Where’s the Childhood that was here? The cat ate it! Reflections on time and childhood

Abstract

This article seeks to discuss time and contemporary childhoods, based on the protagonism of its main actors, children, based on three central concepts: the becoming-child, experience and daily life. To the studies on becoming-child we add the concepts of “generation” and “otherness”, from the Sociology of Childhood. The experience considered in and of daily life was taken to sustain the encounter with the other, on the assumption that the social relationships, which occur in daily life, have a fundamental function over the individual and, with this, their social practices become experiences that produce subjectivity. Thus, experience and daily life are fundamental principles in childhood. Through them children can make, feel and create, producing culture because of children's protagonism. The question that worries us is the time implications of and in infancy, understanding differences in real and subjective time for children and the consequences of the eminent absence of the experience of their enjoyment for new childhoods, translated by the lack of leisure, of playing free, pleasure and creativity. The articulation between the concepts of becoming-child, experience and daily life in time of and in childhood allows us to realize that, in contemporary childhood, free time disappeared, and other times were shortened. “Where’s the childhood that was here? The cat ate it” refers to a child’s play and denounces the absence of time in and of childhoods, a time that is real and at the same time symbolic, both necessary for the child to live the experiences that will constitute him as a citizen.