Raby, (2002) comments in the introduction of her article, A Tangle of Discourses: Girls Negotiating Adolescence that “Adolescence, in particular is a twentieth-century, Western phenomenon, linked to capitalist imperatives and consumer culture. Furthermore, when adolescence is framed as a predictable life stage, it also homogenizes a diverse and unequal group of people” (p. 425). Historically, the idea of adolescence was gradually being introduced in the late 1900’s due to changes in labour laws around children working on farms and in mines. The great depressions effect on jobs and value of money, as well as mandatory school for children were significant factors in this early cultural shift. To examine childhood historically, we are exposed to the social construction of childhood and come to understand the meaning of ‘child’ today. It also prompts us to learn and understand the concepts of, privilege, inequality, power, agency, identity, context, racism, sexism and homophobia and the external effect that this places on the development of
Raby, (2002) comments in the introduction of her article, A Tangle of Discourses: Girls Negotiating Adolescence that “Adolescence, in particular is a twentieth-century, Western phenomenon, linked to capitalist imperatives and consumer culture. Furthermore, when adolescence is framed as a predictable life stage, it also homogenizes a diverse and unequal group of people” (p. 425). Historically, the idea of adolescence was gradually being introduced in the late 1900’s due to changes in labour laws around children working on farms and in mines. The great depressions effect on jobs and value of money, as well as mandatory school for children were significant factors in this early cultural shift. To examine childhood historically, we are exposed to the social construction of childhood and come to understand the meaning of ‘child’ today. It also prompts us to learn and understand the concepts of, privilege, inequality, power, agency, identity, context, racism, sexism and homophobia and the external effect that this places on the development of