This Master’s thesis deals with the prevalent Western conception of childhood, which was founded on enlightenment ideals; according to various sociological analyses, the (emotional) value of childhood within the dominant discourse and hierarchy of knowledge of the Western imaginary is deemed to be on the rise, thereby acquiring the status of an all-encompassing vulnerability, which is detectable in both in lay and scientific, or, professional vocabularies of the 20th and 21st centuries. Thus, we start by examining the construction of the child as a primarily innocent and vulnerable creature, as defined by J.-J. Rousseau (taking into account that this represents a break with the tradition that conceived of the child as an originally sinful being), and then as a rational being, as understood by John Locke. Furthermore, we connect Rousseau’s theory with the development of the ideal of the bourgeois family, which in turn affected other social classes as well; this ideal demanded a new type of motherhood, which ought to strengthen its own natural intuitiveness with the help of science (especially medicine), and confined childhood in specially designed and strongly controlled spaces, such as the school, home and children’s playgrounds. We conclude the first part by presenting the role of developmental psychology in the consolidation of the modern conception of childhood; developmental psychology remains the dominant science in setting norms about the course of child development, and we actualize the presumptions accordingly. The second part again pays attention to Rousseau’s return to nature, but with contemporary emphasis, which we connect with developmental psychology and the concept of child-centeredness. We analyze how the return to nature, developmental psychology and child-centeredness are intertwined and implemented, in concrete cases, namely in contemporary parenting, with an emphasis on families that opt for postponed schooling or alternative forms of schooling, such as home schooling and schooling in institutions with special pedagogical principles. We show that even those families that attempt to delay their child’s entry into the system or completely avoid it, are already subordinate to this same system and dependent on it; this is most evident in the cultivation of a high degree of trust in developmental psychology, which confirms that, along with family and school, psychology also functions as an extremely effective ideological apparatus of the state.
|
