The state and problems of modern childhood. Children and the modern world

Introduction

Poverty as a key source of ill-being in the modern Russian family

Medical and demographic situation in Russia

Abortion problem

Maternity benefits

Social orphanhood: street children

Conclusion

References

Introduction

The family acts as the first educational institution, with which a person feels a connection throughout his life. It is in the family that the foundations of a person’s morality are laid, norms of behavior are formed, and the inner world and individual qualities of a person are revealed. The family contributes to a person’s self-affirmation and stimulates his social and creative activity. In other words, the primary socialization of the child takes place in the family. Naturally, disruptions in family functioning directly affect the child and his development.

In modern Russia, the family as a social institution is undoubtedly experiencing a crisis. We can single out several facets of this crisis: demographic, socio-economic, moral. One way or another, there is a massive spread of such a phenomenon as a dysfunctional family. Hence the massive spread of a whole range of problems that befall children in such families.

This paper attempts to analyze the social problems of childhood in modern Russia. It is necessary to emphasize the following: the topic “social problems of children” is not included in the list of “socially significant”, no matter how strange and regrettable it may be. Russian society has become accustomed to the sight of young beggars, criminals and prostitutes, and such phenomena as domestic violence, alcoholism in the family, and mass poverty have simply become the norm. However, the very presence of these problems, which, I emphasize, are widespread, threatens the very future of our country. Therefore, their study and solution is an urgent need.

1. Poverty as a key source of ill-being in the modern Russian family

Of course, there can be many reasons for the dysfunction of a particular family, and they are different for each specific family. However, it is obvious that the key social problem that has caused the explosive growth in the number of dysfunctional families in our time is poverty.

In 1992, as a result of the total economic crisis and “shock therapy,” the bulk of the population was thrown into the abyss of poverty. At the same time, all the population’s savings in cash and non-cash forms were actually completely “expropriated”. This is where data emerged about the 70-80% share of the poor in Russia.

So, if at the end of the 60s the share of low-income people (“poor”) was 29.6%, at the end of the 70s - 32.1%, at the end of the 80s - 30.7%, then as a result of the shock Therapy, the problem of poverty as an independent one disappears, being replaced by the problem of economic devastation, a drop in the level of economic development and, as a result, the living standard of the population as a whole. The country as a whole is becoming poor. But the catastrophic drop in income of the population was considered at that time an extraordinary, but very temporary phenomenon associated with a short period of socio-economic transformations. Thus, these processes were “transformers” that decided to use shock therapy without taking into account Russian characteristics.

A family cannot exist for a long time using up to 70% of its budget for food, since there are still a number of low-elastic needs (housing and communal services, transport, clothing for children). In conditions of high inflation, which largely affects goods consumed by the poor, the poverty line changes more intensively under the influence of prices. At the same time, the poor could not remain indefinitely within the extreme consumption structure: some food supplies were quickly depleted, children outgrew their clothes and shoes, and prices for housing and communal services and transport grew rapidly.

Two forms of poverty have emerged: “stable” and “floating”. The first is due to the fact that a low level of material security, as a rule, leads to deterioration of health, deskilling, deprofessionalization, and ultimately to degradation. Poor parents produce potentially poor children, which is determined by their health, education, and qualifications received. Social research into the persistence of poverty has confirmed this hypothesis and shown that people who are “born as persistently poor” remain so throughout their lives. The second form, much less common, is due to the fact that the poor sometimes make incredible efforts and “jump out” of their social, virtually vicious circle, adapting to new conditions, defending their right to a better life. Of course, in such a “leap”, not only subjective, personal factors play a significant role, but also objective conditions created by the state and society.

The drama of the situation lies in the fact that two thirds of children and one third of the elderly population find themselves “beyond the threshold” of social guarantees, in the poverty group. Meanwhile, the majority of older people, through their past work, have secured the right to at least a comfortable existence, and the poverty of children cannot be tolerated, because it undoubtedly leads to a decrease in the quality of future generations and, as a consequence, the main characteristics of the nation’s human potential.

There is an intensive process of feminization of poverty, which has extreme forms of manifestation in the form of stagnant and deep poverty. Along with the traditional poor (single mothers and large families, the disabled and the elderly), a category of “new poor” has emerged, representing those groups of the population that, due to their education and qualifications, social status and demographic characteristics, have never before (during Soviet times) been low-income. All experts came to the conclusion that the working poor are a purely Russian phenomenon. Today, their low incomes are primarily due to the unreasonably low level of wages at state enterprises, unemployment and underemployment, as well as non-payment of wages and pensions.

According to the State Statistics Committee of the Russian Federation, in the third quarter of 2003, the share of the population with monetary incomes below the subsistence level of the total population was 21.9% or 31.2 million people. These figures indicate the dynamics of a significant reduction in poverty.

A detailed analysis of the composition of poor families, or what is called the “profile” of the poor, shows that in demographic terms, of the total number of family members, more than a quarter (27.3%) are children under 16 years of age, about a fifth (17.2%) - persons over working age, and the rest - more than half (55.5%) - are the working population. Special calculations show that, by gender and age, the population with disposable resources below the subsistence level in 1999 included 59.1 million people, including 15.2 million children, 24.9 million women and 19.0 million men. This means that the poor were: 52.4% of the total number of children under 16 years of age, 39.5% of women and 35.6% of men. This is the most general characteristic. It shows that in terms of material security, more than half of children are below the “border” of a decent life, and the share of poor women is higher than the share of poor men. Despite the fact that the difference by gender is small, there is still every reason to talk about the feminization of poverty, which is confirmed by the factors shaping it.

According to social composition, the following groups of the adult population are distinguished among the poor: more than one third (39.0%) are employed, about one fifth (20.6%) are pensioners, 3% are unemployed, 5.3% are housewives, including women who are on maternity leave to care for a child. In terms of demographic typology, there are three groups among poor families: a) married couples with children and other relatives (50.8%); b) single-parent families, which may include other relatives (19.4%).

Poverty, unemployment, economic and social instability, unrealistic hopes, and collapse of plans intensify the process of marginalization of the population. As a result, a social layer of paupers appears as a consequence of increasing downward social mobility, increasing in intensity. This is how the “social bottom” is formed and strengthened, which is actually rejected by a society that practically does not even know its true dimensions. A special study of this problem allows us to identify four groups of people who make up the “social bottom”: 1) beggars who openly beg for alms; 2) homeless people who lost their housing, as is known, primarily due to the emergence of the housing market; 3) street children who have lost their parents or run away from home; 4) street prostitutes (including children) leading an antisocial lifestyle. Representatives of the “social bottom” have similar features. These are people who are in a state of social exclusion, deprived of social resources, stable connections, who have lost basic social skills and dominant values ​​of society. They have actually already stopped fighting for their social existence. At the same time, each of these groups has its own specifics, but there are no hard lines between them: a homeless person can be a beggar, and a homeless child can be a homeless person. Nevertheless, all representatives of the “social bottom” have their own characteristics, formation features and socio-demographic properties of their identification.

2. Medical and demographic situation in Russia

With the implementation of the national project, as Valentina Petrenko, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy, noted with satisfaction, the mentality in relation to healthcare, mothers, children, and families is changing. However, many problems remain. How they can be solved was discussed at a round table meeting dedicated to current issues of demography and child health, which took place in the Federation Council.

According to expert estimates, in our country 60% of the total number of births is the birth of the first child, 30% - the second, 10% - the third or more. And in England the birth rate of a second child is 50%. In France, the emphasis is on the birth of a third and subsequent children. The study shows that about 60% of Russian couples with one child would like to have a second if they had the conditions: housing, financial opportunities.

The problem of infant mortality is also quite acute. There are successes. If you don't look around. Still, the achievements of the maternal and child health service should not be undermined. They are. Thus, recently there has been a significant reduction in maternal mortality. Although abortion remains a problem in the structure of maternal mortality, according to Olga Sharapova, director of the Department of Medical and Social Problems of Family, Motherhood and Childhood of the Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development, their share has even increased. It was 18%, but in 2006 it became 23%.

An improvement is observed in the morbidity rates of women: there is a decrease in the frequency of detection of anemia during pregnancy (by more than 3%), labor disorders (by 5%), the development of septic conditions in pregnant women and women in labor (by almost 30%), bleeding in the postpartum and postoperative periods (by 16%).

Using the example of children under the age of one month, we really manage the indicators of life and death,” says the director of the Ivanovo Research Institute of Motherhood and Childhood. V.N. Gorodkova Roszdrav Lyubov Posiseeva. - If other services also work with other age categories, I think a lot will change.

Another question is that I would like more. According to E. Baibarina, despite significant investments, there is underfunding of perinatal services. The wear and tear of equipment in maternity hospitals reaches 80%; effective techniques are not used enough. Modern technologies for, say, artificial ventilation of the lungs in a variety of modes against the background of surfactant administration make it possible to successfully care for premature babies. But everything comes down to financial problems, since nursing such a child costs about 7 thousand rubles a day (for comparison: in Europe - 2-3 thousand euros). Where such means are found, the achievements are obvious. An example is the Moscow Regional Perinatal Center, where early neonatal mortality decreased in a short period of time to 2.3 ppm.

