Gender and Childhood
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 April 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0025
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 April 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0025
Introduction
The organization of this bibliography reflects the evolving, often contradictory state of scholarly work on childhood and gender. As in adult scholarship in gender studies, scholars constellate around two different perspectives, even as they acknowledge the points of overlap and exchange between them. Many scholars, particularly in the social sciences and education, are dedicated to charting the powerful and often damaging effects of gender expectations on children. Scholars working in queer and cultural studies often take a different approach, drawing on a host of cultural, literary, and historical sources to illustrate how children are shaped by, but can also transcend, gender norms. This bibliography seeks to acknowledge the productive tensions that are emerging in studies of childhood and gender by including sources that examine gender as it emerges in a variety of fields (e.g., education, literature, and adoption studies) and by including sources under the useful but perhaps problematic division of work into girlhood studies; boyhood studies; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies. As many of the sources cited here indicate, there is a vibrant and valid set of arguments that the study of gender in childhood should remain under the larger rubric of childhood studies. To do otherwise, to separate children out by gender, to draw attention to the workings of gender, runs the risk of imposing the very gendered dualisms on children that scholars seek to undo. Overall, this bibliography includes examples of various permutations of study in childhood and gender, with specific texts focusing on “girl” and “boy” studies that chart the demands of gender indoctrination, as well as more theoretical texts that argue that such binaries simply reinforce damaging stereotypes.
Classic Texts
A sizeable number of the works in this bibliography build upon the theories found in the following classic texts on feminism, gender theory, and queer theory. Mead 1963 was groundbreaking in documenting diverse gender roles in families and childrearing. Gilligan 1982 broke new ground in gender studies generally, and in undermining the argument that “normal” was inextricable from “male.” Halberstam 1998, an excavation of performed masculinity, and Sedgwick 1990, an analysis of male homoeroticism in literature, are studies essential to any scholar seeking to further decenter masculinist narratives. Fetterly 1978 discusses how one might resist the pedantry encoded in literature and culture and has proven particularly useful for scholars seeking to recover the experiences of child readers. In this vein, scholars seeking to excavate how children participate in, reiterate, and resist gender norms have found Butler’s ideas about the performativity of gender (Butler 1990) and Foucault’s argument about the working of disciplinary power to create and reinforce “normality” (Foucault 1990) to be particularly relevant. Finally, Scott 1986 presents a cogent argument that the study of gender allows scholars to uncover the scaffolding of cultural and political power; this work provides a useful framework for scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Judith Butler pioneered the influential argument that links gender identity with performativity.
Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.
This classic of feminist literature offers a useful framework for thinking about how young girls (and boys) might respond to their culture’s narratives of gender.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1990.
This watershed book, available in many editions, is essential for entering the current conversation about how repression functions in the construction of “normal” sexuality.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
This oft-cited text takes psychologists from Freud to Piaget to task for treating girls’ moral and psychological development as if it should be identical to the norms applied to male children and adolescents.
Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
Halberstam argues that to fully denaturalize masculinity we should be studying it in contexts that are not inhabited by men—in butch lesbians, drag kings, and other transgendered performances.
Mead, Margaret. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York: Morrow, 1963.
This watershed work of anthropology became a key feminist text because it documented that gender roles were socially, not biologically, determined.
Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” American Historical Review 91.5 (1986): 1053–1075.
DOI: 10.2307/1864376
This classic article lays out the stakes for studying gender as a way of distributing and organizing power.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
A defining work of queer theory, this book argues that questions of sexual definition are at the heart of literary narrative.
