У статті здійснений аналіз поглядів науковців на проблему соціалізації дитинства, існування дитячої субкультури (дитяча гра, дитячий фольклор, художня творчість дітей, комунікативна поведінка (спілкування)), висвітлено складові компоненти цілісності сучасного дитинства (ставлення світу дорослих до світу дітей, засоби навчання і виховання, періоди психічного розвитку з характерними провідними видами діяльності), встановлено, що під дитинством вчені розуміють: віковий період життя людини; особливий, неповторний, своєрідний світ та спосіб буття дитини у ньому; сукупність дітей певного віку; світ відносин дорослих і дітей.
The article analyzes the views of scientists on the problem of childhood socialization, the existence of children’s subculture (children’s play, children's folklore, children’s art, communicative behavior (communication)). It highlights the components of the integrity of modern childhood (the attitude of adults towards the world of children, the tools of education, the periods of mental development with characteristic leading activities). The article reveals what scientists understand under the childhood: age period of a person’s life; special, unique, original world and the way the child lives in it; children of a certain age; the world of relations between adults and children.
I.Kon is of the opinion that spontaneously formed groups of children, as a rule, are of different ages (within certain limits). It was founded that to the same point has come and M. Conner. Summarizing the historical, ethnographic and ethnological data, he claims that practically all naturally emerging groups of children are of different ages. Only one type of the same age group is a school class, which has established itself as a system in the early nineteenth century.
It was established that scientists from the field of psychology divide childhood into two conditional periods: the first childhood is preschool years, and the second childhood - years of primary school.
It is discovered that entire, complex approach to childhood as a social and educational phenomena is carried out in the works of D.Feldshteyn, Ye.Rybinskyi and other scientists. D.Feldshteyn notes that there is no scientific definition of childhood "as a special condition, which serves an integral part of the general society system, is not disclosed the substantial nature of childhood."
Sociologists study childhood from the perspective of world adult attitude to a child and the place of childhood in this world. Considering childhood as a phenomenon of the social world, D. Feldstein sees in it the carrier of the future. He made attempts to reveal the contents and the structure of the child maturity in childhood and childhood in society, marked the most significant characteristics of childhood. Functionally childhood appears as objectively necessary condition in a dynamic system of society, the state of younger generation maturing, and, therefore, the preparation for future society reproduction. By content definition, it is the process of constant physical growth, the accumulation of physical neoplasm, familiarization of social space, reflection on all the relationships in this space, defining in it oneself, own self-organization that occurs in the child's contact with adults and other children (youngers, children of the same age, elders), which is constantly expanding and become complicated, with adult community as a whole. Essentially childhood represents a form of manifestation, a special state of social development, when biological patterns associated with age-related changes of the child, mostly showing their actions, "obeying" more and more the regulatory and decisive social action.
Studying the childhood as a particular social and demographic population groups, Ye. Rybinskyi interprets it as: 1) the stage of the human life cycle; 2) a social phenomenon.
It is determined that the contribution of education in historical formation process of developed childhood.
