Adultization and blurring the boundaries of childhood in the late modern era

Abstract

Although the modern Western concept of childhood is rapidly disappearing in the age of late modernity, this study asserts that childhood (as it is lived) has not disappeared but has been transformed. An integrated approach to childhood is employed in order to go beyond binary oppositions such as the Global North versus the Global South and/or childhood versus childhoods. It is argued that children while constructing their childhoods are confronted with processes of individualisation and globalisation through which new forms of adultization have emerged as concepts of ‘child consumerism’ and ‘child citizenship’. Beyond the opposing views involving the disappearance of childhood or its liberation, this study concludes that the concept of adultization can be used to problematise and analyse childhood in its current state.

Keywords

adultization children’s rights inequality risk society sexualisation of childhood

Introduction

A historical trajectory powerfully elucidates both past and present ideas of childhood. For example, Ariès (1962) stated that the idea of childhood did not exist in medieval society. Rather, it is modernity, particularly the development of schooling as prescribed and provided by the state, that results in the phase we refer to as childhood. This concept not only involves schooling but also a decrease in infant mortality; increasing class stratification and a gradual withdrawal of the family from a wider web of social relations were the factors constructing a new middle-class model or an ideology of the family in which children were seen as a central part of the family’s purpose (Clarke, 2004; Cunningham, 2005; Kehily, 2004). On the contrary, children were often defined as unstable and incomplete in relation to the independent, participant, stable and complete adults, which meant that children were seen as dependent and passive recipients (Lee, 2001).

This dichotomy has been overcome in late modernity. The traditional understanding of childhood has resulted from debate between various disciplines, including developmental psychology, pedagogy, sociology and cultural history. According to contemporary childhood studies, childhood is socially constructed (Corsaro, 2011; Elkind, 2001). It always reflects cultural and historical views regarding the perception and creation of children and thus reveals the importance of local differences (James et al., 1999; Stearns, 2005, 2015). Moreover, the new sociology of childhood enhances the set of contexts in which the child interacts daily. In his book The Sociology of Childhood, William Corsaro (2011) exceeds traditional thinking about childhood. Corsaro considers children as agents and participants in society and childhood as a social form. He defends children as active, creative social agents who produce a unique children’s culture while simultaneously contributing to adult society.

However, there are a variety of views regarding the concept of childhood today; some claim that childhood has disappeared (Nelsen, 1985; Postman, 1985; Winn, 1983), while others claim that childhood has never been alive, liberated and/or empowered (Archard, 2004; Freeman, 2012; Mook, 2007; Smith, 2010). Beyond these opposing views, this study asserts an alternative view regarding the concept of childhood, one which is useful for problematising and analysing it. Namely, this is the concept of adultization. Thus, this study focuses on late modernity, a period in which child development occurs in a risk society (Beck, 1991, 2006; Beck et al., 1994; Giddens, 1991) in which children face transitional development.

As such, this article aims to show that contemporary children are characterised by the appearance of adultization. This does not suggest that all the children, regardless of cultural differences, are facing the same challenge of adultization in the same way. Rather, after recognising the existence of different childhoods, it is aimed to move beyond binaries and to explore the commonalities between particular types of childhoods. As a term, adultization is related to Neil Postman’s (1985) book The Disappearance of Childhood, in which he questioned why childhood was first considered unnecessary, then inevitable, and, in the latter part of the 20th century, difficult to sustain. At the time, Postman was shocked by the commercial exploitation of children aged 12 and 13 years. Thus, we can only guess how he would react to the pornography and commodification of childhood that has increasingly spread to younger children in the late modern era. The assumption of this study is that the adultization of children is a definitive part of emergent childhood today. To show the usefulness of ‘adultization’ as a term, this study debates the different manifestations of adultization (e.g. child consumerism and child citizenship).

