In a world dominated by poverty, a central characteristic has been the plight of orphans and abandoned children. Over the centuries, State, Church and individuals have all attempted to tackle the issue, but can we trace any change over the course of time when it comes to the welfare system intended for these disadvantaged children and acts of philanthropy? What kind of social policies did States follow and what were the main differences between countries and regions? Drawing on historical evidence across several centuries and a range of European countries, the contributors to this volume provide a transnational overview.

ALLISON JAMES Globalization seems to be the word on everyone's lips, with politicians as much as academics extolling its benefits as well as its contradictions. For some, globali- tion means, in practice, that whether in Bangkok or Boston, in London or Rio, as travelers from wealthy countries they can be sure to find the beer, the pizzas, and the jeans that they can at home; they can be both at home and away simulta- ously. For others, though, globalization has had rather different, often less bene- cial, consequences. In their everyday lives people have come to find themselves tied in, albeit in often unseen ways, into larger economic and political systems over which they have no control; yet these systems cause radical changes-often for the worse rather than the better-in the pattern of their daily lives. And it is those who have least voice whose lives are usually affected the most. In this book attention is drawn systematically-really for the first time-to a consideration of how processes of globalization variously impact upon the lives of children. Such an approach is not only most welcome in the field of childhood studies, but also long overdue. It will, at last, enable us to begin to contextualize in a broader framework some of the many issues to do with ch- dren's rights and participation which have long been discussed as separate and discrete issues within childhood studies.

Research in religious studies has traditionally focused on adult subjects since working with children presents significantly more challenges to the researcher, such as getting the research protocol passed by the Internal Review Board, obtaining permission from parents and schools, and figuring out how to make sense of young worldviews. The Study of Children in Religions provides scholars with a comprehensive source to assist them in addressing many of the issues that often stop researchers from pursuing projects involving children. This handbook offers a broad range of methodological and conceptual models for scholars interested in conducting work with children. It not only illuminates some of the legal and ethical issues involved in working with youth and provides guidance in getting IRB approval, but also presents specific case studies from scholars who have engaged in child-centered research and here offer the fruits of their experience. Cases include those that use interviews and drawings to work with children in contemporary settings, as well as more historically focused endeavors to use material culture-such as Sunday school projects or religious board games-to study children's religious lives in past eras. The Study of Children in Religions offers concrete help to those who wish to conduct research on children and religion but are unsure of how to get started or how to frame their research.

The current generation of adolescents are experiencing more stressful and/or negative experiences at an earlier age in their development than previous generations. The consequence is that more and more teenagers are becoming casualties of drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, and mental illness. In this book, George R. Holmes provides care-givers and parents with specific tactics to move teenagers successfully through adolescence.

The prevention of adolescent casualties is accomplished by the practice of three major prevention strategies. The first provides a clear understanding of the complex changes adolescents experience with what Holmes calls a map of the territory called adolescence. The second involves a set of interpersonal prescriptions or ways to communicate with teens that have proven usefulness. The third encourages a renaissance in schools serving teenagers by bringing technology and talent to the classroom in a new way. These strategies are designed to promote greater levels of social competency among teenagers. This, in turn, leads to fewer major emotional problems and a more successful move to adulthood. Holmes's volume is an important tool for counselors, mental health professionals, social workers, and others dealing with today's adolescents.

This original book explores the importance of geographical processes for policies and professional practices related to childhood and youth. Contributors from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds explore how concepts such as place, scale, mobility and boundary-making are important for policies and practices in diverse contexts. Chapters present both comprehensive cutting-edge academic research and critical reflections by practitioners working in diverse contexts, giving the volume wide appeal. The focus on the role of geographical processes in policies and professional practices that affect young people provides new, critical insights into contemporary issues and debates. The contributions show how local and national concerns remain central to many youth programmes; they also highlight how youth policies are becoming increasingly globalised. Examples are taken from the UK, the Americas and Africa. The chapters are informed by and advance contemporary theoretical approaches in human geography, sociology, anthropology and youth work, and will be of interest to academics and higher-level students in those disciplines. The book will also appeal to policy-makers and professionals who work with young people, encouraging them to critically reflect upon the role of geographical processes in their own work.

