This book makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of childhood studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture by drawing on the intersecting fields of girlhood, evangelicalism, and reform to investigate texts written in North America about girls, for girls, and by girls. Responding both to the intellectual excitement generated by the rise of girlhood studies, as well as to the call by recent scholars to recognize the significance of religion as a meaningful category in the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture, this collection locates evangelicalism at the center of its inquiry into girlhood. Contributors draw on a wide range of texts, including canonical literature by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan Warner, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and overlooked archives such as US Methodist Sunday School fiction, children's missionary periodicals, and the Christian Recorder, the flagship newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. These essays investigate representations of girlhood that engage, codify, and critique normative Protestant constructions of girlhood. Contributors examine girlhood in the context of reform, revealing the ways in which Protestantism at once constrained and enabled female agency. Drawing on a range of critical perspectives, including African American Studies, Disability Studies, Gender Studies, and Material Culture Studies, this volume enriches our understanding of nineteenth-century childhood by focusing on the particularities of girlhood, expanding it beyond that of the white able-bodied middle-class girl and attending to the intersectionality of identity and religion.

Inquiring into childhood is one of the most appropriate ways to address the perennial and essential question of what it is that makes human beings - each of us - human. In Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Aasgaard, Horn, and Cojocaru bring together the groundbreaking work of nineteen leading scholars in order to advance interdisciplinary historical research into ideas about children and childhood in the premodern history of European civilization. The volume gathers rich insights from fields as varied as pedagogy and medicine, and literature and history. Drawing on a range of sources in genres that extend from philosophical, theological, and educational treatises to law, art, and poetry, from hagiography and autobiography to school lessons and sagas, these studies aim to bring together these diverse fields and source materials, and to allow the development of new conversations. This book will have fulfilled its unifying and explicit goal if it provides an impetus to further research in social and intellectual history, and if it prompts both researchers and the interested wider public to ask new questions about the experiences of children, and to listen to their voices.

This book brings together key authors from the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland) to discuss theoretical and empirical research on families and children. Sharing the Nordic perspective from each of the five countries, the book highlights key ideas within and across the countries. The chapters provide an understanding of the history of the Nordic perspectives of family and children, present current innovative research on solutions to complex issues, and explore contemporary issues. Nordic countries continually attain high scores in lifestyle measures, quality of life and children's outcomes. Much of this has to do with the specific culture and policy of the Nordic countries. Written by academics within the region who are well regarded for contributing to academic and public debate, this book will appeal to an international audience interested in the Nordic perspective and social policy around family and children.

Boys' underachievement is grabbing headlines in the education debate, and it has never been more important to solve the problem. This book offers clear and practical strategies to headteachers, classroom teachers and other professionals for ways to address the issue. The book looks at:
*reasons for boys' underachievement
*ways of adapting teaching styles to maximise learning gains for boys ... and girls
*guidance on how to plan successful pyramid, whole-school and classroom approaches
*practical strategies for subject leaders and teachers
*examples of successful case studies
After introductory chapters examining whole-school issues and strategies there are further subject-specific chapters that advise on particular teaching approaches.

This book offers an engaging study that analyses contemporary childhood by examining new lines of argument about diversity, disability and difference. The author critiques the key issues that affect both adults' and children's quality of life, including market-driven values, poverty and civic disengagement.In this fascinating study, Dimitra Hartas analyses contemporary childhood. She discusses the plurality inherent in childhood and the cultural, ideological, social and biological forces that shape children's experience of growing up in the 21st century. She engages with new lines of argument about diversity, disability and difference, and critiques the big issues that affect both adults' and children's quality of life such as market-driven values, poverty and civic disengagement.Hartas uncovers evidence of how the right to childhood is being violated in both the developed and developing world and how our consumerist culture is shaping children's lives in ways that are not always understood, and advocates the right to childhoods. She concludes by discussing the implications of her findings for both policy and practice in early childhood education, and examines pedagogies that are responsive to ethics, diversity and difference.

