Welcome to your Making Children: The Social Constructions of Childhood reading list. Here you will find the resources to support you throughout your module.
Essential Reading
Disabled Children by Borsay, A., Dale, P.This volume of essays attempts to identify the shared experiences of disabled children and examine the key debates about their care and control. The essays follow a chronological progression while focusing on the practices in a number of different countries.
Childhood in Question by Fletcher, A., Hussey, S.Childhood in Question explores the historical development, from the 1600s to the 1960s, of childhood experience. Drawing on artifacts as diverse as state papers, legal records, diaries, letters and oral sources, the authors probe a series of key issues: the definition of "the child" and the formation of identity; the emotional world of childhood; the changing attitudes of the state to family intimacy and parent-child relations; the sexuality of children; children and authority; and children and crime.
Call Number: 305.230941 FLE
ISBN: 0719053943
Publication Date: 1999
Juvenile Nation by Olsen, S.In the first five months of the Great War, one million men volunteered to fight. Yet by the end of 1915, the British government realized that conscription would be required. Why did so many enlist, and conversely, why so few? Focusing on analyses of widely felt emotions related to moral and domestic duty, Juvenile Nation broaches these questions in new ways.Juvenile Nation examines how religious and secular youth groups, the juvenile periodical press, and a burgeoning new group of child psychologists, social workers and other 'experts' affected society's perception of a new problem character, the 'adolescent'. By what means should this character be turned into a 'fit' citizen? Considering qualities such as loyalty, character, temperance, manliness, fatherhood, and piety, Stephanie Olsen discusses the idea of an 'informal education', focused on building character through emotional control, and how this education was seen as key to shaping the future citizenry of Britain and the Empire.Juvenile Nation recasts the militarism of the 1880s onwards as part of an emotional outpouring based on association to family, to community and to Christian cultural continuity. Significantly, the same emotional responses explain why so many men turned away from active militarism, with duty to family and community perhaps thought to have been best carried out at home. By linking the historical study of the emotions with an examination of the individual's place in society, Olsen provides an important new insight on how a generation of young men was formed.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781472510099
Publication Date: 2014
Child Guidance in Britain, 1918-1955 by Stewart, J.Stewart presents a history of child guidance in Britain from its origins in the years after the First World War until the consolidation of the welfare state. This is the first study of child guidance in this period and makes a significant contribution to the historiography.
Being Boys by Tebbutt, M., Sharpe, P., Summerfield, P., Abrams, L., Beattie, C.This original and fresh approach to the emotions of adolescence focuses on the leisure lives of working-class boys and young men in the inter-war years. Being Boys challenges many stereotypes about their behaviour. It offers new perspectives on familiar and important themes in interwar social and cultural history, ranging from the cinema and mass consumption to boys' clubs, personal advice pages, street cultures, dancing, sexuality, mobility and the body. It draws on many autobiographies and personal accounts and is particularly distinctive in offering an unusual insight into working-class adolescence through the teenage diaries of the author's father, which are interwoven with the book's broader analysis of contemporary leisure developments. Being Boys will be of interest to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences and is also relevant to those teaching and studying in the fields of child development, education, and youth and community studies.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781526130730
Publication Date: 2017
Worth Saving by Wheatcroft, S., Anderson, J., Schalick, W.Early in the war, when faced with an acute shortage of accommodation for evacuees, a government official questioned whether disabled children were 'worth saving'. This book examines how the evacuation in England was planned, executed and evaluated for children with various disabilities (including the 'excluded') and explores how this wartime experience influenced public and professional attitudes towards the children long after the war had ended. Through the use of official documents, newspapers and personal testimony, the book illustrates both positive and negative experiences of the government evacuation scheme, and shows the impact of the attitudes held by the authorities, the general public, and the teaching and nursing staff. It demonstrates how wartime conditions changed special education, both during and after the war, and will appeal to social and medical historians, as well as those studying childhood, the voluntary sector and social policy.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781526103352
Publication Date: 2015
Recommended Reading
Bad Girls in Britain by Cox, P., Campling, J.The first major study of the history of British "bad girls," this book uses a wide range of professional, popular and personal texts to explore the experiences of girls in the twentieth century juvenile justice system, examine the processes leading to their definition as delinquent, defective or neglected, and analyses possibilities for reform.
Children's Literature and Culture of the First World War by Paul, L., Johnston, R. R., Short. E.Because all wars in the twenty-first century are potentially global wars, the centenary of the first global war is the occasion for reflection. This volume offers an unprecedented account of the lives, stories, letters, games, schools, institutions (such as the Boy Scouts and YMCA), and toys of children in Europe, North America, and the Global South during the First World War and surrounding years. By engaging with developments in Children's Literature, War Studies, and Education, and mining newly available archival resources (including letters written by children), the contributors to this volume demonstrate how perceptions of childhood changed in the period. Children who had been constructed as Romantic innocents playing safely in secure gardens were transformed into socially responsible children actively committing themselves to the war effort. In order to foreground cross-cultural connections across what had been perceived as 'enemy' lines, perspectives on German, American, British, Australian, and Canadian children's literature and culture are situated so that they work in conversation with each other. The multidisciplinary, multinational range of contributors to this volume make it distinctive and a particularly valuable contribution to emerging studies on the impact of war on the lives of children. and Canadian children's literature and culture are situated so that they work in conversation with each other. The multidisciplinary, multinational range of contributors to this volume make it distinctive and a particularly valuable contribution to emerging studies on the impact of war on the lives of children.
Call Number: 809.89282 PAU
ISBN: 0367346206
Publication Date: 2019
Cohabitation and Non-Marital Births in England and Wales, 1600-2012 by Probert, R.Today, cohabiting relationships account for most births outside marriage. But what was the situation in earlier centuries? Bringing together leading historians, demographers and lawyers, this interdisciplinary collection draws on a wide range of sources to examine the changing context of non-marital child-bearing in England and Wales since 1600.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781137396273
Publication Date: 2014
No Future by Worley, M.'No Feelings', 'No Fun', 'No Future'. The years 1976-84 saw punk emerge and evolve as a fashion, a musical form, an attitude and an aesthetic. Against a backdrop of social fragmentation, violence, high unemployment and socio-economic change, punk rejuvenated and re-energised British youth culture, inserting marginal voices and political ideas into pop. Fanzines and independent labels flourished; an emphasis on doing it yourself enabled provincial scenes to form beyond London's media glare. This was the period of Rock Against Racism and benefit gigs for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the striking miners. Matthew Worley charts the full spectrum of punk's cultural development from the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and Slits through the post-punk of Joy Division, the industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle and onto the 1980s diaspora of anarcho-punk, Oi! and goth. He recaptures punk's anarchic force as a medium through which the frustrated and the disaffected could reject, revolt and re-invent.