This book brings together case studies from a wide range of societies with varying social expectations in order to examine childhood and how this stage in life differs from adulthood, for example in terms of work and status.

Childhood is increasingly saturated by technology: from television to the Internet, video games to 'video nasties', camcorders to personal computers. Children, Technology and Culture looks at the interplay of children and technology which poses critical questions for how we understand the nature of childhood in late modern society. This collection brings together researchers from a range of disciplines to address the following four aspects of this relationship between children and technology:
*children's access to technologies and the implications for social relationships
*the...

Hidden Hands focuses on a specific and neglected area of contemporary child welfare; that of children's paid work and labour. This book provides the first cross-cultural examination of children's productive activities, their relationship to children's broader social lives, and their implications for the child's education, welfare and well-being. The contributors look at the situation both here and overseas. They discuss issues including conflicts between schooling, education and work in the UK, child poverty, motivating children to work, children from ethnic minorities, the work and...

In this ground-breaking book, Alan Prout discusses the place of children and childhood in modern society. He critically examines 'the new social studies of childhood', reconsidering some of its key assumptions and positions and arguing that childhood is heterogeneous and complex. The study of childhood requires a broad set of intellectual resources and an interdisciplinary approach. Chapters include:

• the changing social and cultural character of contemporary childhood and the weakening boundary between adulthood and childhood
• a look back at the emergence of childhood...

This work provides a forum for presenting and reflecting on new concepts and findings from research projects on children and urban space, in particular from the ESRC Children 5-16 Research Programme.

Hearing the Voices of Children provides a fresh perspective on social policy. At the heart of the book is the emergence of 'children's voices' and the implications of this for social policy. The authors argue that children's voices should be heard much more strongly in the process of policy formation at all levels. Although there is growing support for this idea, it is not without opposition, and the authors themselves make many critical points about the current attempts to put it into practice.
The book is divided into four main themes: hearing children's voices; discourses of...