Middle East
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 April 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 November 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0103
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 April 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 November 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0103
Introduction
Childhood Studies of the Middle East is a nascent field of study among scholars. The first scholarship to look at children and youth in the Middle East focused on their depiction in Islamic texts of the medieval era. Children and youth are rarely the primary focus of historical research on the modern era but appear indirectly through ongoing debates about state-building, colonialism, gender, class, and the family. For example, a large body of literature exists on educational reforms in the latter part of the Ottoman Empire. This literature discusses children and youth in the context of state-led initiatives to modernize the population through schools. The early 20th century is a critical moment for children in the Middle East because it is at this point that the state begins to usurp the family in teaching children values and behaviors. Studies on children and youth in contemporary Middle Eastern society generally analyze the challenges and pitfalls faced by international and domestic aid organizations. Scholars tend to show that modernization and the adoption of Western-style welfare systems in the Middle East have not always translated into youngsters’ betterment. The bulk of the Western world’s research on the topic of Childhood Studies relates to contemporary youth activism, spawned in large part by political events such as 911 and the Arab Spring.
General Overviews
There are no comprehensive monographs or textbooks on children and youth in the Middle East. The study of children and youth is a relatively new field, with not enough individual accounts to piece together one large story. There are, however, several edited volumes that attempt to cover a vast array of topics relating to children and youth in the modern and contemporary eras. Fernea 1996 and Fernea 2002 are anthologies of primary sources about growing up. Rooke 1997, a survey of 20th-century Arabic autobiographies of childhood, reveals themes relating to children’s lives. Contemporary youth culture and issues is the subject of Georgeon and Kreiser 2007 and Simonsen 2005. Fargues 2000a and Fargues 2000b look at issues relating to children and youth through changing demographic patterns. Giladi 1992 provides a detailed study of legal, medical, and philosophical conceptions of childhood in the medieval period, while Georgeon and Kreiser 2007 and Meijer 2000 survey topics relating to children and youth in much of the premodern era.
Fargues, Philippe. Générations arabes: L’Alchimie du nombre. Paris: Fayard, 2000a.
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NNNThis book looks at the changing demography of the Arab world. The current generation is vastly different than the preceding due to a decline in birth rates, increasing migration, growth in schools, and decline of the patriarchal family.
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Fargues, Philippe. Jeunesse du monde arabe: Défis et opportunités. Paris: La Documentation Française, 2000b.
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NNNThis collection of nine articles seeks to understand the impact of demographic changes on Arab society, paying particular attention to the topics of school, youth identity, and family.
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Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock, ed. Children in the Muslim Middle East. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
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NNNThis anthology looks at the situation of children in the Middle East, with respect to history, health, education, work, school textbooks, adoption, play, politics, and the arts. The contents take the form of academic essays as well as short stories, games, lullabies, poems, and proverbs. Tradition and change are both part of the children’s experience growing up at the end of the 20th century.
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Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock, ed. Remembering Childhood in the Middle East: Memoirs from a Century of Change. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
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NNNThis is a collection of life histories in which men and women recount what it was like growing up in the Middle East from the end of the Ottoman Empire through the post-independence period. There was not a single, distinctive way of raising children in the Middle East. All the authors make clear that changing political and social circumstances impacted their personal lives.
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Georgeon, François, and Klaus Kreiser, eds. Enfance et jeunesse dans le monde Musulman. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2007.
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NNNThis edited volume looks at the place of children and youth in the Muslim world from the days of the Prophet until today. Most of the chapters focus on the premodern era. In looking at everything from traditional Islamic texts to modern literature, the articles address such topics as Qurʾanic concepts of childhood, the education of girls in medieval Muslim society, and Ottoman reactions to early death. (Title translation: Childhood and Youth in the Muslim world.)
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Giladi, Avner. Children of Islam: Concepts of Childhood in Medieval Muslim Society. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 1992.
DOI: 10.1057/9780230378476Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis book deals with childhood in medieval Islamic society, specifically legal, philosophical, ethical, medical, and theological conceptions of children. Topics covered include child rearing, child education, and child mortality.
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Meijer, Roel, ed. Alienation or Integration of Arab Youth: Between Family, State and Street. Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2000.
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NNNThis collection of essays looks at the impact of the state, the family, and the street on Arab youth identity since the 1960s. Youth have become estranged from the state that has moved toward dismantling the welfare systems set up after independence. As a result of these developments, the identities of the youth and the traditional role of the family are in constant flux.
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Rooke, Tetz. In My Childhood: A Study of Arabic Autobiography. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 15. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1997.
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NNNThis dissertation looks at twenty Arabic autobiographies of childhood published from 1929–1983. Childhood autobiography is a distinct genre in modern Arabic literature, with a tradition of its own. There are three reoccurring themes in this genre: the eternal imprint of the birthplace, escape from poverty, and rebellion against the family.
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Simonsen, Jørgen Bæk, ed. Youth and Youth Culture in the Contemporary Middle East. Proceedings of the Danish Institute in Damascus 3. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2005.
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NNNThis edited volume looks at the evolution of and changes in cultures of youth in the 20th-century Middle East. Countries examined include Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, and Morocco. Topics covered include adolescence, leisure activities, Sufism, and dating culture.
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Children and Youth in Politics
Children and youth played a role in early and mid-20th-century nation-building and colonial resistance. They continue to shape economically stagnant and politically oppressive societies today through daily nonviolent resistance and the Arab Spring. The categories of children and youth have also been tools used by the elite to advocate change.
Youth Activism and Resistance
Most literature on youth activism relates to contemporary issues. Herrera 2009 and Skalli 2003 seek to dispel the post-911 myth that Middle Eastern youth are dangerous and a threat. The literature tends to deal with the concrete causes of dissatisfaction among youth today and the types of nonviolent resistance youth perform. Some of the issues that young people are targeting in their resistance movements include government indoctrination of Islamic beliefs and policing of moral behavior, as discussed by Varzi 2006 and Khatam 2010, and feelings of economic and political detachment from society, as discussed by Osman 2010. Bayat 2010 and Sadeghi 2010 show that youth movements are not without shortcomings, contradictions, and challenges.