Reducing perinatal and neonatal losses is highly costly, it is possible mainly through the use of high-tech medical care and the use of effective safe medicines, the round table participants noted. However, there are a number of problems associated with their availability. Regions are forced to allocate money for expensive drugs from their budgets, but limited funds make their widespread use impossible. In addition, the standards of medical care for children, especially up to one year of age, lack modern methods for the prevention and treatment of pulmonary pathology. In some regions there is a decrease in the supply of neonatologists.

As is known, the vast majority of diseases in the early neonatal period and many diseases in infancy and older age are associated with the unfavorable course of pregnancy and childbirth, which requires a significant strengthening of the preventive orientation of obstetricians towards the birth of a healthy child. In the meantime, the focus of obstetricians is the condition and health of the pregnant woman, and not the outcome of the pregnancy. The stillbirth rate remains high. But here lies a reserve in increasing the number of children born, L. Posiseeva noted during the round table.

Particular attention should be paid to the reproductive health of northerners, believes Gennady Oleynik, Deputy Committee of the Federation Council on Northern Affairs and Minority Peoples. Three quarters of pregnant women living in the North have significant health problems, 70% of them do not receive enough necessary food products, vitamins and microelements. All this significantly affects the health of future generations. Up to 80% of children have developmental disorders before birth.

Children of the North have unequal starting conditions of life compared to children in other regions of the country and get sick 2-3 times more often. Under the influence of unfavorable climatic and environmental factors, there is a lag of 2-5 years in the age-related development of the immune system. Every fifth child is underweight. Many northern regions of Russia are not able to independently solve the problem of ensuring the full development of children in extreme conditions; they need additional, targeted support from the state. In its absence, the process of depopulation will increase. The question of the need to preserve the “Children of the North” program was repeatedly raised. Unfortunately, the efforts were in vain. Although a number of problems of children in the North are highlighted as a separate line in the “Healthy Generation” and “Children and Family” subprograms of the Federal Target Program “Children of Russia,” this is not enough.

3. The problem of abortion

The population of our country is declining: more people are dying than are being born. This has brought to life the president’s new demographic initiative, which provides for support for families with children, an increase in child benefits, payment of maternity capital, etc. But economic measures alone are clearly not enough. It is necessary that motherhood and fatherhood become a conscious need, and children are a desirable and significant life goal for every family. In Volgograd they approached the problem from a different angle. Here, for the first time in Russia, a psychologist service began working at antenatal clinics. Their task is to convince a pregnant woman planning to have an abortion to abandon her decision and save the life of the unborn child.

Five main reasons for abortion in Russia

Why does a woman decide to undergo an abortion operation that is unsafe, has a serious impact on her health and well-being, and is not very approved by society? As a rule, not from a good life, psychologists have found. Here are the most common reasons:

Unstable marriage, lack of confidence in the partner. When a marriage is falling apart at the seams or “love hasn’t worked out,” only the most naive women expect that the birth of a child, and not their first one, will help save the relationship. Most women are afraid that this, on the contrary, will alienate their husband or partner, and they will be left alone with a child, or even two, in their arms.

Unsolved housing problems. Many young families are forced to live with their parents or rent expensive housing. This often becomes the reason for refusing to have a child, especially a second one.

Poor financial situation. With low incomes for young families, the birth of a child often forces them to further lower their standard of living, denying themselves many things. But if, at the birth of the first child, grandparents are ready to provide them with assistance, including financial assistance, then the birth of the second grandchild is sometimes greeted without much joy, since it also places a burden on them.

Insufficient level of sexual culture. Many young women and men are not aware of modern methods of contraception and do not think about the consequences of casual and unprotected sex.

Medical indications. The health status of many women is such that pregnancy (especially repeated pregnancy) can be dangerous for them. Official statistics are silent about the prevalence of such a phenomenon as pregnancy due to rape, but, according to doctors, it is not as rare as it seems.

Over the past 15 years, the number of abortions in Russia has decreased significantly - more than 2 times. If in the early 90s more than 4 million abortions were officially registered, then in recent years, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, their number does not exceed 1.7 million per year. And yet it is too early to talk about significant successes in this area: at the same time, our birth rate was falling, so about 57% of all pregnancies still end in abortion. Particularly alarming is the fact that every fifth abortion is performed on teenage girls under 18 years of age.

From 10 to 15% of abortions result in various complications that require serious and long-term treatment, and sometimes end tragically - in the death of the woman. Up to 8% of women become infertile after an abortion. In our country, every 10th married couple is unable to conceive a child. According to the Scientific Center for Obstetrics, Gynecology and Perinatology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, 6-7 million Russian women are infertile, but these data are incomplete.

There is no doubt that the legalization of abortion in the 20th century was an element of woman’s emancipation and gave her the right to decide her own destiny. But since then, it has somehow been forgotten that both a woman and a man equally participate in the birth of a new life. 29-year-old Zhanna and her husband Ilya represent a rare case: this couple came to one of the Volgograd antenatal clinics together. They have an apartment and a second-grader son is growing up.

But if we have a second child, we will all have to limit ourselves in many ways - the family budget will shrink,” says Ilya. - You still need to live up to the “maternity capital”, and money for additional expenses will be needed not in three years, but immediately. The wife receives a good salary. What will she be left with after maternity leave? According to the law, everything should be preserved, but will the employer wait?

The psychologist must be prepared for such a conversation. Will Tatiana be able to convince Zhanna and Ilya that the greatest joy of the birth of a baby will atone for all the passing everyday troubles and material difficulties? For now, it is enough that both of them have not made a final decision.

Abortion is clearly prohibited by the Catholic Church and Islam, so in countries where these religions have a strong position, abortion statistics are low. Abortions are allowed in most countries of Europe, North America, East Asia - China, Mongolia, Vietnam, North Korea and almost in India. They are allowed with restrictions in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. In China, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Vietnam, from 25 to 45 abortions are performed per 100 pregnant women, in India and Turkey - 5. In Zambia and South Africa - about 5, in the rest of Africa - at least 17.

In the European Union, abortion is legal everywhere except Ireland. However, their numbers vary: from 18.3 in Sweden to 5.4 per 1000 women of childbearing age in Spain. The Netherlands has the least number of them in the world: less than 5 per 1000 women.

The maximum number of abortions occurs in the republics of the former USSR and former socialist countries: in 14 out of 25 countries - from 40 to 63 per 100 pregnant women.

4. Maternity benefits

Russian parliamentarians are convinced that there is no problem in the country with finding sources of funds necessary to increase maternity benefits. In their opinion, huge gold and foreign exchange reserves and a stabilization fund can be used for these purposes. At the same time, parliamentarians believe, it is necessary to make accurate, arithmetically verified calculations so that the innovation is beneficial to women with both large and small salaries. In addition, politicians expressed the opinion that it is necessary to proceed from the minimum subsistence level of the child, and not from the salary that the woman received before pregnancy, so as not to discriminate against the majority of women in the country who have low wages.

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation found the legal norm limiting the maximum amount of maternity benefits to be inconsistent with the Constitution. The norm, which was preserved in the laws on the budget of the Social Insurance Fund (SIF) for five years, essentially deprived wealthy working women of equal compensation for wages during maternity leave.

In six months, by decision of the Constitutional Court, the first part of Article 15 of the law “On the Budget of the Social Insurance Fund for 2002”, which for the first time established the average monthly income level, which cannot be exceeded by maternity payments, will no longer be in force. During this time, the Russian government and the State Duma will have to amend the current legislation. The corresponding bill, lifting restrictions on the amount of monthly maternity benefits, will be submitted to the State Duma within the next week and a half, and it is planned to pass it before the end of the spring session.

The basis for the proceedings was a complaint to the Constitutional Court from a resident of the city of Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod region, Tatyana Banykina, who filed a complaint with the court about the violation of the constitutional rights of all well-earning women to state social guarantees during the period of bearing a child. In the ruling, the judge said the laws “disproportionately limit the amount of maternity benefits for insured women whose average earnings exceed their cap.”

In 2002, the size of the monthly maternity benefit was determined in the amount of average earnings and did not exceed 11,700 rubles. Since 2002, the “maternal maximum” has been raised several times and by 2007 the threshold rose to 16,125 rubles. However, this amount is far from being 100% compensation for average annual earnings for all Russian women.

At the same time, many experts doubt that the state will soon begin to compensate 100 percent of the income of pregnant women and young mothers.

The Constitutional Court refers to documents of the International Labor Organization (ILO), which state that it is preferable to increase the amount of maternity payments to 100% of the average wage. As Elena Vinogradova, representative of the Federation Council in the Constitutional Court, explained, thus, the size restrictions will remain, and it is still difficult to say how much benefits will be increased.

According to the State Duma representative in the Constitutional Court, Elena Mizulina, the government and the Duma will have to provide for “some other mechanism” for payments, since the Social Insurance Fund may not have enough funds. It is possible that part of the amount will be paid additionally by the employer.

