The disapperance of childhood

According to Neil Postman (1994) childhood has disappeared. Why?


Firstly, to understand why childhood has disappeared we need to find out how it actually appeared. Childhood is rather a social concept than a biological (e.g. we often define children as a group of people below certain age). Neil Postman relates the apperance of childhood to the printing press invention. It sounds strange for the first time, but let me explain how this things are connected.

In the Middle Ages ( i guess it was before 15 century), a person became 'adult' as soon as he learnt how to speak, so that there was no actual difference about children (biologically) and adults treatment.

Printing press invention allowed to distinguish children from adults and create a 'barrier' : a person needed to be literate in order to be counted as an adult. And, actually, that was a beginning of 'childhood' concept development. Then, with the appearance of schools etc, a clear picture of how a child should behave, think, communicate, dress was created. An this picture has been developed and expanded until our days.

But, according to Neil Postman, the transforming power of television makes this 'childhood model' disappear. That happens because TV programmes do not actually differ a lot ( even though they are 'targeted' at a certain age group) and people do not need any special skills to watch television, so that televesion is available for each of us (assuming it is affordable for each of us).
Moreover, there are several aspects of our life that we do not usually want our children to know before they reach a certain age, but television provides information on this topics to everyone. Children become involved in the 'adult world' and that makes the gap between childhood and adult life disappear. That transforms the way we dress, behave, communicate. For example, Mc'Donalds that was mainly a teenage restaurant before, now is full of people of all age groups. Elder people are starting to wear their children's clother, listen to modern music, while some of the teenagers tend to dress up as adults and find a job.

Neil Postman concludes his writing on childhood disapperance with the statement about 'the culture of narcisssim' (Christopher Lasch): he sees our new generation as people stuck between 20 and 30 years, without life aims, without children, without future.