ABSTRACT
Children’s vulnerability made them susceptible to harm, even within the haven of family life. Thus, the sentimental perspective made it easy to link children with social problems. By the eighteenth—certainly by the nineteenth—century, the meaning of childhood had been redefined: Childhood became sentimentalized. The distinction between objectivist and subjectivist stances also characterizes sociologists’ discussions of social problems. Conceptions of social problems involving children, then, reflect a society’s definitions of both childhood and social problems. Virtually all nineteenth- and twentieth-century child-saving movements derived their rhetoric from the modern sentimental conception of childhood. Claims about social problems and children tend to depict children in particular ways, and different sorts of claims tend to come from particular categories of claimsmakers. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a children in societal crises; pregnancy and infancy; families and children; schools and children; and children’s perspectives on social problems.
