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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2019

No Diapers, Not a Baby Anymore! Constructing “Babyhood” as an Age Boundary while Toilet Training

Résumé

Different conceptions of growing up are sources of multiple tensions in the field of the sociology of childhood and children, as well as in everyday practices. The modern child-rearing is torn by conflicting precepts. On the one hand, the parents must give the child time to grow by respecting his needs for care and protection. On the other hand, they should nurture him to become autonomous. Indeed, the increasing social value of the childhood restricts forcing the child to grow up, but at the same time, many aspects of early childhood education consist of pushing children to quit the “infantile” attitudes or attributes by challenging them and emphasizing the benefits of being a “big boy” or a “big girl”. Being a child appears as a discrete period composed of both rhetorical and material “milestones” to pass. Using the example of toilet-training, this paper aims to explore the construction of children’s agency and of growing-up as a sequence of stages and barriers to surmount. The comparison of different methods shows that the more the toilet-training is conceptualized as something that depends on child’s will, the more it is presented as a “rite of passage”. The test of crossing a symbolic border may be ratified by some market products or by institutions.

Domaines

Sociologie
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Dates et versions

hal-04031752 , version 1 (16-03-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04031752 , version 1

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Victoria Chantseva. No Diapers, Not a Baby Anymore! Constructing “Babyhood” as an Age Boundary while Toilet Training. 14th ESA Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, Aug 2019, Manchester, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-04031752⟩
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