Childhood is a uniquely human life-stage, and is both a biological phenomenon and a social construct. Research on children is currently of wide-ranging interest. This book presents reviews of childhood from four major areas of interest - human evolution, sociology/social anthropology, bio-medical anthropology and developmental psychology - to form a biosocial, cross-cultural understanding of childhood. The book places a strong emphasis on how childhood varies from culture to culture, offering examples from developed and developing countries, as well as from other animal species. It will be of interest to students and scholars within the fields of human biology, anthropology, sociology, health studies and developmental psychology.

Child Abuse and Neglect is the third volume sponsored by the Social Science Research Council. The goals of these volumes include the development of a biosocial perspective and its application to the interface between biological and social phenomena in order to advance the understanding of human behavior.Child Abuse and Neglect applies the biosocial perspective to child maltreatment and maladaptation in parent-child relations. The biosocial perspective is particularly appropriate for investigating parent behavior since the family is the universal social institution in which children are born and reared, in which cultural traditions and values are transmitted, and in which individuals fulfill their biological potential for reproduction, growth, and development. The volume examines biological substrates and social and environmental contexts as determinants of parent behavior. By identifying areas in which contemporary human parent behaviors conform with and depart from evolutionary and historical patterns and assessing the overall costs and benefits, it permits their objective assessment in terms of modern circumstances. In analyzing evolutionary and historical variations in parent behavior and assessing their costs and benefits, the book makes possible an objective assessment of contemporary variations. Its analysis of the occurrence of child abuse in past history and in other cultures and species advances our ability to predict the probability of child abuse and neglect in various social and ecological contexts.

Publisher Description

Research on parenting through the life course has developed around two separate approaches. Evolutionary biology provides fresh perspectives from life history theory using behavioral ecology and parental investment theory. At the same time, the social and behavioral sciences integrates research from long-term studies of individual development and from the collection of life histories.This path-breaking book advances evolutionary, life history research by integrating perspectives of these two approaches into a biosocial science of the life course. It examines parenthood as a commitment extending throughout life and focuses on the impact on parental and child behavior of changes in the timing, distribution, and intensity of parental investment. This perspective is particularly appropriate for research on parenting since the family is the universal human institution within which the bearing and rearing of children has been based and which transmits traditions, beliefs, and values to the young.

Social scientists examining contemporary Africa take considerable pains to resist portraying Africa as nothing more than a land of victims unable to escape historical cycles of war, exploitation and tyranny. However, children are still frequently conceptualised as passive actors, mere extensions of adult societies and receptors of culture. The authors in this volume argue that children are dynamic contributors to the shaping of contemporary Africa. Through novel and unorthodox ethnographic research methods, each chapter provides insights into children’s perspectives on kinship, work, caring, health, migration and conflict, shedding light on children’s views and the vital roles they play in the emerging Africa of tomorrow.

The Reason for this Volume If we were to judge the seriousness of a psychosocial problem by the attention that the popular media give to it, we would have to conclude that the modem world is in the midst of an epidemic of pedophilic child sexual abuse. One can scarcely go more than a few weeks in any large metropolitan area without reading about one of the community's upstanding citizens discovered to have been sexually involved with children or adolescents. The attention that the popular media give this topic is paralleled by the attention that it receives in the social sciences, where literally dozens of books and more than a thousand articles have been published on it in the past few years. In fact, "child sexual abuse," along with "co-dependency" and "dysfunctional family," have become the avant-garde psychological cliches of the decade. However, most of the lay and professional literature, although voluminous, reflect a narrow anthropo-, ethno-, and chronocentrism that precludes any real understanding of the topic with anything more than the preconceptions of our times.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.