#96 Heather Montgomery: Social Anthropology of Childhood and Child Labor
Dr. Heather Montgomery is a social anthropologist who studied for her PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge, which she wrote on child prostitution in Thailand. She has had jobs and research positions in Sussex, Norway, Texas and at Oxford. Her research interests are within Childhood Studies, especially the history and anthropology of childhood and children’s rights.
In this episode, we talk about what might be some cultural influences on childhood, and how boys and girls behave. We address the issue about how parents might look at their children as economic assets, and how that influences division of labor between the sexes, and child labor. We finish by talking a little bit about how people’s perceptions about children changed over time in the West, and some of the reason behind that change.
Time Links:
Do children share traits across different cultures?
How important is the way boys and girls are treated differently in different societies?
Studying childhood from the perspective of social anthropology
Boys and girls prefer playing with children of the same sex
Gendered division of labor
Are parents worried about the economic value they can extract from children?
Puberty and initiation rituals
Child labor
History of childhood in the West
Where to follow Dr. Montgomery’s work
Follow Dr. Montgomery’s work:
Faculty page (Open University): http://www.open.ac.uk/people/hkm23
Articles (Researchgate): https://tinyurl.com/y9mdx4rw
Books: https://tinyurl.com/ybabowjx