Children

Category: Fields of research

Early Research

Some of the first research on children and childhood was done by socialist or progressive female authors who wanted to understand and improve children’s life quality. Friedrich Engels' research, presented in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845a), showed that industrialization greatly deteriorated the living conditions of industrial workers. Housing conditions were so poor that most working families lived in only one room, in very poor-quality buildings; their clothing and food were in extremely dire condition, and the mortality of children and adults was several times higher than that of the rest of the population; diseases and infections were prevalent; workers did not have access to even the most basic health and educational resources; the average working day lasted twelve hours; even the children did the hardest jobs.

Jane Addams, in the book The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909), argues that city life destroys the spirit of youth and that it is necessary to introduce programs of games and entertainment for youth, which will develop the spirit of democratic cooperation, free speech, and collective action. In the book, The Delinquent Child and the Home (1912a), Sophonisba Breckinridge shows that poverty and life in overcrowded urban neighborhoods are the main causes of delinquent behavior among children. She also reveals how delinquent children, from different classes, experience different fates - while children from poor families often go to juvenile correctional facilities, at the same time, children from rich families are sent to expensive boarding schools. American feminist, sociologist, and reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote Concerning Children (1903) which deals with topics like school, motherhood, and childhood. In the 1930s, Swedish sociologist Alva Myrdal focused her attention on the education of children and youth, both as the director of the Pedagogical Institute, but also as the author of several publications on pedagogy and education. She believed that the roots of all social inequalities stem from inequalities in education.

Childhood Throughout History

In the book Centuries of Childhood historian Philip Ariès dealt with the history of family and childhood in France and Western Europe in the Middle Ages. With this book, he became the first historian who researched childhood. Using art, personal memoirs, and other written documents Ariès concluded that in the Middle Ages, the idea and concept of childhood did not exist, and that there was no cultural recognition of childhood, as well as no distinction in social relations toward children. Children before the age of seven had no social significance and after turning seven they immediately started training for adulthood and wearing adult clothing. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, children started to go to schools and universities and then children started wearing distinct children’s and young people’s clothes. Schooling demands that children be disciplined and go through planned and controlled stages of growth and learning. Children who didn’t follow the school discipline and acted impulsively were viewed as misbehaving and in need of discipline. The propagation of schools created a social environment where children lost their independence and adults started mistrusting their ability to develop on their own, and thus schools invented the psychology of the young. This development introduced disintegration into the whole society.

Vivien Zelizer examined the economic "price" of the child in the book Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (1985). She studies the price of children in three areas: child insurance, court compensation for accidents in children, and cases of child adoptions. In the nineteenth century, children in working-class families helped economically with paid work and domestic work, so the “price” of a child for his family was proportionate to his economic contribution to the family. In the twentieth century, children stopped contributing economically, both financially and by working in the household, but, on the other hand, court damages became extremely generous. In the modern world children present great emotional and economic investment for the family, especially in the USA with the high cost of childcare and education, but, on the other hand, children become a great source of happiness and emotional support for parents. This change made the “price” of a child proportional to the emotional and economic investment of the family in a child. Because this investment is usually large, children become “sacred” and “priceless”.

Feminism on Motherhood and Children

Friedrich Engels, in his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), argues that the fall of matriarchy is "a historic defeat for women of world proportions". Men came to power, while women became subordinate to male autocracy, and their purpose became only to serve and give birth to children. Patriarchy, unlike matriarchy, where relations between the sexes would be more equal, introduces the autocracy of men as the heads of the family, not only over women but also over children and family slaves. To ensure that children born in wedlock are the direct biological descendants of the father, complete control over the movement and behavior of the woman was introduced. Although polygamy was reserved only for men, it was rare and a privilege only for richer men.

Kate Millett showed in the book Sexual Politics (1969) that the family has a great role in maintaining patriarchy, because mothers and children get their social status through the social status of the father, and in addition, the family is the most important place of early socialization.

