This timely and thought-provoking book explores how social and family change are colouring the experience of childhood. The book is centred around three major changes: parental employment, family composition and ideology. The authors demonstrate how children's families are transformed in accordance with societal changes in demographic and economic terms, and as a result of the choices parents make in response to these changes. Despite claims that society is becoming increasingly child-centred, this book argues that children still have little influence over the major changes in their lives.
This book breaks new ground by researching family change from the child's point of view. Through combinations from childhood experts in Scandinavia, the UK and America, the book shows the importance of studying children's lives in families in order to understand how far children are active agents in contemporary society.
Students of childhood studies, sociology, social work and education will find this book essential reading. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the social, child and youth services.

This timely and thought-provoking book explores how social and family change are colouring the experience of childhood. The book is centred around three major changes: parental employment, family composition and ideology. The authors demonstrate how children's families are transformed in accordance with societal changes in demographic and economic terms, and as a result of the choices parents make in response to these changes. Despite claims that society is becoming increasingly child-centred, this book argues that children still have little influence over the major changes in their lives.
This book breaks new ground by researching family change from the child's point of view. Through combinations from childhood experts in Scandinavia, the UK and America, the book shows the importance of studying children's lives in families in order to understand how far children are active agents in contemporary society.
Students of childhood studies, sociology, social work and education will find this book essential reading. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the social, child and youth services.

Low fertility in Europe has given rise to the notion of a 'fertility crisis'. This book shifts the attention from fertility decline to why people do have children, asking what children mean to them. It investigates what role children play in how young adults plan their lives, and why and how young adults make the choices they do. The book aims to expand our comprehension of the complex structures and cultures that influence reproductive choice, and explores three key aspects of fertility choices: the processes towards having (or not having) children, and how they are underpinned by negotiations and ambivalences how family policies, labour markets and personal relations interact in young adults' fertility choices social differentiation in fertility choice: how fertility rationales and reasoning may differ among women and men, and across social classes Based on empirical studies from six nations - France, Scandinavia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Italy (representing the high and low end of European variation in fertility rates) - the book shows how different economic, political and cultural contexts interact in young adults' fertility rationales. It will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, demography and gender studies.

In this book, distinguished demographers consider whether recent changes in women's roles are the cause of such changes in family life as rising divorce rates and declining marriage rates, increases in out-of-wedlock childbearing, and a growing disconnection between the lives of men and children. The discussion covers over twenty countries, including the USA, the countries of western Europe, and Japan.