The Future of Childhood: Towards the Interdisciplinary Study of Children

Alan Prout discusses the place of children and childhood in the late modernity. He argues that as the general social and economic climate has been increasingly dominated by uncertainty, so there appears to be a greater cultural confusion about the appropriate form that childhood should take. There is an increasing tendancy to see children as individuals with rights however there are also calls for, and measures to implement, the greater surveillance, control and regulation of children. This volume addresses this issue. It shows that the social, economic and technological uncertainties, and the pace of change in the late modernity, have brought child-adult relationships to the point of crisis. Alan Prout discusses: order and disorder in generational relationships; the wellbeing of children in industrialized countries; the dependence, independence and interdependence of children in society; the need for balancing concern for the future wellbeing of children with their current wellbeing; inclusion and participation of young people in decision making; and the future of childhood based on research and social trends.