Childhood through the eyes of the child and parent

Abstract

Views of children and childhood vary historically, culturally and individually. While historic views positioned children as either evil (products of their parents' intimacy) or innocent (passive and in need of nurturing) (Branscombe, Castle, Dorsey, Surbeck & Taylor, 2000), a number of other images of childhood have emerged. In 2005, taking a reconceptualist perspective and examining written and visual documents and emergent data, Sorin and Galloway developed a Typology of ten Constructs of Childhood, These are: the child as innocent, the child as evil, the child as miniature adult, the child as adult-in-training, the noble/saviour child, the commodified child, the snowballing child, the out-of-control child, the child as victim and the agentic child. This paper uses the typology to examine data collected through parent and child interviews in Canada and in Australia.