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Article
- Abduction of Children
- Aboriginal Childhoods
- Addams, Jane
- ADHD, Sociological Perspectives on
- Adolescence and Youth
- Adolescent Consent to Medical Treatment
- Adoption and Fostering
- Adoption and Fostering, History of Cross-Country
- Adoption and Fostering in Canada, History of
- Advertising and Marketing, Psychological Approaches to
- Advertising and Marketing, Sociocultural Approaches to
- Africa, Children and Young People in
- African American Children and Childhood
- After-school Hours and Activities
- Aggression across the Lifespan
- Ancient Near and Middle East, Child Sacrifice in the
- Animals, Children and
- Animations, Comic Books, and Manga
- Anthropology of Childhood
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Ariès, Philippe
- Attachment in Children and Adolescents
- Australia, History of Adoption and Fostering in
- Australian Indigenous Contexts and Childhood Experiences
- Autism, Females and
- Autism, Medical Model Perspectives on
- Autobiography and Childhood
- Benjamin, Walter
- Bereavement
- Best Interest of the Child
- Bioarchaeology of Childhood
- Body, Children and the
- Body Image
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Boy Scouts/Girl Guides
- Boys and Fatherhood
- Breastfeeding
- Bronfenbrenner, Urie
- Bruner, Jerome
- Buddhist Views of Childhood
- Byzantine Childhoods
- Child and Adolescent Anger
- Child Beauty Pageants
- Child Homelessness
- Child Mortality, Historical Perspectives on Infant and
- Child Protection
- Child Protection, Children, Neoliberalism, and
- Child Public Health
- Child Trafficking and Slavery
- Childcare Manuals
- Childhood and Borders
- Childhood and Empire
- Childhood as Discourse
- Childhood, Confucian Views of Children and
- Childhood, Memory and
- Childhood Studies and Leisure Studies
- Childhood Studies in France
- Childhood Studies, Interdisciplinarity in
- Childhood Studies, Posthumanism and
- Childhoods in the United States, Sports and
- Childism
- Children and Dance
- Children and Film-Making
- Children and Money
- Children and Social Media
- Children and Sport
- Children and Sustainable Cities
- Children as Language Brokers
- Children as Perpetrators of Crime
- Children, Code-switching and
- Children in the Industrial Revolution
- Children with Autism in a Brazilian Context
- Children, Young People, and Architecture
- Children's Humor
- Children’s Museums
- Children’s Parliaments
- Children’s Reading Development and Instruction
- Children's Views of Childhood
- China, Japan, and Korea
- China’s One Child Policy
- Citizenship
- Civil Rights Movement and Desegregation
- Class
- Classical World, Children in the
- Clothes and Costume, Children’s
- Colonial America, Child Witches in
- Colonization and Nationalism
- Color Symbolism and Child Development
- Common World Childhoods
- Competitiveness, Children and
- Conceptual Development in Early Childhood
- Congenital Disabilities
- Constructivist Approaches to Childhood
- Consumer Culture, Children and
- Consumption, Child and Teen
- Conversation Analysis and Research with Children
- Critical Approaches to Children’s Work and the Concept of ...
- Critical Perspectives on Boys’ Circumcision
- Crying
- Cultural psychology and human development
- Debt and Financialization of Childhood
- Disability
- Discipline and Punishment
- Discrimination
- Disney, Walt
- Divorce And Custody
- Dolls
- Domestic Violence
- Drawings, Children’s
- Early Childhood
- Early Childhood Care and Education, Selected History of
- Eating disorders and obesity
- Education: Learning and Schooling Worldwide
- Environment, Children and the
- Environmental Education and Children
- Ethics in Research with Children
- Eugenics
- Europe (including Greece and Rome), Child Sacrifice in
- Evolutionary Studies of Childhood
- Family Meals
- Fandom (Fan Studies)
- Fathers
- Female Genital Cutting
- Feminist New Materialist Approaches to Childhood Studies
- Feral and "Wild" Children
- Fetuses and Embryos
- Filicide
- Films about Children
- Films for Children
- Folk Tales, Fairy Tales and
- Folklore
- Food
- Foundlings and Abandoned Children
- Freud, Anna
- Freud, Sigmund
- Friends and Peers: Psychological Perspectives
- Froebel, Friedrich
- Gangs
- Gay and Lesbian Parents
- Gender and Childhood
- Generations, The Concept of
- Geographies, Children's
- Gifted and Talented Children
- Globalization
- Growing Up in the Digital Era
- Hall, G. Stanley
- Happiness in Children
- Hindu Views of Childhood and Child Rearing
- Hispanic Childhoods (U.S.)
