"Recommended for anyone who works with inner-city youth."
--"Library Journal"

"This exceptionally important book will set the standard for powerful writing about urban teenagers for years to come. Privileging the voices of inner-city teens and presenting their experiences of themselves and their worlds, Niobe Way's intelligent, subtle voice leads us to listen freshly to this group whose views are so often not heard or are distorted. She presents a brilliant example of voice-centered research and essential reading for anyone hoping to work effectively with adolescents."
--"Carol Gilligan, Author of In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development"

What does it mean to be a teenager in an American city at the close of the twentieth century? How do urban surroundings affect the ways in which teens grow up, and what do their stories tell us about human development? In particular, how do the negative images of themselves on television and in the newspaper affect their perspectives about themselves? Psychologists typically have shown little interest in urban youth, preferring instead to generalize about adolescent development from studies of their middle-class, suburban counterparts. In Everyday Courage Niobe Way, a developmental psychologist, looks beyond the stereotypes to reveal how the personal worldviews of inner-city poor and working-class adolescents develop over time. In the process, she challenges much conventional wisdom about inner-city youth and about adolescents more generally.

She introduces us to Malcolm, a sensitive and proud young man full of contradictions. We follow him as he makes the honor roll, becomes a teenage father, and falls intodepression as his younger sister is dying of cancer. We meet Eva, an intelligent and confident young women full of questions, who grows increasingly alienated from her mother and comes to rely on her best friends for support. We watch her blossom as a ball player and a poet. We share her triumph when she receives a scholarship to the college of her choice.

In these 24 adolescents, Way finds a cross-section of youngsters who want to make positive changes in their lives and communities while struggling with concerns about betrayal, trust, racism, violence, and death. Each adolescent wants most of all to "be somebody," to have her or his voice heard.

Although pupil disaffection has been a major concern to professionals, policy makers and researchers for quite some time, recent professional books in the area tend to focus on behaviour and exclusion from schools. Despite considerable government funding in both LEA's and schools- to promote new measures to improve school attendance, non-attendance at school is a relatively neglected topic as far as serious researched-based literature is concerned. This book will be the first in several years concerned with non-attendance.
Previously unpublished research material in the book will provide a multi-disciplinary evaluation of practice at LEA, whole school and individual levels.

In this highly acclaimed work first published in 1974, Glen H. Elder Jr. presents the first longitudinal study of a Depression cohort. He follows 167 individuals born in 1920-1921 from their elementary school days in Oakland, California, through the 1960s. Using a combined historical, social, and psychological approach, Elder assesses the influence of the economic crisis on the life course of his subjects over two generations. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this classic study includes a new chapter on the war years entitled, "Beyond Children of the Great Depression."

This innovative book finally takes seriously the need for anthropologists to produce in-depth ethnographies of children's play. In examining the subject from a cross-cultural perspective, the author argues that our understanding of the way children transform their environment to create make-believe is enhanced by viewing their creations as oral poetry. The result is a richly detailed 'thick description' of how pretence is socially mediated and linguistically constructed, how children make sense of their own play, how play relates to other imaginative genres in Huli life, and the relationship between play and cosmology.
Informed by theoretical approaches in the anthropology of play, developmental and child psychology, philosophy and phenomenology and drawing on ethnographic data from Melanesia, the book analyzes the sources for imitation, the kinds of identities and roles emulated, and the structure of collaborative make-believe talk to reveal the complex way in which children invoke their experiences of the world and re-invent them as types of virtual reality. Particular importance is placed on how the figures of the ogre and trickster are articulated. The author demonstrates that while the concept of 'imagination' has been the cornerstone of Western intellectual traditions from Plato to Postmodernism, models of child fantasy play have always intruded into such theorizing because of children's unique capacity to throw into relief our understanding of the relationship between representation and reality.

