Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies

Abstract

The scholarly study of children and young people spans multiple epistemologies and methodologies. Childhood Studies encompasses the meanings that adults place on children’s innocence or competence and interrogates the notion of childhood as a social category. How adults have thought about children and the impact that this has had on the ways children are treated are also analyzed critically, and great emphasis is placed on historical, cultural, and literary interpretations of childhood. Contemporary Childhood Studies is also characterized by its insistence on the need for children themselves to be understood as the best informants of their own lives. Scholars therefore look at children’s own cultures, meanings, and the ways in which they attempt to change their lives and the lives of adults around them. Whereas once children might have been seen as passive, dependent or incomplete, they are now seen by scholars as equal participants in society, differently competent to adults, but of interest for what they are now, not only what they will become. Children’s rights, and the changing relationship between parents and children, therefore, are central to the field.

Childhood Studies is international and cross-cultural in scope, transcending narrow geographical confines and analyzing modern and historical childhoods both locally and globally. Researchers and practitioners at all levels need tools that help them filter through the proliferation of information sources to material that is reliable and directly relevant to their inquiries. Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies offers a trustworthy pathway through the thicket of information overload.