The Individual Child, the Future, and the Duty to Protect: Individualization and Changing Standards of Care Towards Children in Ireland

Following a figurational sociological theoretical framework, and empirically drawing upon changes in teachers’ manuals, educational handbooks, curricula, and newspaper reports, this paper examines the escalating notions of innocence and individualization attached to childhood in Ireland since the nineteenth century. The conceptual identity of, and emotional identification with, the child changes in non-linear ways over this long time frame. At various historical periods, there were oppositional views of the nature of childhood and consequent practices of appropriate intervention. Broadly speaking, the earlier concern of building the character of children to serve the needs of the adult world and social expectations was overtaken by the adult responsibility to nurture and reveal the individual personality of each child and enhance his or her self-esteem. This indicates, as Elias argues, the widening distance between adults and children in terms of the individual civilizing process; the standards of emotional self-control expected of adults and children widen. But in another respect the cultural distance between these social categories diminishes in that children are increasingly afforded rights to express themselves and exert agency. The prohibition on personal violence between adults is extended to relations between adults and children, especially in schools where corporal punishment is eventually banned in Ireland in 1982. These changing adult-child relations are connected to broader processes such as state formation in Ireland when state and nation builders after the disintegration of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland looked to the collective past for sources of tradition and national distinction. This tilted the We-I balance towards the ‘we’. The increasing openness of Irish people towards global others from the 1950s encouraged a greater future-orientation. Increasing social differentiation and mobility meant children were not destined to follow in their parents’ footsteps and each child was increasingly expected to ‘choose’ a path in life.