Adolescent researchers are increasingly aware that they must examine development both across time and across context. To do so, however, requires new conceptualizations and methodological approaches to the study of development, including attention to the pathways young people choose in adolescence and follow into adulthood. This volume assembles work by key researchers in the field who are struggling to understand how developmental trajectories are constructed and maintained throughout the adolescent period. A complete understanding of developmental pathways requires the recognition that adolescents' social contexts--family, school, neighborhood, and/or peer group--are important influences on the choices they make at this developmental period. Researchers have traditionally studied contexts in isolation rather than examining the interrelationships among contexts and their implications for adolescent development. The present volume seeks to address this gap in the literature, with attention given not only to the interrelationships among contexts for white, middle-class youth, but also to these issues for minority adolescents in neighborhoods that vary in terms of access to resources. It concludes with an examination of researcher-community collaboration as a strategy to move communities toward a greater awareness of adolescent development and the problems facing youth in their community, and as a means to promote potential avenues for policy change and intervention.

This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field of childhood development focus on the critical issues and questions that need to be addressed at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Topics covered include the ecology of fetal development, birth and the newborn period, family ecology and infant development, infant care settings, gender influences on caregiving, culture, violence, poverty, substance abuse, social support, maternal age, risk and protective factors, the impact of legal and public policy, and historical, and future ecologies of infant development

This book radically refigures the conceptual and formal significance of childhood in nineteenth-century English poetry. By theorizing infancy as a poetics as well as a space of continual beginning, Ruderman shows how it allowed poets access to inchoate, uncanny, and mutable forms of subjectivity and art. While recent historicist studies have documented the "freshness of experience" childhood confers on 19th-century poetry and culture, this book draws on new formalist and psychoanalytic perspectives to rethink familiar concepts such as immortality, the sublime, and the death drive as well as forms and genres such as the pastoral, the ode, and the ballad. Ruderman establishes that infancy emerges as a unique structure of feeling simultaneously with new theories of lyric poetry at the end of the eighteenth century. He then explores the intertwining of poetic experimentation and infancy in Wordsworth, Anna Barbauld, Blake, Coleridge, Erasmus Darwin, Sara Coleridge, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, and Augusta Webster. Each chapter addresses and analyzes a specific moment in a writers' work, moments of tenderness or mourning, birth or death, physical or mental illness, when infancy is analogized, eulogized, or theorized. Moving between canonical and archival materials, and combining textual and inter-textual reading, metrical and prosodic analysis, and post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the book shows how poetic engagements with infancy anticipate psychoanalytic and phenomenological (i.e. modern) ways of being in the world. Ultimately, Ruderman suggests that it is not so much that we return to infancy as that infancy returns (obsessively, compulsively) in us. This book shows how by tracking changing attitudes towards the idea of infancy, one might also map the emotional, political, and aesthetic terrain of nineteenth-century culture. It will be of interest to scholars in the areas of British romanticism and Victorianism, as well as 19th-century American literature and culture, histories of childhood, and representations of the child from art historical, cultural studies, and literary perspectives. "D. B. Ruderman's The Idea of Infancy in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry: Romanticism, Subjectivity, Form is an interesting contribution to this field, and it manages to bring a new perspective to our understanding of Romantic-era and Victorian representations of infancy and childhood. ...a supremely exciting book that will be a key work for generations of readers of nineteenth-century poetry." Isobel Armstrong, Birkbeck, University of London Victorian Studies (59.4)

Atlantic Childhoods in Global Contexts explores childhood and youth in the Global South. The term childhood often conjures images of innocence, vulnerability and the need for protection, but this book suggests that, in colonial contexts, these images need to be re-examined. In fact, as the articles in this collection demonstrate, deviance, culpability, and a presumed autonomy were the more popular notions of childhood in the colonial context. These notions were held by the various actors in the colonial drama, not only colonial officials but interestingly enough often by the colonized people themselves. Furthermore, traditional notions of childhood as a period of total dependency are challenged in this collection, as the various authors explore the ways in which children were pro-active agents who shaped notions of childhood and therefore our understanding of the history of childhood. This collection provides in-depth analysis and offers new perspectives on how children were imagined and constructed (both legally and informally) in the colonial context. The contributions cover a broad geographic range that spans the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and India. Each of the authors explore the ways in which the interplay of Atlantic and Global influences shaped young people's experiences, as well as the discourses that were used to articulate concerns about youth. The themes explored in this collection include the pathologization of childhood, juvenile delinquency, cultural creativity, and the use of child labour. The book ends with an interview by Sara Austin of World Vision Canada who discusses the ways in which the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child neglected to include the voices of children until 2014. This book was originally published as a special issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents.

