What is Childhood?
Before we consider how a child grows and matures, perhaps we should ask the question: 
What is a child?
Think about this for a few minutes. 
And what is childhood? 
Think about your own childhood - how would you define it?

A legal definition may state that a child is merely "a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority"

But a biological approach may define a childhood as "the period of time person between birth and puberty or full growth"

Unicef describe childhood as:
"Childhood is the time for children to be in school and at play, to grow strong and confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended community of caring adults. It is a precious time in which children should live free from fear, safe from violence and protected from abuse and exploitation. As such, childhood means much more than just the space between birth and the attainment of adulthood. It refers to the state and condition of a child’s life, to the quality of those years"

Frones (1994) identified childhood as a life stage which has defined cultural, economic and social characteristics. It is a distinct category that differs from adulthood and children will experience different childhoods depending on their social circumstances and cultural influences. Childhood is a status that has been created through our families, systems, institutions and it could be argued that childhood is  a social construct rather than biological occurrence (Hoyles and Evans, 1989)

What do you think of above statements about childhood being created by societies?

Frones, I. (1994)cited in Waller,T. and Davis, G. (eds) (2014) 3rd ed. An introduction to early childhood. London. Sage
Hoyles and Evans(1989)cited in Burman, E. (2016). Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. In Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315727127

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