Globalization and childhoods

Two developments in the later twentieth century ushered in a new era of globalization – an era of intensifying contacts and interactions among societies literally around the world. The most obvious development, and with direct impact on children and youth, was technological: satellite TV broadcasts facilitated global communications, including networks such as MTV, crucial in dispensing at least a version of international youth culture; and in 1990 the introduction of the Internet created an unprecedented means of contact, which many young people seized upon in societies otherwise as different as the United States and Iran. The second development was political: the decision of first China, then Russia to open to new kinds of international contacts. The Cold War ended; multinational companies expanded their outreach amid growing inducements to create market-based economies. Globalization was not an entirely new process, and historians debate

the chronology. Important influences from inter-regional contacts had affected childhood in earlier periods. More intense connections in the later nineteenth century, including Western imperialism, reshaped childhood in many areas and many ways. For Japan, for example, decisions about relationships to the external world brought global forces to bear on childhood from 1868 onward. There is no question, however, that globalization accelerated in the twentieth century, and particularly in the final decades, with a new variety of impacts on childhood. Contemporary globalization was not a simple process. It was not entirely

new, even in its impact on youth and childhood. The global spread of key sports such as soccer and baseball, as part of the spectator life and athletic aspirations of young people from Latin America to Asia, had begun in the late nineteenth century. Another complexity: globalization provoked new kinds of resistance, some of them winning allegiance among groups of young people. Some Muslims, for example, feared the impact of globalization on their traditions, seeing it as a new means of Western dominance. Many Latin Americans feared the impact of American consumer culture on their offspring. On another front, groups of young people in the West and the Pacific Rim openly worried about globalization’s impact on labor conditions and

the environment. It was not certain that globalization would triumph over the various oppositions. In the West and Pacific Rim, polls showed that young people were more favorable to globalization, overall, than older adults were, priding themselves in their tolerance and openness to new ideas; but in Latin America, Africa, and other parts of Asia, young people and adults agreed on a certain wariness. Third complexity: globalization’s emphasis on increasing international contacts did not point in a single direction, and this was of great importance to childhood. Economic globalization, for example, worsened the work situation of some children; but political globalization – that is, the growing outreach of international government and nongovernment organizations – moved toward increased advocacy of children’s rights. Globalization did not assume command of childhood; major regional

patterns persisted, and the earlier trends embodied in the modern model of childhood, already well under way, largely persisted. Key aspects of globalization actually provided new support for this model, as we will see. Nevertheless, globalization deserves separate consideration as a new force in the history of childhood, creating additional kinds of change and resistance in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Four facets of globalization had particular impacts: new patterns of migration; the efforts of international political groups to provide international standards for the treatment of children; economic globalization, or the growing involvement of almost all regions of the world in a common process of production, along with the retreat of state-sponsored economies; and cultural globalization, or the spread of global consumerism. Migration, of course, was not new, and it had always had consequences

for children. Immigrant children in the United States around 1900, for example, had often played a special role as intermediaries between parents, whose English was often uncertain, and the new society in which they worked and, often, went to school. It was a challenging but sometimes invigorating experience, though frequently confusing to parents. At the same time, prejudices often surfaced that found targets among immigrant children; job opportunities might be limited thanks to ethnic bias, and gang activities embodied tensions among many urban youth in immigrant neighborhoods. Two aspects of migration in the later twentieth century, loosely associated

with globalization, added to this mix, along with familiar elements. First, migration occurred over unusually long distances and involved people of very different cultures. Pakistanis and West Indians poured into Britain; Turks and North Africans created large Muslim minorities in France, Germany and the Netherlands; Filipinos and Palestinians flocked to the oilrich Persian Gulf states; Latinos and Asians created new diversity in the United States. In this situation, children’s role as buffers between parents and the new society became if anything more important, but also more demanding. Opportunities for generational clashes within the immigrant community could increase, around issues such as dating or female dress.