The idea that Britain, the US and other western societies are witnessing the rise of an underclass of people at the bottom of the social heap, structurally and culturally distinct from traditional patterns of "decent" working-class life, has become increasingly popular in the 1990s. Anti-work, anti-social, and welfare dependent cultures are said to typify this new "dangerous class" and "dangerous youth" are taken as the prime subjects of underclass theories. Debates about the family and single-parenthood, about crime and about unemployment and welfare reforms have all become embroiled in underclass theories which, whilst highly controversial, have had remarkable influence on the politics and policies of governments in Britain and the US. This text addresses the underclass idea in relation to contemporary youth. It focuses upon unemployment, training, the labour market, crime, homelessness, and parenting. It should be of interest to students of social policy, sociology and criminology.

This volume demonstrates the power of art therapy as a tool for intervening with children from violent homes. Emphasis is given to the short-term setting where time is at a premium and circumstances are unpredictable - because within this setting, mental health practitioners often experience a sense of helplessness in their work with the youngest victims of abusive families.; In this new edition, the author describes the intervention process from intake to termination, highlighting the complex issues involved at various levels of evaluation and interpretation. The text is augmented with 95 children's drawings, which serve to fill the gap between theory and reality.; Specific topics include: inherent frustrations for therapists working in battered women's shelters; what to include in art evaluation; evaluating child abuse and neglect; group art intervention in shelters; and art expression as assessment and therapy with sexually abused children.

James A Schultz has brought a historiographic approach to nearly two hundred Middle High German texts-narrative, didactic, homiletic, legal, religious, and secular. He explores what they say about the nature of the child, the role of inherited and individual traits, the status of education, the remarkable number of disruptions these children suffered as they grew up, the rites of passage that mark coming of age, the various genres of childhood narratives, and the historical development of such narratives.

Detailing the development of a new Western attitude about children and their place in society, this book tells the story of Italy's forgotten children at the end of the nineteenth century--foundlings, street children, factory and mine workers, emigrants and delinquents--and illustrates the efforts of the recently unified Italian state to help them.

Traces historical constructions of adolescence and considers coming of age in the late 20th century Young adults in the modern era face a completely differently set of challenges from previous generations. Tracing historical constructions of adolescence and their role in maintaining social order, James E. Cote and Anton L. Allahar persuasively argue that young people today constitute one of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in society. Today, for the first time, teenagers and young adults in the United states, Canada, Japan, Scandinavia and Western Europe can expect to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Youth are conditioned to stay young linger and have, as a result, become socially and economically marginalized. Many young people amass credentials regardless of employment prospects and continue to live at home, often dependent on their parents, into their thirties. With fewer jobs available, young people are ironically targeted increasingly as consumers, rather than as producers. As new technologies continually reduce the work force and alter the social fabric, an entire generation of young people has struggled to keep up. What then does it mean to come of age in an advanced industrial or post-industrial society?

Covering a key topic in nearly every sociology course, this book is a thorough and lively introduction to the role and importance of youth and employment in contemporary British society. The book looks at the momentous changes that have occurred in the nature of youth employment in recent years. Examining the range of young people's experience of employment and unemployment, Professor Roberts highlights the importance of class, gender, ethnic divisions, and geography in explaining these differences. He assesses the huge impact of educational changes on the patterns of youth employment, and compares the British experience with the rest of Europe. The book will be an invaluable introduction and point of reference for students of sociology, human geography, and economics. The Oxford Modern Britain series comprises authoritative introductory books on all aspects of the social structure of modern Britain. Lively and accessible, the books will be the first point of reference for anyone interested in the state of contemporary Britain. They will be invaluable to those taking courses in the Social Sciences. Series Editor: Professor John Scott, Department of Sociology, University of Essex

