The editors of the Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies, which was published in 2009, note that sociology and anthropology are ‘the two most obvious forerunners in the interdisciplinary social studies of childhood’. This chapter examines the political uses of the term childhood agency and diversity. Disagreement with the perceived principles and methods of child and developmental psychology was one of the main motivations for the emergence of the new paradigm for the study of childhood, labelled childhood studies. In the years when the new paradigm of childhood was coming into being, its novel perspectives were highlighted by pitching them against the perceived prescriptions of child psychology and child development. To understand the sociological meaning of agency it is necessary to understand the long-standing tension in sociological theory between theories that emphasise ‘agency’ and those that emphasise ‘structure’ as explanatory concepts in shaping social processes.