Julia Brannen, Margaret O'Brien

The postmodern child, Chris Jenks; the politics of children's rights, Jeremy Roche; strategies and structures - towards a new perspective on children's experiences of family life, Allison James and Alan Prout; the challenge in child research - from being to doing, Anne Solberg; demographic change and the family situation of children, Lynda Clarke; children's constructions of family and kinship, Margaret O'Brien, Pam Alldred and Deborah Jones; helping out - children's labour participation in Chinese take-away businesses in Britain, Miri Song; discourses of adolescence - young people's independence and autonomy within families, Julia Brannen; conceptualising parenting from the standpoint of children - relationship and transition in the life course, Pat Allatt; the economic circumstances of children in ten countries, Steven Kennedy, Peter Whiteford and Jonathan Bradshaw; family, state and social policy for children in Greece, Theodoros Papadopoulos; the crumbling bridges between childhood and adulthood, Hilary Land; teenage pregnancy - do social policies make a difference?, Peter Selman and Caroline Glendinning.

Much academic work on families and households has focused in the past on the adult members. However, a surge of interest in children's issues has occurred recently in the social sciences. A key theoretical assumption in this area of research is that children's relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right and that children play an active part in the construction of these cultures and relationships.; This work provides perspectives on children in their family contexts. It shows that children's needs and wishes have often been neglected in the social sciences, especially in the areas of law, social policy and sociology. The authors present empirical research on children and young people in contemporary family settings and offer theoretical insights which challenge existing thinking on modern childhood. They draw on international comparisons between the condition of childhood and children's welfare, putting forward an argument for future research and policy initiatives needing to concentrate on, and even privilege, children.