Alice Bertha and other cultural evolutionists associate the games played by children with the oldest documents in history. According to Alice, most of the children’s games tend to symbolize traditions that seem to be quite complex. In most cases, children usually play and act by aping the actions of their elders. These ideas are still present in the way we write and talk about children.
For example, many people often associate bad behaviors among children with poor parenting. If children are not taught how to behave well at an early stage of development, they are highly likely to engage in activities that are against the expectations of the entire society.
On the same note, parents who portray misbehavior to their children are likely to convince them to adopt such behaviors. This can be risky because it may not be easily rectified in future.
The ideas of Philippe Aries helped to transform the study of children’s culture by showing the importance of protecting children from adult reality. Aries’ ideas also helped to stress the importance of offering good and quality education to children in a bid to boost their knowledge and personal development.
A naturalistic’ method of studying children’s folklore is vital in various ways. To begint with, this method is capable of dictating reference frames that are extremely low when using different strategies and methodologies to collect and report data. In this case, the use of a naturalistic reference frame refers to the ability of a researcher to collect and use data from the natural behavioral patterns of children.
Such data is usually free from external manipulation that can affect the accuracy of the final results. Secondly, this method allows a researcher to obtain all the required information that relate to children without consulting myriads of diverse sources. This is due to the fact that the method accommodates the use of observation to collect the required data from children’s behaviors that occur naturally.
However, it is important to understand that it may sometimes be difficult to identify if the observed behavior is truly natural. Despite the existence of this challenge, it is extremely important to rely on a naturalistic reference frame since it acts as a source of guidance to the researcher. Such a frame also facilitates the evaluation process.
One of the main challenges faced by researchers when carrying out ethnography with children is ethical issue. This challenge arises because there is a high chance of children involved in research to be below the required age.
This may also be as a result of the dynamics that are observed when defining the role of the relationship that exists between children and adults. Most of the individuals who undertake research in different areas often base their research studies on relationship that exists between peers.
Involving children complicates the whole process and makes it difficult to carry out research. In spite of the existence of such limitations, it is vital for researchers to fully recognize the legitimate role of guardians and parents.
Barbie’s ideas were developed after making observations on how children exercised their play activities. Most of the manufacturers who specialize in children’s toys are likely to be surprised when they are asked to manufacture adult toys. Handler had earlier mentioned the idea of marketing adult toys.
He believed that it was possible to market adult dolls if manufacturers managed to fit the doll with well-made clothing. It is also important to comprehend that Jeannie’s fieldwork is extremely useful to manufacturers.
For instance, during the twentieth century, manufacturers were able to use Jeannie’s field work to improve the quality of manufactured dolls. A good example of Jeannie’s contribution was the introduction of teddy bear dolls. However, it is worth to mention that a good number of manufactured dolls were mainly feminism because they targeted women.
Simon Bronner identifies quite a number of reasons that make it difficult to study some of the play objects that children find or make themselves. For instance, Simon argues that most of the play items made by children themselves are ephemeral and private. As a result, such objects are discarded, hidden or forgotten without making any research to identify whether they can be used in future.
Secondly, most of the researchers think that it is extremely difficult to extract useful information from children. This makes most of the researchers to shy away from conducting this kind of research because they are not sure whether they will arrive at accurate findings.
Another reason why research involving such objects is ignored is due to the fact that many researchers believe that the knowledge used by children to make those objects emanates from the elderly people. They believe that interviewing the elderly is an indirect way of interviewing these children.
Lastly, some of the researchers who find it important to rely on information given by the children do not use appropriate methods of extracting information from the same children. Apart from observing children’s actions, these researchers prefer to interview children directly.
In such circumstances, it becomes difficult for a researcher to obtain the right information. This challenge arises because a child may not be in a position to answer all the questions correctly.