CHILDHOOD AND CHILDREN OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

<doi>10.24250/jpe/2/2025/PLR/RR/</doi>

Abstract

The authors compare the children of yesterday and today
from the perspective of eight adults of different age, sex,
professional training, and nationality, interviewed about
their own childhood and on how they see today’s children,
to identify similarities and differences and to find remedial
solutions. The method is qualitative, and the technique is
that of the interview. For those interviewed, childhood
meant freedom, joy, outdoor play, family, and flying;
family members and teachers had the greatest impact on
childhood. Compared to the children of yesteryear, today’s
children are both happy and unhappy. Yesterday’s children
were happy, fulfilled, modest, contented, grateful,
respectful, and simple; today’s children are creative,
beautiful, informed, intelligent, ambitious, critical, brave,
and free, but also uncommunicative, bored, absent,
disoriented, and without models. Remedial solutions should
target the causes that have led to these mutations: broken
families, social media, and technology.