Why do parents who have high levels of education tend to have children who perform better at school, stay at school longer, and end up with more desirable jobs? Researchers have evidence of how distinct factors affect educational and occupational success, but significantly less understanding of the actual mechanisms involved. This work uses new Australian data to investigate those mechanisms, examining how cultural participation and parental encouragement affect adolescent and adult stratification outcomes in advanced modern society. Crook develops theoretical accounts of the possible mechanisms linking family background with socioeconomic success and tests competing hypotheses using a synthetic approach drawing on the strengths of the two distinct traditions of social stratification research.

Images of children in Roman society abound: an infant's first bath, learning to walk, playing with pets and toys, going to school, and - all too often - dying prematurely. The child was prominent in private houses and public space in the teeming, cosmopolitan city of ancient Rome and other towns of Italy. Such a vivid picture does not recur until the twentieth century. This study builds on the dynamic work on the Roman family that has been developing in recent decades. Its focus on the period between the first century BCE and the early third century CE provides a context for new work being done on early Christian societies, especially in Rome.

In recent years the factors influencing young people's transition to adulthood have become much more problematic. This edited collection of papers from Pennsylvania State University's fifth annual Family Symposium explores the main issues involved in this transition, such as the widening gap between rich and poor, downsizing, global competition, and technological change. These factors have made jobs scarce in many areas, especially inner cities, and have profoundly affected family formation, making cohabitation, delays in marriage and parenthood, and prolonged residence with parents, the life choices of many young adults. These and other issues are explored by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, who focus on four main questions: alterations in the structure of opportunity, prior experiences in the family, prior experiences in the workplace, and career development and marriage formation.

"An international team of researchers videoed a day in the life of two-and-a-half-year-old girls at home in Canada, Italy, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, the UK and the USA. Different paths to wellbeing are illustrated through words and images. The book examines how human culture is shaped through interactions involving young children and their families"--Provided by publisher.

Why is it that so many children in the US and England underperform academically in comparison with people in many other industrialized countries? Despite the ongoing search for effective teaching approaches, it would appear that for many children, motivation is the central issue. Arguing that current perspectives on motivation are too narrow, this book draws upon a major five year international study that has examined the impact of factors at the level of the child, the school, the family and wider society. In providing recommendations for policy and practice, this text sets a challenge to those who seek simplistic solutions to problems of student apathy and disaffection.

This handbook collates research evidence and presents the most up-to-date findings on child development in Sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses complex risk factors and medical conditions affecting childhood outcomes, and spotlights emerging programs for enhancing literacy and cognitive development. The panel of expert contributors offer needed context and knowledge to the discussion of previously understudied topics. Chapters present proven intervention strategies currently in use across the diverse region. In addition, this handbook provides guidelines for culturally sensitive and ethical research that will inform practice and help shape policy goals and initiatives. Topics featured in the Handbook include: * Fatherhood in the African context. * Sibling care-giving and its implications in Sub-Saharan Africa. * Nutritional status, infections, and child development * Diabetes in Sub-Saharan African children. * How to adapt tests for Sub-Saharan Africa. * Interventions aimed at children and caregivers. * A culturally sensitive approach to conducting research and promoting initial literacy development in Africa The Handbook of Applied Developmental Science in Sub-Saharan Africa is a must-have resource for researchers, professionals/scientist-practitioners, and graduate students in child, school, and developmental psychology, as well as pediatrics, social work, public health, and education.

Recent studies suggest that current policy approaches to tackling childhood poverty have had limited efficacy. In the developing world, the problem is more challenging still, as highlighted by the large number of countries that are off track in meeting the child-related Millennium Development Goals. This timely book highlights the importance of integrating children's voices into the debate, bringing together a theoretical discussion of childhoods, children's experiences of poverty and development discourses, as well as empirical case studies from the developing world. Weaving together theory and mixed method approaches, the book provides an introduction to students and development professionals who are new to debates on children and development, offering scholars in the field new methodological and empirical insights.

