Policies and practices around school work, operating within and beyond the family, are fundamentally rooted in and perpetuate a particular generational order. Working from a temporal perspective this article focuses on "school work" in order to demonstrate how time operates across spheres as a key means of constructing generation, making…

Research shows that members of transnational families sustain meaningful relationships despite the physical boundaries that separate them. At the same time, distance creates many stresses and strains that disrupt family life. In this article, the authors take a child-centered approach to explore how the migration of different family members…

This article explores the experiences of "home" for British-born Bangladeshi children who are active members of transnational families. The article illustrates that these children, who are mobile between Sylhet and London, play an active role in maintaining transnational linkages. The article critiques the omission of children's…

Among the Maasai of southern Kenya, child circulation in the form of adoption is widespread. It persists despite increased family nuclearization and pervasive sedentarizing discourses depicting "modern" family life as small, settled and nuclear. Through the perspectives and experiences of 10 families having undergone adoption, this…

This article builds on sociological accounts of the negotiated, creative character of kinship and on previous studies of children's involvement in family life to ask how children actively create and define kinship and relatedness. Drawing on data from a qualitative study with children aged 7-12 in the north of England, the authors identify five…

This article examines territorial negotiations concerning gaming, drawing on video recordings of gaming practices in middle-class families. It explores how private vs public gaming space was co-construed by children and parents in front of the screen as well as through conversations about games. Game equipment was generally located in public…

This article draws upon new analysis from a qualitative study of four-generation English families. It takes a historical generational perspective and explores perspectives on the childhoods of three generations of women. The article also offers a number of theoretical and methodological reflections upon the interpretation of life stories: the need…

This article presents an analysis of the family context and everyday negotiations around risk, safety and danger between children and parents in four families drawn from a larger qualitative study. The challenges of analysing accounts from several family members are highlighted. Case study families are described; and fragments of their interwoven…

Analyzed narratives about future family life and themselves as fathers written by 13- to 14-year-old boys in suburban and rural Swedish communities to examine adolescent construction of self-identity. Found that their writing connected to fellowship, equality, and knowledge transmission. The father role in the narratives gave boys access to adult…

In this ethnographic study of family life, intergenerational video and computer game activities were videotaped and analysed. Both children and adults invoked the notion of a digital divide, i.e. a generation gap between those who master and do not master digital technology. It is argued that the digital divide was exploited by the children to…

Examined role of social class in shaping contours of U.S. white and African American childhoods. Found that middle-class 7- to 10-year-old boys spent time in adult-organized activities stressing public performance and skill development, similar to their school activities, and paralleling the nature of their parents' work. Found working-class…

Argues that beyond explanations predicated on psychological ideas of separation and attachment, "nervios," a depression-like disorder among children in the southern Ecuadorian Andes, reflects the limits of children's abilities to accept terms of family life increasingly defined through transnational migration and new consumption…

Used data from the National Child Development Study of Great Britain to examine the sex education lessons reported at age 16 and subjects' report of teenage motherhood at age 23. Results showed that sex education may be associated with teenage motherhood positively or negatively, depending on the topic and the individual's marital status when she…

Investigated interactions between Travellers (historically known as Gypsies or Tinkers) and school policy toward such children in Europe. Reviews the mismatch between Traveller cultures and their schooling experience. Notes that schools ignore and devalue the children's home learning of interdependence and independence and offer only learned…

Discusses life paths of children and their families in cities in the Philippines, India, Brazil, Kenya, and Italy, providing an analysis of the multiple, overlapping crises that lead them to distress. Their life histories illustrate their resilience, but also illustrate how the quality of their relationships to meaningful adults is being…