Obliteration of Childhood
Patrick Rothfuss once said ‘When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can.’
Did you really have a childhood? Or have you unknowingly been stripped of your childhood? What is childhood?
The concept is one that has evolved and developed, originating prominently from the post-industrial world, where there had once been a separate, protected space and specific considered time that made room for a world that had been free from worries, responsibilities, expectations and the burdens and turmoil that become apparent in adult life.
This does no longer exist.
The erosion and disappearance of childhood has been noted since the early 1950s, and many questions had been raised into what truly was and is the cause;
It truly came down to the decline of moral authority, relaxing of parental controls, children being rushed into adulthood, higher numbers of children and adolescents committing inexplicable crimes, the inability for parents to control what their children are influenced by outside of the home, even the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, the rising rates of divorce have all had their influences.
But there are two that have caused dramatic ramifications to the existence of childhood; the speed at which a child is thrown into adulthood, and the exposure of the realities of the modern world. Question is, is this right?
Throughout the 1980s the literary movement directed their ‘mode’ to look at the disappearance of childhood, many writers included, Neil Postman, Marie Winn and Joshua Meyrowitz, whom appeared at the forefront of this mode.
Postman held a firm stance on the reasons for the erosion and destruction of childhood, looking at the impact of the ‘print culture’ that was beginning to arise alongside, the body politic of pressure, that consisted of society compelling parents to transform children into adults before they had even hit adolescence. Postman, took the
Did you really have a childhood? Or have you unknowingly been stripped of your childhood? What is childhood?
The concept is one that has evolved and developed, originating prominently from the post-industrial world, where there had once been a separate, protected space and specific considered time that made room for a world that had been free from worries, responsibilities, expectations and the burdens and turmoil that become apparent in adult life.
This does no longer exist.
The erosion and disappearance of childhood has been noted since the early 1950s, and many questions had been raised into what truly was and is the cause;
It truly came down to the decline of moral authority, relaxing of parental controls, children being rushed into adulthood, higher numbers of children and adolescents committing inexplicable crimes, the inability for parents to control what their children are influenced by outside of the home, even the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, the rising rates of divorce have all had their influences.
But there are two that have caused dramatic ramifications to the existence of childhood; the speed at which a child is thrown into adulthood, and the exposure of the realities of the modern world. Question is, is this right?
Throughout the 1980s the literary movement directed their ‘mode’ to look at the disappearance of childhood, many writers included, Neil Postman, Marie Winn and Joshua Meyrowitz, whom appeared at the forefront of this mode.
Postman held a firm stance on the reasons for the erosion and destruction of childhood, looking at the impact of the ‘print culture’ that was beginning to arise alongside, the body politic of pressure, that consisted of society compelling parents to transform children into adults before they had even hit adolescence. Postman, took the