Adults were once children, yet a generational gap can present itself when grown-ups seek to know children's lives, in research. In A Younger Voice discloses how qualitative research, tailored to be child-centered, can shrink the gap of generational unintelligibility. The volume invites and instructs researchers who want to explore children's vantage points as social actors. Its suggested tool kit draws from both academic and applied research, based on the author's lifelong career as a child-centered qualitative researcher. World round, research in knowing children has grown recently in anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, cultural psychology and a host of applied fields. This book draws widely from the trending child-centered research movement, taking stock of methods for fulfilling its aims. In A Younger Voice provides mature researchers with a kid-savvy guide to learning effectively about, from, and with children. The highlighted methods' are steadfastly child-attuned, "thinking smaller" in order to free children to participate with empowerment. From fieldwork and observation, to focus groups and depth interviews, to the use of photography, artwork, and metaphors, viable methods are discussed with an old-hand's acumen for making the procedures practical with children in the field. Whether an investigator is at the beginning of a project (designing from scratch procedures to involve and reveal the young) or at the final stages (conducting interpretations and analysis true to children's meanings) In A Younger Voice gives know-how for a challenging area of inquiry. Playfully interviewing children as young as five years old, as well as empowering teenagers to tell it like it is, are tasks revealed to be both doable and essential. For adults seeking to overcome generational-cultural myopia, these methods are invaluable.

This book explores the management of children's services in local authorities across England and Wales. It examines residential childcare from a management and organizational perspective for the first time. The volume evaluates how social services manage residential units and offers alternative solutions. The book will interest academics, practitioners and policy makers who work in the public sector, as well as their counterparts from outside who are concerned with the issues of control, implementation, professionals and markets.

Exploring the experiences of children encountering war and armed conflict, this book draws upon history, ethnography, sociology, literature, media studies, psychology, public policy, and other disciplines to address children as soldiers, refugees, and peace-builders within their social, cultural, and political contexts.

The mental well-being of children and adults is shockingly poor. Marc Brackett, author of Permission to Feel, knows why. And he knows what we can do.

Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University’s Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults – a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. He was the first adult who managed to see Marc, listen to him, and recognize the suffering, bullying, and abuse he’d endured. And that was the beginning of Marc’s awareness that what he was going through was temporary. He wasn’t alone, he wasn’t stuck on a timeline, and he wasn’t “wrong” to feel scared, isolated, and angry. Now, best of all, he could do something about it.

In the decades since, Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional well-being. His prescription for healthy children (and their parents, teachers, and schools) is a system called RULER, a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions that has already transformed the thousands of schools that have adopted it. RULER has been proven to reduce stress and burnout, improve school climate, and enhance academic achievement. This book is the culmination of Marc’s development of RULER and his way to share the strategies and skills with readers around the world. It is tested, and it works.

This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don’t have to be. Marc Brackett’s life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.

In "African American Childhoods, " historian Wilma King presents a selection of her essays, both unpublished and published, which together provide a much-needed survey of more than three centuries of African American children's experiences. Organized chronologically, the volume uses the Civil War to divide the book into two parts: part one addresses the enslavement of children in Africa and explores how they lived in antebellum America; part two examines the issues affecting black children since the Civil War and into the twenty-first century. Topics include the impact of the social and historical construction of race on their development, the effects of violence, and the heroic efforts of African American children when subjected to racism at its worst during the civil rights movement.

The goal of this book is to provide teachers with the theoretical and practical information needed to meet the daily challenge of individualizing instruction for gifted and talented students with different learning styles in regular classrooms. These students spend most of their time in regular courses. Teachers and counselors often are urged to provide for the unique needs of each of these learners without being shown how such adolescents differ from each offer in their learning style traits. This is the first book devoted entirely to the topic, and it is based on a two-year study in many different nations.

This volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth showcases timely and important work of active, early-career sociologists helping to define the direction of the sub-field. Their work shares basic premises and concerns: Children and youth are active agents in their own "socialization," produce meaning and action collaboratively with peers, and struggle for agency in various social contexts. These themes shape essentially all of the contributions.

The volume is organized in two parts. Following the Introduction, six chapters make up Part One, "Empirical Studies." Two quantitative analyses lead off: first an examination of residential mobility, peer networks and life-course transitions; second, a look at adolescents' participation in a particular social movement. Two ethnographic studies follow - here the foci are "Zero Tolerance" school discipline policies, and female athletes' construction of femininity. A comparative content analysis of teen magazine advice columns, and a qualitative study of construction of "adoptive family" identities, round out Part One.

Three chapters constitute Part Two, "Innovations in Theory and Research Methods." The first offers an analysis of two films that explore children's struggle for agency and control. The next chapter develops a typology of children's participation in social movements, employing fascinating first-person narrative accounts. The final chapter demonstrates the unique ability of group interviews to capture processes through which adolescents accomplish group talk, develop shared perspectives, and construct gender identities.

Social pedagogical work is a field of practice that is indebted to and illuminated by aspects of knowledge from sociology and psychology, but many practitioners feel that social pedagogical theories are too abstract and distant from the challenges faced in practice. In Practical Social Pedagogy Jan Storo shows the reader for the first time how the theories and practices of social pedagogy interlock. The book combines social pedagogy theories, psychology, sociology and social work with a social constructionist perspective to help practitioners guide children and young people to cope better with the challenges they face as they grow up. The author emphasises that the actualities of practice are first disclosed in the meeting between the professional practitioner and the client. The book uses many practical examples to help make the application of social pedagogy more accessible, and is ideal for students on courses covering work with children and young people.

This is the fifth volume in a series which endeavours to organize, centralize and present current ideas and research in the field of child development, viewed with a sociological perspective. It contains three main sections: early childhood care; children's peer groups; and, family influence. Papers examine early childhood care; non-parental child care environments; differences in preschool cognitive skills by type of care; quality of centre care and cognitive outcomes: differences by family income; parent involvement in early childhood education and day care; negotiations of norms and sanctions among children; the attainment of peer status: gender and power relationships in the elementary school; social status and interactional competence in families; family and friend relationships of only children: a study of Chinese adults; women and money: cultural contrasts.

In the context of a growing global awareness of the significance of children's rights and perspectives created by the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, this edited collection of papers explores the extent to which children's interests are finding expression in different societies in Western Europe. Its aim is to compare the ways in which social and welfare issues around childhood are being framed and realised, both within policies and legislation and through cultural practices. If, as is frequently argued, "the child is a nation's future," such a comparative project is timely, given the drive for a common European political identity.

This is the first annotated guide to recent young adult literature that is organized into specific problem areas: alienation and identity, disabilities, homosexuality, divorced and single parents, adopted and foster families, abuse, eating disorders (anorexia nervosa and bulimia), alcohol and drugs, poverty, dropouts and delinquency, teenage pregnancy, AIDS, death and dying, and stress and suicide. More than 900 recommended books published through 1993 have been annotated. Reading levels of recommended books are grades 5-8 and interest level is through grade 12.

This work addresses bibliotherapy, but is not based on it. Instead, it is built on the premise that literacy is the key to growth and understanding. Each chapter deals with a specific adolescent problem area and begins with general comments about the problem, startling information and current statistics about its gravity and pervasiveness, warning signs to look for, and suggestions of what to do and where to go for help. Each entry contains complete bibliographic information. The format and readable annotations will make it easy for young adults, parents, librarians, teachers, clergy, psychologists, counselors, social workers, and health professionals to find appropriate fiction and nonfiction books and articles on the serious problems that adolescents face today.