The End of Children? - Changing Trends in Childbearing and Childhood (Paperback)

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.

Nathanael Lauster is an assistant professor of
sociology at the University of British Columbia. Graham
Allan is professor emeritus of sociology at Keele University
in the United Kingdom.

Contributors: Graham Allan, Anita Ilta Garey, Mona
Gleason, Edward Kruk, Nathanael Lauster, Megan Lemmon, Todd F. Martin,
Adena B.K. Miller, Jay Teachman, Nicholas W. Townsend, Rebecca L.
Upton, James M. White, Mira Whyman, and Jing Zhao.