Bayat, Asef. “Reclaiming Youthfulness.” In Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. By Asef Bayat, 115–136. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.5117/9789053569115Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNYouth movements in the Muslim Middle East are about reclaiming youthfulness and not necessarily motivated by democratizing society. The author warns that if youth do not think politically, then they risk being just as conservative politically as any other group once their youthful claims are accommodated. Youthfulness is a tendency for adventure, change, and autonomy.
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Herrera, Linda. “Pensée 1: Youth and Generational Renewal in the Middle East.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41.3 (1 August 2009): 368–371.
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NNNThis article argues that the youth bulge in the Middle East should not be viewed as a threat but an opportunity to transform the social order toward justice and equity.
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Khatam, Azam. “Struggles over Defining the Moral City: The Problem Called ‘Youth’ in Urban Iran.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 207–221 Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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NNNSince the revolution, young people have played a major role in resisting the Islamic state’s policing of moral behavior. Cursing publicly at stadium soccer games is one way that youth resist the discipline.
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Osman, Tarek. “Young Egyptians.” In Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak. By Tarek Osman, 196–224. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010.
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NNNYoung Egyptians feel detached from society due to unemployment, deteriorating educational systems, weakening generational links, and damage to the land. Young Egyptians’ dynamism has led to cultural, economic, philanthropic, and political innovations against capitalism.
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Sadeghi, Fatemeh. “Negotiating with Modernity: Young Women and Sexuality in Iran.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 250–259. Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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NNNYoung Iranian women of the current generation appear to be ardent in pursuing their own rights; however, their motivation is not political. They follow their personal interests in dress and premarital affairs while at the same time upholding conservative gender hierarchies. They wear loose veils, for example, not necessarily to express free will, but to attract male attention.
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Skalli, Loubna H. “Youth, Media, and the Politics of Change in North Africa: Negotiating Identities, Spaces, and Power.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 6 (2003): 5–14.
DOI: 10.1163/18739865-00503001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe current generation of young North Africans is largely under-researched and misunderstood, particularly in light of the world’s construction of them as a security threat since 911. However, youth have been drivers of change through culture, art, and alternative media both within and outside the territorial borders of the nation-state.
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Varzi, Roxanne. Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822388036Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis is a study of the first generation of middle-class Iranians to have grown up entirely in post-Revolution Iran. Although the government claims to have inculcated the youth in its version of Islamic identity, the behavior of young Iranians shows resistance to such manipulation.
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Nonviolence
Scholars point to the vast array of methods youth use to transform society, including the use of football (soccer) culture (Amara 2012), heavy metal music (Hecker 2010), digital media (Herrera 2012, Khoury-Machool 2010), and sexual transgression (Mahdavi 2009).
Amara, Mahfoud. “Football Sub-Culture and Youth Politics in Algeria.” Mediterranean Politics 17.1 (2012): 41–58.
DOI: 10.1080/13629395.2012.655045Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis article takes football culture as representative of youth culture in North Africa. Through football chanting and online social networks, youth express unease with their socioeconomic future and lost ties with the nation. Chanting is a way for youths to take control of their identity and not be excluded from political participation.
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Hecker, Pierre. “Heavy Metal in the Middle East: New Urban Spaces in a Translocal Underground.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 325–340. Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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NNNThere is a vibrant counterculture heavy metal scene in urban centers of the Middle East. Contrary to popular belief, rebellion against Islam is not the source of attraction to heavy metal. Transnational metal fans exist across the Middle East out of a shared lack of political expression, travel opportunity, and economic capacity.
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Herrera, Linda. “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt.” Harvard Educational Review 82.3 (Fall 2012): 333.
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NNNHigh proportions of youth in Egypt are learning citizenship through new media and communication technologies. The digital age allows members of this generation to revolt against authoritarian regimes and unemployment.
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Khoury-Machool, Makram. “Cyber Resistance: Palestinian Youth and Emerging Internet Culture.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 113–124 Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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NNNPalestinian youth engage in cyber activism. They use the Internet to organize international solidarity, call for demonstrations, and stay connected with one another during curfews and sieges that block them from coming together.
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Mahdavi, Pardis. “‘But What if Someone Sees Me?’ Women, Risk and the Aftershocks of Iran’s Sexual Revolution.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 5.2 (2009): 1–22.
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NNNIncreasing numbers of young Iranian women are engaging in premarital sex as a form of rebellion against the regime. Out of their fear of being caught or seen by the morality police or family, these women are not visiting education centers and thus have increased risks of diseases such as HIV.
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Religion
Al-Otaibi and Ménoret 2010, Austin 2011, Bennani-Chraibi 2010, Ciftci 2013, Herrera 2010, and Saktanber 2010 show that religion is not the sole and driving catalyst for youth activism today.
Al-Otaibi, Abdullah, and Pascal Ménoret. “Rebels without a Cause? Politics of Deviance in Saudi Arabia.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 77–94. Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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NNNThis article attempts to understand the daily life of Saudi Arabian youth and move beyond the conventional narrative that only seeks to understand the connections youth have with Islamization. In a state with high social control and political monitoring, many low-income rural youth express boredom and rage through high-stakes car skidding.
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Austin, Leila. “The Politics of Youth Bulge: From Islamic Activism to Democratic Reform in the Middle East and North Africa.” SAIS Review 31.2 (2011): 81–96.
DOI: 10.1353/sais.2011.0019Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNMuslim youth are participating en masse in nonviolent protests against secular and Islamic authoritarian governments. More than half of the population of the Arab world is under the age of thirty and they are working in democratic ways against the stagnation of their societies. Young activists have shifted away from the radical politics of their parents’ generation.
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Bennani-Chraibi, Mounia. “Moroccan Youth and Political Islam.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 63–76. Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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NNNMoroccan youth went from being depicted as a category of promise of change in the post-independence period to being represented as a menace. There is however a plurality of identification among Moroccan youth, just as there is throughout global youth society.