Opportunities for expression of prejudice could expand as well. Many immigrant youth in Britain faced growing hostility, punctuated by outright violence and race riots; gang activity could form in response, as in the rise of Latino youth gangs on both coasts in the United States by the early twentyfirst century, or the emergence of (Asian) Indian gangs on Canada’s west coast. Several riots by Muslim youth in France broke out in the early twenty-first century, reflecting high levels of joblessness and discriminatory treatment by police. Different kinds of youth music, such as the reggae styles brought from the West Indies, but also the sometimes racist punk rock, expressed creativity but also obvious tension in this intermixture of groups of young people in urban settings. The second innovation, for some immigrant youth, involved the growing

possibility of return visits to the home country, thanks to relatively cheap air travel or other facilities; Indians and Pakistanis often went home for vacations, preserving ties to extended families, and often providing occassion for marriage arrangements for young people themselves. The opportunity for many youth to become “bicultural” in this situation, conversant with two cultures and comfortable in switching back and forth, increased. This could involve young people who did not migrate, but whose contacts with cousins who did provided familiarity with the habits of other societies. Here was an obvious spur to globalization, though not to a single cultural model. Efforts of international organizations to assist children and reshape

childhood had begun in the aftermath of World War I – a sign of political globalization and the growing force of humanitarian world opinion. A variety of groups distributed food and other aid to children displaced in the war, including children in former enemy nations. While this applied mainly to Europe, the principle of special international charity for children gained ground steadily. After World War II, this would blossom into further efforts for refugees and for children in poor countries. Private organizations such as the Save the Children Fund, and political bodies deriving from the United Nations, both solicited philanthropy and distributed funds and products. The needs of poor children regularly outpaced donations, but the aid was significant, as were the new principles involved. In the 1920s, also, the new International Labor Office, affiliated with the

League of Nations, began to pass resolutions against child labor up to age 15. The goal was to extend the criteria now common in industrial societies to the world at large. This effort also broadened out under the United Nations after World War II. A host of conferences and resolutions attacked excessive work, while urging the right of every child to an education. The United Nations drafted formal statements on children’s rights (the Convention on Rights of the Child was issued in 1989), and most nations signed on, at least in principle: the main goals were promotion of health, avoidance of abuse, access to education, plus more standard rights such as freedom of religion and expression – a familiar roster, but now conceived in terms of a global

approach. A key focus by the 1990s was an effort to ban executions of children and youth for crimes, and virtually all societies in the world accepted this agreement, with the United States one of the only holdouts (until 2005). The World Health Organization worked hard to promote children’s survival and wellbeing, and a number of improvements occurred under its auspices – from inoculations that largely defeated some traditional killers, like polio, to educational programs designed to improve maternal care of infants. In the late 1970s, world opinion, as well as international organizations, became actively involved in attacking the Nestlé company for distributing infant milk formulas to regions where unsanitary water and parental ignorance led to higher death rates than occurred with breastfeeding; after initially resisting the international campaign, the giant company dramatically revised its approach in the 1980s. Other United Nations programs worked actively to promote some form of population control, in the interests of economic stability and children’s wellbeing alike: a major conference in 1996 agreed on this goal, despite tensions with religious authorities in the Islamic world and in the Catholic Church; greater education for women was particularly recommended as a means of reducing population pressure. Finally, a variety of United Nations and private agencies worked to spread the most up-todate principles of education and childrearing, often distributing materials urging parents to pay attention to their children as individuals. The commitment of large numbers of well intentioned people, primarily

from the more affluent countries, to a global vision of children’s rights, health, and economic protection was an important part of globalization more generally. The idea of children’s rights was novel in any society, but the notion of international agreement was at least as dramatic. It could have important effects, even aside from the resounding proclamations. In 2003, for example, the United Arab Emirates banned the use of children as jockeys in camel races: they had long been favored because of their light weight, strapped to the great beasts despite obvious terror. Here was an established pattern that had to be rethought by a nation eager for growing international contacts and a successful world role. The United States was affected as well. A Supreme Court ruling in 2005 held that minors could not be subjected to capital punishment, an area where the United States had, for several decades, differed from almost every other country in the world; international legal standards were cited as a key basis for the decision. More generally, along with imitation of the modern model of childhood by individual governments, the global movement on behalf of children helps explain the steady (if quite varied) decline of the birth rate and, even more, the decline of infant and child mortality; the same applies to the steady reduction of child labor in the final decades of the twentieth century, and the consistent increase in the percentage of children receiving at least some education. There were, however, important limitations on the range of global action

for children. In the first place, open disagreement flared on certain issues.

