Books in the Series in Childhood Studies series

Whether First Communion or bar mitzvah, religious traditions play a central role in the lives of American children. This book presents a collection of essays that reveal how various religions interpret and mediate their traditions to help guide children and their parents in navigating the opportunities and challenges of American life.

A provocative work that will prompt a thorough reevaluation of the culture of secondary education, Defining Student Success shows how different schools, promoting modified versions of larger cultural ideas of success, foster distinct understandings of what it takes to succeed--understandings that do more to reproduce a socioeconomic status quo than to promote upward mobility.

Follows a group of young girls living on Nevis, an island society in the Eastern Caribbean. This title shows that girls are often caught between conflicting discourses of Christian teachings about chastity, public health cautions about safe sex, and media enticements about consumer delights.

Drawing from ethnographic data and research in immigrant communities, this study provides the definition of child labor by assessing children's roles as translators as part of a cost equation in an era of global restructuring and considers how sociocultural learning and development is shaped as a result of children's contributions as translators.

Examines the centrality of girlhood in shaping women's lives. Scholars study how age and gender, along with a multitude of other identities, work together to influence the historical experience. Spanning a broad time frame from 1750 to the present, thematically-arranged essays and case studies illuminate the various continuities and differences in girls' lives across culture and region.

In an adult-dominated society, teenagers are often shut out of participation in politics. This title offers an account of young people's attempts to get involved in community politics, and documents the battles waged to form youth movements and create social change in schools and neighborhoods.