Childhood is a uniquely human life-stage, and is both a biological phenomenon and a social construct. Research on children is currently of wide-ranging interest. This groundbreaking book presents reviews of childhood from four major areas of interest--human evolution, sociology/social anthropology, biomedical anthropology and developmental psychology--to form a biosocial, cross-cultural understanding of childhood. The book places a strong emphasis on how childhood varies from culture to culture, offering examples from developed and developing countries, as well as from other animal species....