ABSTRACT
The study of childhood and children remained for a long time trapped, both conceptually and theoretically, in the prevailing sociological or psychological approaches of socialisation. Sociologists spent considerable energy studying adult-initiated processes supposed to transform children from a-social to social beings. Psychologists were absorbed in the study of the internalisation by children of social demands. Most socialisation research understood children as objects. Children were defined negatively, not according to what they are, but according to what they are to become (Alanen 1990; James and Prout 1990). Problems and issues in connection with children were most often examined through the lenses of this adult-centred approach to socialisation. Researchers analysed the influence of parents or the family on children (Peterson and Rollins 1987). They examined the effects of parental educational strategies on children’s development, school performance or health, worked on the effects of the family structures and dynamics on what children became later in life; studied the impact on the parents and indirectly on the children of various intervening agents and institutions (Pourtois and Desmet 1989). Most often, however, researchers ignored how children themselves experienced these influences (for exceptions see Milkie, Simon and Powell 1997; Cullingford 1997).
