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Living in the Real World - Places for Childhoods: How Institutional are YOU?

by Jim Greenman
September/October 1992
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Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/living-in-the-real-world-places-for-childhoods-how-institutional-are-you/5008749/

The notion that we are institutionalizing children in child care is not one that we like to hear. After all, we child care professionals are the good guys. We love children, childhood, primary colors, and cookies. And yet, there is not another appropriate term for what we are doing. A child care center or home is an institution - a formal, established organization. It is the connotation we find hard to take: institutionalize conjures up, well, institutions, particularly those that sociologists call total institutions (asylums, hospitals, prisons, some schools) - places where uniformity, order, and rules are the primary values.

Sociologist Erving Goffman studied institutions and noted that while every institution captures something of the time, space, and interests of its members, some are far more encompassing or total than others as to their control and impact on the lives of their members. In total institutions:

All aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the same authority (eating, sleep, play, work, social life, etc.). Second, each phase of the member's daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do ...

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