Children's spaces are widening culturally and socially. Socially, children s spaces are more often multilocal. Culturally, they are enlarged through mobility in the globalized and virtual spaces in the media-saturated world. Children's times are also less confined by strict borderlines. The more flexible and individualized use of time in the world of work impacts on children's lives in families, day care, and school. The chapters of this volume each present particular temporal and spatial aspects of social change in childhood. The book is directed toward considering the impact of such change on children's welfare. As former boundaries between generations begin to blur and neo-liberal forces enter all realms of people's lives, it can no longer be taken for granted as it was in former periods of modernity that continued efforts to realize the childhood project will automatically guarantee the "best interest of the child." With respect to children's welfare in time and space, Flexible Childhood? discusses tensions between demands from the market economy, dynamics of rationalization and technology, and visions of a "good" childhood. Together with the above companion volume Childhood, Generational Order and the Welfare State, also by the University Press of Southern Denmark this book is the final result of COST Action A19, Children's Welfare, which has been supported by the European COST Framework.

Das Buch gibt einen Uberblick uber die jungste Entwicklung der Kindheitssoziologie. Es fuhrt ein in die Konzepte der neueren soziologischen Kindheitsforschung, diskutiert die gesellschaftliche Positionierung von Kindern und den gegenwartigen Wandel von Kindheit. Reprasentanten der neuen Forschungsrichtungen aus Danemark, Finnland, Grossbritannien, Italien, den Niederlanden, Norwegen, Osterreich und der Bundesrepublik stellen exemplarisch sozialstrukturelle, kulturanalytische und konstruktivistische Perspektiven der Kindheitsforschung vor. In allen Beitragen wird Kindheit als Ausdruck eines konkret-gesellschaftlichen Generationenverhaltnisses diskutiert. Das Themenspektrum reicht von der generationalen Arbeitsteilung uber den Mediengebrauch und die alltagliche Lebensfuhrung, Peer- und Familienbeziehungen bis zur Neuorganisation von Lernformen.

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