Global Childhoods: Issues and Debates [Paperback]

An exciting and engagingly written book. The case studies are intriguing and the discussion of previous theories impeccable.
- Dr. Heather Montgomery, The Open University

What is a child? Kate Cregan and Denise Cuthbert begin this path-breaking and compelling work with a deceptively simple question. From this seemingly straightforward formulation, they unravel, interrogate and engage with some of the most pressing issues related to children in the early 21st century... This book is an absolute must for scholars in all the fields of childhood studies.
- Professor Joy Damousi, University of Melbourne

Global Childhoods draws on the authors’ interdisciplinary backgrounds and original research in the fields of embodiment, theorisations of childhood, children's policy, child placement and adoption, and family formation. The book critically demonstrates how following from the modern construction of childhood which emerged unevenly from the late eighteenth century,  the twentieth century saw the emergence of the conception of the normative global child, a figure finally enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The book offers a wide-ranging critical analysis of approaches to children and childhood across the social sciences. Through stimulating case studies which include the experiences of child soldiers, orphans, forced child migrants, and children and biomedicine, Cregan and Cuthbert critically test the notion of the ‘global child’ against the lived experiences of children around lӟ