Kids snatched from their bedrooms, shot at in school, fatter than ever, prone to risk-taking and cruelty...is childhood today as bad as the news accounts would have us believe? Is this generation headed for disaster? Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions About Today's Youth critically examines the hottest news stories of the past few years to assess whether the news is really as bad as it sounds. For instance, is kidnapping by strangers really a bigger threat now than in the past? Are disputes at school now settled with guns instead of fists? And are kids, especially girls, becoming bigger bullies than ever before? Kids These Days looks at the stories that made headlines and goes deeper to explore overall trends and statistics to compare the hype to reality. The truth is, kids today do face unique obstacles and challenges, but their situation isn't nearly as dire as the compelling news accounts would have us believe. Our nation's youth have been targeted as a problem population to absolve adult responsibility for creating the often dangerous and difficult conditions many young people must endure. Kids These Days will give the reader pause and perspective to better understand the realities of the first generation to come of age in the twenty-first century.

In this examination of the ubiquitous practice of bullying among youth, compelling first person stories vividly convey the lived experience of peer torment and how it impacted the lives of five diverse young women. Author Keith Berry's own autoethnographic narratives and analysis add important relational communication, methodological, and ethical dimensions to their accounts. The personal stories create an opening to understand how this form of physical and verbal violence shapes identities, relationships, communication, and the construction of meaning among a variety of youth. The layered narrative describes the practices constituting bullying and how youth work to cope with peer torment and its aftermath, largely focusing on identity construction and well being; addresses contemporary cyberbullying as well as other forms of relational aggression in many social contexts across race, gender, and sexual orientations; is written in a compelling way to be accessible to students in communication, education, psychology, social welfare, and other fields.

Now in paperback, Inventing the Child is a highly entertaining, humorous, and at times acerbic account of what it means to be a child (and a parent) in America at the dawn of the new millennium. J. Zornado explores the history and development of the concept of childhood, starting with the works of Calvin, Freud, and Rousseau and culminating with the modern 'consumer' childhood of Dr. Spock and television. The volume discusses major media depictions of childhood and examines the ways in which parents use different forms of media to swaddle, educate, and entertain their children. Zornado argues that the stories we tell our children contain the ideologies of the dominant culture - which, more often than not, promote 'happiness' at all costs, materialism as the way to happiness, and above all, obedience to the dominant order.

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The book sheds light on the transformation of childhood in Singapore, over our many milestones. It is a collection of lectures by distinguished authorities on various aspects of childhood. They encompass a rich mix of historical material and personal anecdotes garnered from the speakers themselves and their respective professional expertise. Salient questions from the audience are also included with the speakers' replies.

A crucial contemporary dynamic around children and young people in the Global North is the multiple ways that have emerged to monitor their development, behaviour and character. In particular disabled children or children with unusual developmental patterns can find themselves surrounded by multiple practices through which they are examined. This rich book draws on a wide range of qualitative research to look at how disabled children have been cared for, treated and categorised. Narrative and longitudinal interviews with children and their families, along with stories and images they have produced and notes from observations of different spaces in their lives - medical consultation rooms, cafes and leisure centres, homes, classrooms and playgrounds amongst others - all make a contribution. Bringing this wealth of empirical data together with conceptual ideas from disability studies, sociology of the body, childhood studies, symbolic interactionism and feminist critical theory, the authors explore the multiple ways in which monitoring occurs within childhood disability and its social effects. Their discussion includes examining the dynamics of differentiation via medicine, social interaction, and embodiment and the multiple actors - including children and young people themselves - involved. The book also investigates the practices that differentiate children into different categories and what this means for notions of normality, integration, belonging and citizenship. Scrutinising the multiple forms of monitoring around disabled children and the consequences they generate for how we think about childhood and what is 'normal', this volume sits at the intersection of disability studies and childhood studies.

This volume asks, what is it like to be a child in a country where 25% of the population is under the age of 14? Handling this question through a multidisciplinary lens, the book provides a rich and diverse analysis of different portrayals of childhood in Turkey. From children's rights to transformation of childhood, from refugee children to host country children living in armed conflict areas, from cultural factors to gene-environment interaction, from parent-focused to child-focused programs, readers will find in-depth and up-to-date information about children living in Turkey from the perspectives of sociology, education, and psychology sciences.