According to Anna Gvozditskikh, a lawyer for the NGO Center for Social and Labor Rights, employers are unlikely to positively evaluate such an innovation. Today, benefits for expectant and young mothers are paid entirely from insurance amounts, while employers often unreasonably believe that women cost them more than men.

According to the plenipotentiary representative of the government in the Constitutional, Supreme and Arbitration Courts, Mikhail Barshchevsky, “The Constitutional Court motivated its decision with the desire to create favorable conditions for increasing the birth rate.” “It seems to me that the Constitutional Court has gone beyond its powers. Issues of demographic policy fall within the competence of the legislative and executive powers,” Barshchevsky said.

poverty social family orphanhood

5. Social orphanhood: street children

The scientific community became interested in the problem of homelessness back in the early 90s. However, systematic surveys have not been carried out across Russia or large regions. The reason is the lack of own funds and budgetary allocations from scientific institutions, as well as the lack of interest in this problem among the authorities, both local and federal. Research teams carried out surveys only for individual cities in Russia.

The problems of street children have been studied for several years by the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of Population of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This paper presents the results of surveys in 1995 and 1999 conducted by the author, a survey by Rossiyskaya Gazeta in 2002, as well as a survey of experts who analyzed the situation of homelessness in the country.

The 1995 survey involved 115 street children who were in a reception center in the city of Samara. The results showed that 62.5% of children ran away from home, previously lived in families.This is also confirmed by statistical data on those delivered to children's reception centers (in 1999 they were transformed into temporary isolation centers for juvenile offenders). In 1995, 32.4 thousand teenagers, or 56.6% of all those brought to reception centers, ran away from their families.

About half (43.7%) of the examined children lived in single-parent families, i.e. with one of the parents (almost always the mother), 31% - with grandparents or other relatives. The main reason for this situation is the deprivation of parents' rights for failure to fulfill their responsibilities towards their children. Only 25% of children live in a complete family, i.e. with father and mother. However, very often in such a family there is an unemployed person (sometimes both parents are unemployed), and there are other reasons for trouble.

Quite a large number of children run away from alcoholic parents. Moreover, this reason was never noted in our survey as the only one; it was usually accompanied by the child’s starvation, his poor relationships with parents and teachers. Another point should be noted: children who left home for this reason accounted for almost 30% among 9-14 year olds, half among 5-8 year olds and almost 100% among 15-17 year olds.

About 18% of children noted reluctance to study as the reason for leaving home. About 12% left home because no one wanted them there. Among the reasons is this: the mother died, and the child was left in the care of relatives who do not care about him. At the same time, none of the children surveyed noted a lack of love for their parents and relatives as a reason for leaving home. Even children from families of alcoholics did not take advantage of this hint.

About 10% of the children in the survey ran away from home because they wanted to travel. But even in this case, this reason did not act as the only one; it was usually accompanied by the following: “ran away for company,” “bad relationship with parents.” Only 5% of teenagers ran away from home solely in search of romance and adventure.

5% of children according to survey data ran away from orphanages, shelters, boarding schools, etc.In 1995, according to state statistics, their number (who ran away) in reception centers was 5.6 thousand or 9.8% of the total number of children taken there. The absolute number is not very large. However, if we compare them with all children living in orphanages, their share will be 6.9%, while only 0.3% of all children living in a family run away from families.

The main reason why children run away from reception centers is the desire to return home, despite the difficult life there (87%). 25% ran away due to poor relationships with teachers and mistreatment of them.

Different children are running ages,in our survey the smallest is 6 years. The most significant group of street children are children aged 9-14 years (58% of all street children). Distribution by semishows that these are mainly boys - 78.6%, girls make up 21.4%. The majority of street children are city residents (almost 80%). Rural children make up just over 20%. Length of staychildren in homelessness range from 2-3 days to 7 months (meaning those who end up in a reception center. If the child is outside a reception center or other children's institution, then these periods can be as long as desired). Moreover, our survey revealed the following pattern: the younger the child’s age, the longer the period of his or her homelessness. The explanation is quite difficult to find.

Dangers facing street teenagersdiverse. One of them is connected with the place of overnight stay. Street children usually spend the night “wherever they have to” (this is the most common answer). Many have a permanent place in the attics or basements of mostly old houses, at train stations and can become easy prey for any criminal, including a maniac. The teenager faces another danger while earning a living. Its main sources: begging, theft, petty racketeering, haggling, part-time work at gas stations, car washes, collection and delivery of empty bottles. Those who are stronger can work as loaders in a store. One of the teenagers named his source of income as “undressing children.” Many disappointments and surprises await them along this path. Most street children are connected to one degree or another with the criminal world.

Street children can also join a group of adults, and if it is criminal, it is very difficult to get out of it, according to employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with a general increase in crime, adults are committing fewer and fewer crimes; in 70% of cases, minors convicted of any crime were supervised by adults.

Having run away from home, from the oppression and cruelty of parents, a teenager is often still at risk of becoming a victim of violence, robbery, and insult. Thus, according to some data, from 20 to 40% of children undergo physical violence, and about 8% - sexual violence. These children are also highly likely to acquire bad habits, become addicted to drugs, alcohol, criminal activity, and prostitution.

HealthAccording to the survey results, the number of homeless children leaves much to be desired: more than 70% of children are sick.

Second examinationstreet children was carried out in 1999. It was attended by 69 street children who were located in the Central Institute of Children's Education in Veliky Novgorod. His data confirmed many of the trends identified in the 1995 survey. The majority of street children (52%), as in the first survey, have a family: 28% - complete, 24% - incomplete, 36% - live with other relatives, with their grandmother and /or with grandfather, 16% - in an orphanage, orphanage.

Living with parents is not always positive for a child. From a young age, these children saw something that, according to psychologists, had an impact on their psyche and will affect their entire future lives. Only a very few of them can forget about it later and lead a different way of life. This survey revealed new patterns: 45.5% of children had one of their parents, and in some cases both were unemployed, 17.4% of children had one of their parents in prison, 8.9% had parents (or one of them) deprived of parental rights.

A comparative assessment with the 1995 survey shows that the reasons for running away from home, as well as their frequency, have not changed. On average, each child ran away from home (orphanage) 5 times, but in some cases this number, according to them, reached 25-30 escapes.

More than a quarter of children (22.6%) did not study or work. This is the most dangerous group. They found themselves, as it were, alone with life, without the slightest support from relatives and loved ones at the age when they most needed it. Not only their parents, but also the school, housemates, and the public did not pay any attention to them. A new study confirms the criminal nature of the escapees’ pastime: 52% steal, 30.5% earn extra money (collect bottles, work as loaders in a store), 13% beg.

One third of street children earn money alone, 19% sometimes team up. The rest (52.5%) act in groups. This makes it easier for them to survive and defend themselves, but more dangerous for society. When children gather in groups, they feel more unpunished and become more aggressive and embittered. Let us recall that in the 1995 survey, almost 70% of children were united in groups. Apparently, the ideas of individualism, the need and desirability of relying only on oneself, declared in society, did not pass unnoticed even for these children. There is another difference from the 1995 survey: then in 20% of cases these groups were led by adults, now the situation is different - the number of such groups has decreased by more than 3 times and is only 6%. In the 1999 survey, among the organizers, a higher proportion of peers was noted, rather than older children, as was the case in 1995. Some teenagers said that they organized groups themselves.

What are these children's plans for the future? In a 1995 survey, 53% of homeless people would like to return home, 29% would like to continue their studies at school, vocational school, technical school, 17.6% want to live like everyone else, some want to study and work. Only 12% had no plans. None of the teenagers noted such a prompt as “I can’t change anything,” that is, all children, to one degree or another, hope for better changes. And the best change, in their opinion, is to have kind and caring parents (this was noted by 53.8% of street children, including among 9-14 year olds - 64.7%, and among children 6-8 years old - 33.4 %), have a close-knit family, respectively - 46.1%, 29.4%, 77.6%. At the same time, 17.7% of children noted that they would like to live independently, separately from their parents. The questionnaire also contained what adults thought were typically childish responses. Thus, almost 12% of children aged 9-12 wrote that they would like to have a lot of toys, 23.5% - beautiful clothes. I would especially like to highlight a group of children, for whom the best change is the opportunity to eat well. Moreover, their share is quite large: it amounted to 26.9% of all respondents (including those aged 9-14 years - 23.5%; 6-8 years - 31.7%).

Conclusion

In 2006, it became fashionable and relevant to talk about Russia’s demographic problems, about its future in 2015, 2020, 2050 or even 2100. Both on the scale of the federation and in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the implementation of the corresponding “projects” has begun, for which it is planned to allocate colossal and simply unprecedented amounts for our tight-fisted state.

