Contributing to recent work in the critical sociology of childhood, this article presents an ethnographic and discursive analysis of the multitude of cultural meanings associated with "child-centeredness" in US American early childhood education. Specifically, the article focuses on Waldorf education, a private educational alternative…

This article explores how conceptions of responsible parenting are re-negotiated in present-day Singapore. It discusses how policy changes in the pre-school area have affected parental practices and notions of morally worthy parenting. Pre-school reform promoting children's holistic development and less intensive parenting is part of a wider…

Sylvia Wynter's wide-ranging intellectual contributions contain a poetics of being and becoming human that serve to counter the hegemony of developmental psychology and its articulation of the child in teacher education. In this article, I use Wynter's insights to unsettle the universality of this child figure to reveal the child of Man, a…

The definition of poverty in developed nations is "lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods, hunger… lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness… unsafe environments; and social discrimination and exclusion" (Raphael, 2013, p. 5). Tenets…

This paper re-examines the purposes of a planned and intentional parenting style--"concerted cultivation"--for different middle-class groups, highlighting that social class fraction, ethnicity, and also individual family disposition, guides understandings of the purposes of enrolling children in particular enrichment activities. We…

In this essay, it is argued that a general understanding of human development needs a unified framework based on evolutionary theorizing and cross-cultural and cultural anthropological approaches. An eco-social model of development has been proposed that defines cultural milieus as adaptations to specific socio-demographic contexts. Ontogenetic…

Americans are struggling through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. In recent years, a significant body of research and analysis has documented the breakdown of the middle class and the impact of the current financial crisis on family income, housing, and jobs. But few reports have examined these impacts through the lens of…

This article examines how American middle-class children learn and acquire culturally appropriate emotions and sentiments, focusing especially on children's experiences. By analysing children's emotional worlds as well as adult socialization practices, the article shows that children actively reinterpret, reconstruct and reformulate various…

Children in middle class Australia, and many western countries around the world experience restricted opportunities to engage in free play in their neighbourhood streets and parks. The impact of this has been a drastic decrease in children's independent mobility and environmental play. Recent research has focused on the physical environment of…

Children's socialization environments reflect cultural models of parenting. In particular, Euro-American and Chinese families have been described as following different socialization scripts. The present study assesses parenting behaviors as well as parenting ethnotheories with respect to three-month-old babies in middle-class families in Los…