In acquiring communicative competence, children must learn to speak not only grammatically but also appropriately. Although rules for appropriate language use may vary from culture to culture, they are usually sensitive across languages to many of the same factors, including the context and the topic of the discourse, and the sex, age, familiarity and relative status of the speaker and the listener. There is available detailed evidence of the ways in which adults consistently modify their speech to foreigners, of phonological, syntactic, and lexical markings of language in professional settings, and of differences in men's and women's speech that are tied to their roles in society. This book examines young children's knowledge of the sociolinguistic rules that govern appropriate language use, exploring (i) the repertoire of registers (ie speech varieties) that young children possess; (ii) the linguistic devices that they use to mark distinct registers; (iii) the way their skill in using these registers develops.

This scholarly yet highly readable and practical text systematically covers the importance, development, assessment, and treatment of social skills of children and adolescents. Combining scientific rigor with a highly approachable and readable style of writing to create a practical and unique book, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the increasingly important topic of child and adolescent social skills. A wide variety of tables, figures, and practical step-by-step guides enhance the material presented, making it particularly useful for practitioners while offering an extensive array of recent research and models of interest to researchers. The authors present a solid foundation of scientific knowledge written in a manner accessible to nonscientists and having ample practical implications and examples for educational and clinical practice. The book is divided into two parts--the first features a foundation for conceptualizing and assessing child and adolescent social skills, whereas the second focuses on the arena of intervention. An up-to-date and unique addition to the literature, this volume will be of interest to professionals who work with or study children across several disciplines including school and clinical child psychology, special education, counseling, and social work. Although many books and other professional materials on the social competence of children and adolescents are presently available, the knowledge regarding these social skills is expanding rapidly, and there is a tremendous need to keep it current. This book helps meet this need by not only synthesizing a great deal of recent work in the field, but also by providing new information and evidence that has not yet been published. It also bridges an important gap that sometimes exists between research and practice. For instance, some books on child and adolescent social skills are clearly written for the academician or researcher, and may have little apparent application for the clinician or practitioner. Other materials are written as practical assessment or intervention guides for the clinician/practitioner, yet sometimes lack supporting evidence and rationale. This book is aimed at both arenas.

This book is unique in exploring the process of conducting short-term intensive group play therapy and the subsequent results. It focuses on play therapy with special populations of aggressive acting-out children, autistic children, chronically ill children, traumatized children, selective mute children, disassociative identity disorder adults with child alters, and the elderly. The book addresses such vital issues as: * How play therapy helps children * Confidentiality in working with children * How to work with parents * What the play therapist needs to know about medications for children The difficult dimension of diagnosis is clarified through specific descriptions of how the play therapist can use play behaviors to diagnose physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional maladjustment in children.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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.

Research continues to uncover early childhood as a crucial time when we set the stage for who we will become. In the last decade, we have also seen a sudden massive shift in America's racial makeup with the majority of the current under-5 age population being children of color. Asian and multiracial are the fastest growing self-identified groups in the United States. More than 2 million people indicated being mixed race Asian on the 2010 Census. Yet, young multiracial Asian children are vastly underrepresented in the literature on racial identity. Why? And what are these children learning about themselves in an era that tries to be ahistorical, believes the race problem has been "solved," and that mixed race people are proof of it? This book is drawn from extensive research and interviews with sixty-eight parents of multiracial children. It is the first to examine the complex task of supporting our youngest around being "two or more races" and Asian while living amongst "post-racial" ideologies.

The second volume of Priscilla Alderson's popular and renowned book Childhoods Real and Imagined relates dialectical critical realism to childhood. By demonstrating their relevance and value to each other, Alderson presents a practical introductory guide for applying critical realism to research about children and young people. Each chapter summarises key themes from several academic disciplines and policy areas, ranging from climate change and social justice between generations, to neoliberalism, social reform and imagining utopias. Children's and adults' views and experiences are reviewed, and whereas the first volume deals with more personal and local aspects of childhood, this volume widens the scope into debates about global politics, which so seldom mention children. Each chapter demonstrates how children and young people are an integral part of the whole of society and are often especially affected by policies and events. This book is written for everyone who is researching, studying or teaching about childhood, or who cares for and works with children and young people, as well as those interested in critical realist approaches.