In this regard, in conclusion, I would like to note one important fact, which is somehow missed by modern Russian society. An increase in the birth rate, even to stratospheric “African” heights, and, accordingly, a drop in mortality is simply meaningless, in conditions when the majority of Russian children live in dysfunctional families and face such phenomena as parental alcoholism, violence, including sexual violence, humiliation, poverty , homelessness. Without solving these problems, Russia's key problem - the degradation of its human potential and the decline in viability as a self-sufficient society - will not and cannot be solved.

An analysis of the situation shows that the authorities, although they have a fairly good grasp of the situation, do not want and are not ready to act adequately to it. It seems that they do not have a clear idea of ​​what needs to be done. Caring for the entire society about children, about all of them, not just about our own, should become a priority in society. Today, most people don't have this yet. To overcome such a crisis of public consciousness, it is necessary to recognize it. “Devastation,” as Professor Preobrazhensky argued, “is not an old woman with a stick, devastation is in our heads.” Society's awareness of its condition as a crisis would mean the beginning of qualitative changes.

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10.Evpanova V. The medical and demographic situation in the country still remains very difficult. // Medical newspaper, March 30, 2007.

Pedagogy wants to educate a person in all respects, then it must also know him in all respects. When identifying age-related characteristics of children and fixing a certain period of childhood, anatomical indicators, features of the course of physiological processes, qualitative changes in growth, mental development of the emotional-volitional and effective-practical spheres, and the degree of spiritual and moral maturity are taken into account. In modern periodizations of childhood, the phenomena of accelerated physical development of children (acceleration) are noted; their ability to withstand significant physical, emotional, mental and intellectual stress; spiritual readiness to enter into diverse social relationships. K.D.Ushinsky

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Alafyeva O.V.,

MBDOU teacher

kindergarten No. 57 "Rainbow"

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Problems of modern childhood.

Periodization of childhood and features of children's development.

Alafyeva O.V.,

MBDOU teacher

kindergarten No. 57 "Rainbow"

K. D. Ushinsky emphasized that if pedagogy wants to educate a person in all respects, then it must also know him in all respects. When identifying the age characteristics of children and fixing a certain period of childhood, anatomical indicators, features of the course of physiological processes, qualitative changes in growth, development of the psyche of the emotional-volitional and effective-practical spheres, and the degree of spiritual and moral maturity are taken into account. In modern periodizations of childhood, the phenomena of accelerated physical development of children (acceleration) are noted; their ability to withstand significant physical, emotional, mental and intellectual stress; spiritual readiness to enter into diverse social relationships.

In its development, a child goes through two stages: biological, during nine months of development in the womb, and social, for about 17-18 years in various forms of social education. The periodization of the social stage has the following structure.

1. From birth to 1 year - early infancy. This is the period of initial adjustment and readiness of the essential forces for initial adaptation.

2. From 1 year to 3 years - infancy itself. One of the most fruitful and intense periods of a child’s accumulation of social experience, the formation of physical functions, mental properties and processes.

3. From 3 to 6 years - early childhood - the period of transition from infancy to childhood. A time of intensive accumulation of socially significant experience and orientation in social space, the formation of basic character traits and attitudes towards the world around us. All three periods - from birth to 6 years - are also called pre-school and preschool. Systematic education in kindergarten and school begins for many children at the age of 6. It is carried out taking into account the fact that children’s full psychophysiological, moral and volitional readiness for systematic educational work, intellectual, physical, and emotional stress occurs by the age of 7.

4. From 6 to 8 years - childhood itself. During this period, the initial maturation of the physiological and psychological structures of the brain is completed, and physical, neuro-physiological and intellectual forces are further accumulated, ensuring readiness for full-fledged systematic educational work.

5. From 8 to 11 years - the pre-teen period - the time of mature childhood, the accumulation of physical and spiritual strength for the transition to adolescence. Together with the period of childhood, the pre-teen period is also called junior school age.

6. From 11 to 14 years - adolescence, adolescence - a new qualitative stage in the development of a person. Its most characteristic features are: physiologically - puberty, psychologically - personal self-awareness, conscious manifestation of individuality. Adolescence is also called middle school age.

7. From 14 to 18 years - adolescence - the period of completion of physical and psychological maturation, social readiness for socially useful productive work and civic responsibility. Girls and boys - senior schoolchildren - receive some training in the field of psychology and ethics of family life.

In each period of development, it is important for a child to achieve the completeness of development, psychophysiological and spiritual maturity necessary for this period, which does not always coincide with the age limits and requirements of schooling. Thus, by the end of the period, six-year-olds are still not ready for systematic studies at school. And high school students require more decisive and intensive involvement in social life and productive work to ensure effective moral; physical and civic maturation. Any attempts to shape the development of children through excessive stress at an early age inevitably lead to overload and fatigue, physical and mental breakdowns. Protection from work and civic responsibility during adolescence leads to social infantilism and disruptions in spiritual and moral formation.

Characterizing each of the named age periods of children's development from the point of view of their spiritual and moral development, it should be noted that preschoolers and primary schoolchildren have limited experience of real social relations. This explains their enormous desire to accumulate impressions, the desire to navigate life and assert themselves. Preschoolers and primary schoolchildren are able to appreciate and value moral qualities in another person, especially kindness, caring, attention and interest in themselves. They evaluate these qualities in a utilitarian and practical way, and see human beauty in external, attractive, directly contemplated forms of clothing, behavior and actions. The period of preschool and primary school childhood is the most important for the development of aesthetic perception, creativity and the formation of a moral and aesthetic attitude towards life. At this age, the most intensive formation of personality traits and qualities takes place, which remain more or less unchanged throughout life.

Adolescence is the most difficult period in children's lives. This is the age of consolidation of the moral and aesthetic baggage acquired in early childhood, its comprehension and enrichment. An important feature is that the child is going through puberty. The real complexity of his life lies in the gradually growing wave of self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-esteem in the system of social relations, in the development of moral and aesthetic consciousness and thinking. If a teenager feels and understands that he is harmoniously integrated into life and finds satisfaction of his needs, then physiological processes proceed normally. If he conflicts with peers and adults, his interests are suppressed, contradictory situations arise one after another, then puberty complicates the depressed mental state.

Teenagers are not far removed from younger schoolchildren, but have already stepped over the barrier of self-awareness. They are still very much attracted by the external form of life phenomena, but they are already interested in their meaningful social content. In the perception of the moral and aesthetic appearance of another person, the functional-romantic approach dominates. A teenager evaluates aesthetically not only appearance, but also individual moral qualities that attract him. He highlights, for example, courage and boldness, activity and loyalty, justice and determination. And depending on their presence or absence, he judges the person as a whole: whether he is good or bad. beautiful or ugly. A teenager can also be captivated by an antisocial type of behavior, a pseudo-romantic lifestyle of people who commit crimes. All this makes adolescence a period of special attention from adults and a thoughtful individual approach.

Adolescence is no less difficult. During this period, the physical maturation of a person is completed, and the conditions for his mental, moral and aesthetic maturity actually arise. Boys and girls are already ready to participate in social production activities, in productive labor. However, the family and school do not yet provide the necessary conditions; they keep high school students in the position of wards, constantly controlled people, as if incapable of making independent decisions, taking responsibility for their behavior and their actions. This hinders the development of amateur performances among boys and girls, the formation of a team, and the implementation of multilateral activities of public organizations and school student self-government.

Boys and girls are capable of a holistic moral and aesthetic assessment of a person in the unity of his spiritual and external physical beauty. Their consciousness is saturated with knowledge, impressions, ideal aspirations, and maximalist requirements for human moral behavior. Some high school students, striving in their maximalism to develop high moral qualities and social ideals, do not have the opportunity to actually implement them. As a result, they internally “burn out”, calm down, tend towards indifference and skepticism, and go into “informal” associations. Others, overcoming life's obstacles, find a way out to real affairs, responsible social relations and are formed as integral individuals. Still others are imbued with bourgeois worldly wisdom. In personal practice, they are convinced that it is not at all profitable to be themselves. You need to appear, pretend, pretend to be a social activist, and then you can get a good job.

The main way of forming the personality of high school students is to resolve the contradiction between their readiness for a full social life and limitations, lagging behind life, the content and organization of their daily activities. It is overcome on the basis of combining the education of the younger generation with production labor, carried out in the conditions of modern industry and advanced forms of labor organization.

The peculiarity of adolescence and youth is that teenagers, boys and girls do not always consider it necessary and capable of expressing their moral and aesthetic attitude to life in an aesthetic form. In their midst, you can encounter facts when good guys look comical and pathetic or outwardly behave defiantly rude. It is important to help teenagers understand themselves and find adequate forms of self-expression.

We can speak about the formation of a socially valuable moral and aesthetic attitude towards life in a young person when his moral and aesthetic feeling and consciousness act as an effective incentive for an active struggle against ugliness, immoral and anti-aesthetic. This feeling and consciousness turn into an internal controller that does not allow one to step over the moral law. It becomes conscience, a means of self-insight and self-punishment, bringing moral satisfaction and peace of mind or repentance and remorse.

