ABSTRACT
As Melson observes, a critical analysis of children's relationships with nonhuman animals has neglected in the study of children and childhood, which author argued is untenable given the ubiquity of children's interactions with other animals as well as the ubiquity of cultural representations of other animals in children's culture. In order to facilitate the analyses of those interactions and representations that this chapter introduces some of the ways in which scholars have addressed the early years of human life. It begins with a discussion of how childhood has been recognized as a cultural construct, beyond simply a physiological pre-adult stage of development. The chapter discusses social science research on children and childhood that highlights the emergence of socialization sites relevant to the empirical analyses. It concludes by asserting the indissociability of children and other animals for a full sociological account of the construction of each, in the context of the emergence and trajectory of modern Western societies.
