To understand how society works, we must take account of children as well as adults, otherwise our explanation omits an important social group. This book argues that we should start from the children's own accounts to show how the organisation of social relations provides an explanation for their social position.
Childhood and the Women's Movement
The book explores the intertwined lives of children and women in early 20th-century England, highlighting shifts in societal views on their status and experiences. It examines how children navigated their environments, including home and school, while also detailing the influence of the women's movement, particularly in suffrage and socialist efforts. By linking women's work to childhood, the author argues that women significantly contributed to redefining childhood as an important life stage, emphasizing children's roles in learning and politics. This work is aimed at students and researchers in history, education, and sociology.
As men and women throughout England were called up for war work during World War II, the country needed to generate as much food and wealth as possible to support them. Children quickly came to be seen as a vital resource. Many children worked the land, planting and harvesting crops, raising money for the war effort, and carrying out a range of other tasks. That war work followed on debates throughout the preceding decades about the character and proper activities of childhood, debates that saw commentators in education and workers' organizations arguing about whether children should stay in school and learn or should combine their education with war-related work. The work of children during the war raised a question that still has relevance Should children be conceptualized as citizens of the future or as participating citizens now? That debate has led to even larger questions about the social construction of childhood. As children have increasingly withdrawn from paid and unpaid work, their contribution today can best be understood through their work at school, though that work is often disguised or devalued as mere socialization. The interwar years and the war years in England were a key time for re-thinking childhood, and the issues that were raised then still have relevance to the role of children in society today.