Nancy Chodorow, in her book The Reproduction of Mothering (1978), studies strategies created to maintain and strengthen existing social hierarchies. She states that gender roles and norms are not adopted by imitation or coercion, but are a consequence of the early relationship between a mother and a child (especially regarding attachment and separation). Both sexes identify with the mother after birth, but that relationship changes later. Likewise, mothers begin, over time, to treat children of different genders differently. Girls build their identity by maintaining a connection with their mothers, while boys build a sense of identity by separating from their mothers. Boys build an identity by rejecting and suppressing the feminine side and by belittling femininity in women. Maintaining masculinity requires constant self-examination and struggle with oneself, which leads to its fragility. Femininity is more stable, but it involves the self-sabotage of women. She believes that there is a universal female self that transcends racial and class differences.

In the book Gender in Intimate Relations: A Microstructural Approach (1989) Barbara Risman showed that at the individual level, socialization in childhood leads to the internalization of gender roles in members of both genders and thus leads to the creation of gender (innate) selves. In her book The Feminist Papers (1973), Alice Rossi took a very different view, arguing that the biological differences between men and women make women better suited to caring for children. It follows that gender equality should be achieved through social recognition of this biologically innate advantage for caring for children, and not by men taking on this role. Rossi later, in several books, explored how different aspects of life develop and change during a woman's life: work, family, sexuality, child-parent relationships, and community relationships.

The New Paradigm

Allison James and Alan Prout introduced, in their book Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, 2nd ed. (1997), the new paradigm in scientific research on children and childhood. While earlier sociological approaches viewed and researched children only in the context of family, school, and the process of socialization, the new paradigm sees children as active members of society with their specific agency. The main tenets of the new paradigm are: 1) childhood is a social construction, 2) social analysis of childhood has to include other relevant variables - class, gender, and ethnicity, 3) social relations between themselves are an important field of study, 4) ethnography should be the main method of researching childhood. The new approach is essentially an interdisciplinary endeavor, bringing together scientists from psychology, history, sociology, anthropology, and geography.

Education and Class Differences

In his book Adolescent Society (1961), James Coleman studied the value systems of students, and, most of all, their status hierarchy. Among adolescents, boys who were successful in sports had the highest reputation, while similar situation was for the girls who had the greatest circle of friends, while social background and success in school did not have a great influence. In schools that attached great importance to sports competitions with other schools, successful athletes had an even higher social status. A few years later, Coleman conducted extensive empirical research to determine differences in educational opportunities between different schools, which resulted in the book Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966). He came to several conclusions: the scope and content of school inputs did not have a greater impact on student achievement; family background, and especially racial background, had the greatest impact on school success; bad students showed better results when they are surrounded by better students, while the opposite case has not been noticed. In his book Public and Private High Schools (1987), Coleman specifically studied the impact of social capital on student achievement. He determined that the school success of students, to a large extent, depends on the similarity in values and norms between parents and teachers of a school. If parents and teachers only share values and norms, then there is what he called a "value community", and when parents and teachers have social interactions outside of school, then there is a "functional community". The best example of a functional community are Catholic schools. The results showed that students from schools that had functional communities achieved the greatest success, students in value communities achieved medium success, while students who went to schools where parents' social capital was small or non-existent had the worst success.

Paolo Freire revolutionized the field of education, using his theoretical and practical approach of critical pedagogy. His most famous book is Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) where he elaborated his approach. His goal was to create politically engaged pedagogy against the prevailing “culture of silence”, which refers to the conditions of life and work of the poor and illiterate Brazilian working class. The goal of critical pedagogy was to empower marginalized and oppressed communities through education. He believed that education should not be a tool of domination but rather a means of liberation. According to Freire, traditional education systems, which he called the “banking approach” to education, were designed to maintain the status quo, reproduce existing power structures, and maintain the oppression of the marginalized. He called for a radical reimagining of education that would challenge these power structures and allow for the liberation of the oppressed.

In the book Education, Opportunity and Social Inequality (1973) Raymond Boudon explores the interplay between social inequality and the chances of achieving higher education. He applies his theory of rational action to the choices that students make when choosing an educational direction, as well as the length of schooling, and thus arrives at a theory he calls "positional theory." The primary effects of stratification relate to the different subcultural values that exist in different classes. The secondary effects of stratification are the very positions (within social stratification) from which students begin schooling. Children from different classes will not achieve the same rise or fall on the stratification ladder by choosing the same occupation. Children from the working class can achieve social progress by choosing a professional occupation, while children from the upper middle class will experience a social decline with this choice. Related to this are the different expectations of parents from different classes. Another factor that limits choices in schooling is the relationship of solidarity with family and peers. Children will be less likely to choose a type of education that will distance them from family and peers. Boudon found that the length of schooling is also affected by the number of educational levels that exist in an education system, that is, the number of places where children can decide to drop out of school. The greater the number of such places of decision (crossroads), the more pronounced will be the inequality of opportunities in education. Children behave rationally because they always estimate how much some choice of educational profile will bring them harm, and how much it will benefit them.

