's essay, in which that innocent, unknowing, "modern, Western" child is seen ("publicly") by adults as the "Apollonian child"; this is the child who is "angelic, innocent and untainted by the world which they have recently entered," writes Chris Jenks (Childhood, 73). That northern / Western child has a "natural goodness and clarity of vision that we might 'idolize' or even 'worship' as the source of all that is best in human nature," Jenks explains.

The children thus described "play and chuckle, smile and laugh," but adults detest their "tears and tantrums," Jenks asserts; adults only want "the illumination of their halo. This is humankind before either Eve or the apple," he continues, echoing the theme of Burman ("puritan doctrines of original sin").

And unlike children being raised in the south, these northern children are not, Jenks writes, "curbed nor beaten into submission," but rather, they are "encouraged, enabled and facilitated." And adult society enables, encourages, and places children in "high profile" positions which renders them "subject to new forms of control" (68) Jenks believes. And in fact, though adults "idolize" children, childhood is the "most intensively governed sector of personal existence. Why? Because the "health, welfare, and rearing of children..." is directly linked to "the destiny of the nation and the responsibilities of the state."

And moreover, Jenks writes (quoting Hillman), "Whatever we say about children and childhood is not altogether really about children and childhood." And Jenks deciphers that statement as meaning that, when the dust settles on all the analysis about childhood, in fact childhood is a "casual repository for the explanation of self and the progress of the psyche." In addition, the child is "moral and political," not simply "natural" and "not merely normal." And theories of the child are "always pointers towards the social construction of reality... [thus] the way we treat our children is indicative of the state of our social structure..." And the way we "control children reflects...the strategies through which we exercise power and constraint in the wider society."

So, it appears the two authors are intimating that it's not just a love affair with children because they're so innocent and angelic; it's because the future of the country is in their hands and let's not have them screw it up?)

Meanwhile, in her essay, Burman continues with three "bipolar dimensions" around which adult-child relations are organized in the contemporary northern experience. 1) There exists innocence and inexperience in children, however, this can be reversed because within the northern cultural "sediment" (created by Wordsworth's "lyricism") children are also "party to knowledge and experiences that adults lack or have 'forgotten'"; 2) though children are dependent and adults autonomous, adults are envious of the freedom that children enjoy, which children don't recognize until adults tell them these are "the best days of your lives"; 3) while children are spontaneous and adults reflective, adults yearn to be more spontaneous and to escape from their northern world of "regulation and self-regulation" (289).

Interestingly, Burman includes in her lengthy essay several psychological models of approaching childhood that she doesn't necessarily adhere to, but presents them as food for thought. For example, she alludes to the notion "Winnicott (1958)" put forward that "the cost (or perhaps the gain) of sentimentality is sadism." And hence, by taking on the "paternal, culturally sanctioned position of sentimentalizing children," adults are "acting out the rage of the surrender of our lost love(s)." Hence, there is "aggression within pity" when it comes to the northern view of childhood and children. and, further, Burman says that "we are in deep and tricky waters" in approaching children from this standpoint, e.g., applying the approaches of Winnicott and Alice Miller - that adults believe that they act in children's "best interests" while in fact denying children's "agency, autonomy and participation in decision making" (291).

Speaking of the child's best interests, Burman writes that children's "fairy stories" (currently being circulated and distributed primarily "in the north"), resulted from the "moral panics" from the 1960s, when many educators and parents were up in arms over the perceived "gore and violence" of children's literature. When adults over-reacted to some of the literature then, and the "sanitisation" occurred, children's books became "arid" and repressed cultural knowledge.

Another aspect of the approach to public opinion in the north is the "appalling children" part of Burman's essay: "publicizing humanitarian emergencies through the depiction of children in need, especially black children," and in particular, little girls (292). The appeals through these commercials to white, rich, adults who are competent, "confirms our sense of power," Burman writes, "and reassures 'us' that 'we' are not 'them.'" and Burman asks, poignantly, when "we" give to a cause that shows a poor, black, starving child with flies on his face, "whose child is being saved: our idealized conception, or the real children whose lives and welfare are at risk?"

On page 294, Burman writes that "what is significant here is the prevalence not only of images of children as indicators of more general need, but of little girls. Girls form the main image corpus of aid appeals, thus invoking a familiar...elision of woman and children within the more general discourse of the disempowered and incapable." The "sadomasochistic dynamics of child suffering appear to participate" within the genre of "fascination and repudiation" (295) she continues. And in that context, if childhood is "natural" then clearly not all children "partake of the category." And the children who most often break from this model - the "white, middle class northern children" - are the "southern children, minority black children, working class children the world over, and especially girls (since the culturally privileged model of the playing child is really a boy)..." (296).

Those "unnatural" children are "street children in Brazil and Guatemala," "children who engage in paid work," and children who live away from "traditional cross-generational families."

Erica Burman: The Abnormal Distribution of Development: policies for Southern women and children; Gender Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 1995: "...If children are 'our' future," Burman writes, "then it is interesting to see that the images of children who lay claim to the world are white European children."

And moreover, she continues, "While northern children 'develop' dominant discourses," children in the South "are preoccupied with 'survival'." And along these lines of thinking, Burman insists that, particularly in the UK, children typically are "abstracted from culture and nationality" in order to present images… READ MORE

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