A campaign in 1973 to win global agreement on a ban on child labor under age 16 failed, because not enough countries would sign on. Several poor countries believed that their economies depended to an extent on cheap child labor, and that many poor families had the same need; countries such as the United States refused to sign as well, both because of reliance on child labor among migrant agricultural workers, and because of a general resistance to international infringement on national freedom of action. A replacement agreement in 1989 was important, but more modest: extreme abuse of child labor was now outlawed in principle, with particular focus on sexual exploitation, sale of children to pay family debts, and use of children in military forces. Most countries did sign this document. There were also disagreements about birth control, with the United States, from the 1980s onward, withholding funds from international agencies that distributed birth control devices or in any way countenanced abortion. Catholic and some Islamic opposition added to disputes on this issue. In addition to disagreements, many international political measures

fell short because the problems were too severe, or because individual regions simply ignored the principles involved – sometimes even when they had signed the international convention in order to seem up-to-date and civilized. Many countries signed documents on children’s rights to schooling, but because of lack of resources and family dependence on child labor, many children were left with no educational access at all. Other international standards provoked outright disagreement locally. Conflicts over birth control might pit wives against husbands, doctors against priests; and while the birth rate did drop overall, with major reductions in Latin America and in China, high rates persisted in Africa and in many Islamic regions. A huge gap opened, as discussed in Chapter 11, between ringing international rights statements and the actual treatment of children in cases of war and civil conflict: rights workers strove to mitigate the effects of war, with occasional success, but clearly they could not keep pace with the magnitude of the problem. Global influences on children were undeniable, but there was hardly a single, effective global voice. Trends in child labor showed some of the limits of global standards efforts,

and the modern model itself, while ultimately providing evidence of impact as well. The issue bridged between global politics and global economies. By the later twentieth century, rates of child labor were falling almost everywhere, with schooling on the rise, which did not negate the fact that a large minority of children still worked in some places, often amid extensive exploitation. But the case of South and Southeast Asia was particularly challenging because the region not only failed fully to comply with international efforts to curb the use of child workers, but actually experienced rising rates in the 1990s, bucking the global trend outright. Clearly some comparative regional analysis was essential, for even by 2008 United Nations’ reports showed that up to 44 million children aged 5-14 were at work in the

region, and while some decline was reported by this point, it was noticeably slower than in other areas. Explanations varied, in comparison with other regions where poverty was as, or even more, extensive. For India, the persistence of large rural populations was surely a factor, compared with societies such as Latin America, where poor families are more urbanized. A related point was the lack of a fully available school system, and some government hesitancy in pushing school requirements. Literacy rate gains lagged in consequence, which might also explain the tenacity of commitments to child labor. Within South Asia as a whole, localities in particular economic distress, or disrupted by civil war, as was the case until recently in Sri Lanka, saw more child labor simply as a function of families trying to make ends meet. A persistent claim was the strength of the long-standing view that children are simply supposed to work, and that they are ready to work at a young age. Yet regional distinctiveness, and the incomplete hold of global standards,

was not the end of the story. By 2008, after some lag, the South Asia region did seem to be pulling into the global trend of replacing work with schooling, particularly once some modest improvements in prosperity began to register. India had 17-20 million children working in 1999, but the figure had dropped to 12.6 million by 2008, a dramatic reduction. Global influence and the sheer impact of a more modern economy had a real, if gradual, effect. Economic globalization added greatly to the complexity. Not only levels

of trade, but also basic systems of production, shifted with this central development. Multinational companies, based in the United States, Western Europe, or the Pacific Rim, began setting up production facilities wherever they could find favorable labor costs, environmental regulations, and useful resources and transportation systems. Complex products such as automobiles were assembled from parts made in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. For simpler items such as textiles, giant sales companies such as Gap or Nike usually hired subcontractors who ran the actual factories in places such as Indonesia, Vietnam, or Lesotho. Labor conditions in the multinationals were not always good – they were

seeking low-wage areas, and they often skimped on safety equipment, while requiring long hours. They employed relatively little child labor, however – only about 5 percent of the children working by the early twenty-first century were in any sense directly working in the global economy. Economic globalization’s impacts were more indirect, but they were huge. There were two major pressures. In the first place, global production often displaced more traditional manufacturing, in which children and young people had been employed. Along with continued population growth in places such as Africa and the Middle East, this led to massive rates of youth unemployment – figures of 30 percent or more in the cities were not uncommon. This became a key source, in turn, of various forms of unrest among young people, including participation in extremist religious and political movements.

