The Sociology of Childhood

The sociology of childhood has been used increasingly as a theoretical perspective in early childhood education since the late 1980s. In Australia, those who draw on the sociology of childhood have tended to use it in similar ways to European counterparts, being guided by six major tenets identified by Prout and James (1997) that form the basis of the sociology of childhood. These include the notion that childhood is a social construction, that childhood is a variable of social analysis and is closely connected to other variables such as class and gender, and that children's relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right (p. 8). Further, children are considered as active (rather than passive) agents in their daily lives and to be competent and knowledgeable about their own lives (p. 8). Although the sociology of childhood is comparatively young, there has been little analysis of the key tenets of the position. Morss is an exception and raises some fundamental issues for consideration, which include refining the notion of the 'socially constructed child', a term that is used widely in much that written about the sociology of childhood