ABSTRACT
As we move towards the new millennium public commentary, social scientific thinking and policy prescriptions continually refer to childhood as a period of physical insecurity and moral ambiguity. The alleged rise in child abuse, the coupling of childhood with crime and disorder and the notion of children’s rights are taken as evidence of a failure of adult society to define clearly the moral and social boundaries between themselves and children. In short, there is talk of a crisis of childhood. In this book I argue that that crisis is based on the misplaced idea that childhood is inferior to adulthood. Inferiority here refers to children’s imputed inabilities to assume the full range of roles and responsibilities demanded of adults in society. Children’s general lack of development in social, moral and emotional terms means that their interests and welfare are determined by their adult counterparts. In other words, what is in crisis is a particular understanding of childhood, a recurring set of dominant ideas within political and academic domains that draws a generational boundary between adults and children, in the process restricting children to subordinate and protected social roles.
