The after-school period of older primary school-aged children was used to examine how the social construct of childhood is being shaped and how it changes over time. With studies on childhood still relatively new academic terrain, this research makes a contribution by identifying some key structural and social forces impacting upon childhood. This research investigated firstly how children spend their time in the after-school period, secondly the reasons why they do so, and thirdly parental and child understandings and opinions on this subject. Childhood was found to be differentially constructed by socioeconomic backgrounds, and mediated by employment status. Results suggest that increasing parental employment accompanied concerns over safety for children and the need to protect them. This meant that there was a tendency for families to mediate between the child and wider society through increased surveillance of children. For one-parent families this took the form of supervision of children through after-school programmes. Two-parent families, who were more able to organise their work arrangements so that one parent was home after-school, monitored their children's activities within localised areas based around the home. Parental 'risk anxiety' was seen to be shaping the lives of children in terms of defining safe places and spaces for them. Children themselves tended to prefer informal, unstructured activities within these contexts, and did not seem too concerned about safety issues.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/284374 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Cottam, Paul |
| Publisher | Lincoln University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://purl.org/net/lulib/thesisrights |
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