In this timely study, high profile researchers contribute to the burgeoning field of the social studies of childhood with original and often surprising perspectives and approaches. They demonstrate that far from being esoteric or negligible, childhood is part and parcel of the social fabric in both poor and affluent countries. With chapters on children's agency in small worlds and childhood's placement in large scale relationships, the book shows not only the variety of childhood(s), but also suggests that much is common in a generational context.

Early Modern Childhood is a detailed and accessible introduction to childhood in the early modern period, which guides students through every part of childhood from infancy to youth and places the early modern child within the broader social context of the period. Drawing on the work of recent revisionist historians, the book scrutinises traditional historiographical views of early modern childhood, challenging the idea that the concept of ‘childhood’ didn’t exist in this period and that families avoided developing strong affections for their children because of the high death rate. Instead, this book reveals a more intricately detailed character of the early modern child and how childhood was viewed and experienced. Divided into five parts, it brings together the work of historians, art historians and literary scholars to discuss a variety of themes and questions surrounding each stage of childhood, including the household, pregnancy, infancy, education, religion, gender, illness and death. Chapters are also dedicated to the topics of crime, illegitimacy and children’s clothing, providing a broad and varied lens through which to view this subject. Exploring the evolution in understanding of the early modern child, Early Modern Childhood is the ideal book for students of the early modern family, early modern childhood and early modern gender.

This book sheds light on new research related to welfare state, child care policies, and small children's everyday lives in institutions in Europe. In uniting recent social childhood research, welfare perspectives and historical and comparative approaches, the book explores institutionalization as a feature of the modern child's life.

In the book architectural historians, social historians, social scientists, and architects examine the history and design of places and objects such as schools, hospitals, playgrounds, houses, cell phones, snowboards, and even the McDonald's Happy Meal.

This book investigates the relationship between ideas about childhood and the actual experience of being a child, and assesses how it has changed over the span of five hundred years. Hugh Cunningham tells an engaging story of the development of ideas about childhood from the Renaissance to the present, taking in Locke, Rosseau, Wordsworth and Freud, revealing considerable differences in the way western societites have understood and valued childhood over time. His survey of parent/child relationships uncovers evidence of parental love, care and, in the frequent cases of child death, grief throughout the period, concluding that there was as much continuity as change in the actual relations of children and adults across these five centuries. For undergraduate courses in History of the Family, European Social History, History of Children and Gender History.

Caribbean Childhoods: From Research to Action is an annual publication produced by the Children s Issues Coalition at the University of the West Indies, Mona. The series seeks to provide an avenue for the dissemination of research and experiences on children s health, development, behaviour and education, and to provide a forum for the discussion of these issues.

Historically, children were often understood in relation to their development towards adulthood, but the 'new paradigm' of childhood studies has since shown how they should be taken more seriously as active participants in their own lives. Studying childhood is not just a question of research on children, but increasingly a practice of research with them. With this 'new paradigm' having now come of age, Sally McNamee offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of childhood studies and its history. Taking a thematic approach, she looks at how issues such as rights and citizenship, the state, the family, school, work, leisure, health and globalisation shape and are shaped by children. The Social Study of Childhood is an accessible introduction for students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds such as childhood studies, sociology, psychology, social work and education. With reflection points for discussion and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, it is an engaging and stimulating account of how and why children's voices deserve to be heard in today's world.