In a recent discussion on Doing Sociology, scholars engaging with research in childhood studies had answered important questions on their entry into such a lesser-known research area, ideas of positionality, the impact of particular theoretical visions, and the future of such research. What emerged from this conference was an intellectual and institutional necessity to enlarge the scope of research on children in India. It called for debunking canons that resist a body of knowledge regarding children emerging in the global South through alternate modes of studying the spatiotemporal reality they inhabit.

It is in the same spirit, Ravneet Kaur’s Constructions of Childhood in India: Exploring the Personal and Sociocultural Contours (published by Routledge in 2021) engages with the discourse on childhood and the emergent form of childhood that exists in India, today. Ravneet Kaur’s book aims at analysing how childhood has been constructed in India through an immersive exploration of everyday life. In tune with the basic thrust of a childhood studies perspective that focuses beyond the developmental aspect, Kaur’s book sheds light on the meaning that is employed to make sense of the various nuances of being a child in a particular space and time.

The author begins by foregrounding her research within the broader perspective of New Childhood Studies after which she makes a case for such a study in India using a plethora of examples from works on children conducted in Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. Written in a lucid style, the chapter brings together major scholarly ideas and debates on understanding childhood as a socially constructed phenomenon. It brings into consideration three ways to map childhood (as socially constructed, a structural category and children as active agents) that will eventually form the foundation of the various chapters in the book.

Kaur’s text then begins addressing the dominant construction of children and childhood in India. It brings in analyses of perceptions, and imaginations that feed into the exploration of how childhood has been culturally understood and experienced. Here, the author begins by locating it within the realms of family belonging to different social classes in Delhi. To delineate the perspectives of three generations, Kaur has made constant use of diagrams and charts which clarified various intersecting viewpoints. While mapping this construction in actual family processes, Kaur made some interesting comments about time, children’s perception of their involvement in the day-to-day life of the household, seeking agency through silence, the dynamics of lying, and children’s understanding of generational gradation and vulnerabilities.

In later chapters on generational order, and diversity in childhood important sociological insights on kinship, nature of relatedness and lineage have emerged. Mostly, we understand this from the narratives of the children where they have reinstated the value of their presence as blood-bearers, of establishing relatedness, continuing lineage and providing various kinds of support for their parents and grandparents. The last two chapters tried to tie various strands of the arguments mentioned previously into an overall understanding of childhood that currently exists in India. It showed how contemporary childhood differed from the childhood of the parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Emphasis on other matters concerning childhood was mostly used as a way to measure the meanings attached to it in different generations and discover the dualism that emerges out of the researcher’s data.

The strongly empirical nature of Kaur’s work has opened doors to various kinds of debates and deliberations childhood studies in India can engage with. Firstly, the author argues that there is a need to study children and adults together since both participate in each other’s everyday life intrinsically. Thorne (1987) had argued her case for childhood studies along the lines of woman’s studies- where, just like women, children need to be studied in their own right. Feminist works have been successful in putting that to practice by studying women solely without men’s perspectives acting as a yardstick to measure and compare. Kaur’s work has brought together not only narratives of children but also of the parents and grandparents’ generation to compare and understand childhood. While this offers space for comparison and estimation, it also disallows children from being taken seriously without an adult perspective validating that experience. This may inadvertently corrode the agency of the child which recent scholarship on childhood studies has been emphasising.

Secondly, in an urban space, why choose class as a starting point to enter into understanding childhood? The author gives various examples of childhood and class, which may also apply to other social categories like gender, religion, caste or ethnicity. In a later chapter, Kaur has engaged particularly with class by bringing finer nuances, and rhythms of everyday lives to the fore. Among children gender, alongside class plays a role in determining their social reality, as has been evident in Hia Sen’s (2012) work on the middle-class, Bengali children. Sen has dealt with the culture of clothing, and forms of household chores to show how gender and class work together to shape childhood experiences across different generations. Finer aspects of gender emerged through the narratives in Kaur’s book but the lens of class seems to have occluded them from making a case for a further intersection.

From the beginning until the end of the book, Kaur has deliberated on the aspect of children’s role as ‘co-constructors’ of their social environment. Using examples from everyday lives and borrowing from James and Prout (1997), she has debunked the idea that children may not be active participants as social actors. In studying cases of child sexual abuse, Jenny Kitzinger (1997) has brought narratives of these children who have been labelled as innocent and passive victims of the violence. She argues against such a popular perception where children’s agency of being a co-constructor is side-lined. Through her work, Kitzinger has laid down the implications of children’s role as co-constructors of their reality through an analysis of power in society. What does the role of co-constructor imply for urban children across varying social classes in India? What form of power or its lack thereof means for these children? To what extent do broader political decisions of the Indian state for/against children affect their role as co-constructors of their social space? Perhaps, these are questions which shall now become essential to answer to make a firmer case for children as actors or co-constructors of their social space.

Interestingly, Kaur has stated at the outset that family is a focal point of her field. In many ways, the text becomes an important contribution to the literature on urban families and households as the narratives evoke a visual of consanguineous units negotiating power and difference. Kaur’s work revolves around this evocation. It taps into the dynamics of familial processes to derive an understanding of childhood in India. Such a study opens up more scope for socio-anthropological engagements with family, which has for a long-time been adult-centric, where perspectives of children have often remained silent or subdued.

References:

1. James, Allison, and Alan Prout. 1997. eds. ‘A New Paradigm for the Sociology of Childhood? : Provenance, Promise and Problems’ In Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, 1-32. London: Falmer Press.
2. Kannan, D et al. 2022. ‘Childhood, Youth, and Identity: A Roundtable Conversation from the Global South’ Journal of Childhood Studies, 47 (1).
3. Kitzinger, Jenny. 1997. ‘Who Are You Kidding? Children, Power and the Struggle Against Sexual Abuse’ In Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, edited A. James and A. Prout, 161-186. London: Falmer Press.
4. Sen, Hia. 2012. ‘Time-Out’ in the Land of Apu: Childhoods, Bildungsomratorium and the Middle Classes of Urban West Bengal, 207-234. Germany: Springer.
5. Thorne, Barrie. 1987. ‘Re-Visioning Women and Social Change: Where are the Children?’ Gender and Society, 1: 1, 85-109.

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Rahul Singh is a postgraduate student in Sociology from Presidency University, Kolkata. He loves reading literary fiction and shares his thoughts on them on his Instagram account. His book reviews have been published at LiveWire, NewPolitics and Outlook India. His short story ‘There he is’ is published on The CCYSC blog for the February 2022 theme: ‘Childhood and Spatiality during the Pandemic’. His academic blog post on Understanding Kinship and Childhood Through K-Drama was out on Doing Sociology previously.