ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book is about a group of seven hundred children as they reach their fourth birthdays in the English Midland city of Nottingham. It discusses the social and material context of their lives: the streets and street-friendships, backyards and neighbours, homes and families, which make up the kaleidoscope of their everyday environment. Numerous attempts have been made in the past to show that specific practices in child upbringing are responsible for specific consequences in the adult personality, either individual or collective. The book explains the emotional tie which forms the core of each child's experience-his relationship with his parents; and in particular, since he is only four years old. It describes the behaviours and emotions which are generated between the child and that person with whom he spends the greater part of his waking life-his mother.