The lure of drugs and alcohol is capturing today's youth in its fatal grip and may ultimately destroy our nation's future generations. The vicious cycle of abuse is one that parents, teachers, counselors, and other citizens decry on a daily basis. Dr. Thomas Milhorn, an expert on adolescent drug abuse, provides crucial information on all the major drugs of abuse - including depressants, narcotics, stimulants, cannabinoids, inhalants, steroids, and hallucinogens - and their lethal consequences. Dr. Milhorn contends that in order to confront the monster that is destroying our children's health and quality of life, we must first understand the psyche of drug and alcohol abusers and the natural progression of the disease of addiction. This respected physician and physiologist reveals the harmful combinations currently in vogue in the drug world and the shortand long-term effects they have on the body, and discusses ways to recognize and pinpoint the telltale signs of a user. He explores the question of why adolescents abuse drugs, as well as special issues affecting young female addicts. This powerful book also examines the fatal relationship between drugs and AIDS, and includes a brief history of AIDS, and lifesaving advice on AIDS prevention. Dr. Milhorn skillfully assesses the various inpatient and outpatient treatment choices. He realistically portrays the intense physical and emotional stages the user will pass through before becoming drug free, as well as the stresses placed upon families during the recovery process. As this valuable book relates, both parents and teachers have clearly defined roles, and each can use his or her own brand of influence to aid the adolescent on the journey back to a healthy mind and body. Finally, Dr. Milhorn presents a list of successful options available if a first treatment attempt should fail. We live in a society wh ere 12-year-olds are budding alcoholics and children are bombarded in school hallways with solicitations to ex

Bringing together a wealth of evidence drawn from court records, coroner's rolls, literary sources, and books of advice, this book weaves a rich tapestry of the life of London children during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

An optimistic historical revision of the classic concept of childhood and the treatment of children from 1500 to 1900. Drawing from hundreds of English and American diaries and autobiographies, the author reconstructs a genuine picture of childhood in the past.

Identity: Youth and Crisis collects Erik H. Erikson's major essays on topics originating in the concept of the adolescent identity crisis. Identity, Erikson writes, is an unfathomable as it is all-pervasive. It deals with a process that is located both in the core of the individual and in the core of the communal culture. As the culture changes, new kinds of identity questions arise—Erikson comments, for example, on issues of social protest and changing gender roles that were particular to the 1960s.

Representing two decades of groundbreaking work, the essays are not so much a systematic formulation of theory as an evolving report that is both clinical and theoretical. The subjects range from "creative confusion" in two famous lives—the dramatist George Bernard Shaw and the philosopher William James—to the connection between individual struggles and social order. "Race and the Wider Identity" and the controversial "Womanhood and the Inner Space" are included in the collection.

The twentieth century will surely be remembered as a period of remarkable calamity, vigorous intellectual activity, and striking technological progress. For the first time in history, the development of rapid forms of communication and transportation shrunk the effective size of the world so that many of its citizens were made aware of events occurring in far-distant locations and came to appreciate cultural differences more directly than was previously possible. Among the many trends and events for which the century may be remembered, however, one will surely be the ascendancy of science and scientific thinking. Given adequate resources and ample time, scientists have argued they will be able to reduce the mysteries of the universe, as well as the mysteries of life and death, to objectifiable processes and events.
The editors of this book draw attention to the implicit and explicit images of childhood that various disciplines -- especially development psychology -- have constructed. These sometimes unspoken metaphors have enduring value in that they provide a means of drawing together, integrating, and interpreting otherwise disparate findings or conclusions. They also provide a ready means of conveying the fruits of scientific research to the people who constitute its primary consumers. The contributors strive to show that the images of childhood that each professional implicitly carries in her or his head vary across historical epochs, just as they vary across cultures and subcultures. Perhaps even more alarmingly, some of these images seem to reflect the politically correct ideology of particular times and places, at least as much as they represent the objective findings they purport to summarize.
This volume's main objective is to unpackage cultural and historical variations in the conception of childhood in order to make clearer those which might be considered universal aspects of behavioral and psychological development and those which must be seen as temporary cultural constructions or images.
The specific aims of this volume are to:
* delineate images of childhood in diverse cultural, subcultural, and historical contexts;
* illustrate how these images of childhood are manifested in popular proverbs as well as in distinct patterns of childrearing, broadly conceived to include aspects of parental behavior, childcare arrangements, education, indoctrination, and the assignment of responsibilities;
* indicate how these images of childhood are manifest in the development and implementation of educational and social policies as well as in the legal status of children;
* consider whether children are believed to have a privileged place in society and whether age-graded constraints limit their roles and participation in society; and
* evaluate the extent to which cultural images affect the ways in which developmental processes are viewed or understood.

