Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood

Description

Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood explores gender and sexuality in children's lives, from early childhood through adolescence, bringing together key inter-disciplinary perspectives. Kane explores how childhood gender and sexuality are constructed, resisted, and refined within children's peer cultures, within social institutions like the family, education, and media and the role the state holds in structuring children's lives - defining their rights and opportunities through gender and sexuality-related policies and programs. Examples of research, interviews, activities, key points and guidance on further reading encourage the reader to actively engage with the material and to develop a critical relationship with the content. Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood is essential for those studying childhood at undergraduate and graduate level and of great interest to those working with children in any field.

Emily W. Kane is Professor of Sociology and a member of the Program in Women and Gender Studies at Bates College, USA.

This is an ideal book to introduce students of contemporary childhoods to issues of gender and sexuality. It explains and demystifies complex issues and encourages students to engage with these ideas through the use of in-text activities. An essential addition to student reading lists. -- Heather Montgomery, Reader in the Anthropology of Childhood, Centre for Childhood, Development and Learning, The Open University, UK This is a remarkably readable and comprehensive portrait of gender and sexuality in childhood. Kane has brought together cutting edge research and vivid examples from across the social sciences. Her concise prose and key questions are thought provoking and will engage students of both childhood studies and gender and sexuality studies. -- Karin A. Martin, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan, USA Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood is an important review of contemporary research and advocacy, premised upon the need to listen to a diversity of children's voices and respect their participation in constructing their own realities. Its focus on children's rights through the lens of gender and sexuality is timely and will be useful for students, researchers, activists and practitioners interested in current key issues affecting children, such as sexual and relationship violence, poverty, and homophobic discrimination. -- Alison Phipps, Director of Gender Studies, University of Sussex, UK Education and health holdings alike, as well as collections concerned with early education, will find Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood to be a powerful survey that offers a detailed portrait of gender and sexuality development, using exmaples from across the social sciences to offer the latest research in gender studies...The result is a college-level survey highly recommended for any gender studies or early childhood collection. * California Bookwatch * This is an invaluable resource for students and researchers interested in engaging with contemporary issues and concerns around childhood gender and sexuality in a global context. Examining and making accessible a rich wealth of research (including original interviews with author-researchers), Kane explores constructions of childhood gender and sexuality as multi-dimensional, intersectional and complex and, importantly, considers children's active agency in both the reproduction and resistance of traditional expectations. Her focus on sexual diversity, alongside serious concerns with homophobic discrimination, highlights issues that are more typically under-represented in the field and brings in new and refreshing perspectives to these and other issues. * Kathryn Simpson, Senior Lecturer in English, School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK * Kane does a great job covering basic key concepts and arguments and mentions and explains ideas such as the social construction of gender and sexuality, heteronormativity, emphasized femininity and much more. The definitions are easy to understand and explained very well... The range of topics included in this discussion, and the research presented, is broad and its basics are covered, making the book very interdisciplinary and useful to a wide audience. -- Elin Weiss * Metapsychology * A fabulous, in-depth book that allows an Early Childhood Studies student to understand the implications of gender and sexuality in relation to a child's overall development. -- Katherine Cartmell, Liverpool John Moores University, UK