Examine the reasons for the changes in the position of children in the family and society

Childhood is considered to be a social construction which means that it was created by the society from social views and definitions. However different cultures see childhood differently and there is no universal description for everyone what is the childhood. In biological terms we consider people to be children when they just born and grow up because in this period they can’t be independent and survive without the help. In pre-industrial societies families were as unit of production and all the members of the family had to work in order to survive. But with the industrialization the role of women and children has changed; families lost some of their functions which were taken by other institutions (Parsons), and women were stepped aside of the work and their major duties were taking care of children and all the domestic work. Children became to be more protected and childhood was more independent stage of life when people needed more attention and care and also they had to study in order to get skills to their future jobs in manufacturing.
In Medieval Europe, as Aries suggested in his research, childhood didn’t exist. Children were seen as little adults and had the same rights with them and were treated in the same way. However later because of different diseases and high mortality rates they had to have special care and protection.
However a big importance plays ethnicity, culture. And for instance, if in the West children treated in some cases like Aries said, in the East relationship was different mostly because of diverged values of families. In the West people tended to be more independent, have their own priorities, while in the East families were cooperating and share their values.
However in the 19th century some rights of children were protected by the government such as introduction of Factory Act according to which children had to have special conditions while working, however still they were mostly as unit of production and only in 20th century they became a separate stage of life and had their own rights. Compulsory Schooling Act required primary level of education for all children by law and so they mustn’t work at this age, The children Act in 1989 gave children their rights; education acts said that children had to study up to a certain age.
However nowadays as Lee suggested, children increasingly have more rights, they have greater similarities with adults; adulthood, by contrast is becoming more unstable and uncertain, so generally he said that now adults and children change their roles.
Also, Postman said that now notion of childhood has disappeared. The influence of media, new technologies broke boundaries between children and adults and now there are only biological differences between them. However we can’t say that childhood has disappeared because still children are depended on their parents because parents are those who bring them up and taking care of them and support them in material questions.