Thus, for the accumulation of life experience of sensations, emotions and for their recording, there is a certain period of childhood. This is the period when the child strives to exercise the organs of external senses in his acquaintance with the outside world. He needs objects that have sensory stimuli. At an older age, sensory stimuli alone do not satisfy the child and retain his attention only for a short time; here we need incentives that correspond to the child’s desire for literacy, numeracy, acquaintance with nature, the structure of his native language, social life, various types of work, etc. The external material of development, corresponding to the developing mental needs of the child, is like steps of a ladder that help the child to climb up: these steps should lead to the formation of higher perfections. This is personal development.

The idea of ​​sensitive periods closely linked the problems of education to the solution of development problems, conditions, prerequisites and factors of development.

Among the three development factors:. heredity, environmental influences and upbringing - the latter is the most significant. Therefore, even if education cannot bring everything out of everyone, it can help ensure that natural inclinations that are not clearly expressed in themselves are developed through exercise and that, on the contrary, other inclinations do not develop or are completely obscured. There is no doubt that outstanding, even natural talents of genius, become deaf and perish from lack of education.

Societies differ in which age group has the most status. In traditional cultures, the status of an individual increases steadily with the number of years lived, and the elderly have absolute authority. In an industrial society, able-bodied adults have the greatest influence, pushing retirees to the periphery. In modern society, in which youth becomes the greatest value, belonging to the younger generation becomes a value in the labor market. The specificity of modern industrial and post-industrial society is the ever-increasing speed of change, and the gap between the culture of different generations is increasingly growing. In the 70s XX century, as the rate of change in the external environment increases, internal differences between young people and old people inevitably become more noticeable. The pace of change becomes so intense that a few years difference makes a big difference in a person's life experience. The younger generation, as the bearer of the most modern knowledge and better prepared for the future, acquires a higher status than their parents. Adults begin to imitate children, master their clothing style, their jargon, and listen to their music. It has become fashionable to make large feature films for adults based on cartoons and computer games.

Children's vision of the world is now becoming universal. Interest in childhood is becoming more and more intense, and the image of a child occupies an increasingly important place in the world of adults.

The profound changes in modern childhood are revealed and deeply analyzed by D. I. Feldstein. The meaning of these changes, revealed by him, is “civilizational breakdown”: “... the emerging instability of the social, economic, ideological situation, discrediting many moral guidelines causes massive psychological stress, which has a serious impact on the general spiritual and physical health of people.” “It is very alarming that... there is a detachment of the adult World from the World of childhood. In fact, children today have left the system of constant contact with adults,” says D. I. Feldshtein. The most alarming factors that determine profound changes in growing people include: 1) marketization, market ethics, which increases children’s orientation toward consumption; 2) adoption, which separates the child from the cultural traditions of society and its history; 3) marginalization - unequal access to educational resources, growth of deviations and much more. Modern research shows that the child has become different. D. I. Feldshtein identified 13 positions that reveal these changes:

• 1) decreased cognitive development of children;
• 2) decreased energy in children, increased emotional discomfort;
• 3) impoverishment of the level of development of role-playing games, which leads to underdevelopment of the child’s motivational and need-based sphere, as well as his will and arbitrariness;
• 4) decrease in children's curiosity and imagination;
• 5) deficiency of voluntariness;
• 6) insufficient social competence of 25% of children of primary school age, their helplessness in relationships with peers, and inability to resolve simple conflicts. At the same time, there is a dangerous tendency when more than 30% of independent solutions proposed by children are clearly aggressive in nature;
• 7) introducing children to television from an early age has serious consequences; such children need constant external stimulation;
• 8) impoverishment and limitation of communication between children, including adolescent children, and peers, an increase in the phenomena of loneliness, rejection, and a low level of communicative competence;
• 9) an increase in children with emotional problems who are in a state of affective tension;
• 10) intensification of the onslaught of information flows, primarily television and the Internet.

Factors of intensive childhood change. In big Russian cities Modern children don’t have yards -“spaces of life with an air of freedom” (B. Okudzhava), and in rural areas - gaming outskirts. Child psychiatrists and psychotherapists say: children's playyards were taken away, and then they were forced to occupy attics and basements.

Democratizing children's lives, legal freedoms recorded in international, state and other documents, and restrictions (especially in big cities) on the space of children’s life activities, the actual deprivation of the child’s inalienable right to play, primarily traditional for all cultures - play with peers.

The value of children and marriage, the formation of parental attitudes and a special emotional connection with the child, family life “for the sake of the children” - and a sharp decline in the birth rate, conscious celibacy: “... the value of children becomes an independent factor motivating birth control - such is the paradox of our time.”

Rise in the last decade standard of living child (increased consumption of goods and services, increased living comfort, mechanization of everyday life, the quantity and quality of the children's entertainment industry - books, films, toys for children, etc.) - and a decrease quality of life(the child’s subjective satisfaction with the conditions of his life, his psycho-emotional well-being, optimism).

Significant costs of the socialization process of modern youth include pronounced infantilism a significant part of it, which is caused by the peculiarities of the gaming consciousness, convinced of its protection from the responsibilities and hardships of everyday life. Playing with reality, or playing in an illusory world, which is expressed in fashionable youth communities living according to the laws of virtual reality, in long-term material and everyday dependence on parents, etc., is based on a secret desire to renounce those social rights, the implementation of which is associated with practically-oriented efforts and at the same time from the rights and responsibilities assumed by “adult” life.

The right to childhood is hypertrophied to the right to eternal childhood, which, in essence, there is a denial of the right to adulthood.

There have been serious shifts in the motivational needs of children - emergence of new, very dubious values, negative shift in motives etc. To a large extent, this is due to the loss and lack of stable socially developed guidelines, clarity of positions in relation to the reality of adult society itself. The structures that ensure the formation of children's society have been reduced to a minimum, in particular various children's amateur associations, the importance of which cannot be covered by various subject sections, clubs and other extracurricular forms of educational work. Children feel the need to develop multifaceted connections among themselves at different ages, to organize special social structures that are significant in both the adult and children's worlds. In the absence of such positive structures, growing children realize the need for connections with peers in the subcultures of certain groups, in spontaneous associations, in small, often negatively oriented groups, manifesting themselves in their own way in mass shows and discos.

A modern child from an early age is free to use a TV, computer, smartphone, tablet and other electronic devices. He masters all this as already solved problems, a starting position. Children grab the highest, achieved level. Meanwhile, for adults these tasks are still in the process of development, conclude the decision process. Moreover, when dealing with new electronic and computer toys, games, etc., the child, in his relationship to them, raises questions that require adults to comprehend them.

A situation has developed that is difficult and inadequate to the needs of children and the tasks of education in building relationships between children and the adult world. On the one hand, the adult world seems to have come closer: children have become not only more relaxed towards adults, more confident, and often condescending and contemptuous, which is associated with the greater availability of information, with the fact that almost everything previously forbidden has become accessible and permitted , a certain independence of children appeared. On the other hand, at the same time, the adult world has moved away, since adults not only become less involved with children, but also do not appear before them in a clear position of their attitude and their demands. At the same time, older children - teenagers and high school students - actually retain the position of a child in the eyes of close adults and the adult world as a whole. Children are not included in the sphere of social activity and in the discussion at an accessible level of those economic, environmental, socio-political and other problems that adults live with.

Schools still do not adequately create opportunities for children to be included in situations, requiring them to demonstrate personal social activity, self-determination and responsibility. There is obviously a sharp contradiction between the accelerated general social development of children, associated with conditional inclusion in the world of adults, and the possibilities of real social functioning and real personally significant ways of socialization and individualization that are closed to them.

In modern conditions, a qualitatively new circumstance has appeared that significantly complicates the process of developing the personality of a growing person, as already mentioned - avalanche-like, uncontrollable, uncontrolled information from cinema, television and computer screens, pages of magazines and newspapers of varying levels of dignity and dubiousness. All material specially given to the child, from educational subjects to moral principles, no matter how broad it may be and no matter how hard parents and teachers try, is in the same vein with a much larger flow of this free information.

Modern childhood has expanded significantly in time, has lengthened in developed countries over the past 100-130 years by 1/3 - from 12 to 18 years. At the same time, increasingly dynamic development occurs within each stage (stage) of childhood.

Serious problems of moral education have arisen: obvious sympathy and trust of some children in "new values" - pragmatism and individualism against the backdrop of persistent calls to be competitive and successful, often at any cost; increase in aggressiveness, immoral acts, cases of violence against peers, adults, teachers. Foreign researchers also note aggressiveness and an insensitive attitude towards people. Analyzing “the motives for the ever-increasing cruelty of schoolchildren,” modern Japanese researcher S. Murayama comes to the conclusion: “Children who committed the most brutal crimes were no different from their peers: neither in family, nor in psychological, nor in economic terms - they were the same as everyone else " He explains the inhumanity of their actions by the emptiness of their inner world, loss of sensitivity to living things: these are “people with robot syndromes.” Many modern toys also contribute to this - Barbie dolls, monsters, zombies, etc., creating an inhumane gaming environment. All this indicates the need to develop ecology of childhood, aimed at developing ways to solve childhood problems and create a comfortable and prosperous living environment and life for children.