Basil Bernstein is known for his book Class, Codes and Control, 3 vols. (1971, 1973, 1976) where he showed the results of his pioneering study of the relationship between the social class from which a child originates and how that child learns and uses language, both in the family and at school. He found that there are significant differences between the ability of members of different classes to use symbolic communication. Different use of language influences the creation of different identities, experiences, and views of the world, and it is connected with socialization in the family and with two ways of organizing the household - "positional" and "personalizing". The positional type, and the associated language code, are characteristic of the working and old middle classes. The personalizing type is associated with the "new" middle class, which is engaged in the production of cultural content, while the old middle class is associated with material production and trade. The positional system depends on the direct means of social control - clearly defined social roles. The personalizing type allows individual reflection on identity and meaning.

The difference between these two types of primary socialization affects the creation of two clearly separated linguistic codes: "limited" and "elaborated". Limited language code more often uses short, incomplete, and grammatically simple sentences. Adjectives and adverbs are less often used in this code, while the meaning is often expressed by gesticulation and intonation. Restricted code uses particularistic meanings because it is always tied to the context in which it is spoken. The elaborated code, on the other hand, contains many details and explanations, and the meanings are universalistic because they are not related to a specific context. Because formal schooling focuses on transmitting and developing a universalist type of knowledge and meaning, children who use limited code are less likely to successfully acquire the necessary skills and knowledge. Bernstein also showed that children from working-class families create classifications based on their own experience and knowledge, while children from middle-class families create classifications using abstract principles. Bernstein later applied this type of class analysis to the creation of curricula in British schools.

In the book Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (1977), Paul Willis studies how cultural values shape pupils' attitudes toward education and work. The fieldwork for this study was conducted in Birmingham. Willis opposed the hypothesis that children from working-class families, due to academic failures, recognize their own intellectual limitations, and then, as a result, accept jobs with limited chances for career advancement. He spent a long time with a group of white boys from working-class families. He came to the conclusion that they understood very well the system of authority that exists in the school, but they actively fought against it, and one of the ways of fighting was constant conflicts with teachers. They saw school as a hostile system that they could manipulate. The hostile attitude they had towards the authoritarian system at school, with constant attempts to provoke and manipulate, they kept on because they had the same attitude towards work. They were happy to have a paid job, but did not expect to get any pleasure or sense of accomplishment from the work, nor did they have the desire to pursue a career. Remaining in the class of parents, for these children, was a product of cultural reproduction because the subcultural pattern, which was accepted during childhood, continued to operate when entering the labor market. In this group of boys, Willis also found extremely macho behavior - expressing aggressive masculinity by using sexist language about girls, establishing a very clearly defined framework of acceptable behavior for boys, and harassment and physical aggression concerning homosexuals.

In the book, Unequal but Fair ?: A Study of Class Barriers in Britain (1996), Peter Saunders, using data from the National Child Development Study, concludes that there is a real meritocracy in Britain because talented children succeed in life regardless of socioeconomic background. In that sense, it can be said that there is inequality in Britain, but that economic differences are fair because they are based on talent and success.

Psychological Development of Children

In the book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904) Sigmund Freud presents his theory of psychosexual development, which asserts that there are 5 distinct phases of human sexual development, i.e., psychosexual maturation. In each stage, the concentration of the libido is on a different erogenous zone of the body. Successful progression through each of the psychosexual stages is imperative for maturing into a well-functioning adult. In each stage libidinal drives have to be appropriately discharged, otherwise, if they are repressed or unable to be discharged, an individual will be dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction, or as Freud names it, fixation, will produce anxiety and will develop into a persisting neurosis in adulthood. Each of the 5 stages of psychosexual development relates to a specific erogenous body part, age range, and clinical consequence of fixation.

