Exhibition
Introduction
This exhibition features short pieces on selected topics about childhood in the 1980s and 1990s, with links to findings in the archive, images from the period, and reading suggestions. The entries are updated regularly. Click on the read more button under the images to read the short articles.
adulthood age Apartheid Black Britain Canada Carnegie Medal childhood innocence children’s culture children’s literature class consumption Covid-19 discipline distinction education environmentalism failure feminism gifted children girl child girlhood globalisation individualism inequality infantalisation intersectionality James Bulger materiality moral panics neoliberalism paedophilia parenting culture parents politicisation post-war race politics risk school Shocking Pink Spare Rib Strawberry Shortcake success Thatcher toys truancy
“‘Mrs Thatcher is a bloody dictator’ said a 12-year-old in my hearing. Where is such politicisation and abusive language learned by kids?”
“Just walking down a busy city street can be like running the gauntlet for a child. There are bullies of all ages and races: there are maniacs on the road, driving at 60 mph along high streets. Worst of all, there are the sadistic, the insane, and the perverted.”
“Small wonder that now everyone eats the same junk food and watches the same junk programmes, in a culture where children’s tastes came so conspicuously to dominate.”
“‘What’s a whore house mummy?’ asks the nine-year-old as he devours his snap, crackle and pop in front of the television before going to bed”
“Inhabitants of the new childhood look more like mini adults, but that is because new parents like to dress like children. See the family in the park in their brightly coloured jogging suits, anoraks, and those great social levellers, trainers”
“We have evolved, it seems, into a generation of Peter Pans, perpetually stuck in adolescence. You see them in Hyde Park: thirty and fortysomethings on rollerblades and skateboards, hanging out in Glastonbury or discussing the merits of Oasis vs Blur at dinner parties.”
“Once upon a time, children pored over elaborate toy train sets, fortified camps in remote woods, played kiss-chase, tab and hopscotch in the streets and returned home in a heap to get stuck into Swallows and Amazons. In a single generation that age of innocence seems to have been entirely lost.”
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