Childhood is a social phenomenon, but the idea of ​​Childhood is not characteristic of every society. Neil Postman, in his best-selling book The Disappearance of Childhood, ominously and fatalistically suggests that if the “idea of ​​childhood” appeared at a certain stage in human history, then it may disappear. Something similar is already happening in the modern world. Children's clothing is disappearing, children's toys and games increasingly have a pronounced character of attributes and actions of the Adult World, and not always the best. Children's vices and crime are not much different from adults.

A clear understanding of all the outlined problems, their anthropological and pedagogical analysis and comprehension are aimed at finding real ways to solve the problems of modern childhood.

Test questions and assignments

• 1. What is the universality of the worldview of modern children and how does this affect the world of adults?
• 2. Characterize and illustrate with examples the profound changes in modern childhood.
• 3. Justify ways to neutralize the negative factors of intensive changes in childhood.
• 4. J. Korczak formulated the child’s requirements for adults. How do you think, they correspond to modern children? Justify your opinion.

"Don't spoil me, you are spoiling me with this. I know very well that it is not necessary to provide me with everything I request. I'm just testing you.

Don't be afraid be firm with me. I prefer this approach. This allows me to determine my place.

Don't answer to stupid and meaningless questions. If you do this, you will soon discover that I just want you to deal with me all the time.

Don't pay attention too much attention to my little ailments. I can enjoy feeling bad if it brings too much attention to me.

Don't let my bad habits to attract an excessive share of your attention to me. This will only inspire me to continue them.

Don't force make me feel younger than I really am. I will take it out on you for this by becoming a “crybaby” and a “whiner.”

Don't for me and for me what I am able to do for myself. I can continue to use you as a servant.

Don't give in to my provocations, when I say or do something just to upset you. And then I will try to achieve even greater “victories”.

Don't demand immediate explanations from me as to why I did this or that. Sometimes I myself don’t know why I act this way and not otherwise.

Do not expose too much of a test of my honesty. When intimidated, I easily turn into a liar.

Let my fears and fears do not cause you concern. Otherwise I will be even more afraid. Show me what courage is.

Don't let promises that you cannot keep will shake my faith in you.

Don't be inconsistent. This confuses me and makes me try harder to have the last word in all cases.

Don't find fault come to me and don't grumble at me. If you do this, I will be forced to defend myself by pretending to be deaf.

Don't be upset too much when I say, “I hate you.” I don't mean that literally. I just want you to regret what you did to me.

If you tell me that you love me and then ask me to do something for you, I think I'm in the market. But then I will bargain with you and, believe me, I will make a profit.

Don't force me to feel that my misdeeds are a mortal sin. I have the right to make mistakes, correct them and learn from them. But if you convince me that I am not good for anything, then in the future I will be afraid to do anything at all, even knowing that it is right.

Don't defend me from the consequences of my own mistakes. Like you, I learn from experience.

I feel when things are hard and difficult for you. Don't hide from me. Give me the opportunity to experience this with you. When you trust me, I will trust you.

Never even hint that you are perfect and infallible. It gives me a sense of the futility of trying to be equal to you.

Don't correct me in the presence of strangers. I will pay much more attention to your comment if you tell me everything face to face.

Don't worry that we spend too little time together. What's more important to me is how we conduct it.

Don't rely for strength in your relationship with me. This will teach me that only strength needs to be taken into account. I will respond more readily to your initiatives.

Be careful, when the time comes in my life to be more focused on peers and older guys. At this time, their opinion may be more important to me than yours. During this period, I am more critical of you and compare your words with your actions.

Treat your computer the same way how you treat your friends. Then I will become your friend. Remember that I learn by imitating examples rather than by being criticized.

It's important for me to know from you, what is right and what is wrong. But most of all, it is important for me to see in your actions confirmation of whether you yourself understand what is right and what is wrong.”

Not all the requirements named by J. Korczak are listed. What other demands can a modern child make on an adult??

The main problems on the solution of which the coverage of all other issues of pedagogical anthropology depend are the problems of children's nature.

However, for many centuries, the child was perceived as a small adult, who, in accordance with this, should understand everything almost like an adult. Is the father’s dialogue indicative in this regard? with his son in one of the ancient Egyptian sources. The father is dissatisfied with his son’s school success and reprimands him in the spirit that, for example, a donkey is an animal, they explain to him what they want from him in human language, and he eventually understands what he needs to do, and the son is a person, and How is it that he cannot understand the explanation of the teacher who speaks to him in his own human language. For peoples living at the stage of tribal communities, childhood is very short - at 8-11 years old (among different nations), after the initiation rite, the child becomes a full member of the tribe. In many cultures, infanticide - the permitted destruction of children - has existed for many centuries. There are no child characters in ancient myths. A child is not a subject of spiritual culture. The exception is some mythological heroes, but their childhood is assessed according to the laws of adult behavior. A clear illustration of the lack of perception of children's specificity is the canvases of medieval authors, in which the child was depicted with the proportions of an adult, but of small stature. You can determine that this is a child only by a toy, an apple in your hands, or other details belonging to childhood.

Even J.J. Rousseau, whose name is associated with the idea of ​​child-centrism, considered childhood (in the individual and socio-historical sense) only as an illustration of what the real, natural, not distorted by cultural layers, human nature is.

The “discovery” of childhood happened gradually. When discussing the period of childhood, medieval thought highlighted the traits inherent in all children in general: receptivity, sinfulness and irrationality, and special traits inherent in different stages of childhood and different individuals. A positive feature of childhood was considered to be its sensitivity to education compared to all other ages. Philip of Navarre, in his essay “The Four Ages of Man,” argued that childhood is the foundation of life, and on a good foundation one can build a large and good building.

A significant contribution to changing attitudes towards childhood was made by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1536). In the process of raising a child, he believed, one must take into account age and not allow anything that exceeds the child’s strength, even games. The teacher needs to recognize the child’s inclinations and abilities as early as possible and rely on them, because a person more easily grasps what his nature is predisposed to. He argued that the inner world of a child is a divine world and cannot be treated with the cruelty that reigned towards him everywhere.

A scientific understanding of the uniqueness of children's nature began to take shape only in the second half of the 19th century. based on the affirmation of the child’s self-worth, his inclusion in the civil legal and moral communities, which provided children with legal and moral rights. But only in the 20th century. a steady public interest in childhood as a social phenomenon arises and a whole “children’s” industry is formed, covering both the material and spiritual spheres. It was at this time that through the efforts of F. Frebel, N.F. Pestalozzi, M. Montessori and other pedagogical reformers developed socio-psychological and cultural ideas about the special status of childhood, including the child’s right to play and play consciousness, which have a special role in the development of man and society as a whole.

In this regard, philosophical and pedagogical anthropology was faced with specific questions: if the characteristics of a child’s nature are determined by his age, then what is the relationship between childhood and the general nature of man; whether childish nature expresses the original essence of a person or whether human properties are acquired in the process of individual socialization and upbringing; is it permissible to evaluate the sincerity, openness, gullibility and other traits characteristic of children as morally ideal human qualities; Is the task of education to preserve and strengthen these traits, or does the state of “moral innocence” characterize the moral infantilism of the individual?

The concept of childhood at the present stage is associated not with the biological state of maturity of the child, but with a certain social status, with the range of rights and responsibilities inherent in this period of life” with a set of types and forms of activity available to it - this is how historians define childhood. Psychologists interpret childhood as complex , a multidimensional phenomenon that, having a biological basis, is mediated by many sociocultural factors, “The child appropriates society,” wrote D. B. Elkonin, “Everything that should appear in a child already exists in society, including needs, social tasks, motives and even emotions.” V.A. Sukhomlinsky believed that childhood is the most important period of human life, not preparation for a future life, but a real, bright, original, unique life. The famous psychologist and teacher F. Dolto wrote that the child is not the future. a person, but simply a person who has the freedom to be and become, the right to be understood and accepted by others, the ability to accept and understand others, make responsible choices, build relationships with adults not as masters and mentors, but as equal, although not identical, partners through life.

Humanist educators emphasized that understanding the super value of adult life leads to the conclusion that the world of childhood is completely devoted to the task of adapting the child to the world of adults. Adaptation based on complete obedience ultimately leads to the denial of the child’s personality. Recognition of the intrinsic value of childhood became the key idea of ​​educational concepts of a humanistic orientation: the orphanages of J. Korczak, Summerhill A. Neil, the new French school of S. Frenet, the free school community in Vickersdorf of G. Wiene-kenaidr.

According to outstanding teachers, it is the recognition of the intrinsic value of childhood that leads to the idea of ​​the value of the child’s present day. Pedagogihumanists argued that the educational activity of a teacher should be based on the idea of ​​the absolute value of childhood and the needs of the child.

