Various Cultural influences on Western Conception of Childhood in Canada
Introduction
Parenting involves caring for young ones and preparing them for future tasks in life. Parents play a significant role in providing childhood experiences and populating the environment to ensure children have proper guidance during their growth and development. Parenting, therefore, is an expression of practices and cognitions. In our society, parenting is not carried out in isolation, neither do the children grow in isolation, therefore, one aspect that notably influences both these processes is the culture. The cultures differ from one society to the next, usually as a result of widely and deeply acknowledged ideas on how an individual ought to think, feel and act to be considered an adequately functioning member of the society (Bornstein, 2013). As far as parenting is concerned, most parents, whether they subscribe to a particular convention of a given culture, are likely to implement a specific predefined script in raising their children. It is, therefore, a tradition that parents have a responsibility to enculture their children for psychosocial, educational, and physical activities characterizing their culture. The study addresses various themes in connection with the culture and children’s upbringing, including children’s view, child and work, as well as roles of religion in views of children and childhood during the 20th Century. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Childhood in Canada during the 20th Century
The research on a cross-cultural comparison clearly shows that a given culture informs almost all parenting aspects. It means that the culture has a significant influence on how and when parents should care for their children, which behaviors the parents should appreciate, encourage, discourage, punish, reward, and or emphasize. Therefore, cultural norms manifest in the children’s behavior and personality throughout their lives because of parenting. It is essential to highlight that variation in what is considered normal in different cultures continually challenges the assumptions that most of us have about uniform and universal understanding of relationships between parents and children.
Changes that occurred in childhood between the 19th Century and 20th Century among English speaking Canadians happened within two contexts involving social and economic development. That was due to urbanization, industrialization, immigration, scientific advancement, economic liberalization, and shifts in family occupation. The changes were thrilling but caused many to experience profound unease. It, therefore, created a search for an order by different institutions such as schools, churches, and settlement houses in a bid to fix flaws that these groups perceived existed in the new social order. The essay focuses on the cultural contribution towards parenting and their influences on the western conception of childhood.
Views of children
1940-1955 and 1956-1976
The theme shades more light on the beliefs that parents had on their children and youths, especially in the urban areas. Most Canadians living in the urban during the post confederation era had a general public fear of its young population. There was a population explosion in the city, coupled with an increased dependence due to rapid migration from the countryside to the towns (Belshaw, 2018). Schooling was introduced to help contain and channel the energies from the children since the labor laws had reduced the initial economical purpose that kept them busy. Secondly, the militia recruited children claiming that the training would ensure children and youths grew into patriotic, decent, and self-patriotic individuals as opposed to the present condition with no self-control. Most Canadians viewed the prosperity that had been seen in the 1920s and increased unemployment in the 1930s as factors that would create dangerous youths.
It, therefore, created a perception that childhood was a challenge that needed redress. The view was, therefore, reinvested in the post-1945 period to deal with the problem. As such, psychologists and news articles prescribed how to deal with the children. From zoot suiters in the 1940s to 1950, greasers and hippies in the 1960s, 20th Century had a group of young people viewed as deviant and disruptive rebellious (Rollwagen, 2018). More schools were established to ensure that the energy bust resulting from the baby boom would be absorbed. The end of the 1950s was a period characterized by the largest group of adolescents depicted as moody. The stage was recognized and increasingly treated as a problem for Canadian parents to solve. There was a perceived weakening of clerical and family influence and a general loss of discipline. Too much leisure time and the impact of popular culture spread by radio programs, cinemas, music, and TV shows directly influenced an increase in juvenile delinquents
Children and work
1900-1939
At the end of the 19th Century, Canada had become highly industrialized and urbanized. Canadians shifted to urban areas and changed their occupations from the commonly self-employed agriculture and joined the service industries. Such revolution in both the industry and transport system fractured the existing labor markets and increased dependence on wage labor from the Canadian population as well as creating an upsurge in labor mobility and increased fluctuation in demands for work. Several influential people in the field of education and those in religion began to have mixed feelings towards the changes that were rapidly occurring across the country. Even though they experienced the thrill and vitality that came with the rapid growth, they felt they were losing control in directing the course that the society ought to take. Industrialization changed the lives of the working-class population, which further affected the occupation and education and Protestantism of the English Canadians. The 1900s also experienced an upsurge in immigration, causing changes in the demographics. The changes had a significant influence on how society, institutions, and families viewed child-rearing and childhood. Previous research has attributed the significances through cause and effect and the interrelationship between those effects to the final childhood experiences. During the period, there was a shift from family units involved in farming from early ages to entities organized around wages.
Between the end of the 19th Century and term of 20th-century children underwent several changes as a result of external changes across the country. Between 1900 and 1939, children played a critical role as contributors to the family economy. Children worked alongside their parents on unpaid or paid jobs for the survival and wellbeing of their entire family. It wasn’t until post-world war II that mothers took the place of their children as secondary earners in the families (2018). Even after 1884, the Ontario Factory act regulating child labor family and individual needs for survival forced boys and girls to work still. Work during this period was considered a necessity both serving as a training opportunity and also as a way to shape childhood and adulthood habits with a motive of rendering them as responsible citizens. In the film series about growing up Canadian, Susan Terrill captures voices and images of children and Canadian youths as proud workers who loved to bring back home an income and contribute towards their families. In the stories highlighted with additional fragmented past written records, the study identified that children were contributors to the family through work outside the home (Terrill, 2003). Secondly, till 1930 a history of 80,000 children immigrants moved into Canada without their parents. Out of the number about 20,000 enlisted as soldiers despite being underage to serve during World War I (Belshaw, 2018). Up until 1940, work continued to be a factor in the children’s lives, with some sustaining themselves at the age of 14
1956-1976
Between 1956-1976, public voice regarding children’s treatment in or out of their homes increasingly became frequent as compared to the previous periods. The concerns were coupled with changes from the last harsh discipline to a gentle and ordered approach to child-rearing. All these changes converged at one point with an increased focus on children and childhood. The increased fear of economic development and social order created a perception that there would be a breakdown in the social unity that had existed in the past centuries. It further leads to an increased and, to some extent, a new notion of perfectibility, creating momentum to on the desires to influence or control socialization during childhood through religious and educational reforms.
