Childhood Fantasy: Young People’s Time Use in Their Imagined Ideal Childhood

Children’s time and how they spend it has been the focus of both scholarly and political interest. This is evident in the various ways in which society models children’s time use. This study examines Ghanaian children’s fantasy about how they would wish to spend their time. Forty-seven narrative essays written by children between ages 10 and 13 about their imagined ideal childhood is the data for the study. Documentary method was used to analyze the data with the focus on making the implicit meaning explicit. It was observed that children fantasize about spending a lot of time on leisure activities, however, structured social time constraints on children’s time like schooling and learning forms a very small part of their fantasy. In addition, they fantasize about lots of changes to school as an education institution and learning as a compulsory activity in childhood. It is argued that the children’s aversion to schooling and learning is a system critique and not a dislike to acquiring knowledge.

Keywords

Children, Fantasy, Leisure, School, Learning, Adolescent, Ideal childhood, Narrative, Diversity, Time use