An Introduction to Childhood Anthropological Perspectives on Children's Lives

"In An Introduction to Childhood, Heather Montgomery examines the role children have played within anthropology, how they have been studied by anthropologists, and how they have been portrayed and analyzed in ethnographic monographs over the past 150 years." "Using a wide range of evidence from a variety of very different societies, this book challenges the idea that there is any one correct way to raise children, or that parents across the globe have the same goals in raising their children, or the same attitudes toward them. Drawing on the rich history of anthropological literature, Montgomery uses key topics to illustrate important issues in the anthropological study of children and childhood. This volume provides a fresh investigation into the diversity of beliefs about childhood as well as the variety of children's daily lives, looking at issues such as how parents elsewhere raise their children, what they understand as abusive, how children become adults, and what both adults and children see as their respective roles and responsibilities."--BOOK JACKET.

Heather Montgomery is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at The Open University. She has written on children and sexuality, tourism, children’s rights and on the role of children in anthropology. Her publications include Modern Babylon? Prostituting Children in Thailand (2001), Understanding Childhood: An Interdisciplinary Approach (2003, with Martin Woodhead), and Changing Childhoods: Global and Local (2003, with Martin Woodhead and Rachel Burr).