The first stage starts from the birth of a baby and lasts until it becomes one year old. The earliest attachment of the baby is on the mouth and the oral desire, and it stems from the bond with the mother that feeds the baby milk. If stimulation in the oral stage is suboptimal then libidinal energy produces fixation on oral gratification and results in latent aggressive tendencies in adulthood. The second stage spans ages one through three and is focused on the anal part of the body and bodily excretions. In this stage, parents want to establish toilet training for the child. This period is very sensitive because a child is more prone to being reprimanded for not learning to control bodily excretions, which can leave a child feeling inadequate. Fixation from that feeling can manifest itself in anal expulsiveness (whimsical disorganization) or anal retentiveness (incessant orderliness).

The third stage lasts from 3-6 years old, and the child's focus is on genitalia, as it starts to feel pleasure from it. Dissatisfaction in this age of primitive sexual development in the child results in the fixation on the parent of the opposite sex, i.e., the Oedipus complex. The fourth stage lasts from 6 - 12 years old, and in it, the libido is sublimated. There is no bodily area that is the focus of the attention of the child in this stage, and the focus is more on directing libidinal energy into building relationships. Fixation in this stage leaves the child and the adult unable to build healthy relationships. The fifth and last stage lasts from 13-18 years old, and the focus of attention again moves to genital areas. The child in this stage experiences mature sexual feelings, the ego becomes fully developed, and the child starts to seek independence. Fixation in this period results in an inability to develop well-functioning romantic and sexual relationships as an adult.

Erik Erikson presented his theory of human developmental stages in Childhood and Society (1950). The biggest question, that he wants to answer, is what effect developmental stages, which are universal for all people, have on the formation of individual identity and personality. Erikson’s theory of developmental stages was inspired by Freud’s theory of psychosexual development but departs from it in several key points. Points of departure are: 1) Erikson’s scheme has eight stages, while Freud’s scheme has five; 2) Erikson’s scheme encompasses all of life’s duration, while Freud’s lasts only up to the end of adolescence; 3) Erikson stresses the greater importance to the development after six years of age; 4) in Erikson’s theory ego plays a very positive and creative role in individual’s development; 5) Erikson emphasizes more interpersonal influences and external environment on the development, while Freud primarily focuses on intrapersonal forces; 6) Erikson doesn’t connect stages with specific erogenous zones on the body, as Freud does.

Erikson’s theory of developmental stages, known also as the configurational approach, took the concept of epigenesis from embryology and applied it to human psychological development. The ego goes through a predetermined sequence of psychosocial stages, with each stage having a separate developmental task of confronting and resolving the unique challenge or crisis. Every challenge presents a new potential for personal growth, and the more successful the resolution of the challenge is, the development is healthier. The creative and conscious ego interacts with its social environment at every stage and tries to resolve the crisis in the best possible way. In earlier stages, the most important environment are parents and their specific child-rearing practice, while in later stages wider society and culture become increasingly more important. Every stage of development is marked by, not only specific crises, but also by corresponding positive and negative emotions, specific social institutional rituals, and specific virtues. The optimal development for an individual entails a balance between the opposite (negative and positive) emotions. In the period before adolescence, the best resolution of the crisis is to integrate mostly positive emotions, while in the later stages, the best resolution is the incorporation of the synthesis of both types of emotions.

At each stage, individuals benefit from experiences provided by significant others, as they help to resolve the tensions between the individual’s psyche and society’s expectations so the positive resolution of the crisis can lead to the adoption of a specific corresponding virtue. Each stage expands from the experience of the previous stages and prepares the person for later stages. The successful resolution of the crisis in one stage is crucial for the success in the next stage. The negative resolution of the crisis can lead to anxiety in later life. Erikson’s configurational approach stresses that the unsuccessful resolution of the crisis in one stage can be remediated by providing better-than-average expectable psychological support in the form of psychotherapy or counseling. The aspect of the theory that states that the outcome of each stage is modifiable ties to the important premise that ego grows throughout someone's life. It is important to emphasize that Erikson’s theory is not completely age-dependent, as crises and challenges of each stage are always present in every stage, only the relative impact they have on the individual varies throughout life.