Unaccompanied minor migrants are underage migrants, who for various reasons leave their country and are separated from their parents or legal/customary guardians. Some of them live entirely by themselves, while others join their relatives or other adults in a foreign country. The concept of the best interests of a child is widely applied in international, national legal documents and several guidelines and often pertains to unaccompanied minor migrants given that they are separated from parents, who are not able to exercise their basic parental responsibilities. This book takes an in-depth look at the issues surrounding the best interests of the child in relation to unaccompanied minor migrants drawing on social, legal and political sciences in order to understand children's rights not only as a matter of positive law but mainly as a social practice depending on personal biographies, community histories and social relations of power. The book tackles the interpretation of the rights of the child and the best interests principle in the case of unaccompanied minor migrants in Europe at political, legal and practical levels. In its first part the book considers theoretical aspects of children's rights and the best interests of the child in relation to unaccompanied minor migrants. Adopting a critical approach to the implementation of the Convention of Rights of a Child authors nevertheless confirm its relevance for protecting minor migrants' rights in practice. Authors deconstruct power relations residing within the discourses of children's rights and best interests, demonstrating that these rights are constructed and decided upon by those in power who make decisions on behalf of those who do not possess authority. Authors further on explore normative and methodological aspects of Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child and its relevance for asylum and migration legislation. The second part of the book goes on to examine the actual legal framework related to unaccompanied minor migrants and implementation of children's' rights and their best interests in the reception, protection, asylum and return procedures. The case studies are based on from the empirical research, on interviews with key experts and unaccompanied minor migrants in Austria, France, Slovenia and United Kingdom. Examining age assessment procedures, unaccompanied minors' survivals strategies and their everyday life in reception centres the contributors point to the discrepancy between the states' obligations to take the best interest of the child into account when dealing with unaccompanied minor migrants, and the lack of formal procedures of best interest determination in practice. The chapters expose weaknesses and failures of institutionalized systems in selected European countries in dealing with unaccompanied children and young people on the move.

Football is ubiquitously acknowledged as 'The Global Game' and/or 'The People's Game' - everyday all-encompassing terms familiar to anyone with an interest in football which illustrate, albeit nebulously, the game's international reach and popularity. Yet much academic and popular attention has been, and continues to be, narrowly centred on topics pertaining to the elite and professional aspects of the game. At a time when there appears to be an ever-widening gap between the grassroots and elite levels of the sport, this book brings together, for the first time, a collection of research articles dedicated solely to youth and junior grassroots football. The intention is to generate future inquiry, encourage theoretical debate and stimulate empirical research on topics and issues within the relatively marginalised area of the game that is youth and junior grassroots football. The collection represents a preliminary consideration of what is already currently known about grassroots football and, no less importantly, point towards what remains unknown and under-researched but which deserves much more attention than has been given hitherto. As such, the collection includes contributions from practitioners and researchers alike. Topics included range from the provision, organisation and development of grassroots football in one national association, to broader issues such as the sources of enjoyment in participation, the lived experiences of junior players and coaches, to the causes of youth dropout from football. In addition, the significance of social stratification and various forms of social division which structure children's participation in grassroots football are discussed. These include female participation and the role of elite female role models, and issues relating to the participation of immigrant youth. The book is intended to appeal to practitioners, academics and football enthusiasts alike. This book was originally published as a special issue of Soccer & Society.

How children experience, negotiate and connect with or resist their surroundings impacts on their health and wellbeing. In cities, various aspects of the physical and social environment can affect children's wellbeing. This edited collection brings together different accounts and experiences of children's health and wellbeing in urban environments from majority and minority world perspectives. Privileging children's expertise, this timely volume explicitly explores the relationships between health, wellbeing and place. To demonstrate the importance of a place-based understanding of urban children's health and wellbeing, the authors unpack the meanings of the physical, social and symbolic environments that constrain or enable children's flourishing in urban environments. Drawing on the expertise of geographers, educationists, anthropologists, psychologists, planners and public health researchers, as well as nurses and social workers, this book, above all, sees children as the experts on their experiences of the issues that affect their wellbeing. Children's Health and Wellbeing in Urban Environments will be fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in cultural geography, urban geography, environmental geography, children's health, youth studies or urban planning.

First published in 1987, this book focuses on childhood disability within the family. It examines the very nature of disability itself, as well as many of the fundamental elements of families. The book was written at a time when the meaning level of disability and its effect on family and society were rapidly changing and people with disabilities were starting to benefit from opportunities to compensate for whatever disabilities they may have had. Modern technology and an affluent society afforded advantages to support many of its disabled members. Contributors examine the contemporary context of disability, the cost of disability to families, ethical, philosophical and social issues underlying the treatment and rehabilitation of children with severe disabilities, and the role of professionals, amongst other topics. This book will be of interest to those involved in teaching, research and direct care with families who have children with disabilities. Although written in the late 80s, the work discusses subjects that are still vital today.

