A new edition of this popular companion to childhood studies. The first edition was adopted heavily in both education and sociology departments, and the authors have made a timely, well-written update.

Drawing on children's narratives about their everyday life this book explores how children come to understand the process of socialization at home, at school and in the neighbourhood as an embodied and biographical experience.

This text provides a critical analysis of the social construction of childhood and children's agency. Through an interdisciplinary synthesis combining social theory, social policy and the empirical findings of social science research, it bridges the current gap between theory and practice, offering an incisive theoretical account of childhood that is grounded in substantive areas of children's lives such as health, education, crime and the family. This furthers understanding of the impact of policy on children's everyday lives and social experiences.

First published in 1990, this second edition of the text has been revised and updated. It contains a collection of articles which draw on a variety of disciplines (history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and feminist and developmental studies) to show how childhood is constructed in society.