ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book has explored the idea that certain images, ways of understanding music in children's lives, and the images of musical childhoods that lie beneath need to be revealed. It also explores certain key themes broadly encapsulated in the idea of contemporary children's lives, the new technologies; the return to essentialist ideas of gender and the new configurations of family life. The book shows how adults regulate children's musicality by holding rigidly to conservative methods; by turning music into a commodified, for-profit product or into an intervention for selected children and mothers. It employs critical approaches, digging around and challenging, at times confronting where the idealisation of young children and our own invested emotions may be clouding our view and judgement. The book expands the theoretical lens through which we view musical childhoods and to propose an interdisciplinary approach.