Associated with an integrated approach to childhood studies that acknowledges both commonalities and differences in childhood constructions and children’s lived realities (see Twum-Danso Imoh et al., 2019), this study will give a careful consideration to move beyond binary oppositions such as child consumers versus child workers, early sexualisation versus child marriage, child obesity versus child malnutrition, and so on in order to deconstruct the stereotypes referring to the children at the Global North and Global South. Research shows that children’s lives are being affected by both global processes and local realities, which are closely bound together (Holloway and Valentine, 2000; Katz, 2004; Punch and Tisdall, 2012). Ababe claims that ‘‘global’ and ‘local’ are unstable and blurred in everyday life’ (Hanson et al., 2018: 274). Similarly, Balagopalan discusses that in colonial and political context all childhoods could be recognised as globalised, as ‘all children’s lives have been, either directly or indirectly, influenced by global events, including global capitalism, the most severe of which include histories of forced migration, colonialism, war, natural calamities and so on’ (Hanson et al., 2018: 276). Moreover, the discussions on the distortion of the boundaries between the local and the global have mainly two apparent ideas which influenced how we think about children and childhood: The international children’s rights regime and the mobility and migration of children (Hanson et al., 2018). Punch, for example, referring to the globalisation and new technologies thinks that children have opportunities to develop and maintain relationships beyond their local communities. Globalisation processes especially lead to the increasing numbers of migrants and refugees which contribute to the blurring of boundaries between majority and minority worlds (Hanson et al., 2018: 277). We can possibly add one other trend in relation to globalisation which is to be schooling (Mayall, 2013). Within this context, it is discussed that childhood in the late modern era is blurring the boundaries, and there are many appearances of adultization which should be importantly considered.

Late modern society: facing risks and hazards

The current idea of childhood can be understood through late modern social theory. Sociologists such as Beck and Giddens have suggested that late modernity is marked by the emergence of a new relationship between the individual and the social. For Giddens (1991: 177), ‘modernity is inherently globalizing, and the unsettling consequences of this phenomenon combine with the circularity of its reflexive character to form a universe of events in which risk and hazard take on a novel character’. As such, Giddens (1991) argues that the age of high modernity is characterised by a risk culture insofar as people today are subject to uncertainties that were not involved in daily life for previous generations. This risk culture refers to a risk society in which ‘living with a calculative attitude to the open possibilities of action, positive and negative, as individuals and globally, we are confronted in a continuous way in our contemporary social existence’ (Giddens, 1991: 28). Giddens (1992: 7) concentrated on ‘the discussion upon the themes of security versus danger and trust versus risk’. The risk is always connected to uncertainty and a forthcoming event. This explains why societies traditionally employed notions of luck, fate, the will of gods and magic instead of risk (Pinter, 2003).

Similar to the risk culture discussed by Giddens, Beck refers to a risk society in which there is conviction that risk is a characteristic feature of contemporary societies and a central parameter for their analysis. However, Beck’s risk society regards the reflexive modernisation of industrial society. For Beck (1991), the world is perceived as a dangerous place in late modernity and people are constantly confronted with risk (e.g. the threat of nuclear war, environmental disasters and other daily risks). Beck (2006) states that ‘risk “is not reducible to the product of the probability of occurrence multiplied by the intensity and scope of potential harm”’. Rather, it is a socially constructed phenomenon, in which some people have a greater capacity to define risks than others’. This means that people are not equally vulnerable to risk, and only those who are good at defining their own risks can benefit from the resulting reflexivity (Beck, 1991). This is because collectivist traditions weakened while individual values intensified, thus causing social structures to become increasingly obscure.

The children of today: childhoods lived in the risk societies

In the late 20th century, adults, children and parent–child relationships were profoundly affected. However, very little research has been conducted on the concept of childhood in the risk society. With regard to late modernity, Beck et al. (1994) underlined five interrelated processes (i.e. globalisation, individualisation, gender revolution, underemployment and global risks). One may ask about the effects these processes have had on current childhoods. For example, Wyness (2012) referred to children in late modernity while pointing out the importance of individualisation, the theorisation of family life, globalisation, social inequality and exclusion. In this study, we similarly refer to five interrelated themes involved in current childhoods in the risk society (i.e. individualisation, the late modern family, global risks, children in crisis and inequality). These are the themes to be used in further discussions. A brief debate here will indicate that the children of today are not equally vulnerable to risk and are affected by the micro and macro factors of their societies.

