"Children and Youth in a Changing World"

Long treated as of minor importance within anthropology, the study of childhood has blossomed in the last decade. Scholars interested in human evolution now acknowledge the importance of studying the role of culture and biology in shaping the life course. There is renewed interest in understanding culturally marked transitions and stages in children’s development. From analyses of the allomothering of the young to the study of rites of passage—both traditional and modern—anthropologists are re-examining and overturning many widely held asumptions about human development. While cross-cultural studies of children’s play have a respectable history yielding a large corpus of material, there has been a recent explosion in ethnographic studies of children at work. Work is now seen as a central organizer of children’s movement from toddler to competent adult.