ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book intends to show that the opposite is the case. Parents in Britain are obviously as much concerned with children and childhood as ever, as are educators and childcare workers; the arts continue to imagine childhood and politics keep regulating it. It articulates predicament: while some chapters refer to the ‘contemporary’ as the period after 1945, others focus on more recent developments in the 2010s or draw entirely different lines. The book links up with interdisciplinary Childhood Studies. It attempts to remedy the fact that although many disciplines constitute Childhood Studies, actual multidisciplinary cooperation is still the exception rather than the rule. The book contains a chapter that reaches into the 2000s. It is concerned with the social and political transitions of childhood under the New Right, whereas the follow-up also contains one contribution concerned with children’s literature.
