Childrens Media – childhood

This is a blog so I can write unsubstantiated stuff. What is childhood. When did this concept arise? If we say the concept of childhood, a time of innocence when the brain is developing and thus the child is protected, began with the Victorians how do we square this with child workers and the lack of education for the poor. If we accept that childhood is a very modern concept, post 2nd WW, does this affect the magic family time that existed before the media got in to destroy the family. As i said at the beginning this is a blog and i write stuff. I feel that the concept of ‘family’ that is refered to, is something invented to reconstruct western society after the second world war. The rich could have a childhood, a time before responsibility, but the poor worked, even in childhood. Many women had worked in the war and their children were looked after. After the war society was recreated and within this was the role of motherhood. The mother at home cooking and cleaning to welcome home the father, then to participate in the pastoral idyll of the ideal family. Is this any more real than the family at war with children obsessed by the media with their morals somewhere between ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘The Matrix’. So today, 2009, if I defined childhood it would be a western based idea of the years between 0 and 12. Oh and its primarily male, a girls childhood stops as soon as she bleeds even if she is in primary school and that is worldwide.