Childhood: Chapter Analysis

The first chapter of the textbook focuses on child development as it is related to children’s experiences with death, grief, and bereavement. Overall, my gut reaction is that I enjoyed the chapter and that I believe that the majority of the points made were strongly backed by evidence and reasoning. There were multiple strong points throughout the chapter. For example, the chapter set out to address 4 fundamental subjects and they were each examined throughout the chapter. Another strong point from the chapter was the use of statistics to exemplify the death rates/number of deaths among children in America (e.g. the largest amount of child deaths in 2005 occurred among White Americans). The only weak point I gathered from the chapter was that some of the sources were outdated. By this I mean that the book was written in 2010 and that the sources dated all the way back to 1968. However, I don’t see this as a major weakness from the chapter as it may be the facts are based on the fundamental research.
I enjoyed the use of the table and the statistics, which both emphasized important facts. I found the incorporation of child development, sociology, and thanatology interesting, which I enjoyed because it made for an interesting perspective. Overall, I believe that this chapter has many strong points backed with sources and I enjoyed the incorporation of sociology, thanatology, and child development. There was nothing in particular that I disliked about this chapter. I am excited to see what the next chapters of the text