Beck suggests that Western societies have been reshaped by individualisation, which originally appeared as a result of the disintegration of modernist-industrial structures such as the family, traditional marriage and the support mechanisms on which modernism has been reproduced through its social and economic institutions. Individualisation has thus increased through the provisions of education, social support mechanisms and public goods (Jarvis, 2007). Children in late modernity can thus be seen as both individuals and social agents (James and Prout, 1990; Jenks, 1996; Wyness, 2012). However, Beck (1991) comments on child privilege in the context of individualisation and new practices of intimacy; the child is the last remaining irrevocable, unexchangeable primary relationship. Parents may come and go, but the child stays. Everything that is not realisable in the relationship is directed towards the child. In this case, both choice and risk assessment are envisioned for adults. As Wyness (2012) debated, ‘despite the logic of individualisation opening up space for individual action, contemporary sociological theory ignores the position of children’ (p. 58).

However, it may be speculated that children are significantly affected as the insecurities of adults are projected onto them through the refining of the controlling mechanisms. One example can be found in parental risk anxiety in which there is fear that children are no longer safe walking to school unassisted. To expand on this, adults generally tend to claim that public spaces have become more dangerous and require increasing regulation. From an alternate perspective, children may be more assertive within the private family sphere, and new relations exist between children and parents through which family negotiation is becoming a key feature of reflexive modernisation (Wyness, 2012: 60). Beck (1997) discusses the democratisation of the family, which suggests a future in which children are as actively involved as their parents in shaping the family through negotiation and decision-making. The extreme version of this approach involves families that trust children and teenagers to deal with the realities of the outside world, such as violence, sexuality, substance abuse and environmental degradation seen on television. In Elkind’s (1981) view, ‘our contemporary conception of Superkid, competent to deal with all of life’s vicissitudes, must be seen as a social invention to alleviate parental anxiety and guilt’ (p. 13).

Living in their risk societies, the prototypical modern child of the modern nuclear family has nearly disappeared (Elkind, 1981, 1992; Kehily, 2010, 2013; Mook, 2007; Wyness, 2012). Late modern social theorists suggest that personal relationships are allowing new practices of intimacy, which are in some way affected by electronic media and communication in familial social relations (Oswell, 2013). The breakup of the traditional family unit is evident through the increase of single-headed households, same-sex couples, unmarried cohabiting parents and post-divorce couples who may each bring children into new relationships. The practice of in vitro fertilisation, by which infertile couples, single women, lesbian couples and mature women can have children, is itself a reproductive technology that is extending the project of self, individualisation, and choice in late modernity (Kehily, 2010). For example, around 40% of children in Norway and the United States are likely to experience a family break-up and subsequently find themselves in another two-parent family with stepsiblings and stepparents; the majority experience a period in which only one parent provides care (Wyness, 2012). Furthermore, the modern family’s ideal of domesticity, in which emotional security and protection are provided to children, is increasingly becoming replaced by a certain urbanity in which the home becomes a meeting place for parents and children and a place of refuge from a busy life (Elkind, 1992).

On the other hand, global processes such as migration, natural disasters and war lead to new topics of research such as transnational childhoods (Emond and Esser, 2015; Gardner, 2012; Orellana et al., 2001) and impact of digital technologies for global communications. ‘Today’s children, like no other generation, are growing up in a world where communication technologies are faster and more complex than ever before, where even if they are unable to afford to buy global brands, … and staying put for their entire lives in the same village, neighborhood or country is by no means certain’ (Gardner, 2012: 889).

Living in a risk society brings global risks into the lives of the children and their families. Technological developments have brought communities, nations and cultures together. The result is a range of interconnected ties and interests, as well as a range of increasingly shared environmental problems that equally affect the rich and poor (Wyness, 2012: 67). Children and youth at the forefront of the risk society are developing in a world that is preoccupied with risk. This has impacted their identity and social ties (Mythen, 2004). New technologies (e.g. the Internet, digital television and virtual reality) are creating a shift from mass engagement to more individualistic forms. Globalisation, consumer culture and the mass media are affecting children’s identity formations as children at a local level ‘play around with musical, televisual and filmic reference points and create their own cultures’ (Wyness, 2012: 69). However, children are the subjects of cultural imperialism within the context of globalisation.