First published in 1986, this book reviews research on the role parents play in fostering the early development of children with mental handicaps. Professionals and parents must work together to give such children the chance of living as ordinary lives as possible and here, the author develops a broadly-based conceptual framework for the involvement of parents as teachers of their young handicapped children. McConachie identifies characteristics of parents which seem of particular relevance to the design and success of intervention programmes. Although written in the 1980s, this book discusses topics that are still important today.

First published in 1984, this book focuses on the support and reassurance needed by parents of children with handicaps. It provides a practical guide in relation to daily care and is equally as relevant to professionals, therapists, teachers, doctors and psychologists who must advise parents. Written by an Occupational Therapist, the book highlights the need to make such children as independent as possible and gives advice on care of a special baby, modifications to the home environment, the needs of a child with a physical handicap, problems of educational handicap, and the place of a child in the family and community.

First published in 1981, this work is based on the author's research in the playgrounds of two Oxford schools. It describes the order amongst the apparent chaos by relating the playtime activities - the games, rhymes and taunts of five-to-ten-year-olds in first and middle schools - to children's goals, problems and solutions. It shows how children learn and display in the playground a remarkably complex set of social skills and the study clearly demonstrates the importance of playtime for preparing a child to cope in the adult world.

Bringing together new perspectives in childhood studies and animal studies, this book is the first collection to critically address the manifold alignments and frequent co-constitutions of children and pets in our families, our cultures, and our societies. The cultural politics of power shaping relationships between children, pets, and adults inform the wide range of essays included in this collection, as they explore issues such as protection, discipline, mastery, wildness, play, and domestication. The volume use the frequent social and cultural intersections between children and pets as an opportunity to analyze institutions that create pet and child subjectivity, from education and training to putting children and pets on display for entertainment purposes. Essays analyze legal discourses, visual culture, literature for children and adults, migration narratives, magazines for children, music, and language socialization to discuss how notions of nationalism, race, gender, heteronormativity, and speciesism shape cultural constructions of children and pets. Examining childhood and pethood in America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, this collection shows how discourses linking children and pets are pervasive and work across cultures. By presenting innovative approaches to the child and the pet, the book brings to light alternative paths toward understanding these figures, leading to new openings and questions about kinship, agency, and the power of care that so often shapes our relationships with children and animals. This will be an important volume for scholars of animal studies, childhood studies, children's literature, cultural studies, political theory, education, art history, and sociology.

Discrimination impacts most youth at some point. Almost all children and adolescents belong to at least one stigmatized group, whether they are a Black or Latino boy in school; an immigrant or refugee; a gay, lesbian, or bisexual teen; or a girl in physics class. Discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity can have long-term academic, psychological, and social repercussions, especially when it is directed at a cognitively developing child or an emotionally vulnerable adolescent. How children and adolescents are impacted by this discrimination depends on their cognitive ability to perceive the bias, the context in which the bias occurs, and resources they have to help cope with the bias. This book details, synthesizes, and analyzes the perception and impact of discrimination in childhood and adolescence across multiple stigmatized social groups to help us better understand the complex phenomenon of discrimination and its long-term consequences. By looking at the similarities and differences in discrimination across all social groups, we can more fully understand its mechanisms of influence. Before we can fully address the persistent achievement gap between White and ethnic minority children, the high rates of suicidal thoughts among LGBT youth, and the underrepresentation of girls in STEM careers, we must first examine the ways in which discrimination influences and is understood by children, with their unique cognitive constraints and within the specific contexts in which they live.

