Flexible Childhood? - Helga, Zeiher

Children's spaces are widening -- culturally and socially: socially their spaces are more often multilocal, and culturally they are enlarged through mobility in the globalised and virtual spaces in the mediatised world. Children's times are also less confined by strict borderlines; the more flexible and individualised use of time in the world of work impacts on children's lives in families, day care and school. The chapters of this volume each present particular temporal and spatial aspects of social change in childhood. The aim of the book goes even further: it is directed toward considering the impact of such change on children's welfare. As former boundaries between generations begin to blur and neo-liberal forces enter all realms of people's lives, it can no longer be taken for granted -- as it was in former periods of modernity -- that continued efforts to realize the childhood project will automatically guarantee the "best interest of the child". With respect to children's welfare in time and space, tensions between demands from the market economy, dynamics of rationalisation and technology, and visions of a "good" childhood are discussed in the book. Together with volume 1, "Childhood, Generational Order and the Welfare State", this book is the final result of COST Action A19, Children's Welfare, which has been supported by the European COST Framework.