Explores social and cultural understandings of the current situation of boys and girls in different parts of the world. The report provides an overview of how children and childhood have been perceived in Western history, a cross-cultural description of how infants are categorized and how children are educated, and discussion of children’s interpretation of phenomena such as globalization and migration. Chapters address such topics as historical perspectives on childhood, work, and education; naming as a criterion for personhood and social membership; implications of being an outsider; physical and intellectual growth of children; foster, adopted, and “street” children; work as exploitation; formal education of children, with examples from Africa, Bangladesh, France, India, Japan, and the United States; children’s experiences of restructured economic life, diffusion of information and technology, population movements, and changing nation-states; children as consumers of beauty products and media images; children as migrants; children involved in war; and interpretation and implementation of the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child.