Conflict Narratives in Middle Childhood presents evidence from twenty years of research, examining nearly 3,000 narratives from 1,600 children in eight settings in two countries about their own experiences with interpersonal conflict. Close readings, combined with systematic analysis of dozens of features of the stories reveal that when children are invited to write or talk about their own conflicts, they produce accounts that are often charming and sometimes heartbreaking, and that always bring to light their social, emotional, and moral development. Children's personal stories about conflict reveal how they create and maintain friendships, how they understand and react to the social aggression that threatens those friendships, and how they understand and cope with physical aggression ranging from the pushing and poking of peers to criminal violence in their neighborhoods or families. Sometimes children describe the efforts of adults to influence their conflicts - efforts they sometimes welcome and sometimes resist. Their stories show them 'taking on' gender and other cultural commitments. We are not just watching children become more and more like us as they move through the elementary school years - we are watching them become the architects of a future we will only see to the extent that we understand their way of making sense.

Conflict Narratives in Middle Childhood presents evidence from twenty years of research, examining nearly 3,000 narratives from 1,600 children in eight settings in two countries about their own experiences with interpersonal conflict. Close readings, combined with systematic analysis of dozens of features of the stories reveal that when children are invited to write or talk about their own conflicts, they produce accounts that are often charming and sometimes heartbreaking, and that always bring to light their social, emotional, and moral development. Children's personal stories about conflict reveal how they create and maintain friendships, how they understand and react to the social aggression that threatens those friendships, and how they understand and cope with physical aggression ranging from the pushing and poking of peers to criminal violence in their neighborhoods or families. Sometimes children describe the efforts of adults to influence their conflicts - efforts they sometimes welcome and sometimes resist. Their stories show them 'taking on' gender and other cultural commitments. We are not just watching children become more and more like us as they move through the elementary school years - we are watching them become the architects of a future we will only see to the extent that we understand their way of making sense.

Today's children spend more time than ever before watching television, playing computer games and reading comic and pulp fiction. Many of these are directly designed by the toy and media industry. Are children therefore simply being manipulated? There is widespread concern that because of these kinds of popular fiction, children do not read `quality' literature, resulting in lower standards of literacy. There is also the further fear that because many of these popular media portray highly stereotyped, gendered images, this too will have a damaging effect on children. Mary Hilton's fascinating book proves that there is another side to the argument. We do not have to view popular culture as a threat to our children or their education. The writers of this collection show how, used carefully alongside other types of literature, popular culture can actually help teachers to develop literacy in a broad and positive sense.

This book provides an insight into girls' cultural identities and young femininities through an understanding of tween girls' dressing in Singapore. The book adopts a girl-centred approach to shed light on the narratives and experiences of young Singaporean girls that have often been overlooked. It draws on the conversations with young Singaporean girls aged 8 to 12 to understand how they wanted to dress, from where they gained their inspiration, and what the social factors were that influenced their dressing. Through understanding how girls want to fashion themselves, the book shows that it is imprecise to discuss issues based on the assumption that there is one dominant, 'correct' way to grow up as a young person in Singapore. This book unpacks how young Singaporean girls negotiate their cultural identities through clothing that do not simply conform to or reflect their roles as students. It also shows how girlhood in Singapore is multi-faceted and the values and meanings that tween girls' attach to their dressing intersect at the personal, social, and cultural level. The book offers new ways of approaching and looking at girls' adult-like dressing that move beyond the discourse of sexualisation. In establishing a space for young Singaporean girls' voices in an area that has been dominated by studies from the West, this book also shows how the focus on tween girls in Asia can contribute to and advance the current state of girls' studies.

Since 1992, marijuana use among 8th graders has tripled, among 10th graders it has nearly doubled, and its use among high school seniors has increased by 50 percent. The use of other illicit drugs is also heavily on the rise. Yet, there exists very little research and literature on the etiology and prevention of drug abuse among those most at risk--disadvantaged, inner-city, minority youth. The Etiology and Prevention of Drug Abuse Among Minority Youth is an important first step in remedying this gap in the literature and for getting at the heart of the psychosocial factors that promote and sustain drug use among minority youth.The book's chapters evolved from a program of research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Cornell University Medical College's Institute for Prevention Research concerning drug abuse prevention with multi-ethnic youth. So that you might learn effective strategies for intervening with at-risk adolescents and teenagers, The Etiology and Prevention of Drug Abuse Among Minority Youth discusses: correlates and predictors of alcohol and drug use community-based skills interventions how youths offset feelings of distress or self-derogation by bonding with deviant peers the advantages of community-oriented outreach programs the role of cultural factors as they shape vulnerability to adolescent alcohol and drug use the role of ethnic identity as a moderator of psychosocial risk for alcohol and marijuana use the needs of youth at high risk for future use preventing gateway drug use drug use among youth living in homeless shelters the conditions of public housing and how they affect the etiology of drug abuseAn essential tool for policymakers, social workers, clinicians, researchers, psychiatrists, and other professionals in chemical dependency and narcotics rehabilitation, The Etiology and Prevention of Drug Abuse Among Minority Youth provides you with vital insight on the causes of drug use among minority adolescents, the strengths and limitations of different intervention approaches, and incentive to find appropriate ways for working with at-risk, minority teenagers.

