The End of Children? : Changing Trends in Childbearing and Childhood

Concerns about declining fertility rates are matched only by fears that childhood is being destroyed by modern parenting practices. This multidisciplinary volume offers a more balanced, less alarmist perspective on the meanings and implications of these issues. Contrary to predictions about the end of children and the end of childhood, these investigations of developments in Canada and the United States, and elsewhere in the world, show that fertility rates and ideas about children and childhood are not uniform but rather vary around the globe based on factors such as time, culture, class, income, and age. Fertility rates have fallen dramatically around the world. In some countries, there are no longer enough children being born to replace adult populations. The disappearance of children is a matter of concern matched only by fears that childhood is becoming too structured or not structured enough, too short or too long, or just simply too different from the idealized childhoods of the past. "The End of Children?" brings together scholars who draw on their expertise in multiple disciplines--sociology, demography, history, anthropology, family studies, social work, and education--to provide a more balanced, less alarmist perspective on the meanings and implications of these issues. Contrary to predictions of the end of children and the end of childhood, their investigations of developments in Canada and the United States, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the world, show that fertility rates and ideas about children and childhood are not uniform but rather vary around the globe based on factors such as time, culture, class, income, and age. These timely explorations of how changing ideas about the child are reshaping when and why people have children and how they choose to raise them opens a new dialogue on the production and place of children in modern society Fertility change in North America, 1950-2000 / Mira Whyman, Megan Lemmon, and Jay Teachman Changing children and changing cultures : immigration as a source of fertility and the assumptions of assimilation -- Nathanael Lauster, Todd F. Martin, and James M. White Using infertility, useful fertility : cultural imperatives on the value of children in the United States -- Rebecca L. Upton The performance of motherhood and fertility decline : a stage props approach -- Nathanael Lauster Parenthood, immortality, and the end of childhood -- Nicholas W. Townsend Leaving home : an example of the disappearance of childhood and its end as a predictable set of uniform experiences -- Adena B.K. Miller The disappearance of parents from children's lives : the cummulative effects of child care, child custody, and child welfare policies in Canada -- Edward Kruk Navigating the pedagogy of failure : medicine, education, and the disabled child in English Canada, 1900-45 -- Mona Gleason -- Pathologizing childhood / -- Anita Ilta Garey From children to child : ending in China -- Jing Zhao, Nathanael Lauster, and Graham Allan. The End of Children? brings together scholars who draw on their expertise in multiple disciplines - sociology, demography, history, anthropology, family studies, social work, and education - to provide a more balanced, less alarmist perspective on the meanings and implications of these issues. Contrary to predictions of the end of children and the end of childhood, their investigations of developments in Canada and the United States, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the world, show that fertility rates and ideas about children and childhood are not uniform but rather vary around the globe based on factors such as time, culture, class, income, and age."--Pub. desc This timely volume brings insights from multiple disciplines to bear on debates about declining fertility rates and modern approaches to child raising.