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Ciftci, Sabri. “Social Identity and Attitudes toward Foreign Policy: Evidence from a Youth Survey in Turkey.” The International Journal of Middle East Studies 45 (2013): 25–43.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743812001249Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNTurkish university students overwhelmingly believe that their country’s future lies in the EU or the Turkic republics, but not in the Middle East or Islamic world. Educated youth’s perceptions of foreign policy are shaped by both micro-level social identity (such as religious or ethnic attachments) and state-level identity (such as national interest).
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Herrera, Linda. “Young Egyptians’ Quest for Jobs and Justice.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 127–144. Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369212.003.0008Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNHerrera writes the life histories of two ordinary Egyptian youth and shows that rights, rather than religion, characterize the shared values of youth. The scarcity of jobs and the lack of justice put youth on hold, causing frustration. Although the youth fit the perceived socioeconomic profile for becoming radical, they oppose such extremism.
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Saktanber, Ayse. “Performance, Politics, and Visceral Transformation: Post-Islamist Youth in Turkey.” In Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Edited by Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 259–272. Religion and Global Politics Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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NNNThe way young Muslims relate to their religion is not straightforward. The growing trend among Turkish youth, even the most religiously minded, is to ground calls for reform not in Islam but in universalist values of modernity. Religiously minded youth prefer to be called devout rather than Islamist.
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Arab Spring
Since the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions of 2011, scholarship on youth activism has focused on youth’s role in the Arab Spring. Ahmari and Weddady 2012 collects first-person narratives from young Middle Easterners describing their dreams. Murphy 2012 outlines the social, economic, and political problems that these young revolutionaries seek to rectify. Some scholars shed light on rebellion among youth living in countries that are not typically associated with the Arab Spring (deJong and Moadeel 2013).
Ahmari, Sohrab, and Nasser Weddady, eds. Arab Spring Dreams: the Next Generation Speaks Out for Freedom and Justice from North Africa to Iran. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
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NNNThis is a collection of first-person essays by young Middle Easterners expressing their dreams of human rights and perspectives on being trapped in repressive societies. This anthology rejects the stereotype of the Arab Street as composed of fearful reactionary masses.
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deJong, Julie, and Mansoor Moadeel. “Trends in Values among Saudi Youth: Findings from Values Surveys.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 6.1 (2013): 153–164.
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NNNValues surveys carried out in Saudi Arabia in 2003 and 2001 reflect changes in attitudes of youth toward democracy, individualism, gender equality, and religious identity. Although the Arab Spring has remained weaker in Saudi Arabia than in other countries, the kingdom has been a target of reform by youth.
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Murphy, Emma C. “Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systemic Failure.” Mediterranean Politics 17.1 (2012): 5–22.
DOI: 10.1080/13629395.2012.655043Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNLocal and global media presents youth as driving the uprisings in the Middle East without clearly explaining the rich meaning of this age group. Arab youth define themselves by their own interests and aspirations, as well as by partaking in a shared narrative of exclusion and marginalization that has resulted from post-independence state failures in political, economic, and social realms.
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Nation-Building
Nation-building was a critical aspect of the early- to mid-20th-century Middle East. Kashani-Sabet 2006, Kashani-Sabet 2011, and El Shakry 2005 relate to the connection reformers made between reproduction and strengthening the future of the budding nation. Student youth activism and protests helped shaped modern Egyptian nation-building, as explored by Abdallah 2008 and El Shakry 2011. Neyzi 2001 shows that youth often acted back on society to define themselves despite top-down policies of reform. For other ways that reformers used children and childhood in the nation-building project see Reform, Welfare Programs and Public Policy, and Colonialism and Imperialism.
Abdallah, Ahmed. The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt, 1923–1973. Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, 2008.
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NNNThis book looks at how student activism has shaped modern Egyptian history, particularly after the 1952 Revolution gave way to hundreds of thousands of Egyptians having access to university.
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El Shakry, Omnia. “Barren Land and Fecund Bodies: The Emergence of Population Discourse in Interwar Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37.3 (1 August 2005): 351–372.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743805052116Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNPopulation politics emerged as a topic of inquiry and management in Egypt during the interwar period. This shift was linked to nationalist concerns to create the optimum population by targeting women and the peasantry, those responsible for labor reproduction and agricultural production.
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El Shakry, Omnia. “Youth as Peril and Promise: The Emergence of Adolescent Psychology in Postwar Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43.4 (1 November 2011): 591–610.
DOI: 10.1017/S002074381100119XSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe concept of adolescence as a volatile period in a person’s life entered into Egyptian discourse by the mid-1940s. This life stage was linked to sexual impulse and emerged out of the growing field of psychology as well as the recent participation of youth in large-scale protests.
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Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh. “The Politics of Reproduction: Maternalism and Women’s Hygiene in Iran, 1896–1941.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38.1 (1 February 2006): 1–29.
DOI: 10.1017/S002074380641223XSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNWomen’s hygiene was central to debates on population in modern Iranian history. Launching a modernist culture depended on supervising women on the tenets of mothering and child rearing. Initially concerned with reducing death and disease, control of the woman’s body gradually became appropriated by the state for nationalist goals.
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Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh. Conceiving Citizens: Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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NNNIn 19th- and 20th-century Iran, women were at the center of nationalist debates. Hygiene campaigns cast women as custodians of a healthy civilization. Periodicals and schoolbooks carried encouraged proper maintenance of the human body claiming that without healthy children, Iran’s future seemed threatened. Hygiene was a form of patriotism.
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Neyzi, Leyla. “Object or Subject? The Paradox of ‘Youth’ in Turkey.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33.3 (1 August 2001): 411–432.
DOI: 10.1017/S002074380100304XSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNModernist notions of youth are Western in origin. Non-Western constructions of youth are best understood through a wider frame of generation and age. Three generations of constructions of youth in public discourse in Turkey reveal that youth are currently seeking to define themselves, rather than be defined by society.