This book presents different perspectives of childhood. With contributors from across the globe there are examples of local childhoods from different national contexts including America, Australia, Finland, Hong-Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Norway and Sweden. Each chapter presents a different focus on early childhood showing the diversity and complexity across multiple countries. Issues emerge around multi-language development, nationalism and multiculturalism. Across the chapters, concepts around cultural theories of every-day life also show the ways in which practices of and in relation to children function to produce childhood as an artefact, fiction and instrument. It helps readers to develop an understanding of how changing perspectives on children and childhood and identity are expressed among children, families and educators in and outside educational environments. It brings together active researchers in the field of global childhoods to sustain and develop our community of research and scholarship, promoting internationalization through global childhoods as a way of cultural diversity and acceptance. The book reflects on early childhood before and leading up to Covid-19. The editors were able to create a historical snapshot of early childhood pre-Covid from several countries. The pandemic has demanded major changes around learning, agency, voice and lived experience for children around the world. In some countries there are children in lockdown, without access to learning and who have ceased to be recognised as a child. In other countries life has continued with social distancing and masks in educational spaces. It will be a useful resource for students and academics in early childhood education and education studies more generally, as well as practitioners and educators.

Experiencing fear in front of the screen is a common phenomenon in childhood, and a focus of public concern. Yet, research has encountered ethical and methodological challenges and has focused largely on the effects of watching disturbing news. In this innovative book, this universal experience is investigated in depth via two complementary studies: 1) a retrospective study of experiences related by 626 undergraduate students from eight countries; and 2) a study of the current nightmares induced by watching television of 510 children in five countries. The results presented in this book highlight the most common elements of fear in front of the screen more generally, followed by a focused analysis of the unique features of fear that characterize different developmental stages: pre-school, middle childhood, pre-teens and teenagers. The rich descriptions distinguish between the negative experiences of fear versus the positive experiences of thrill, and explores gender and cultural differences. Finally, the book offers implications for media producers and policy makers as well as for parents and educators.

With statutory CAMHS services often heavily oversubscribed, and school and college services mainly offering brief therapeutic interventions, parents are increasingly turning to private practitioners for therapy for their children when they need expert emotional or psychological support. Working privately with children and families can be a rewarding experience for counsellors and psychotherapists but it can also be fraught with concerns for both practitioners and families alike. These concerns can seem so daunting that therapists with clinical experience of therapy with children continue to limit themselves to working only in education or statutory settings. This book offers comprehensive guidance to both experienced and novice counsellors to assist them in the process of setting up or adapting their private practice to include children and young people. It coherently and systematically addresses the obstacles which stand in the way of practitioners offering this important service effectively and ethically.The book is divided into four parts and uses case material to bring to life the areas covered by each chapter. Each chapter concludes with a summary of key points covered.

The volumes in this series illustrate how social organization and private, emotional experience are different phases of the social process. They show the steps by which emotional experience is shaped by social structural, macro-level processes and how these processes are changed by experience.

Help your little one learn all the key life skills that they need with this new series of books all about preparing little ones for school. There's so much to remember when it comes to staying safe - from knowing who to talk to if you feel upset, to remembering to put your seatbelt on and how to cross the road safely, and a whole bunch of other things too. But don't panic! This first experiences book for children is a great way to encourage independence and responsibility. This delightful early learning book is perfect for kids aged 3-5 years old. It helps: - Children learn lots of important personal, social, and emotional skills - Encourage children to put their new skills into practice, and try out what they are learning in the real world - A fun and interactive way for parents to introduce children to a new routine - Presented in a highly visual way with bright and attractive illustrations to keep kids entertained and interested No matter what grown-ups tell you, being little is hard work, there's so much to learn! This amusing board book is here to guide little ones along the way by teaching them the skills needed to look after themselves and keep safe - on the road, online, and around strangers. This is How We... Stay Safe is one of four books about starting school for preschoolers! These board books explain key concepts and life skills to children. Look out for This is How We... Get Ready, Eat Well, and Make Friends to help your little ones grow confident to move about in the wider world.

Childhood is not only a biological age, it is also a social construct. The essays in this collection range chronologically from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, and geographically across England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. They chart the depictions of children in various media including painting, sculpture and the graphic arts.

While at first glance it may seem strange that so many films portray children as monstrous characters, the essays in this collection begin by recognizing the pervasive popularity, and the wide variety, of such characterizations. Perhaps because of the wisdom received from our Romantic forebears about the purity of the child, fictional imaginings of children as monsters exercise a tremendous fascination for film audiences, and have for several decades. These opposing, and yet co-dependent, tendencies are reflected in the modern connotations of the phrases child-like (innocent) and childish (selfish, perhaps even evil.) Yet unlike most previous scholarly work on this cultural phenomenon, the essays in this collection do not remain arrested by this reductive binary, but strive to unearth the many possibilities, meanings and forms that are hidden by the two-faced mask our imaginings of children all too often wear.