CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD: THE PRODUCTION AND TRANSGRESSION OF ADULTS' PUBLIC SPACE

In the 1980s and 1990s, North America and Europe have experienced a rising tide of concern about the behavior and well-being of children. On the one hand, there is increased popular concern about young children's vulnerability to stranger-dangers in public space. On the other hand, adults also appear to be concerned about the violence and unruliness of older children in public places. This paper uses these contradictory concerns to explore how public space is being produced as a space that is "naturally" or "normally" an adult space. It also examines the way that this "normality" is being disrupted by teenagers, who are provoking anxieties among adults concerning their continued ability to regulate the activities of the young and therefore maintain their spatial hegemony. In doing so, the paper questions the extent to which "public" is an appropriate term to describe the streets and the suburbs, if their maintenance requires the exclusion or marginalization of young people. It also explores the paradoxica...

[1]  R. L. Schnell.  Childhood as ideology: A reinterpretation of the common school , 1979 .

[2]  J. Newson,et al.  Patterns of Infant Care in an Urban Community , 1971 .

[3]  Spencer E. Cahill.  Childhood and Public Life: Reaffirming Biographical Divisions , 1990 .

[4]  Paul Corrigan,et al.  Schooling the Smash Street Kids , 1979 .

[5]  G. Valentine.  Angels and Devils: Moral Landscapes of Childhood , 1996 .

[6]  Stuart C. Aitken,et al.  A Preliminary Study of the Self‐Directed Photography of Middle‐Class, Homeless, and Mobility‐Impaired Children* , 1993 .

[7]  L. Jamieson,et al.  Shifting Patterns of Parental Authority, 1900–1980 , 1990 .

[8]  L. Johnston.  THE POLITICS OF PRIVATE POLICING , 1992 .

[9]  I. Dyck.  Space, Time, and Renegotiating Motherhood: An Exploration of the Domestic Workplace , 1990 .

[10]  I. Dyck,et al.  Integrating Home and Wage Workplace: Women’s Daily Lives in a Canadian Suburb , 1989 .

[11]  Laurence Steinberg,et al.  The serious business of growing up: By Elliot Medrich, Judith Roizen, Victor Rubin and Stuart Buckley. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1892, xviii + 402 pp., $24.50 (hardcover) , 1983 .

[12]  M. Blades,et al.  The Child in the Physical Environment: The Development of Spatial Knowledge and Cognition , 1989 .

[13]  R. Downs,et al.  On Education and Geographers: The Role of Cognitive Developmental Theory in Geographic Education , 1988 .

[14]  D. Stea,et al.  Studies of Geographic Learning. , 1971 .

[15]  David H. Demo.  Parent-Child Relations: Assessing Recent Changes , 1992 .

[16]  M. H. Matthews.  Environmental Cognition of Young Children: Images of Journey to School and Home Area , 1984 .

[17]  Philippe Ariès,et al.  Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien regime) , 1964, History of Education Quarterly.

[18]  Gill Valentine,et al.  'My Son's a Bit Dizzy.' 'My Wife's a Bit Soft': Gender, children and cultures of parenting , 1997 .

[19]  L. Johnston,et al.  The rebirth of private policing , 1992 .

[20]  Doreen Massey,et al.  The Political Place of Locality Studies , 1991, Undoing Place?.

[21]  Maxine Wolfe,et al.  Childhood and Privacy , 1978 .

[22]  D. Bell,et al.  All hyped up and no place to go , 1994 .

[23]  A. Ambert.  An International Perspective on Parenting: Social Change and Social Constructs. , 1994 .

[24]  C. Philo.  Neglected rural geographies: A review , 1992 .

[25]  J. Seeley,et al.  Crestwood Heights: A study of the culture of suburban life , 1956 .

[26]  M. Davis.  City of Quartz , 1990 .

[27]  F. C. Waksler.  Studying children: Phenomenological insights , 1986 .

[28]  Michael G. Wyness.  Keeping Tabs on an Uncivil Society: Positive Parental Control , 1994 .

[29]  Douglas B. Sawin,et al.  Children's Privacy in the Home , 1979 .

[30]  Stuart C. Aitken,et al.  Putting Children in Their Place , 1994 .