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Welfare Programs and Public Policy
Literature on welfare programs in the Middle East deals with the tension between state and private initiatives. Libal 2002, Libal 2000, and Libal 2003 show that in the early 20th century, countries such as Turkey targeted children in state-sponsored programs to build the nation, but not without contestation and disagreement. Baylouny 2006 looks at the status of current state welfare programs in the era of economic liberalization.
Baylouny, Anne Marie. “Creating Kin: New Family Associations as Welfare Providers in Liberalizing Jordan.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38.3 (1 August 2006): 349–368.
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NNNSince economic liberalization in Jordan in the early 1990s, family associations reorganized and formalized, altering ideas of kinship and identity. Family associations take the place of the social welfare provision that has been in demise since the freeing of the market. The association leaders are indirectly incorporated into the regime, hence disguising income polarization in Jordan and preventing the expression of dissent over government policies.
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Libal, Kathryn. “The Children’s Protection Society: Nationalizing Child Welfare in Early Republican Turkey.” New Perspectives on Turkey 23 (2000): 53–78.
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NNNThe Children’s Protection Society played a key role in children’s welfare in the 1930s, particularly in drawing attention to the need to ground welfare efforts more deeply in the state apparatus.
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Libal, Kathryn. “The Robust Child: Discourses on Childhood and Modernity in Early Republican Turkey.” In Symbolic Childhood. Edited by Daniel Thomas Cook, 109–130. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
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NNNTurkish nationalism of the 1920s and 1930s used the visual image of the robust child as a symbol of future strength and an object of state-centered programs. Campaigns for healthy children targeted the literate urban elite.
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Libal, Kathryn. “‘The Child Question’: The Politics of Child Welfare in Early Republican Turkey.” In Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts. Edited by Mine Ener, Michael Bonner, and Amy Singer, 255–272. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
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NNNDuring the early Turkish republic, a variety of groups engaged in debates over how best to resolve the “child question.” Reformers were aware of uneven social development in the growing nation-state but disagreed on the role that the state or traditional charity should play in its amelioration.
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Colonialism and Imperialism
Stockdale 2010 writes about how colonists targeted children in their mission in the Middle East. Jones 2010 explores the resulting impact of this on children’s lives. Morrison 2009, El Shakry 1998, Pollard 2003, and Pollard 2005 show how anticolonialists competed with colonialists in their efforts to control the country through discourse on childhood.
El Shakry, Omnia. “Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn of the Century Egypt.” In Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East. Edited by Lila Abu-Lughod, 126–170. Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
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NNNAt the turn of the 20th century, Egyptian mothers became responsible for modernizing the country through child rearing and domesticity. Colonial and anticolonial discourse deemed mothers unprepared in the ways of modern childcare. Anticolonial discourses were not simply derivatives of European, as they often framed their child-rearing techniques in terms of Islamic morals and for the benefit of the religious community.
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Jones, Christa. “Growing Up in Colonial Algeria: The Case of Assia Djebar.” In Girlhood: A Global History. Edited by Jennifer Helgren and Colleen A. Vasconcellos, 49–64. The Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.
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NNNThis article looks at Algerian nationalist and author Assia Dejebar’s girlhood, as depicted in her autobiographical novels. She created a bicultural identity while coming of age in colonial and wartime Algeria. Education set her apart from her confined female peers.
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Long, Taylor. “Political Parenting in Colonial Lebanon.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4.2 (2011): 257–281.
DOI: 10.1353/hcy.2011.0017Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe concept of childhood in Mandate Lebanon was a site around which the public negotiated anxieties about Euro-American modernity. Debating the significance of childhood was a political act for anticolonial nationalists, missionaries, colonial administrators, and women.
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Morrison, Heidi. “Quick Studies (As I See It): Unspoken Dreams.” The International Journal of Middle East Studies, 41.4 (November 2009): 548–550.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743809990043Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNPhotographs of children in modern Western attire and using modern Western technology was a form of resistance in British Mandate Egypt.
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Pollard, Lisa. “The Promise of Things to Come: The Image of the Modern Family in State-Building, Colonial Occupation, and Revolution in Egypt 1805–1922.” In Families of a New World: Gender, Politics, and State Development in a Global Context. Edited by Lynne Haney and Lisa Pollard 17–39. New York: Routledge, 2003.
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NNNThe governing elite used family as a site of debate about ideal forms of statehood during the colonial and revolutionary eras. The British attributed Egyptian child-rearing practices to the inability of Egyptians to govern themselves. Nationalists sought to reform domestic space for the future of Egypt.
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Pollard, Lisa. Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing and Liberating Egypt (1805–1923). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
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NNNStarting from the times of Muhammad Ali, modernity in Egypt became synonymous with reformed households, including habits and customs relating to offspring. British administrators and Egyptian nationalists used children, especially girls, as tools for consolidating their respective powers. Egyptian children learned that their cultural traditions were responsible for Egypt’s lack of progress.
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Stockdale, Nancy. “Palestinian Girls and the British Missionary Enterprise, 1847–1948.” In Girlhood: A Global History. Edited by Jennifer Helgren and Colleen A. Vasconcellos, 217–233. The Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.
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NNNMissionary schools in British Palestine sought to convert Palestinian girls and teach them British forms of domesticity. The formative years of a person’s life were a battleground for Orientalists and imperialists.
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Globalization
Very little scholarship has looked at the impact of globalization on children and youth in the Middle East. One study considers the role that Egyptian children’s consumption of global toys, ideas, and food plays in shaping class identity (Peterson 2011).
Peterson, Mark Allen. Connected in Cairo: Growing Up Cosmopolitan in the Modern Middle East. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.
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NNNConnection to and display of transnational goods and practices are used by Cairo’s upper class to distinguish themselves from other Egyptians. Upper-class children and youth perform a cosmopolitan identity through consumption of magazines, Pokémon, private schools, and restaurant franchises. Global economic, social, and political processes take place within a local context of competing class identities.