This book provides an engaging and informative insight into the experiences, dreams and hopes of children and teenagers in contemporary Ireland. O'Connor analyzes a unique data set: a random sample of 4,100 texts drawn from roughly 34,000 texts written by young people aged 10-12 years and 14-17 years, in response to a nationwide invitation to describe themselves and the Ireland they inhabit. The young people's voices give the book a vivid reality, which is illuminated by the application of sociological concepts including global and local, individualization, and ways of 'doing boy/girl.'

The study leads us towards a better understanding of contemporary social problems by locating these young people's accounts within the broader context of cultural change where collective identities have become weaker; where the local is enmeshed with the global; where children anticipate a predictable future and teenagers focus on an extended present; where gender is no longer salient but yet in many ways remains a submerged framework mapping their life styles, life choices and relationships. Written in an accessible style, the book presents a picture that is sometimes challenging, sometimes reassuring but always informative. Containing extensive quotations, it will be of interest not only to students and lecturers in sociology, education, child and youth studies, Irish studies and psychology but to thoughtful parents and teachers at first and second level, and especially those whose students took part in the Write Hear, Write Now project.

Despite the existence of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child there still exists a debate on whether children can really hold rights. This book presents a clear theory of children's rights by examining controversial case studies. The author presents a pathway to translating rights into practical social and political instruments for change.

Is the bicycle, like the loudspeaker, a medium of communication in India? Do Indian children need trade unions as much as they need schools? What would you do with a mobile phone if all your friends were playing tag in the rain or watching Indian Idol? Children and Media in India illuminates the experiences, practices and contexts in which children and young people in diverse locations across India encounter, make, or make meaning from media in the course of their everyday lives. From textbooks, television, film and comics to mobile phones and digital games, this book examines the media available to different socioeconomic groups of children in India and their articulation with everyday cultures and routines. An authoritative overview of theories and discussions about childhood, agency, social class, caste and gender in India is followed by an analysis of films and television representations of childhood informed by qualitative interview data collected between 2005 and 2015 in urban, small-town and rural contexts with children aged nine to 17. The analysis uncovers and challenges widely held assumptions about the relationships among factors including sociocultural location, media content and technologies, and children's labour and agency. The analysis casts doubt on undifferentiated claims about how new technologies 'affect', 'endanger' and/or 'empower', pointing instead to the importance of social class - and caste - in mediating relationships among children, young people and the poor. The analysis of children's narratives of daily work, education, caring and leisure supports the conclusion that, although unrecognised and underrepresented, subaltern children's agency and resourceful conservation makes a significant contribution to economic, interpretive and social reproduction in India.

Drawing on examples from British world expressions of Christianity, this collection further greater understanding of religion as a critical element of modern children's and young people's history. It builds on emerging scholarship that challenges the view that religion had a solely negative impact on nineteenth- and twentieth-century children, or that 'secularization' is the only lens to apply to childhood and religion. Putting forth the argument that religion was an abiding influence among British world children throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, this volume places 'religion' at the center of analysis and discussion. At the same time, it positions the religious factor within a broader social and cultural framework. The essays focus on the historical contexts in which religion was formative for children in various 'British' settings denoted as 'Anglo' or 'colonial' during the nineteenth and early- to mid-twentieth centuries. These contexts include mission fields, churches, families, Sunday schools, camps, schools and youth movements. Together they are treated as 'sites' in which religion contributed to identity formation, albeit in different ways relating to such factors as gender, race, disability and denomination. The contributors develop this subject for childhoods that were experienced largely, but not exclusively, outside the 'metropole', in a diversity of geographical settings. By extending the geographic range, even within the British world, it provides a more rounded perspective on children's global engagement with religion.