The Missing Child in Canadian Sociology: Is It Time for Change?

Introduction

A few years back, I organized a session, titled "Where Has the Sociology of Childhood Gone?" at the annual meeting of the Canadian Sociology Association at the Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences. This session yielded a great deal of interest from "sociology of youth" researchers, but papers on children and childhood were almost non-existent. I organized the session out of frustration, after having taught a sociology of childhood course for a number of years at Ryerson University in Toronto. Each year, when publishers' representatives came around to sell course texts, there was not a single Canadian sociology of childhood textbook to be found. They nonetheless insisted on sending me psychology textbooks on child development. I watched my psychology collection grow over the years, as my sociology of childhood shelf lay bare. I contemplated writing my own Canadian textbook, but few publishers were interested because they believed there was too small a market, and they were correct.

I scanned sociology-department websites from across the country and found few stand-alone courses on children. There were plenty on the sociology of youth, families, violence, poverty, social problems/issues, and the life-course and aging. All of these somewhat indirectly, potentially, included children, but few sociology departments actually committed an entire course to children. Introductory sociology textbooks, including my own co-edited book (with Lorne Tepperman), did not include a chapter on children. Most included chapters on "socialization," but children as social actors and agents were absent there, too—or were an "absent presence," as noted by historian Mona Gleason in her contribution to this forum.

Things have been changing (and I did write my textbook, Children in Canada). Since the late 1980s, we have seen new initiatives springing forth at national and international levels, such as the drafting and introduction of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations' World Summit for Children in 1990, the implementation of child-initiated movements to stop child labour, and the establishment of organizations to protect child soldiers.

At the international level, the 1990s was a decade of great promises to and for children and children's rights—at least on paper. In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention includes a universally agreed-upon set of standards and obligations that are to be respected by the governments that have signed and ratified the agreement (only Somalia and the United States have not ratified the agreement ["Convention"]). Its articles are founded on the principles of respect for the dignity and worth of each individual, regardless of race, colour, gender, language, religion, opinions, origins, wealth, birth status, or ability, and are expected to apply to every child everywhere. Its four key commitments are (1) the best interests of the child, (2) survival and development, (3) children's participation, and (4) non-discrimination (United Nations). Upon ratifying this agreement, governments are obliged to help improve conditions for children everywhere. In 1990, at the United Nations' World Summit for Children, world leaders made a joint commitment and issued an urgent, universal appeal to give every child a better future. This was the largest gathering of world leaders in history. Led by seventy-one heads of State and eighty-eight other senior officials, the World Summit adopted a Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children and a Plan of Action for implementing the Declaration in the 1990s ("Promise"). In 2002, the UN again called upon world leaders to join a global movement aimed at building "a world fit for children." This "new world" would be built by upholding a large number of principles and objectives, including commitments to put children first, eradicate poverty, leave no child behind, care for every child, educate every child, protect children from harm and exploitation, protect children from war, combat HIV/AIDS, listen to children and ensure their participation, and protect the earth for children (United Nations General Assembly).

At the national level, there was the unanimous 1989 all-party House of Commons commitment to end child...