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Children’s Rights
Libal 2001 focuses on indigenous efforts to advance children’s rights, while Sweis 2012 and Tremayne 2006 address the pitfalls of international aid organizations. Joseph 2005 deals with rights and cultural relativity in the context of Lebanon.
Joseph, Suad, ed. “Teaching Rights and Responsibilities: Paradoxes of Globalization and Children’s Citizenship in Lebanon.” Journal of Social History 38.4 (2005): 1007–1026.
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2005.0063Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNLebanese family-rearing practices regarding teaching children their rights complement and contradict Western notions of the autonomous citizen. In Lebanon, the Western model of children’s rights as based on the individualist self-conflicts with the connective self nested in patriarchal family structures. Children learn that their rights are situated within familial networks.
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Libal, Kathryn. “Children’s Rights in Turkey.” Human Rights Review 3.1 (October–December 2001): 35–44.
DOI: 10.1007/s12142-001-1004-8Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNA number of political and legislative steps have been taken in Turkey since 1990 to advance children’s rights; however, the welfare of children cannot be separated from the overall social and economic problems of the country.
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Sweis, Rania Kassab. “Saving Egypt’s Village Girls: Humanity, Rights, and Gendered Vulnerability in a Global Youth Initiative.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 8.2 (Spring 2012): 26–50.
DOI: 10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.8.2.26Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNTransnational humanitarian organizations view Arab village girls as the quintessential humanitarian project. These organizations justify and legitimize their existence on the welfare of their bodies, while virtually ignoring the welfare of their families and larger issues of structural violence and poverty. A “regime of care” is unfolding in Arab states, such as Egypt, around the protection of youngsters.
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Tremayne, Soraya. “Modernity and Early Marriage in Iran.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 2.1 (Winter 2006): 65–94.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2006.2.1.65Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe global assumption is that female education and employment are the most effective measures against early marriage. However, a conservative town with a high literacy rate in Iran has high levels of early marriage. Changes that prove to empower girls and young women include lessening the obligation of kin to protect the girl, more legal rights for girls and young women in marriage, and weakening of parental control.
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Circulation and Kinship
There exists one edited volume on Middle East family history that contains some indirect references to children (Doumani 2003).
Doumani, Beshara, ed. Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
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NNNThis anthology provides a cross-section of themes relating to the family in the early modern and modern period of Egypt, Iran, and Greater Syria. The history of the family in Middle East is not one of linear evolution from traditional extended groups to modern nuclear families. Family demographics varied widely by region, religion, education, profession, etc.
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Adoption
Bargach 2002 explores how adoption is carried out in the context of an Islamic country.
Bargach, Jamila. Orphans of Islam: Family, Abandonment, and Secret Adoption in Morocco. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
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NNNThis book is about adoption in the context of Morocco, tracing both its legal history and cultural practice. The Western definition of adoption does not leave room for different forms that take place in the Muslim world. The modern political economy turns abandoned children into surplus bodies because it creates only one acceptable family paradigm.
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Households, Property, and Law
Before creation of the modern nation-state, Islamic law largely shaped legal decisions impacting children. Sonbol 1996 discusses how this played out in the Ottoman period, while Rahman 1980 looks at some relatively contemporary applications of Islamic law.
Rahman, Fazlur. “A Survey of Modernization of Muslim Family Law.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 11.4 (1 July 1980): 451–465.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800054817Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis is an overview of how classical Islamic family law was practiced in some Muslim-majority countries in the late 1970s. Inheritance, family planning, the status of orphans, and the status of children in divorce are discussed.
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Sonbol, Amira El-Azhary. “Adults and Minors in Ottoman Shari’a Courts and Modern Law.” In Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History. 1st ed. Edited by Amira El-Azhary Sonbol, 236–257. Contemporary Issues in the Middle East. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
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NNNThis essay explores legal decisions impacting minors in Egyptian Islamic courts from Ottoman times to the present. A minimum age for marriage was set for children in 1931, as was the age of majority. After this period of reform, the state became involved in the construction of family law, gradually supplanting in authority the various Islamic legal schools.
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Familial Relations
Gordon 2007; Dwairy, et al. 2006; Joseph 1999; Rugh 1984; and Rugh 1997 focus on the message that children receive about their identity as inextricably bound to the family identity. Hussein 2011 looks at connections between families. Hatem 1987 considers changes that happen in family structure due to economic policies.
Dwairy, Marwan, Mustafa Achoui, Reda Abouserie, and Adnan Farah. “Adolescent-Family Connectedness among Arabs.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 37.3 (2006): 248–261.
DOI: 10.1177/0022022106286923Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNArab adolescents scored higher than their American peers in emotional, functional, financial, and total connectedness to family. Urbanization, parents’ education, sex, and birth order did not significantly affect the level of Arab adolescent connectedness to their family.
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Gordon, Joel. “The Slaps Felt around the Arab World: Family and National Melodrama in Two Nasser-Era Musicals.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39.2 (1 May 2007): 209–228.
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NNNThis article looks at two popular 1960s melodramas that deal with generational gaps in regards to love and dating. The generational battle reaffirms the necessity of patriarchal rule and that the challenging of it is dangerous for society. Yet, the future of society is left uncertain.
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Hatem, Mervat. “Toward the Study of the Psychodynamics of Mothering and Gender in Egyptian Families.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19.3 (1 August 1987): 287–305.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800056749Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe evolution of Egypt’s economy toward an industrial workforce impacted the structure of middle- and working-class families. Mothers became exclusively identified with the task of mothering within a nuclear family, with fewer people living in a single household.
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Hussein, Nashaat. “The Social Significance of Street Soccer in Greater Cairo: Game Structure and Social Functions.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4.2 (2011): 309–328.
DOI: 10.1353/hcy.2011.0021Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNStreet soccer in Cairo plays a significant role in the socialization of children and leads to the creation of various forms of relationships among families. Although regarded as unstructured play, street soccer has a distinctive structure.
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Joseph, Suad, ed. Intimate Selving in Arab Families: Gender, Self, and Identity. 1st ed. Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999.
