Perspectives_on_Childhood_Images_Exercise

Perspectives on Childhood Lecturer : Howard Stones Assignment 1 – Images Exercise When looking at the image for the first time you can see two young children who are being shown to depict young or new mothers. To the left of frame there is a doll sitting in a pram with one of the children holding it she is also smoking what appears to be a candy cigarette, to the right of frame the other child is clutching a doll in her arm and is wearing heart shape glasses. The girls strike a pose with both of their bodies slightly tilted to the left, they are both barefoot and dressed in creased summer dresses. The significance of the posing, being barefoot and smoking gives the impression that these girls don’t give a damn about what people think of them. If we were to follow these images on we could clearly imagine the girls drinking, taking drugs involved in one night stands, the young mothers in this photo are infact an example of bad mothers. The The image challenges the idea that children at a certain age should not be expected to be mothers, childhood is seen as a carefree time and that the burden of looking after a small child would be far too great for children to cope with. The ideology of childhood is that children should not be shown as adults the image has the children in a very adult and provocative pose not associated with childhood. The image shows tension between whether is acceptable or not acceptable for a child to be shown in this way. I find the image quite uncomfortable to look at as it depicts small children who are quite clearly mimicking adults in today’s society, I believe the image is also portraying young mothers in a lower class background this is evident by one of the young mothers holding a cigarette. The image also shows how the innocence of the child has been taken by having a child not only from the view of what age these children become sexually active but by also having to deal with the stresses and strains of bringing up a child at such a young age. By becoming a young mother you are not long out of childhood itself and it is difficult to image how they would be able to cope given that they have little or no concept of what newborn children need or require.