Giddens suggested that we must deal with new fears and worries and are also presented with new possibilities that are increasingly open to children (Jans, 2004). Beck (1997) claims that Western children are encouraged to author their own lives. These children seem to utilise these possibilities and present themselves as social actors with interests and rights. For example, they successfully claim agency within the contours of the family. Paradoxically, children are living with many risks and rights but retain their natural biological entities in which there is need of nurturing and protection. However, a general distrust of adults has emerged in a climate in which all adults (including parents) are potential child abusers (Kehily, 2010). Problems such as child abuse and exploitation, therefore, are more emphasised because of the increasing number of victims in both the developed and developing worlds (Akmatov, 2011; McElvaney and Lalor, 2014).

For many commentators in contemporary Western society, there is an idea that childhood is in crisis (Kehily, 2013; Wyness, 2015). There are alternative views and various interpretations here. For example, Mayall (2010: 162–163) says that children are restricted by their parents to a greater degree than those parents were restricted as children. Children are encouraged to take more responsibility for their futures by seeking education. On the contrary, child poverty is also increasing as poor children face many global threats (e.g. early death, malnutrition, forced labour, crime and mental disorder). Here, we should emphasise the social problems and poverty that affect children; there is a dramatic number of street children in Brazil, a high number of HIV/AIDS orphans in Kenya, high child labour rates in southeast Asia (specifically in India and Pakistan) and the lack of an effective social welfare policy preventing children from falling into the 15%–20% bracket of poor children in the United States and many other developed countries (Corsaro, 2011; O’Dell et al., 2013; Stearns, 2015; Wells, 2009).

Mayall (2010) points to another theme regarding children who live in the risk society that involves rapid changes in media technology as children are exposed to adult entertainment and presented with mature levels of stress. There is also an opposing view claiming that children are being liberated from the control of adults through access to knowledge and entertainment. Wyness (2012: 114–117) supports the first view, stating that the cyber-child (or ‘the child trapped in the net’) views crises in three different ways (i.e. a fear of technology stemming from video games and computers containing hidden threats to children’s integrity as paedophiles and strangers could contact children with a sexual motives; a fear of adultization as technology gives access to adult images and stimuli such as the worlds of sex, economics, war and politics that threaten the moral and social integrity of childhood; and a fear of a potential threat to adult authority as cyber-children compromise the monopoly that adults have over knowledge).

It is important to mention one additional theme of crisis; millions of children are living in crowded, polluted environments and insecure metropolitan areas. Such environments give little opportunity for learning, playing and recreation. Furthermore, ‘undoubtedly they have great disadvantages as free play is not possible for many of the city children even when they come from high-income families’ (Francis and Lorenzo, 2002: 159).

One of the most negative impact which late modernity brought into the lives of today’s children is undoubtedly inequalities they face. Over half the world’s population (including over a billion children) lives in cities and towns. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund’s (UNICEF) (2012: 1–8) report on the State of World’s Children shows that many children enjoy the advantages offered by urban life, including access to educational, medical and recreational facilities. However, too many cannot reach clean water, electricity or healthcare and are forced into dangerous and exploitative work. UNICEF (2016) reports the following:

Compared to the richest children, the poorest are 1.9 times as likely to die before age 5;

Thirty-eight percent of children leave primary school without learning how to read, write, or do simple arithmetic;

At current trends, nine out of ten children living in extreme poverty will live in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030;

One quarter of the world’s school-aged children live in countries affected by crises.

The latest report on the state of the world’s children by UNICEF-Innocenti (2017) presents an outlook on the digital technology affecting children’s lives and chances, identifying both dangers and opportunities. Around one-third of the world’s youth (346 million) do not have Internet access. This exacerbates inequities and reduces these children’s ability to participate in the digital economy. The report also examined how the Internet increases children’s vulnerability to risks and harms (e.g. misuse of their private information, harmful content and cyberbullying). Recent studies (Danby et al., 2018; Lahikainen et al., 2017) have discussed the digitalisation of childhood under the effects of media and technology.