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NNNThis book looks at intimate Arab familial relationships. Western psychological models hold that the self emerges in a nuclear family setting; however, in the Arab world notions of the self do not always conform to Western individualist, autonomous constructs. The chapters in this book are a combination of biographies and autobiographies and ethnographic, historical, and literary studies.
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Rugh, Andrea B. Family in Contemporary Egypt. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1984.
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NNNThis study argues that family in Egypt takes the form of group organization controlling individual initiative, status and respect, confidence between people, social behavior, future planning, engagement in public life, and financial decisions. Modernization and Westernization disrupt family ties but ultimately do not break them. Some topics touched upon in this study are parent-child relationships, orphans, custody, and birth order hierarchy.
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Rugh, Andrea B. Within the Circle: Parents and Children in an Arab Village. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
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NNNThis book reports on the day-to-day life of parents and children in a Syrian village, including the reactions of the American female observer.
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Slavery
Most scholarship on slavery in Middle East history relates to the devsirme system in the former Ottoman Empire (Yilmaz 2009). La Rue 2009 tackles the experience of a slave child in the trans-Saharan trade, for which little is known.
La Rue, George Michael. “The Brief Life of ‘Ali, the Orphan of Kordofan: The Egyptian Slave Trade in the Sudan, 1820–35.” In Children in Slavery through the Ages. Edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller, 71–87. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009.
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NNNThis article looks at the experience and ideology of the trans-Saharan slave trade from Sudan to Egypt, paying particular attention to the life of one boy purchased by a British doctor and abolitionist.
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Yilmaz, Gulay. “Becoming a Devsirme: The Training of Conscripted Children in the Ottoman Empire.” In Children in Slavery through the Ages. Edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller, 119–134. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009.
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NNNThe devsirme were a group of male slaves forcibly recruited from Christians living in the Ottoman Empire. These boys could obtain privileged status, with opportunities for advancement in the power dynamics of the Ottoman Empire.
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Street Children
Ammar 2009, Bademci 2012, and Fahmī 2007 focus primarily on the lack of appropriate and adequate services provided to assist street children.
Ammar, Nawal. “The Relationship between Street Children and the Justice System in Egypt.” International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 53.5 (2009): 556–573.
DOI: 10.1177/0306624X08320209Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNAmmar explores the causes of Egyptian street children and the problems they face, including an outdated justice system and inadequate rehabilitation opportunities. Nonprofit organizations try to pick up the pieces and the media tries to cover the plight, but street children continue to suffer the most from family and state-sponsored violence.
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Bademci, H. Ozden. “Working with Vulnerable Children: Listening to the Views of Providers Working with Street Children in Istanbul.” Children and Youth Services Review 34.4 (April 2012): 725–734.
DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.12.020Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNFront-line state workers for street children in Turkey determine the scope and quality of service provision, regardless of the statutes put before them. The neglect of the service providers and their lack of specific training lead to further marginalization of their clients.
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Fahmī, Kamāl. Beyond the Victim: The Politics and Ethics of Empowering Cairo’s Street Children. Cairo, Egypt, and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2007.
DOI: 10.5743/cairo/9789774160639.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe phenomenon of street children in Cairo continues to escalate because the dominant discourse defines them as victims. Action with street children must acknowledge the children’s agency to change themselves, instead of treating them as in need of rescue and rehabilitation.
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Orphans
Eraqi-Klorman 2001, Maksudyan 2011, and Maksudyan 2009 look at historical instances where the state has used them to advance a larger agenda.
Eraqi-Klorman, Bat-Zion. “The Forced Conversion of Jewish Orphans in Yemen.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33.1 (1 February 2001): 23–47.
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NNNIn the 1920s Yemen subjected its Jews to a unique law, the Orphans’ Decree, which obligated the Muslim state to take custody of orphan Jews and raise them Muslim. The intent was to alleviate the suffering of orphaned Jewish children, but it alienated the Jewish community, who sought to resist it.
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Maksudyan, Nazan. “Modernization of Welfare or Further Deprivation? State Provisions for Foundlings in the Late Ottoman Empire.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2.3 (2009): 361–392.
DOI: 10.1353/hcy.0.0071Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNIn the late Ottoman state, child abandonment resulted in the child being institutionalized by the increasingly bureaucratized and modernized state. This article discusses the experiences of the infants, arguing that the state’s newly adopted European welfare policies worsened their condition.
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Maksudyan, Nazan. “Orphans, Cities, and the State: Vocational Orphanages (‘Islahhanes’) and Reform in the Late Ottoman Urban Space.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43.3 (1 August 2011): 493–511.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743811000638Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNOttoman vocational orphanages that opened in the late-19th-century provinces were instrumental in disseminating Ottoman ideals and identity. Orphanages were educational and disciplinary institutions for destitute children that reflected new conceptualizations of order in urban space.
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Marriage
Young people of the 20th century have faced economic and political challenges to getting married, as explored by Kholoussy 2010 and Singerman 2007. Salamon and Juhasz 2011 investigates conceptions of young female beauty among late-19th-century Tunisian Jewish brides.
Kholoussy, Hanan. “For Better, for Worse”: The Marriage Crisis that Made Modern Egypt. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
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NNNIn the early 20th century, Egypt faced a “marriage crisis” because of young middle-class men refraining from marriage. This book investigates the societal causes of this crisis.
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Salamon, Hagar, and Esther Juhasz. “‘Goddesses of Flesh and Metal’: Gazes on the Tradition of Fattening Jewish Brides in Tunisia.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 7.1 (Winter 2011): 1–38.
DOI: 10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.2011.7.1.1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNDuring the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tunisian Jewish community practiced a custom of fattening and whitening their brides before marriage. These young women’s bodies were perceived as being able to be transformed. Gazes by both insiders and outsiders embodied both attraction and repulsion.
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Singerman, Diane. Middle East Youth Initiative, Wolfensohn Center for Development, and Dubai School of Government. The Economic Imperatives of Marriage: Emerging Practices and Identities among Youth in the Middle East. Washington, DC: Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution, 2007.