In modern Russian legislation, the rights of a child are interpreted as the rights of a person who has age restrictions on their legal capacity. They represent a set of legislative norms aimed at protecting the interests of the child in all spheres of life. It is noted that the child is an independent subject of law, that children as citizens of the state must enjoy all human rights and freedoms and have appropriate guarantees for their implementation, that they cannot act on an equal basis with adults and need special protection and protection. The state, in the legal regulation of social relations, legislatively establishes special rights for children and norms for their provision for all children in general, and in particular for children deprived of parental attention and care for various reasons.

The rights of the child are presented in the "UN Convention - an international treaty binding on its signatories. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on July 13, 1990. The appearance of the Convention played a certain role in the process of humanization of education. The Convention calls adults to take responsibility for the fate of children, emphasizes that childhood is the time of the most intensive development of a person, the formation of his personality, but it is in childhood that a person is least protected and needs the help and support of elders. The Convention draws public attention to the legal protection of children from all forms of physical, mental and sexual violence. has the right to be protected from insults, harsh treatment, he has the right to be cared for by adults. The Convention sets out in detail the rights of children with physical and mental disabilities, orphans and refugees, and children prosecuted for offenses. Articles occupy an important place. on the protection of children from economic exploitation, prohibiting the involvement of children in work that is dangerous to their health. A special place in the Convention is given to the problem of school discipline. The need for discipline for the safety of children is emphasized and attention is drawn to methods for achieving it. Several articles talk about equal starting opportunities for children in the process of receiving education, which should be aimed at instilling respect for the national values ​​of one’s own country, as well as for other civilizations.

In modern pedagogical science, the rights of the child are systematized for the first time:

The 1st group of rights - “social subsystem” - represents the child’s rights to a higher social status. This includes the rights of children to equality with adults in discussing common problems, to participate in reasoning and judgment on themselves, to complain, to protest, to a free exchange of opinions and statements on any issue, to protection from the arbitrariness of adults (tyranny and despotism). The right to protection of one's health, to privacy and to the deviations of the hard work of growth, to self-government, to independent management of one's own life, to property as to respect for personal belongings and money, to respect for today and the current hour (the child lives today, and he is valuable as an individual today).

The 2nd group of rights is physical, or “environmental”. Includes requirements for control over the child's environment.

The 3rd group of rights are “personal rights” related to the internal life of the child, which are subjective in nature. The main one is the right to be yourself. Recognition of this right does not mean pedagogical passivity - we are talking about non-violence against the child’s nature, a refusal to bring him to the standard or to bring him into line with the goals that adults have set for themselves. Recognizing the child’s right to be who he is, the teacher creates conditions for the child’s development, showing kindness and understanding.

Societies differ in which age group has the highest status. In traditional cultures, the status of an individual steadily increases with the number of years lived, and old people have absolute authority. In an industrial society, able-bodied adults have the greatest influence, pushing retirees to the periphery. In modern society, in which youth is the greatest value, belonging to the younger generation becomes a value in the labor market. The specificity of modern industrial and post-industrial society is the ever-increasing speed of change, and the gap between the culture of different generations is increasingly widening. In the 70s XX century, as the rate of change in the external environment increases, internal differences between young people and old people inevitably become more noticeable. The pace of change becomes so staggering that a few years apart makes a big difference in a person's life experience. The younger generation, as the bearer of the most modern knowledge and better prepared for the future, acquires a higher status than their parents. Adults begin to imitate children, master their clothing style, their jargon, and listen to their music. It has become fashionable to make large feature films for adults based on cartoons and computer games.

Children's vision of the world is currently becoming universal, interest in childhood is becoming more and more intense, and the image of a child is occupying an increasingly significant place in the world of adults.

Significant costs of the process of socialization of modern youth include the pronounced infantilism of a significant part of them, which is caused by the peculiarities of the gaming consciousness, convinced of its protection from the responsibilities and hardships of everyday life. Playing with reality, or playing in an illusory world, which is expressed in fashionable youth communities living according to the laws of virtual reality, in long-term material and everyday dependence on parents, etc., is based on a secret desire to renounce those social rights, the implementation of which is associated with practice-oriented efforts, and at the same time from the rights and responsibilities assumed by “adult” life. The right to childhood is hypertrophied to the right to eternal childhood, which, in essence, is a renunciation of the right to adulthood.

Each new generation of people appropriates the level achieved by humanity, taking it for granted. For example, today a child from an early age is free to use a TV and a computer. He masters all this as already solved problems, a starting position. Children grasp the highest level achieved. Meanwhile, for adults, these tasks are still in the process of development and are in the process of being solved. Moreover, when dealing with new electronic and computer toys, games, etc., the child, in his relationship to them, raises questions that require adults to comprehend them.

Modern childhood has become, on the one hand, much more active in its reflection on the world around us as a whole, and on the other, more infantile in terms of social orientation. There have been serious shifts in the motivational and need-based sphere of children, which is expressed in the emergence of new, often very “controversial” values, an alarming shift in motives, etc. This is largely due to the loss and lack of stable socially developed guidelines and clarity of positions in relationships to the reality of adult society itself. In addition, the structures that ensure the formation of children's society, in particular various children's amateur associations, have been reduced to a minimum. The existing various sections, clubs and other extracurricular forms are focused on specific subject-based activities, and not on the interaction of children, not on the child’s manifestation of himself among others, in his society. Meanwhile, children feel the need to develop multifaceted connections among themselves, different at different ages, to organize special social structures that carry a certain load, both in the children's society itself and in the adult world. Growing children realize this need for connections with peers in the subcultures of certain groups, in spontaneous associations, in small, often negatively oriented groups, manifesting themselves in their own way in mass shows and discos.

A situation has developed that is complex and inadequate to the needs of children and the tasks of education in building relationships between children and the adult world. On the one hand, the adult world seems to have come closer: children have become not only more relaxed towards adults, more confident, and often condescending and contemptuous, which is due to the greater availability of information, with the fact that almost everything previously forbidden has become accessible and permitted , a certain independence of children appeared.

On the other hand, at the same time, the adult world has moved away, since adults not only become less involved with children, but also do not appear before them in a clear position of their attitude and their demands. At the same time, older children - teenagers and high school students - actually retain the position of a child in the eyes of close adults and the adult world as a whole. Children are not included in the sphere of social activity and in the discussion at an accessible level of those economic, environmental, socio-political and other problems that adults live with. Schools still do not create adequate opportunities to include children in situations that require them to demonstrate personal social activity, self-determination and responsibility. On the contrary, due to the reduction of requirements for mastering compulsory subjects, the lack of proper control, etc., on the one hand, and changes in the value systems and goals of modern youth, on the other, conditions are being formed that contribute to the development of dependency, consumerism, stimulating the formation of social passivity and egocentrism.

It is no coincidence that, for example, compulsory classes, educational and other, in the absence of a corresponding formed need, internal readiness to acquire deep true knowledge, are perceived by schoolchildren only as imposed, often causing a feeling of incomprehensibility and opposition. There is obviously a sharp contradiction between the accelerated general social development of children, associated with conditional inclusion in the world of adults, and the possibilities of real social functioning and real personally significant ways of socialization and individualization that are closed to them.

In modern conditions, a qualitatively new circumstance has appeared that significantly complicates the process of developing the personality of a growing person - an avalanche-like, uncontrollable, uncontrolled information from cinema, television screens and computer monitors, pages of magazines and newspapers of varying levels of dignity and dubiousness. All material specially given to the child, from educational subjects to moral principles, no matter how broad it may be and no matter how hard parents and teachers try, is in the same vein with a much larger flow of this free information.

Modern childhood has significantly extended in time, lengthening in developed countries over the last one hundred to one hundred and thirty years by one third, from 12 to 18 years of age. At the same time, increasingly dynamic development occurs within each stage of childhood.

When talking about children and childhood, of course, one cannot ignore the problem of play and its importance for the development, upbringing and education of children. The paramount importance of play for the natural development of a child is evidenced by the fact that the UN has declared play to be a universal and inalienable right of the child. Play is the only central activity of a child that takes place at all times and among all peoples. V. G. Belinsky wrote in one of his articles that let a child play pranks and play pranks, as long as his pranks and pranks are not harmful and do not bear the imprint of physical and moral cynicism; let it be reckless, reckless, as long as it is not stupid and stupid, but deadness and lifelessness are the worst of all.

The game, as you know, presupposes the presence of other participants with whom the rules and scenario of the game are discussed, roles are assigned, etc. Even in cases where a child plays alone, he seems to “split into two” and negotiates everything with himself. A game is always a dialogue. During the game, unpredictable situations often arise, opening up space for making non-standard decisions, awakening fantasy and imagination, stimulating the independence and initiative of each participant.

When the game is offered by others, children, as a rule, easily and immediately take on the game part, but with goal setting, control and evaluation, as the most reflexive components, the situation is much more complicated. J. Piaget explained this by the existence of a strict age division of the functions of a child and an adult. Thus, in the European and our system of education and upbringing, the functions of goal setting, control and evaluation in the process of interaction with children are assigned to adults. In independent children's play, most often the idea of ​​the game, its implementation, and adjustments are the work of the child himself.

