The first presumptioo is that childhood is a universal process and this is based on much of the work of traditional child development theorists who saw children as progressing from dependence to adulthood ei rher through stages or phases, but in an ordered and predictable and rule-governed way - rather like other natural phenomena o the physical world. This allowed theoriscs to describe some things they sit as "normal" development and by implicarion, other things as "not-normal' development. Add to this the fact thar these theorists often ignore the sociocultural and economic impact of facts like family structure