Childhoods and Time, Philosophical Perspectives

From reading the key texts of the new sociology of childhoods—for example, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood by key thinkers in the childhood studies field Allison James and Alan Prout—one learns that children and childhoods are theorised, constructed, and reconstructed in different discourses. Taking this notion as its starting premise, this entry on childhoods, time, and temporality addresses how childhoods are a temporal encounter and how the notion of childhood relates to the idea of time. It becomes evident that childhoods are, for human beings, temporal encounters that are vibrant, changing, and shifting. This is well-documented by the work of historians of childhoods as well as philosophers of childhoods.

At the same time as understandings of the temporality of childhood—and its disappearance (see, for instance, the work ...