The second result of economic globalization involved a steady retrenchment of social programs by governments in societies such as Brazil or India. The reigning philosophy argued for freer market economies, rather than government spending, and agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as conditions for development loans, often pressed for smaller welfare programs as well. Eager to advance economic growth, and hoping that growth would yield ultimate benefits to the poorer classes, governments pressed ahead, with very few exceptions. Family assistance dropped as a result. Patterns were complex. Despite the pressures of globalization, the percen-

tages of children working continued to drop steadily, as we have seen, from 6 percent of the total workforce in 1950 to 3 percent in 1990 – or from 28 percent of children under the age of 14 in 1950 to 15 percent in 1990. The declines accelerated during the 1980s and thereafter. By 2004, 88 percent of all children of the relevant ages, around the world, were attending primary school. Globalization was not, in sum, reversing the movement toward the more modern model. Nor were some of the horror stories straightforward. An Indian social scientist commented on newspaper reports lamenting the long hours and close confinement of child workers in fishery industries along the coast; the children had been recruited from other areas, often disputing with their parents, who wanted them closer to home. Yet the children themselves found work entirely normal, and rejoiced that they had escaped far poorer conditions in their villages of origin. They were pleased, as well, that they could send a bit of money to their families. Exploitation? Definitely, by many standards. But the key problem was grinding poverty. Globalization contributed to harsh child labor mainly insofar as it failed to resolve, and in some cases surely worsened, the economic constraints faced by so many families in the developing world. Global competition and the reduction of social programs had a very clear

result: an increase in the number of children in poverty. This occurred even in industrial countries such as the United States, and it had massive results in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and parts of Latin America. The number of children dependent on activities in the street – begging, prostitution, occasional unskilled labor, petty theft – increased in many places. Outright child labor went up for a time, as we have seen, in South and Southeast Asia – mainly in small production shops and other outlets where the cheapest possible labor was essential to stay afloat. The increase was 50 percent in the late 1990s in this huge region, not counting those in family employment in agriculture, defying the larger global trends. Even more widely, many poor families, pressed by debt, sold children into labor. Purchase of young women for the sex trade almost certainly increased, with some transported to centers of sexual tourism, such as Thailand, from original homes in Eastern Europe or elsewhere. Some families even sold body organs for transplants, with adolescents a particular target. Whatever its other

benefits – and there were strong arguments in favor of its good overall results for rapidly-growing economies in places such as China and India – globalization dramatically worsened the struggle for survival for many children and their families. Global consumerism was the final major facet of globalization, affecting

values and behaviors alike, and quickly embracing many children. We have seen the increasing association of childhood with consumerism in the West and Japan; it was not surprising that the relationship spilled over into other societies. Lebanese teenagers, in the cities, began to attend Western movies fairly regularly in the 1920s and 1930s. Enthusiasm for baseball gained ground among Japanese and Latin American youth, and the passion for soccer spread still more widely. But the full explosion of global consumerism for children awaited the later twentieth century, with its new technologies and market opportunities. Young people began to patronize fast food restaurants, often to the dismay of their parents – which was, of course, one of the purposes of these new tastes. McDonald’s and similar outlets became havens for youth in Korea, China, and elsewhere, a place to see and be seen, and often to indulge other interests such as dating and romantic love. Television shows such as Sesame Street, translated into most major languages, promoted new standards for children, and MTV and global rock tours offered a common youth musical language and generated literally global fan clubs. Dress for urban young people began to standardize in many places, often against adult and traditional patterns, usually around the ubiquitous blue jeans. Patronage of theme parks provided new standards for parents to demonstrate their economic success and love for their children in a single consumerist swoop: taking the kids to Orlando became a ritual for caring, successful Latin American parents. This was the context in which Disney figures and Barbie dolls became part of the global children’s play kit. This was the context in which many Chinese youth stayed up until daybreak to watch a European soccer tournament half a world away. With some plausibility, certain observers began to contend that a global youth culture had come into being. In 2000, a young American Peace Corps teacher was working in an east-

ern Russian village that had never seen an American before, and that had no computer or Internet connection. Despite their isolation, her students reported a very precise notion of who the most beautiful woman in the world was, and their choice was Britney Spears. In the same year an anthropologist, working in Madagascar on teenagers and youth in an urban slum, realized that her subjects had a very definite idea of the beauty products young women should seek: those that would make them look more like Britney Spears. Around 2000 also, television reached some of the more remote Pacific

Islands. Seeing the new images, many girls became discontented with their bodies and traditional standards of plumpness. Rates of anorexia and bulimia went up markedly.