Crisis, Childhood and Children’s Rights: A Modern Sociological Approach

Abstract

Discussions around the current economic crisis have primarily focused on how it affects children’s well-being, ignoring its consequences on the conception of childhood. Following the modern sociological approach to childhood, which argues that it is not just a biological fact of life but a product of the social context and that children have to be seen as social agents, it is examined how the current socio-economic situation affects the construction of childhood and whether this hinders children from being active subjects of social structures and processes. Similarly, taking into account the close relation between conceptions of childhood and perceptions on children’s rights, this paper also examines the consequences of the economic crisis on the contemporary theoretical evolution of children’s rights, which is mainly specified by the ascription of autonomy rights to children. The conclusion common to both the sociology of childhood and children’s rights is that modern social reality fails to meet the expectations that have been raised by recent developments in the above fields, as crucial concepts, such as dependency, agency and capacity, are undergoing complex transformations.