ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the recent history of the study of children as it exemplifies the history of adult myth-making about children, including sociological myth-making. The possibility that younger children might also occupy semi-autonomous social worlds where their behaviour and language was neither asocial or pre-rational did not develop at this time as fully as one might have anticipated. The relationship between academic feminism and the sociology of childhood is not a simple alliance however. The construction of motherhood as part of 'women's work' in the eighties, whilst elevating the status of the nurturing function and forming the basis of an unarguable case for the wider recognition and public support for the domestic labour of women still tended to objectify children; to treat them as the objects of mothering. The value of childhood lies, in such accounts, in its simultaneous use as preparation for adulthood and its capacity to ensure the stability of cultural and social reproduction.
