The disappearance of childhood. Two theoretical perspectives

Abstract

Among the different studies on childhood, there are some views that suggest the disappearance of infancy due to the transformations that children have undergone since the end of the XXth century. This text presents two perspectives for the understanding of this phenomenon: The sociological perspective expressed in Disappearance of childhood by Neil Postman, who considers that television removes the frontiers between children and adults, and the psychoanalytical one, based on Sigmund Freud’s notion of taboo, which leads to conclude that such a disappearance does not exist, but rather a cultural imperative that proposes, as an ideal, the search for immediate satisfaction.