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NNNThis study looks at the financial reasons underlying delayed marriage in contemporary Egypt. Young people feel disempowered, economically vulnerable, and in a state of perpetual adolescence, even though they are more educated than ever before. As a result, young people are dating and mating in new ways that need more policy and research attention.
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Migration and Refugee Status
Children of refugee and migrant families face unique challenges in the Middle East, as explored by Chatty and Hundt 2005, Hart 2004, and Willen 2005.
Chatty, Dawn, and Gillian Lewando Hundt, eds. Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East. New York: Berghahn, 2005.
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NNNFor more than half of a century, Palestinian children have moved in and out of refugee camps. Forced migration and prolonged conflict affect rites of passage from childhood to adult status, transforms family organization, and changes education structures. International organizations that seek to aid Palestinian children are based on Western assumptions of appropriate child development rather than an understanding of local context.
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Hart, Jason. “Beyond Struggle and Aid: Children’s Identities in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Jordan.” In Children and Youth on the Front Line: Ethnography, Armed Conflict and Displacement. Edited by Jo Boyden and Joanna de Berry, 167–186. New York: Berghahn, 2004.
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NNNInternational humanitarian agencies and political leaders lump Palestinian refugee children into a monolithic identity. This conflates refugee children into one category, without paying heed to age, gender, social class, religious faith, personal history, and political views. Efforts at reconciliation must acknowledge young people’s role in defining their identities, rather than constraining them in assumed value systems.
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Willen, Sarah S. “Birthing ‘Invisible’ Children: State Power, NGO Activism, and Reproductive Health among ‘Illegal Migrant’ Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1.2 (Spring 2005): 55–88.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2005.1.2.55Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNChildren born to illegal migrants in Israel are almost completely excluded from state-subsidized health care and they do not have citizenship or residency rights at birth. National ideologies of citizenship and belonging are at odds with the transnational economic and political forces propelling migration.
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Child Labor
Hindman 2009 surveys the history of child labor in the world, with one section dealing specifically with the Middle East and North Africa. Goldberg 2004 looks at the historical roots of child labor in Egypt in the 20th century.
Goldberg, Ellis. Trade, Reputation, and Child Labor in Twentieth-Century Egypt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
DOI: 10.1057/9781403976833Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNEgyptian elites during the first half of the 20th century actively chose to use child labor in order to turn Egypt into a specialized exporter of high-quality cotton. Egyptian political leaders regulated the economy and did not make the education of children incentive-compatible for parents and employers, holding repercussions for the country even into the early 21st century.
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Hindman, Hugh, ed. The World of Child Labor: An Historical and Regional Survey. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2009.
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NNNOne section of this edited volume explores the current and historical state of child labor in the Middle East, paying particular attention to the following countries: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey, the UAE, and Yemen.
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Health
There are no comprehensive books on the health of children and youth in Middle East history and society. However, several individual works address the issue both directly and indirectly.
Family Planning
Ali 2002, Baron 2008, and Maffi 2012 explore the connection between fertility rates and state control.
Ali, Kamran Asdar. Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves. 1st ed. Modern Middle East Series no. 21. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
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NNNFamily planning programs in Egypt seek to regulate reproduction, as well as manage the population by turning the people into self-regulating individuals. International agencies blame ecological degradation, hunger, poverty, and political instability on overpopulation, ignoring the impact of Western-backed structural readjustment programs. There are various responses and reactions by Egyptians to these population control measures.
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Baron, Beth. “The Origins of Family Planning: Aziza Hussein, American Experts, and the Egyptian State.” In Special Issue: Innovative Women: Unsung Pioneers of Social Change. Edited by Nikki R. Keddie. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 4.3 (Fall 2008): 31–57.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2008.4.3.31Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNFertility rates in the Middle East have changed dramatically in the 20th century, at varying rates in specific countries. Birth control programs in Egypt started in the 1950s. Camps have differed between those focusing on the social dimension of family planning and those who prefer to work with the medical establishment through a centralized state program. The state has generally sided with the latter in order to eliminate a site of autonomous, independent ventures.
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Maffi, Irene. Women, Health and the State in the Middle East: The Politics and Culture of Childbirth in Jordan. London: I. B. Tauris, 2012.
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NNNSince the 1960s, Jordan has witnessed the bureaucratization of women’s health, making pregnancy and birth medical events controlled by the state. In conjunction with international aid agencies, authorities introduced a pathological view of reproduction, meaning that careful medical surveillance is necessary. Modern obstetric practices have amplified the control that men can have over women’s bodies.
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Abortion
Bowen 1997 looks at the historical and current state of abortion in Islamic law.
Bowen, Donna Lee. “Abortion, Islam, and the 1994 Cairo Population Conference.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29.2 (1 May 1997): 161–184.
DOI: 10.1017/S002074380006445XSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNMedieval Muslim jurists recognized abortion as a necessary practice under certain conditions. Today, politics and ignorance of the nuances in Islamic law push some groups to wage debates against abortion by claiming it is a Western norm. Dogmatic slogans against abortion deny the realities of women’s everyday needs.
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Infertility
The question of the importance of fertility in Middle Eastern society has been the focus of the work of Marcia Claire Inhorn (Inhorn 1996 and Inhorn 2007).
Inhorn, Marcia Claire. Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
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NNNPoor infertile Egyptian women suffer stigmatization and an almost complete lack of social power. Children are a source of power in patriarchal societies. Motherless women are often subject to divorce or polygamous marriage. Patriarchy, class, religion, and urbanism are at the base of pronatalism and are sources of both population growth and infertility stigmatization. The father figure sees his children as extension of himself and guarantee of the family’s future.
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Inhorn, Marcia Claire. “Masculinity, Reproduction, and Male Infertility Surgery in the Middle East.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3.3 (2007): 1–20.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2007.3.3.1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNInfertile men in the Middle East often undergo a surgery on their genitalia called varicocelectomy. This paper looks at why men are demanding this surgery, including the pressure on men to produce a lineage, physician greed, and a desire to support their wives’ fulfillment of fertile manhood.
