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Children Need but Mothers Only Want: the Power of ‘Needs Talk’ in the Constitution of Childhood

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Relating Intimacies

Abstract

Childhood, according to Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers (1992), is ‘knowledged into being’. In other words, and claims for the ‘naturalness’ of childhood notwithstanding, the temporal period bracketed off as ‘childhood’ is a social creation, whose inhabitants are marked as ‘other’ to the world of adults (Prout and James, 1990; Hockey and James, 1993; Jenks, 1996). This social creation is forged on the basis of the knowledges which surround childhood and which produce the ‘truths’ by which childhood is ‘known’ (Walkerdine, 1990; Rose, 1991; Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers, 1992). These knowledges, which claim to be describing a pre-existing category of ‘childhood’, can be seen as producing this category. They generate schemata of understanding through which the individuals marked as ‘children’ come to be known and understood.

Need is also a political instrument, meticulously prepared, calculated and used.

(Michel Foucault, 1979: 26)

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Authors
  1. Steph Lawler
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Comparative and Applied Social Sciences (CASS), University of Hull, UK

    Julie Seymour (Lecturer in Social Research) (Lecturer in Social Research)

  2. Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK

    Paul Bagguley (Senior Lecturer in Sociology) (Senior Lecturer in Sociology)

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© 1999 British Sociological Association

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Lawler, S. (1999). Children Need but Mothers Only Want: the Power of ‘Needs Talk’ in the Constitution of Childhood. In: Seymour, J., Bagguley, P. (eds) Relating Intimacies. Explorations in Sociology. British Sociological Association Conference Volume Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27683-7_4

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