ABSTRACT
In the scope of Childhood Studies, the methodological claim will be made here that childhood research is not research about children so much as research from the point of view of children. This contribution connects these considerations to certain issues of developmental research by discussing the study “The Life Space of the Urban Child” conducted by Martha Muchow in the 1920s to 1930s. Muchow's innovative design of combining various methods (e.g. cartography, interviews, essay writing and various observations) is an outstanding example of how studies can be conducted in such a way as to obtain a complete picture of a complex psychological phenomenon, to the extent that these various methods provide different perspectives of the topic at hand. Going beyond the question of how we collect data, Muchow also stressed that research into children must involve a specific adult (researcher) and a specific child and that a simplistic view of children needs to be overcome. Taking this into account, this contribution discusses the premise that it is easy to make statements about seeing the world through their eyes, but that we have to recognise the differences between how adults and children perceive things. In particular, the point is stressed regarding how far statements made by adults about children can be seen as statements of a child's point of view. In contrast to widely used models, which either reconstruct childhood from the adults’ points of view or against the background of the individual's own childhood memory, this contribution argues for consequently considering childhood as a construction created by different generational constellations.
