ABSTRACT
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. W.B.Yeats, ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ (1899)
This book is not about childhood, but about perspectives of childhood and children. As explained in the introduction, such is the nature of childhood that its study cannot be confined within one academic discipline. It must draw on such areas of study as are felt to be appropriate, and these might include, in large or small degree: anthropology, art, computing, education, history, literature, medicine, philosophy, physiology, psychology, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, sociology, statistics, or theology.
