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The Sensuous Child: Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Sexual Revolution;
Children's Culture,
Oct 26 2005
In this essay, I want to look more closely at the social context which led, for a short while, towards a loosening of the "rules" governing sexual contact between children and adults, a changing understanding of children's erotic life and its place within the home. ...
This essay will trace [the] shifting conception of children's minds and bodies through a close examination of pre- and post-war child rearing guides.
Specifically, I want to explore how conceptions of childhood sensuality and bodily pleasure emerge as positive forces in the post-war literature.
In this essay, I want to look more closely at the social context which led, for a short while, towards a loosening of the "rules" governing sexual contact between children and adults, a changing understanding of children's erotic life and its place within the home. ...
This essay will trace [the] shifting conception of children's minds and bodies through a close examination of pre- and post-war child rearing guides.
Specifically, I want to explore how conceptions of childhood sensuality and bodily pleasure emerge as positive forces in the post-war literature.
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Lessons from Littleton: What Congress does not want to hear about youth and media
... Several weeks after the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the United States Senate ... launched a series of hearings ...on the "marketing of violent entertainment to children." ...
The senators were feeding a "cultural war" which was more and more focused on teenagers. ... "We need Goth control, not gun control." ...
A more careful analysis would read video games as one cultural influence among many, as having different degrees of impact on different children, and as not sufficient in and of themselves to provoke an otherwise healthy and well-adjusted child to engage in acts of violence. ...
Most children are not at risk from the media they consume. Parents, not governments, are in the best position to know what kinds of culture their children should consume. ...
Media effects research has had little to say about why children are drawn towards violent entertainment, ... Humanistic research, on the other hand, offers useful tools for understanding why children find media violence attractive and meaningful. ...
The author suggests a more constructive response to these issues.
... Several weeks after the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the United States Senate ... launched a series of hearings ...on the "marketing of violent entertainment to children." ...
The senators were feeding a "cultural war" which was more and more focused on teenagers. ... "We need Goth control, not gun control." ...
A more careful analysis would read video games as one cultural influence among many, as having different degrees of impact on different children, and as not sufficient in and of themselves to provoke an otherwise healthy and well-adjusted child to engage in acts of violence. ...
Most children are not at risk from the media they consume. Parents, not governments, are in the best position to know what kinds of culture their children should consume. ...
Media effects research has had little to say about why children are drawn towards violent entertainment, ... Humanistic research, on the other hand, offers useful tools for understanding why children find media violence attractive and meaningful. ...
The author suggests a more constructive response to these issues.
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The Innocent Child and Other Modern Myths
[...] Childhood -- a temporary state -- becomes an emblem for our anxieties about the passing of time, the destruction of historical formations, or conversely, a vehicle for our hopes for the future. The innocent child is caught somewhere over the rainbow -- between nostalgia and utopian optimism, between the past and the future. [...]
The idea of childish innocence resulted in two kinds of attitude and behavior towards childhood:
firstly, safeguarding it against pollution by life and particularly by the sexuality tolerated if not approved of among adults; and
secondly, strengthening it by developing character and reason.
[...]
This book [published in 2007] is not intended as a guidebook for media and social reformers, not a series of attacks on the corrupting force of mass culture on children's lives. Rather, it will challenge some key assumptions behind those reform movements, rejecting the myth of childhood innocence in order to better map the power relations between children and adults. This book avoids texts that see children primarily as victims in favor of works that recognize and respect their social and political agency.
[...] Childhood -- a temporary state -- becomes an emblem for our anxieties about the passing of time, the destruction of historical formations, or conversely, a vehicle for our hopes for the future. The innocent child is caught somewhere over the rainbow -- between nostalgia and utopian optimism, between the past and the future. [...]
The idea of childish innocence resulted in two kinds of attitude and behavior towards childhood:
firstly, safeguarding it against pollution by life and particularly by the sexuality tolerated if not approved of among adults; and
secondly, strengthening it by developing character and reason.
[...]
This book [published in 2007] is not intended as a guidebook for media and social reformers, not a series of attacks on the corrupting force of mass culture on children's lives. Rather, it will challenge some key assumptions behind those reform movements, rejecting the myth of childhood innocence in order to better map the power relations between children and adults. This book avoids texts that see children primarily as victims in favor of works that recognize and respect their social and political agency.