Adultization as an emergent character of childhood

Postman (1985), in his famous book The Disappearance of Childhood, argued that childhood emerged as a consequence of the age of literacy and was disappearing as we entered the age of electronic media, which transformed communication in a way that bridged the distance and distinctions between childhood and adulthood (Mook, 2007: 150; Oswell, 2013: 200). Postman attributed this to television, dual-parent careers and family breakdowns that blurred the boundary between children and adults.

Aphek (2002) discussed the differentiating line between children and adults as becoming blurred, including concepts that distinguish the adult from the child (e.g. independence and responsibility). Qvortrup (1999) similarly described this phenomenon with the term ‘kidults’, meaning that adults are becoming more like children. However, cultural critic John Hartley argued that novels such as Harry Potter, theme parks such as Disney World and similar television and video game examples have caused the ‘infantilization of adults’ (Oswell, 2013: 201–203). In a risk society, adults are thus more childish, while children (to whom the secrets of adulthood have been revealed) become seemingly mature. However, the maturity is external, not emotional.

Despite his moralistic approach, Postman was correct. Children today speak, dress and behave like adults. However, it would likely be shocking for Postman to see the pornography and commodification of childhood that has increasingly and globally spread to younger children in late modernity. Today, we discuss the sexualisation of children (especially girls), which not only troubles parents but also crystallises many of the tensions and debates in childhood studies (Darbyshire, 2007: 88). Aitken’s (2001) notion of the ‘unchildlike child’ is helpful here; it encompasses some of the perceived changes in both children and childhood that are so contentious and troubling for adults. Aitken focuses particularly on child violence and child labour, but a further disturbance of childhood notions occurs with the sexualised child. However, witnessing marginalised children and variant disadvantages (as depicted earlier) can easily support Postman’s (1985) second assumption that, as a separate and carefree realm, childhood is coming to an end.

Beyond Postman’s moralistic arguments, adultization can be debated through the late modern terms of globalisation and individualisation. Even though they may appear contradictory, these terms are in some way complementary. To understand adultization, it is important to first look at child consumerism. The importance of global consumerism in adding to the constituents of contemporary childhood is obvious and impressively widespread. Furthermore, contemporary consumer habits and media access have some common results in altering (and sometimes worsening) the childhood experience (Bragg et al., 2011; Hill, 2011; Olfman, 2009). Second, a good example of the compatibility of globalisation and individualisation is the International Treaty on Children’s Rights, which was accepted by the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989). The effects of globalisation are obvious, but the convention also supports the idea that children present themselves as individuals with rights (Jans, 2004). Therefore, child citizenship is the second important term for debating late modern childhood.

Child consumerism in the context of global culture

Global consumerism significantly shapes contemporary childhood. Global hegemony of consumer childhood has consequences for rich and poor alike as both participation in the consumeriate and exclusion from it are enemies of sufficiency (Langer, 2005). The emergence of global culture through industries such as Disney, denim, fast food and Japanese toys has generated a new set of expressions for urban children and adolescents. As such, ‘items like Barbie dolls (United States) or Hello Kitty (Japan), or related imitations, were widely sought. Television shows such as Sesame Street were widely disseminated and translated, winning substantial audiences, for example, in countries like Egypt’ (Stearns, 2015: 26). Cook’s (2004) work on the commodification of childhood and children’s clothing industry has shown that in the 1930s for the first time the perspective of the child became institutionalised as ‘pediocularity’, decentred the adult view and privileged the child’s view. ‘One might argue instead that in constructing the child as a desiring subject, pediocularity challenged the myth of childhood innocence and validated different qualities – personality, gumption, savvy, even precocity – as admirable virtues’ (Jacobson, 2005: 1102). More recently the Internet and technology have become important frames of reference for marketers in creating consumer markets for children. However, there are conflicting ways of seeing childhood within this context. Smith (2000) referred to three distinct aspects of children (i.e. consumers (or victims), interpreters (or processors of information and ideas) and actors (or participants)).

