ABSTRACT
Childhood and youth studies is an interdisciplinary field, drawing upon sociology, legal studies, anthropology, history, psychology and many others. It has explored the social meanings given to childhood, the influence of wider social, cultural, political and economic factors on these meanings and the impacts that different understandings have on children’s and young people’s lives. Thinking about the personhood of the unborn emphasises the fluidity, complexity and diversity of ideas around the very youngest and their relationships to others. A further example of this comes in anthropological accounts of ‘spirit children’ who stretch the category of ‘the unborn’ to the furthest extreme. Children are born as embodied beings which develop, grow and change throughout life, and this biological and bodily development occurs from conception. In the UK, birth is the moment when a child becomes an official, legal person with rights—but this is controversial and by no means universal.
