Investing in children and childhood: A new welfare policy paradigm and its implications

Abstract

Childhood often represents a central arena through which we construct our fantasies about the future and a battleground through which we struggle to express competing ideological agendas. (Timimi, 2006, p. 35)One critical part of the future is our children. The way we bring them up is an indication of how we feel about the future; and of course our attitudes to the young and ideas on how they should be educated reveal much about the present …. Without a strong sense of how we want the future to be, the government tends to revert to a default position, thinking mainly about how children will fit into the economy. (Davison, 2005, p. 7)

Citation

Lister, R. (2008), "Investing in children and childhood: A new welfare policy paradigm and its implications", Leira, A. and Saraceno, C. (Ed.) Childhood: Changing Contexts (Comparative Social Research, Vol. 25), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 383-408. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0195-6310(07)00013-0