The first stage starts with birth and lasts up to one year of age. In it, emotions of trust and mistrust form the basis of the conflict. The sense of trust is built through the baby’s relationship with its caregivers, that is, if they provide a feeling of physical comfort and a sense of security for the baby. Successful adoption of a sense of trust sets positive expectations for the rest of life, and that is why it is crucial for further positive development in subsequent stages.In the second stage, conflict is between the need for independence and autonomy, on the one hand, and the sense of shame and doubt, on the other. This conflict stems from the imposition of social rules and self-control (e. i. toilet training) upon the child. Excessive application of rules and punishment leads to the development of a sense of shame and doubt, while positive resolution of conflict ensures that the child will have a strong sense of independence and willpower.

The third stage is marked by the child’s active and purposeful exploration of his or her environment, and the crisis is between taking initiative, and the sense of guilt for taking control over activities. Children in this period are encouraged to take responsibility for their behavior, this leads to the increase of initiative to pursue goals, but also to more challenges, risks, and possible failures. Positive resolution of conflict leads to a sense of purpose in the child, while negative resolution leads to anxiety. In the fourth stage, conflict is between the industry – the ability to focus attention on specific tasks and master cognitive skills – and feelings of inferiority. Positive development at this stage brings curiosity and enthusiasm for learning new things, while negative development results in a sense of inferiority and incompetence. The crisis of building oneself's identity versus having identity confusion marks the fifth stage of adolescence. At this stage, teens are faced with problems of learning and adopting new adult roles, “fitting in with the group”, and finding out their own path in life. Positive resolution of crisis leads to the building of a stable positive identity and a sense of self based on self-knowledge. Negative resolution of crisis leads to identity or role confusion, that is, the adoption of an identity that was forced upon oneself by peers or parents, and having unexplored social roles and undefined future paths.

In the book Personality (1937), Gordon Allport studied personality traits. Traits that develop in an individual during childhood become functionally autonomous in adult individuals. That means that traits that arise as a product of developmental processes and experiences become independent of them in adults. Similarly, traits that have developed and were functional in one type of situation, can have other functions in other situations. He distinguishes individual traits or “personal dispositions” (that are found in some individuals in society) and common traits that are shared by the majority of the people in some societies and cultures. Allport divides all traits into three categories based on how important they are to an individual: cardinal, central, and secondary traits. Cardinal traits dominate the entire life of an individual and define that person. Central traits are general characteristics and central dispositions that are important for an individual. Secondary traits are related to an individual’s preferences or attitudes.

According to Allport newborn babies have no personality, but they acquire it through subsequent processes of differentiation, integration, maturation, and learning. At the start child differentiates adaptive and efficient patterns of behavior; then it starts to integrate those behaviors into its actions; after that child starts to mature physically and learns how to adapt to its environment. These developmental processes progress in a child through stages: “(1) a sense of bodily self, (2) a sense of continuing identity, (3) a sense of self-esteem or pride, (4) the extension of self, (5) a self-image, (6) a sense of self as rationally able to cope, and finally, in adolescence, (7) a sense of “directedness” or “intentionality.””

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued that a child forms his own identity when the father (agent of the father principle) interrupts the mother-child relationship. The mother’s place (feminine) tends to be the Real, the father represents the Symbolic, and the child is Imaginary. That is, the child builds his or her identity by accepting sexual differences. Sexual differentiation starts with the realization that the mother lacks a penis (mark of difference). Lacan names the symbolic meaning of the penis „phallus“. While the penis is real, the phallus becomes a symbolic signifier of what is missing. The Symbolic makes the child confront its vulnerability and mortality, which is symbolically represented by the fear of castration. Through this Symbolic gives the world (society) law and meaning.

Behaviorist psychologist John B. Watson states that most of the conditioning happens in early childhood, hence the knowledge of child development is crucial for understanding how healthy and unhealthy personalities are formed; and for designing a behavioral social technology that would be used to alter human behavior. Watson did many observational and experimental studies on newborns and infants, and the results of those studies were represented in one of the first psychology films Investigation of Babies (1919), the article “Conditioned Emotional Reactions”(1920), and in the child-rearing manual Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928). One of the main focuses of his research on babies was the difference between unlearned (instinctive) and learned behavior. His observation revealed that behaviors like crying, urination and defecation, sneezing and hiccoughing, erection of the penis, smiling, grasping, and blinking were unlearned. He concluded that behaviors like crawling, swimming, and handedness were learned. Watson argued that the beginnings of language are in unlearned vocal sounds. Watson found that three visceral emotional responses are unlearned – fear, rage, and love – while all other visceral habits are shaped by conditioning.

