I do not see that childhood will remain as it was after the war. It has been associated with playing around than house rather than working the farm, with exceptions, for the better part of six or seven decades. As it is childhood was not always fun and games anyway: before the romantic period in Europe it was common for children to be appointed to high positions and even had advisors to help them cope with adult decisions around the royal courts of the continent. At the time of Dickens poorer children had to wash bottles to support their families that had a fair amount of mouths to feed. It was not until 1832 that child labor in Britain was abolished in Britain. Our recent benchmark towards growth and development has been in rebuilding economies after the depression and the war years. Responsibilities have always changed and there have been periods when children have been treated as adults or what we have associated as adult ways. Today many children around the world are still working instead of going to schools, especially in the heavily populated nations of Asia.
If children are still working in sweat shops around the world or collecting coffee beans instead of getting an education, something that we can associate childhood with, than with the population explosion, it will not be long before those heavily populated countries will not be able to sustain growth free of child labor. Perhaps it is already too late. Affluent people will become more aware of having lived a period where they were protected from knowing that most of humanity's offspring do not live as well off as they do in North America, even though benefactors may be there to offer disadvantaged children a chance to communicate to others through the internet. I am not just thinking of the world's most populated nations but also of those who have smaller populations, where there is an increased difference in the level of affability between the well off and those less fortunate.