As consumers, children can be conceived as relatively passive; the main issue here is partly exploitation as children are more vulnerable targets for advertisers and corporations regarding profit maximisation. Young people receive endless material messages encouraging purchasing behaviour and consumption that impact their identities. Recent studies (Hill, 2011) show that 40% of 3-month-old children watch television during a typical day, and almost 60% of children under two are doing the same. Piachaud (2007) agrees that young children are influenced by marketing from as young as 18 months of age, at which point they can recognise corporate labels. At about 2.5 years of age, children can associate items with specific brand names. Up to the age of 7, children will generally accept television advertising at face value. Children do not develop the capacity to understand the intention of marketing messages until they are around 11 or 12 years of age. While children aged 4 to 12 years have increasingly been viewed through their spending capacity, girls are especially targeted by marketers promoting feminine ideals. Thus, children are suffering serious physical, emotional and social deficits directly related to consumerism as they gain knowledge of major contemporary issues, including sex, violence, drugs and crime (Hill, 2011; Linn, 2009; Mook, 2007; Mothers’ Union, 2010). Although children are gaining maturity at very young ages through language, clothing and accoutrements (some quit playing with toys by the age of six and begin using adult products, such as cell phones, video games and computers), there is no evidence that they are gaining the necessary emotional maturity to cope with such content (Linn, 2009: 46).

Studies and observations indicate that the commercial world affects every aspect of a child’s life. For instance, this includes an increased obesity risk through the promotion of unhealthy diets, poor self-esteem and self-images created by high media usage and being confronted with morality and meaning as sold by products such as those from Disney. It has also been found that increased hours spent watching television causes developmental problems with speech, understanding and academic performance, while ‘pester power’ potentially puts stress on the parent/child relationship. In addition, a 2010 study found a significant increase in the number of sexualised images of children.

As interpreters (or processors of information and ideas), children can be seen in a more independent and creative capacity as they generate a distinctive understanding of the world (James et al., 1999). The effects of media (particularly from advertising in the developed world) become a source of entertainment and pleasure for an increasingly age-segmented youth market (Wyness, 2012: 193). It is difficult to understand children’s interpretations and explanations of these experiences. Corsaro (2011) notes that the perspectives and perceptions of children may be distinctive, original and incomprehensible to adults, even from an early age.

Finally, the idea of children as actors (or participants) provides an alternative view regarding the child and Internet context. Oswell (2013: 193) discusses how the central tropes of play provided the bases for the massive development of childhood consumer culture. He observes that the marketisation of play has been a site of productive innovation in the agency of children in terms of both building capacity and in proliferating and multiplying its forms. This view is grounded in empirical research and suggests a more agentic view of childhood. Children are able to construct communities and economies, even under quite hostile circumstances. A powerful example of this can be observed in the ability of street children to act independently and construct their own forms of social organisation (Smith, 2000).

In compliance with the view of children as consumers, there is an ongoing debate that children are also victims of consumerism as corporations are exploiting children’s emotional vulnerabilities while merchandising the concept of ‘cool’ (Williams, 2006). As such, ‘the message – “you are what you consume”’ – has become the dominant ideology for both children and adults such that there is little distinction now between the two’ (Hill, 2011: 358). Children are aggressively targeted as consumers and are ubiquitously confronted by products such as pre-teen makeup, tight clothing and magazines encouraging them to become ‘Lolitas’. Thus, the sexualisation of childhood is the top-priority child consumerism theme on the agenda (Bragg et al., 2011; Olfman, 2009; Rysst, 2008; Voléry, 2016; Williams, 2006).

Sexualisation of childhood as a concrete form of adultization

In an extremely commercialised world, on one hand, the increasing sexualisation of young girls and the development of adolescence itself have become a fashion as kids are getting older younger (Quart, 2003) while on the other hand mums staying younger longer (Cook and Kaiser, 2004). This concept (sexualisation of childhood) forms part of the wider pre-occupation on adultization and indicates that children prematurely learn about adult sexuality (Rysst, 2008: 3). As childhood is at once a universal experience, it is also one of the most culturally and geographically specific, so does adultization:

Boy and girl prostitutes in Thailand hired by French tourists; child pornography on the internet; five-year-old indentured textile workers in India making silk for American clothing; Eastern European adolescent girls assaulted and raped as they seek glamorous careers on Milan’s runways: These are the startling images that confront us regularly now as the economy becomes a global network. (Fass, 2003: 963)

The disappearance of childhood is related to the fact that children are confronted with sexuality daily. For example, Linn (2009: 46–47) reports that toy manufacturers market and produce dolls wearing black leather miniskirts, feather boas and thigh-high boots for girls aged 8 to 12. Maine (2009) reports that ‘[B]arbie dolls similarly have become sexier, and new lines of dolls like The Scene and Bratz, marketed to girls aged 5 to 7, have a sexually provocative, tougher, and more adult edge’ (p. 62). For Maine (2009), sexualisation is not a victimless crime; this refers to an APA report speculating that sexualisation reflects underlying sexism, a troubling tolerance for violence against women and ongoing female exploitation.

Wyness (2015: 37) shared an Australian report on sexualisation that is based on corporate paedophilia analyses, girl magazines, television programmes and advertising. It reveals that girls are a particular focus of the moral entrepreneurs’ critique of sexualisation and are allegedly more at risk than boys while being subjected to forms of hyper-sexualisation. Rysst (2008) conducted a notably comprehensive study in Norway that analysed child-gender roles and found that new clothing-fashion codes for young girls depicted eroticism rather than chastity when pre-teen boys were a media focus; this does not concern sexuality but drugs and violence.

Shocking statistics indicate that approximately a quarter of all children aged 13 to 15 years receive sexually explicit messages, and even younger children claim they have seen sexually explicit images online (Wyness, 2015: 34–36). Beyond moralistic criticisms, the sexualisation of childhood can be seen as a direct form of adultization and an exploitation that makes girls more vulnerable than their male peers. Sexualisation is seen ‘inherently negative and damaging; that girls, in particular, come to see themselves and their worth only in terms of their adherence to narrowly defined normative standards of physical attractiveness’ (Clark, 2012; Moore and Reynolds, 2018). Fass (2003) debates that wilderness, sexuality and the spontaneity of American forms of popular culture (music videos, body styles, dress, etc.) adopted into youth culture have the potential to reach all the children of the world. What happens to children elsewhere will be affected and moderated by the specific culture of each place and the speed of market developments. Yet, the developing world not only creates most of the west’s toys, but it is likely that it will increasingly want to consume them.

Child citizenship and child participation

The effort to promote children’s rights as part of a larger global human rights agenda expresses a different facet of globalisation. It has gained great attention but may have less of an impact on actual childhood than that of consumerism (Stearns, 2015). UNCRC (1989) was the first human rights treaty to explicitly recognise children’s civil rights. The UNCRC exceeded protective rights to include civil and political rights for children, thus moving them closer to citizenship (Coady, 2008). However, supporters noted the importance of establishing individual children’s rights, even against parents. Notably, the Article 12 provision sought to assure each child ‘the right to express his or her own views freely’ and be consulted in decisions affecting their lives. By 2015, all but one nation (the United States) had signed the convention.

As depicted earlier, the children’s rights regimes are an important globalising force for childhood today and increasing rate of schooling is one of its positive effects. Yet, there is an ongoing critical discussion that (Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013) children in collectivistic societies may not secure rights on the citizenship to the state as the metropolitan children do. In other words, as James (2011) puts it ‘ … a globalized child enshrined within the CRC often fails to correspond with the everyday realities of children in different parts of the world’.