Watson’s most famous and, at the same time, controversial experiment was done on an eleven-month-old boy, known as “Little Albert”, the results of which were published in the article “Conditioned emotional reactions” (1920). This baby boy didn’t show any obvious signs of fears or phobias except for sudden loud sounds. At the start of the experiment, Little Albert was lеft to play with the tame white rat, but on subsequent occasions, experimentators would make loud unexpected noises behind the boy, while he was playing with a rat. After some time Little Albert became afraid and distressed with just seeing the rat, and even more, of seeing any furry object. Watson's conclusion from this experiment was that it (the experiment) completely disproved psychoanalytic explanation for the causes of the fears, that is, that fears come from some unobservable internal mental processes. Watson argued that the experiment proved that all fears come from learning by association and that this knowledge can be used to treat fears and phobias in children by exposing them to situations where they would associate positive emotions with the object of the fear.

Watson wrote a popular child-rearing manual Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928). The manual encouraged parents to apply the principles of behaviorism in childrearing. It contains some quite controversial advice on how to raise children: “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning“ (1928:81– 2). Parents should impose strict routines and have control over the behavior and environment of a child. The goal of this kind of upbringing is to make children who are autonomous, bold, and self-reliant. Children should be adaptable, problem-solving, and work-oriented, and exhibit low attachments to places and people.

George Herbert Mead argues that there are two phases in the process of socialization of a child, through which his self is formed. In the earliest period of development, the child is in the "play" phase. During the "play", the child internalizes and imitates certain roles that are related to various social acts. In this phase, it takes on various social roles by taking on, during the play, the role of doctor, warrior, mother, father, or any other role. In the second phase, which Mead called a "game", the child internalizes the roles of all other people who participate in the game. In this way, the child develops a highly organized set of rules that shape different roles. When this process is completed, the child becomes able to see himself or herself from the perspective of other actors. By assimilating the roles of others, the child takes on collective roles. The group that represents the source of socialization, i.e. the source for learning these collective roles, Mead calls "generalized others". An organized and united self is created by successfully taking over the views of the group to which it belongs, that is, generalized others. Both social acts and the self have elements of stability, but they also show great reflexivity and creativity.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead's book Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) was based on her field study on the island of American Samoa. This book highlighted topics of adolescence, gender, child development, sexuality, and especially the sexual behavior of adolescent girls. Her research looked at the influence of cultural conditions on adolescent life and the psychosexual development of Samoan girls. Her research was conducted in a small village. Both sexes were involved in child rearing, boys and girls were taught different skills, while physical punishment was given for bad behavior. Girls were encouraged to learn practical skills like weaving, in order to find good husbands. Boys were encouraged to learn fishing and to display bravery and aggressive behavior, as well as to act humble. Men and women formed separate social groups, first were formed to do work outside the home, while the latter formed groups to do child rearing and domestic work. Mead found out that Samoan girls were tacitly allowed to explore their sexuality in secrecy through sexual encounters. This research showed the existence of the different systems of morality that allowed premarital sex, and where adolescence wasn’t necessarily a stressful time of the life cycle. Adolescent girls in Samoa didn’t experience psychological tensions and had an easy transition to adulthood.

Margaret Mead's book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) studied people and their culture in three societies in New Guinea - the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli. Mead resided with each tribe for six months to immerse herself in the cultural practices of each society. In Arapesh society all members (of both sex) had feminine traits – sensitivity, nurture, and harmony; while masculine traits like aggression and violence were discouraged for all members. Arapesch mothers and their children had a prolonged relationship and men helped with childrearing duties. Mundugumor society had more masculine traits and all members were encouraged to display them, while pregnancies were associated with strong taboos. Tchambuli society exhibits duality of gender roles, but they were reversed to traditional gender roles in the US – men were nominally in charge of each collective, but were passive, gentle, and submissive, while women were truly in charge, breadwinners, aggressive and violent. This research uncovered the constructed nature of gender and gender systems. Gender, gender roles, and gender systems are not a product of innate biological nature, but a product of culture and its practices.