- Historical Approaches to Child Witches
- History of Childhood in America
- History of Childhood in Canada
- HIV/AIDS, Growing Up with
- Homeschooling
- Humor and Laughter
- Images of Childhood, Adulthood, and Old Age in Children’s ...
- Infancy and Ethnography
- Infant Mortality in a Global Context
- Innocence and Childhood
- Institutional Care
- Intercultural Learning and Teaching with Children
- Islamic Views of Childhood
- Japan, Childhood in
- Juvenile Detention in the US
- Key, Ellen
- Klein, Melanie
- Labor, Child
- Latin America
- Learning, Language
- Learning to Write
- Legends, Contemporary
- Literary Representations of Childhood
- Literature, Children's
- Love and Care in the Early Years
- Magazines for Teenagers
- Maltreatment, Child
- Maria Montessori
- Marxism and Childhood
- Masculinities/Boyhood
- Material Cultures of Western Childhoods
- Mead, Margaret
- Media, Children in the
- Media Culture, Children's
- Medieval and Anglo-Saxon Childhoods
- Menstruation
- Middle Childhood
- Middle East
- Migration
- Miscarriage
- Missionaries/Evangelism
- Moral Development
- Moral Panics
- Mothers
- Multi-culturalism and Education
- Music and Babies
- Nation and Childhood
- Native American and Aboriginal Canadian Childhood
- New Reproductive Technologies and Assisted Conception
- Nursery Rhymes
- Organizations, Nongovernmental
- Orphans
- Parental Gender Preferences, The Social Construction of
- Parenting
- Pediatrics, History of
- Peer Culture
- Peter Pan
- Philosophy and Childhood
- Piaget, Jean
- Play
- Politics, Children and
- Postcolonial Childhoods
- Post-Modernism
- Poverty, Rights, and Well-being, Child
- Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica Childhoods
- Premodern China, Conceptions of Childhood in
- Prostitution and Pornography, Child
- Psychoanalysis
- Queer Theory and Childhood
- Race and Ethnicity
- Racism, Children and
- Radio, Children, and Young People
- Readers, Children as
- Refugee and Displaced Children
- Reimagining Early Childhood Education, Reconceptualizing a...
- Relational Ontologies
- Relational Pedagogies
- Rights, Children’s
- Risk and Resilience
- Russia
- School Shootings
- Sex Education in the United States
- Sexuality
- Siblings
- Social and Cultural Capital of Childhood
- Social Habitus in Childhood
- Social Movements, Children's
- Social Policy, Children and
- Socialization and Child Rearing
- Socio-cultural Perspectives on Children's Spirituality
- Sociology of Childhood
- South African Birth to Twenty Project
- South Asia
- South Asia, History of Childhood in
- Special Education
- Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence
- Spock, Benjamin
- Sports and Organized Games
- Street Children
- Street Children And Brazil
- Subcultures
- Sure Start
- Teenage Fathers
- Teenage Pregnancy
- Television
- The Bible and Children
- The Harms and Prevention of Drugs and Alcohol on Children
- The Spaces of Childhood
- Theater for Children and Young People
- Theories, Pedagogic
- Tourism
- Toys
- Transgender Children
- Tweens
- Twins and Multiple Births
- Unaccompanied Migrant Children
- United Kingdom, History of Adoption and Fostering in the
- United States, Schooling in the
- Value of Children
- Views of Childhood, Jewish and Christian
- Violence, Children and
- Visual Representations of Childhood
- Voice, Participation, and Agency
- Vygotsky, Lev and His Cultural-historical Approach to Deve...
- War
- Welfare Law in the United States, Child
- Well-Being, Child
- Western Europe and Scandinavia
- Witchcraft in the Contemporary World, Children and
- Work and Apprenticeship, Children's
- Young Carers
- Young Children and Inclusion
- Young Children’s Imagination
- Young Lives
- Young People, Alcohol, and Urban Life
- Young People and Climate Activism
- Young People and Disadvantaged Environments in Affluent Co...