Beyond this criticisms, there are different schools of thought on children’s rights which are mainly based on the childhood image, the debate on competence, the rights of children and the difference dilemma and are namely Paternalism, Welfare, Emancipation and Liberation (Hanson, 2012). Whereas Paternalism (seeing children as becomings, incompetent with the protection rights) and Liberation (seeing children as beings, competent with participation rights) approaches are representing quite unilateral conceptions we can basically refer to two wider perspectives regarding the discourse on children’s rights (i.e. welfare rights that liberate children from childhood, and rights to self-determination, emancipation that give children a stronger voice) (Jans, 2004; Wyness, 2012: 227). The first approach focuses on child protection through support for physical, emotional and moral resources, as well as preventing starvation, abuse and exploitation. These rights are usually invoked by adults to protect children. The emancipation approach regards children as actors that ‘take certain responsibilities and powers from adults, as children have a right to make decisions themselves’ (Wyness, 2012: 229). Such rights improve children’s access to decision-making processes and participation. Thus, children are seen as both objects of protection and autonomous individuals. This duality reflects the two main tendencies of late modernity (i.e. globalisation and individualisation). Jans (2004) refers to Beck and Giddens by claiming that child participation today presents itself as fact by accepting playful and ambivalent forms of citizenship. The late modern condition increasingly allows children to involve themselves in a continuous learning process in which children and adults are interdependent. Thus, ‘even though children cannot vote or are not fully responsible and/or decent, they are yet citizens within their identities and also are involved and can participate in community life. In other words, children’s participation can be seen as child-size citizenship’ (Jans, 2004: 38).

Oswell (2013: 243–245) debated that the liberation and protection conflict is a false opposition. Individualisation is not set against a welfare discourse. Rather, both constitute aspects of modern biopolitical governmentality. Thus, children’s rights may be seen as a field of problematisation (i.e. in the Foucauldian sense of a field of power, knowledge and subjectivity). Priscilla Alderson (2008) questions political competency regarding the rights of infants and babies, particularly in the context of their capacity to consent to medical treatment. Alderson (1994) proposes a view of self-determination that revolves around children’s rights to physical, mental and personal integrity. Thus, integrity rights and the rights to provision, protection and participation can be applied to all children irrespective of age (Alderson, 2008). It is obvious that a view on children’s rights that separates and individualises children in social and professional terms (see Alderson et al., 2005, Freeman, 2007, 2012; Hart, 1997; Smith, 2007) provides greater recognition of children in late modernity.

Conclusion

This study discussed childhood in the context of late modernity based on Beck’s concept of the risk society and Giddens’s risk culture, in which children are exposed by the continuous transition stemming from globalisation and individualisation. In such a society, childhood is shorter, has blurred boundaries and approaches the adult world. As society and its structural forms (such as the family) change, children face new global and local risks as millions live in poverty and face inequality.

Children’s lives, concepts, ideals and practices come from different, and sometimes, conflicting sources, which are both local and global in their nature (Twum-Danso Imoh et al., 2019: 1–4). The boundaries are blurring since the global processes and local realities are closely bound together. Thus, beyond the binary oppositions, adultization in the form of child consumerism and the children’s rights movement was discussed to show that opposing views (e.g. the disappearance of childhood or the liberation of childhood) can be unproductive. Qvortrup’s (1999) study exemplifies the trend involving the Internet, social media, UNCRC and ‘kidults’ as a supporting evidence for the disappearance of childhood. However, there is criticism following this idea as several trends create difficulty in proving that childhood is obsolete; by referring to welfare laws, children appear more protected and more controlled (e.g. ‘cotton wool kids’).

Beyond these opposing views, this study asserted that the ‘adultization of children’ is useful for problematising and analysing childhood in the late modern era. Regarding child consumerism, evidence indicates that children are being victimised in their roles as consumers but are gaining power as self-actors. Discussions on children citizenship are similarly two-fold as children receive greater protection than ever before, but their individuality is importantly projected through the idea of child agency in cultural and political contexts. Due to this, it is important to consider that childhoods are constructed and experienced at the intersection of social relations implicating actors, structures, forces and dynamics (Mayall, 2010).

Finally, evidence indicates that childhood has not disappeared but has been transformed through adultization; historical and sociocultural contexts have gradually changed during late modernity. Reflexive nostalgia may influence the claim that childhood has disappeared. As they compose one-third of the world population, children should be explicitly considered as citizens with civil, political, social and economic rights. They will otherwise remain isolated from their potentiality and integrity while being exposed to the extreme harms of globalisation.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Turkan Firinci Orman

Author biography

Turkan Firinci Orman is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Baskent University in Ankara, Turkey. Her research interests include sociology of childhood, children’s rights, and human behaviour in a political context.

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