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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

For five years, Jim Walker followed the stories of four groups of young men, from their last years at an inner-city high school to their early twenties. Louts and Legends is a rich portrayal of their ways of life, their responses to school and teachers, and their experience of job-seeking, employment, unemployment, further education and training. Louts and Legends presents a unique perspective on Australian culture, showing the problems, achievements, and social context of four distinct cultural styles: the macho 'Aussie' culture of the footballers; the competitive challenge of the Greeks; the 'nice guy' friendliness of the handballers; the artistic aspirations of the stigmatised three friends. The interview and participant observation data gathered over a long period contains fresh insights on youth culture as well as moving individual stories. The findings in this book pose a challenge to educational and social policy, but they also offer realistic suggestions for teachers, youth workers, parents and for other young people.

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 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.

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.

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.

An increasing interest in children's lives has tested the ethical and practical limits of research. Rather than making tricky ethical decisions, transparent researchers tend to gloss over stories that do not fit with sanitized narratives. This book aims to fill this gap by making explicit the lived experiences of research with children.

In a political climate that holds limited promise for addressing the issue of child recruitment, Child Soldiers and Transitional Justice: Protecting the Rights of Children Involved in Armed Conflicts challenges the trend towards a narrow focus on recruitment and use of the child, and seeks to contribute to more effective prevention and responses that offer the child a chance of recovery, reconciliation and reintegration.This book adapts existing theoretical frameworks of transitional justice in order to analyse child recruitment, with a view to demonstrating how a society can address the issue in a holistic way. It systematises relevant knowledge across a wide range of legal fields to allow for greater understanding of the law and principles, and a more informed basis for practical engagement with transitional justice mechanisms.Delving deep into the travaux prparatoires of each of the fundamental legal instruments, the author analyses their evolution, spanning humanitarian law, human rights law, criminal law, and other aspects of public law, including peace agreements and action plans developed with armed groups and forces. He provides a particular focus on and in-depth analysis of the Lubanga case, and its implications for other components of transitional justice. The findings highlight arguments for placing child recruitment firmly on the transitional justice agenda.By considering child recruitment against a transitional justice framework, the book allows a detailed understanding of the distinct but complementary components rule of law, criminal justice, historical justice, reparatory justice, institutional justice, and participatory justice and reveals the untapped potential in interactions between different areas of transitional justice.

Here is the dramatic and moving story of one child's transformation from a normal, middle-class kid from the suburbs to an activist, fighting against child labor on the world stage of international human rights.

Making headlines around the globe, Graig Keilburger and his organization, Free the Children, which he founded at the age of twelve, have brought unprecedented attention to the worldwide abuse of children's rights. Free the Childrenis a passionate and astounding story and a moving testament to the power that children and young adults have to change the world, as witnessed through the achievements of one remarkable young man.