But both children's games and toys have undergone significant changes, especially in recent decades. Informatization and computerization, which swept society at the end of the 20th century, radically change the centuries-old situation of play's influence on the formation of a child's personality. The place of a gaming partner is firmly occupied by the computer. No matter how complex the game program is, when playing with a computer the child reacts to given rules, while the computer itself does not take into account the child’s individuality. There is another dangerous trend. Modern complex games and toys, which have replaced mechanical ones, do not give the child the opportunity to learn the principle of their operation, look inside and experience surprise and a sense of discovery. And the ancients noticed that surprise is a source of wisdom; it always stimulated independent creative search.

The time of childhood is a natural harmony of mind and feelings that have not lost their sharpness and brightness, which is so necessary for the acquisition of cultural experience and the formation of the child’s inner world. In childhood, the mind and feelings are equal and self-sufficient, although to a certain extent autonomous. It is no coincidence that the teacher’s task is to create conditions for their holistic development. It can be assumed that underestimation of this and other social factors affecting the child in modern conditions can negate the efforts of teachers, parents, and psychologists to form a unique personality.

To understand childhood, it is necessary not only to study its modern problems and difficulties, but also to carry out a historical analysis of the state of children and childhood in different historical eras in various social systems. Researchers are helped in this by providing inexhaustible material, autobiographical stories about childhood.

In the autobiographical approach, educational theory and practice of a historically specific time are presented through the individual life and experience of the child, reproducing his personal attitude towards them, although meaningful already in adulthood. Memories of the childhood of people of different generations show the history of the world of childhood, the history of the emotional and mental world of children, the history of teaching practice not from the side of a professional, but from the side of a “former child.” Existential states of the individual acquire a historical and biographical character.

The description and analysis of individual life and the behavioral strategy chosen by a person turned out to be applicable not only in literature as an artistic device, but also in sociology, history, anthropology, pedagogy, ethnography and other areas of human studies in order to understand the way of existence of people in a given society, the formation of their destinies, ways of their socialization, the relationship between childhood and fate. Moreover, this can be a story about the specific life of a real person, absolutely unremarkable, in contrast to the biography of a famous person.

Back in the 1930s. famous Russian pedologist N.A. Rybnikov and the German teacher K. Uhlig developed a biographical method and used autobiographical materials to study childhood, but this initiative was not developed in Russia. In Germany, the renaissance of the autobiographical method in pedagogy in the 1960s. started by E. Hoffman and especially J. Henningsen, who wrote that pedagogy explores autobiographies, since they refer the researcher to individual learning stories. Education means not only and not primarily studying at school. The history of learning is the whole life of a person.

Autobiographical texts about childhood attract the attention of modern researchers working in the mainstream of educational anthropology in the following aspects:

Study of the historical and sociocultural dynamics of views on childhood;

Studying the characteristics of socialization and the role of childhood in the structure of the life course;

Solving problems of the ecology of the educational process and educational psychology;

Reconstruction of the customs of education among different peoples, etc. Studies of autobiographies, giving the reader living material

everyday life of a particular era provide a lot for recreating complex and very specific ways of socialization of an individual depending on socio-historical conditions.

“Everything begins in childhood,” says the famous children’s writer S.V. Mikhalkov. In his book with that title, he writes: “It is in childhood that the sowing of goodness occurs. But only years later it will be clear whether the seeds of goodness turned out to be germinating, or the weeds of evil have destroyed them. The task of each of us is to help the seeds of good sprout.”

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INTRODUCTION... 3

1 Modern parents and upbringing... 6

2 Consequences of the influence of computers on children... 10

3 The impact of toys on the spiritual and moral development of a child... 14

4 Modern cartoons and media... 25

CONCLUSION... 30

LIST OF SOURCES USED... 33

Introduction

The relevance of this topic is determined by the fact that children in any country in the world represent the most valuable resources of the state, the key to its future development. In today's Russia, children under 18 years of age make up 23.3% of the state's population. According to many scientists and economic analysts, children are the future “human capital”, which is one of the main components not only of the individual well-being of each resident of the state, but also of its overall socio-economic growth and development.

An assessment of the social situation of childhood development in our country reveals disappointing changes in all areas of the composite structure of children’s personality: physicality, mental manifestations and spiritual being. The general state of physical health of young people (from one to 14 years of age) has recently caused concern among teachers, parents, and government officials. The indicator of mental health is also disappointing: general neuroticism and the number of psychosomatic and mental illnesses are increasing. Behind the gloomy statistics one can see such reasons as: ecology, consumption of alcoholic beverages, the state of children's health care, etc. However, despite the significance of these reasons, they turn out to be clearly insufficient and cannot solve all the problems of child development, since they do not take into account the basic psychological parameters of a mental and moral-spiritual nature. Real indicators of spiritual ill-being in the field of childhood in our country are: child vagrancy, an increase in teenage crime and child cruelty, the criminalization of children's consciousness, language and life, as well as a terrible unprecedented increase in child suicides, starting from the age of six, including group suicides.

The basis of these problems lies in the spiritual and moral health and development of children, in a violation of the child’s relationship to the world: the environment, adults, peers and themselves. It follows from this that we need purposeful spiritual and moral upbringing and education that recreates the unity of a person, presupposes the development of all his strengths and sides, observing the hierarchical principle of the structure of his personality, in which the ideal, perfect person in him could be revealed in all its fullness.

The main means of spiritual and moral development as education is the formation of an educational environment that spiritually renews and nurtures the personality, in which an adequate hierarchy of tasks and values ​​of people’s lives and the necessary components of their full life activity are laid down.

Problems of modern childhood are studied in general psychology, social psychology, developmental and educational psychology, as well as in philosophy, sociology and other sciences.

The problems of modern childhood are closely intertwined with the spiritual and moral development of society as a whole.

The subject of the study is modern children and their spiritual and moral development.

The object of study of this work is the problems of modern childhood.

The purpose of the study is to consider the main problems of modern childhood.

Hypothesis. The assumption you are exploring in this paper

The objectives of the study are:

• consider the main problems of parenting;
• explore the effects of computers on children;
• identify the impact of toys on the spiritual and moral development of a child;
• describe the influence of modern cartoons and media.

The theoretical significance of the work is to study and reduce the problems of modern upbringing and raising of children, as well as to minimize the negative consequences of the modern environment.

Fragment of work for review

1 Modern parents and upbringing

Kindergartens can be considered the optimal solution for working parents. There are many advantages of this preschool institution. But recently, more and more young mothers are considering hiring a nanny as an alternative to kindergartens.

The negative impact of kindergartens is associated with many factors, such as: the quality of kindergartens, the amount of time children spend there, the age of the children, and the work of the employees.

2 Consequences of the influence of computers on children

Today, computer games have replaced today's children's previously favorite toys: various dolls, soft animals, balls, cubes and other various games. It is reliably known that children who are interested in computer toys spend a large amount of time in front of monitor screens. They “live” in the virtual world, immersing themselves in it, as they say, “with their heads.” They seem to be present in the game themselves: wandering through labyrinths, participating in races, fighting with a virtual opponent, etc.

3 The impact of toys on the spiritual and moral development of a child

The toy is one of the fundamental inventions of human life; it serves to convey the experience of many generations. In Russian traditions, it combines various periods of historical development, as well as several generations of the family: grandparents - great-grandparents - with parents and children.

Toys are a tool of socialization, a kind of link between children and the objective world, and also part of children's games.

4 Modern cartoons and media

Today, psychologists and teachers are increasingly faced with distortion of children’s behavior. On the one hand, there is stiffness and underdevelopment of speech. On the other hand, pronounced aggressiveness and demonstrativeness of their behavior are observed. Such children are afraid to answer questions, but at the same time, they are not shy about making faces in front of strange adults. Their behavior is uncontrollable, there is hyperexcitability and inattention, they are attracted to models of bad behavior, and they do not seem to hear adults.

CONCLUSION

The life of all modern people consists of endless bustle and daily stress, which is associated with overload at work and the pursuit of material well-being.

Raising a child for a working parent is much more difficult than for those who are not employed. Parents who go to work early in the morning and come back when it’s time for their children to go to bed are always tormented by the feeling of guilt that their children are abandoned and left to their own devices all day.

It is time for children over three years of age to gradually learn to communicate with peers. But education in kindergartens cannot replace the love and care of a family; you cannot completely rely on kindergarten teachers to teach your children everything they need.

References

1. Abramenkova V. What do our children play /V. Abramenkova. – M.: Publishing house “Lepta Book”, 2010.
2. Alexandrov, V.V. Intelligence and computer / V.V. Alexandrov. - St. Petersburg: Anatolia Publishing House, 2004.
3. Bodker, S. Human-computer interaction from the position of activity theory / S. Bodker // Psychological Journal. - 1993. - No. 4.-S. 71-81.
4. Bordovskaya, N.V. Psychology and pedagogy: Textbook for universities. Third generation standard / N.V. Bordovskaya, S.I. Rozum. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2013. - 624 p.
5. All secrets // Computer and health - http://vse-sekrety.ru/15-kompyuter-i-zdorove.html

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