Constructing Children, Childhood and the Child

Abstract

In the contemporary media, all kinds of images and representations of children’s childhoods are to be found. In the world of advertising and marketing, for example, children constitute a rich and abundant pool of new consumers. They can be targeted as customers not only of traditional children’s toys, pop music and computer games but, as has occurred more recently, as health-conscious dieters and drinkers of bottled water (The Independent, 21 April 2002). They are an audience to be wooed and enticed, not only for what they represent now, but also in their immanence as the next generation of adult consumers.