CHILD AND CHILDHOOD AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS: REVIEW OF MODERN THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS

Abstract

The article examines the problems of a child and childhood in the context of the paradigm of the «new» sociology of childhood. The methodological guidelines of the «new» sociology of childhood, which tend to form interdisciplinary syntheses, determine the review of a child and childhood as social constructs. The legitimization of the idea of childhood as a social construct contributed to the growing attention to the social contexts in which a child's psychological and social development takes place. Considering children as active subjects, creators of their world is an attempt to overcome the dualism of differences between adults and children. In the context of this methodological guideline, the social phenomenology of childhood is clarified, and the appeal to children’s experience here and now is actualized and not from the position of children as adults in the future. This, in turn, prompts the rejection of ideas about childhood as a universal, biological stage of life. Conceptualization of a child as a subject, on the one hand, opens a perspective to study childhood in the modes of «being» (to be) and «becoming» (to become): in the mode of «being» a child is understood as separate, not treated as an object in the world, but a certain experience of time that each of us can have; the mode of «becoming» (to become) is based on the idea of the inadequacy and inferiority of children's existence. It is emphasized that the «new» sociology of childhood implements a double hermeneutic in understanding the problems of social reality in general and socialization processes in particular. The latter is understood in the communicative area as a search for consensus between adults and children, while a child interprets and actively reacts to the attitudes and actions of adults. This makes it possible to interpret the phenomenology of childhood as a period of meaning-making and active participation in the world. It is emphasized that the debatable issues regarding the multiplicity and uniqueness of forms of childhood are complicated by contradictory theoretical dichotomies: «a child as a subject» – «childhood as a constant of the social structure», childhood as a social construct – childhood as a natural (biological) given.