Childhood and Delinquency

Clifford Shaw published several books dealing with juvenile delinquency and delinquency. In the book The Jack Roller: A Delinquent Boy's Own Story (1930), Shaw presents a case study of a delinquent boy. In this study, he combined the biographical method (he interviewed the juvenile delinquent in detail about his life) and the collection of official and statistical data. Shaw focused on several areas of a boy's life: the boy's attitudes, the socio-cultural world in which he lived, and the time sequence of situations and experiences. He first collected and chronologically arranged the data of official institutions, then asked the boy to write his own story, after that, in conversations with him, Shaw asked the boy to clarify the discrepancies between his story and official data and thus encouraged the boy to think about his delinquency. In addition, he collected data on school, family, environment, and delinquency rates.

In the book Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1931), co-written by Shaw and Henry McKay, the authors explore the distribution of delinquency in different parts of Chicago in the early twentieth century. They found that delinquency is increasing in neighborhoods away from the city center and that some neighborhoods have had high rates of delinquency for decades, even though ethnic composition has changed significantly in the same neighborhoods. Neighborhoods with high delinquency rates had high rates of adult crime, tuberculosis, and infant mortality. Shaw and McKay created an environmental model to explain juvenile delinquency. They observed the increase in delinquency in the context of the cities' increase because with that increase comes the formation of neighborhoods with specific physical, social, economic, and cultural characteristics. The neighborhoods, where the population is declining, where poverty is widespread, and where a large proportion are immigrants and African-Americans, are most affected by delinquency. As a result of these factors, togetherness, and common goals are declining, leading to a reduction in the influence of institutions and social control. All these circumstances have led to the existence of opposing value systems. The decline in the community's ability to informally control crime has led to the formation of a criminal subculture. Delinquent subcultures, peer pressure, and the need to belong to a group were critical factors in the development of delinquent behavior. For young people, belonging to delinquent groups meant the possibility of achieving goals that they could not achieve otherwise. As a solution to these problems, the authors proposed the implementation of programs that would unite and strengthen the community and social life in it.

In his book The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice (1968), Aaron Cicourel studies deviance in juveniles, primarily social processes that guide the classification of deviant persons, as well as common sense notions that influence the nature of deviant acts and how deviant persons are treated. Analyzing data from two cities in California, Cicourel showed that the police used the common sense theory that children from "broken homes" are more dangerous delinquents. Children from such homes were detained more often, put on trial more often, and convicted more often. The initial common-sense assumption about the existence of a connection between the type of home and the danger of the delinquent influenced the official statistics, while the standard social science drew from these statistics the wrong conclusion about the existence of the connection between the type of home and delinquency. Since there was the same socio-economic structure of the population in the two studied cities, but also a significant difference in official statistical rates of delinquency, Cicourel concluded that the social and political reaction to delinquent behavior produced differences in official statistics on delinquency. As the response to delinquent behavior was stronger in a city with higher rates of delinquency, interactive relationships of negotiating what constitutes delinquent behavior in that city produced higher levels of registered delinquency.

Books and articles:

Abbott: The Delinquent Child And The Home (1916);

Addams: The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909);

- The Child, the Clinic and the Court (1927);

Adelson, Joseph. Inventing Adolescence: The Political Psychology of Everyday Schooling (1986);

Ariés, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1962);

Berk, L. E. Child Development. 7th ed. (2006);Bernstein: Class, Codes and Control, 4 vols (1971, 1973, 1976, 1990);

Boudon: Education, Opportunity and Social Inequality: Changing Prospects in Western Society (1974, in French 1973);

Breckinridge: The Delinquent Child and the Home (1912);

Buchmann, Marlis. The Script of Life in Modern Society: Entry into Adulthood in a Changing World (1989);

Chodorow: The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978);

Cicourel : The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice (1968);

Clausen, John. American Lives: Looking Back at the Children of the Great Depression (1993);

Cole, M., S. R. Cole, and C. Lightfoot. The Development of Children. 5th ed.( 2005);

Coleman : The Adolescent Society (1961);

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