At the End of the Century, commitment towards better childhood became the main preoccupation for the entire society. It manifested itself through school systems, recreational programs, new approaches to child-rearing, regulated childhood, and labor laws, which made childhood responsibilities and experiences more organized as compared to the previous timelines. The second element is the Canadian perspective of the parenting roles in influencing childhood development. A preview of the effects of the labor market to the perceived parenting roles shows that it indirectly harmed the children’s lives. A 1901 special census bulletin section titled Wage-earners of Canada gives us a closer look at the impact the economic shifts created. The increased industrialization and the increased entry of women into the labor force inevitably caused a weakening of interests in home-related issues and sometimes lead to neglect of home duties. It created a scenario that was inconsistent with the cultural position of what a good mother ought to be to her children, what a good wife should be to her husband, and the woman’s status as a maker of the home. Women’s dedication to working vs. cultural demands as caregivers lead to neglect of children and poor parenting.
Role of religion on views of children and childhood
1900-1939
As mentioned earlier, there was a significant restructuring around childhood and child-rearing during the 20th Century in an attempt to alter the rural and immigrant childhood experiences to urban working-class childhood experiences. Individuals involved in these alterations came from a wide range of backgrounds. They majorly included urban middle class who viewed restructuring childhood as part of their attempt to create a new order in the new prosperous environment for themselves and their families and social reformers who created a momentum for change (Mclntosh).
Additionally, religion and churches played a significant role in holding and supporting values in society and help in avoiding the initial adverse effects that had been perceived would result from economic and social changes. These reformers drew plans in different dimensions of how childhood would be transformed. Christian reformers gave sponsorship to juvenile emigration from Great Britain into Canada. At the same time, they began several groups, including Band of hope, specialized for children. Other church organizations were also created, and Sunday schools joined together with YWCA, Young Men Christian Association (YMCA), and Canadian girls in training in the 20th Century to support the child and youth development. Other groups such as the protestant orphan homes, which began before the 20th Century in the 1850s, established orphanages for children and sponsored efforts geared towards improving children’s health and wellbeing. The shots also included campaigns such as the anti-smoking, promotion of domestic science as well as teaching Christian values. The women’s temperance union was formed and carried fights against the consumption of alcohol and other drugs such as tobacco as well as forswear usage of bad language. These organizations, during the late 20th Century, shaped regulations around childhood by advocating for children’s leisure regulations, child protection laws that were stiffer, and demanded curfew legislations. They lobbied other Canadians to create robust policies that would strengthen already existing legislations as well as enforce them.
Halfway through the first period of the 20th Century, new programs and social policies had been created as a result of lobbying by Christians and other social reformers. The public began to have a different view of childhood and responsibilities that could be given to children. They began to increase the survival chances of all children and strove to develop an educational system that would complement the traditional teaching modes. Girls were prepared to become better mothers and housekeepers while boys were nurtured, to be honest, sober, and industrious fathers and family breadwinners. The reformers also advocated for the improved social and physical environment of schools and homes besides supervising parks and playfields (Sutherland, 2014). Through their struggle to salvage youngsters whose families were not available or could not raise them and by questioning merits under which children were placed in institutions built in the 19th Century. They managed to convince other Canadians to end the baby farming practice. The practice that followed was the initiation of adoption services. It would later ensure that illegitimate babies would be placed in family homes. It also legitimized children whose parents had remarried. Legislators began to become socially conscious and helped shift orphaned and neglected children from the institutions to families who could provide better care. Legislators also created a Federal Juvenile Delinquents Act, which would give way for the formation of detention homes, juvenile courts as well as employed probation officers whose responsibility included deflecting delinquent youths from committing a crime. Eventually, Canadians placed all its programs to influence children’s life by 1970 across the country.
Conclusion
Ironically, the 20th Century that childhood was established as a period of dependence and innocence was also the period that children were most endangered. Institutions and regulations established as a means of protecting them became the same instruments that placed children in genocidal and brutal conditions creating suffering and harming them. Besides economic depression that forced children to work even after the establishment of labor laws, cultural perception played an impeding role in ensuring children had access to quality care. However, culture helped set grounds for better parenting practices in the 21st Century through lobbying and public campaigns. Religion also played a critical role in establishing a proper value system, which in part was the guiding principle to better parenting and proper children welfare.
Reference
Belshaw, J. D. (2018). Canadian History: Post Confederation. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/postconfederation/front-matter/about-the-book/
Bornstein M. H. (2013). Parenting and child mental health: a cross-cultural perspective. World psychiatry: official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 12(3), 258–265. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20071
McIntosh, R. (1999) Constructing the Child: New Approaches to the History of Childhood in Canada. Retrieved from https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/acadiensis/article/view/10819/11619
Neil, S. (2014) History of Childhood: Historica Canada. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/history-of-childhood. Accessed 27 February 2020.
Rollwagen, K. (2018). Historical Experiences of Adolescence in the Mid-century. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/postconfederation/chapter/10-11-historical-experiences-of-adolescence-at-mid-century/
Terrill, S. (2003). Growing Up Canadian. Retrieved from https://www.nfb.ca/film/growing_up_canadian_family/