This book explores the use of technology in young people's social lives against a backdrop of "online safety measures" put in place by the UK government to ensure safe and risk free engagement with online services. The UK landscape is used as a case study to compare the grass roots of digital behaviours with attempts by policy makers to control access and prohibit "bad" behaviours. In conducting an analysis of current UK policy positions and media perspectives against ethnographic research in areas such as gaming and sexting, the book highlights the flaws in approaching the control of disruptive social behaviours using prohibitive approaches. It also highlights the gulf between the experiences of young people and the capabilities of the school system to deliver effective education around safe online behaviours. The author illustrates the complex relationship young people have with technology, as active engagers rather than passive consumers, and looks at the ways in which their needs for effective education and resilience are currently not being met. Furthermore, he demonstrates how, in an effort to make them safe, stakeholders are eroding children's fundamental rights. Children's Online Behaviour and Safety will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students researching and practicing in education, sociology, children's law, children's digital rights and social policy.

This book presents a poignant and sensitive account of the challenges faced by adult children when making difficult decisions about care for and with their ageing parents in later life. It offers new insights into the practical, emotional and physical effects that witnessing the ageing and death of parents has on those in late midlife and how these relationships are negotiated during this phase of the life course. The author uses a psychosocial approach to understand the complexity of the experience of having a parent transition to care and the ambiguous feelings that these decisions evoke.

In this book, Charles R. Acland examines the culture that has produced both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock reality of youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a critique of statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares and juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of what has come to be a perceived crisis of American youth. After examining the dominant paradigms for scholarly research into youth deviance, Acland explores the ideas circulating in the popular media about a sensational crime known as the "preppy murder" and the confession to that crime. Arguing that the meaning of crime is never inherent in the event itself, he evaluates other sites of representation, including newspaper photographs (with a comparison to the Central Park "wilding"), daytime television talk shows (Oprah, Geraldo, and Donahue), and Hollywood youth films (in particular River's Edge). Through a cultural studies analysis of historical context, Acland blurs the center of our preconceptions and exposes the complex social forces at work upon this issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Acland asks of the social critic, "How do we know that we are measuring what we say we are measuring, and how do we know what the numbers are saying? Arguments must be made to interpret findings, which suggests that conclusions are provisional and, to various degrees, sites of contestation." He launches into this gratifying book to show that beyond the problematic category of "actual" crime, the United States has seen the construction of a new "spectacle of wasted youth" that will have specific consequences for the daily lives of the next generation.

Once a group of young people (reformed street robbers) had a vision. To transform their poor divided community. But the vision was tarnished by harsh reality, violent feuds and factional strife, corrupt and ineffective leaders, and youths involved in networks of criminality.
LTarnished Vision is the story of the rise and fall of a utopian community project told against a background of crime and delinquency in a troubled neighbourhood. This vivid and authentic account of life in Satellite City' is set in the 1980s, a decade when the promises of the enterprise culture failed to deliver, and the conditions were created for a generation hooked on crime.
Tarnished Vision depicts the 1980s inner city cycle of social tragedy followed by inept societal response, followed by social tragedy. But this is not only a story for the 1980s. The message is that programmes to save the inner cities, however well-resoourced, cannot afford to ignore the destructive frustrations of urban male youths wh are involved in crime. Community action programmes can be no more than window dressing to camouflage these realities.

