Images of Childhood: Changing Patterns in Academia and Society

Abstract

There is a correlation between changes in society and changes in how adults imagine children and childhood. This book review assesses two studies that address this relationship: Beyond the Century of the Child (2003) edited by Willem Koops and Michael Zuckerman, and Childhood and Society (2001) by Nick Lee. The review traces the Western history of childhood through time while connecting images of the child to changes in academia and society. It subsequently addresses the contemporary imagining of childhood during a time when both adults and children are confronted with, and influenced by, a new, complex, and rapidly changing society. The advent of accelerating globalization and modernization fundamentally altered the Western adults’ view on children and childhood. The concepts of “infantilization” and human “being” versus human “becoming” are used to describe the gap between the worlds of children and adults created in the last century, and the ways in which this gap is now being bridged.