"An exciting and engagingly written book. The case studies are intriguing and the discussion of previous theories impeccable." - Dr. Heather Montgomery, The Open University "What is a child? Kate Cregan and Denise Cuthbert begin this path-breaking and compelling work with a deceptively simple question. From this seemingly straightforward formulation, they unravel, interrogate and engage with some of the most pressing issues related to children in the early 21st century... This book is an absolute must for scholars in all the fields of childhood studies." - Professor Joy Damousi, University of Melbourne Global Childhoods draws on the authors' interdisciplinary backgrounds and original research in the fields of embodiment, theorisations of childhood, children's policy, child placement and adoption, and family formation. The book critically demonstrates how following from the modern construction of childhood which emerged unevenly from the late eighteenth century, the twentieth century saw the emergence of the conception of the normative global child, a figure finally enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The book offers a wide-ranging critical analysis of approaches to children and childhood across the social sciences. Through stimulating case studies which include the experiences of child soldiers, orphans, forced child migrants, and children and biomedicine, Cregan and Cuthbert critically test the notion of the 'global child' against the lived experiences of children around the globe. Kate Cregan and Denise Cuthbert draw on and contributes to debates on children and the idea of the child in a wide range of disciplines: sociology, anthropology, education, children's studies, cultural studies, history, psychology, law and development studies. In its historical coverage of the rise of the concepts of the child and the global child, its critical engagement with the theorisation of childhood, and its detailed case studies, the book is essential reading for the study of children and childhood.

Screen-obsessed: Parenting in the Digital Age is the first book solely focusing on parental supervision of children's media use. This book distills important information regarding how parents can effectively guide their offspring living in the multimedia environment. This book discusses an extensive range of theories, issues, and subjects of parental mediation. Readers will discover how parental mediation works, new and traditional theoretical facets, and how this knowledge can be applied in various settings pertinent to the family.

Since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011, Syrian refugee children have withstood violence, uncertainty, fear, trauma and loss. This book follows their journeys by bringing together scholars and practitioners to reflect on how to make their situation better and to get this knowledge to as many front liners - across European and neighbouring countries in the Middle East - as possible. The book is premised on the underlying conception of refugee children as not merely a vulnerable contingent of the displaced Syrian population, but one that possesses a certain agency for change and progress. In this vein, the various contributions aim to not just de-securitize the 'conversation' on migration that frequently centres on the presumed insecurity that refugees personify. They also de-securitize the figure and image of the refugee. Through the stories of the youngest and most vulnerable, they demonstrate that refugee children are not mere opaque figures on who we project our insecurities. Instead, they embody potentials and opportunities for progress that we need to nurture, as young refugees find themselves compelled to both negotiate the practical realities of a life in exile, and situate themselves in changing and unfamiliar sociocultural contexts. Drawing on extensive field research, this edited volume points in the direction of a new rights based framework which will safeguard the future of these children and their well-being. Offering a comparative lens between approaches to tackling refugees in the Middle East and Europe, this book will appeal to students and scholars of refugees and migration studies, human rights, as well as anyone with an interest in the Middle East or Europe.

This is a study of the debate on male youth in the period 1880-1920. During these years, male working-class youth was regarded as posing a serious problem, not only economically, but also morally and socially. Harry Hendrick investigates the `making' of this problem, examining attitudes towards youth and its behaviour, contemporary perceptions of `boy labour', and the `discovery' of the working-class adolescent. He goes on to consider the attempts to solve the problem and create adaptable and efficient citizens, by measures including philanthropy (the youth movement), collectivism (a juvenile labour exchange and vocational guide system), and further education (part-time day continuation schools). Images of Youth demonstrates the significance, long underestimated, of the male adolescent in British society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Dr Hendrick's carefully researched and thorough study illuminates such major issues as poverty, unemployment, race, class conflict, industrial unrest, and the nature of democracy. Drawing in a further dimension, he charts the development of child and adolescent psychology and its contribution to the definition and perpetuation of the youth problem. He argues that the images of youth forged in this period had important and far-reaching consequences for age and class relations. Today the study of youth is of major importance; this book provides us with a comprehensive picture of its beginnings.

Telling the stories of young refugees in a range of international urban settings, this book explores how newcomers navigate urban spaces and negotiate multiple injustices in their everyday lives. This innovative edited volume is based on in-depth, qualitative research with young refugees and their perspectives on migration, social relations and cultural spaces. The chapters give voice to refugee youth from a wide variety of social backgrounds, including insights about their migration experiences, their negotiations of spatial justice and injustice, and the diverse ways in which they use urban space.