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Circumcision
Circumcision for boys and girls is not a densely studied area of academic research. Marx 1973 looks at circumcision feasts in North Africa. Gruenbaum 2005 explores the challenges faced by Sudanese activists working against female circumcision.
Gruenbaum, Ellen. “Feminist Activism for the Abolition of FGC in Sudan.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1.2 (Spring 2005): 89–111.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2005.1.2.89Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNConservative forces accuse Sudanese groups working to end female genital cutting (FGC) of promoting a Western feminist agenda. But too-heavy reliance on male religious authorities by these groups can unleash new restrictions on women. The Sudanese groups appreciate international funding but prefer to work this issue out on their own.
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Marx, Emanuel. “Circumcision Feasts among the Negev Bedouins.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 4.4 (1 October 1973): 411–427.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800031093Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis article discusses male circumcision feasts among a group of Bedouin tribes in the 1960s. The ceremony is a boy’s initiation, fulfills a precondition for marriage, and makes him a Muslim. The feasts reflect otherwise largely inconspicuous income differentials between Bedouin.
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Domestic Violence
Al-Ghanim 2009 discusses the current state of sexual violence in one Gulf country.
al-Ghanim, Kaltham Ali. “Violence against Women in Qatari Society.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 5.1 (Winter 2009): 80–93.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2009.5.1.80Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNA substantial percentage of female students at Qatar University report having experienced violence from males within the family, sometimes in childhood and adolescence. There is a lack of legislation to protect women.
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Play
Some sections of Carlisle 2009 contain information on play in modern and historical Middle East contexts, while Rossie 2013 looks at the sociocultural aspects of toys and play in North Africa.
Carlisle, Rodney. Encyclopedia of Play in Today’s Society. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009.
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NNNThis encyclopedia contains entries that explore the concept of play in a variety of times and places, including the ancient Middle East and modern Egypt.
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Rossie, Jean-Pierre. Saharan and North African Toy and Play Cultures: Technical Activities in Play, Games and Toys. Braga, Portugal: Centre for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, Catholic University of Portugal, 2013.
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NNNThis anthropological study examines toys in North Africa related to weapons for hunting and fighting, communication, and transport.
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Education
The majority of research on education in the Middle East relates to its historical role in national reform movements. Some research explores education as a site of tension and encounter between Western modernity and indigeneity.
Reform
Scholars focus on the way that the state has historically sought to use education to socially engineer society. Pollard 2005, Rostam-Kolayi 2008, Russell 2005, and Yonah and Saporta 2006 illustrate this point through showing how girls were targets of educational reform. Mehran 2011 considers the way that post-revolutionary Iran uses textbooks to support state propaganda. Herrera and Torres 2006 assesses the current state of educational affairs in Egypt.
Herrera, Linda, and Carlos Alberto Torres, ed. Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006.
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NNNThis edited volume uses qualitative methodologies to critically assess schooling in contemporary Arab societies. Some themes of the book include the antidemocratic nature of schooling, the ways the neoliberal market deteriorates the teaching profession, the impact of Islamist movements on schooling, the gap between policy and practice, and the desire of people to have a meaningful educational system.
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Mehran, Golnar. “The Presentation of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ in Postrevolutionary Iranian School Textbooks.” In Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics. Edited by Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee, 232–253. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.
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NNNPost-revolutionary Iranian schoolbooks have been key instruments of teaching the younger generation the values deemed appropriate by the new regime. Children learn to distinguish and create identities based on differences between the Iranian/non-Iranian, Muslim/non-Muslim, good/evil, friend/enemy, and male/female. The ideal identity in the world is the Iranian, Islamic, male identity.
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Pollard, Lisa. “Learning Gendered Modernity: The Home, the Family and the Schoolroom in the Construction of Egyptian National Identity (1885–1919).” In Beyond the Exotic. Edited by Amira El-Azhary Sonbol, 249–269. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005.
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NNNThe state reached into the schoolroom in order to reformulate the domestic realm and ultimately recreate the nation. Girls learned in schoolbooks, for example, that proper cleaning and dressing were habits that would allow for the creation of a modern independent Egypt.
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Rostam-Kolayi, Jasamin. “Origins of Iran’s Modern Girls’ Schools: From Private/National to Public/State.” In Special Issue: Innovative Women: Unsung Pioneers of Social Change. Edited by Nikki R. Keddie. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 4.3 (Fall 2008): 58–88.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2008.4.3.58Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNModern-style girls’ schooling in Iran did not begin in the Riza Shah era, as existing literature claims. The Riza Shah era placed state support and propaganda behind a late-19th-century education trend that started in the face of state opposition and under the initiative of religio-ethnic minorities and Muslims.
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Russell, Mona. “The Use of Textbooks as a Source of History for Women: The Case of Turn-of-the-Century Egypt.” In Beyond the Exotic. Edited by Amira El-Azhary Sonbol, 270–294. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005.
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NNNEarly-20th-century Egyptian textbooks reveal a two-tiered system of education for girls. Both tiers viewed girls as the future of the nation and taught them domestic order and hygiene. However, upper-class girls learned more vocational and consumption skills than lower-class girls.
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Yonah, Yossi, and Ishak Saporta. “The Wavering Luck of Girls: Gender and Pre-Vocational Education in Israel.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 2.3 (Fall 2006): 71–101.
DOI: 10.2979/MEW.2006.2.3.71Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe Israeli educational system in the 1950s and 1960s discriminated against Mizrahi girls (Jewish girls of Middle Eastern origin) through its tracking system. The patriarchal social order sometimes had unintentional favorable outcomes for girls.
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Ottoman
One of the most intense periods of educational reform in the Middle East happened during the latter years of the Ottoman Empire. Evered 2007, Fortna 2000, Fortna 2002, and Somel 2001 study the various goals of those reforms. Evered 2012, Fortna 2011, and Yilmaz 2011 engage in the reception of educational reforms by the people.
Evered, Emine. “An Educational Prescription for the Sultan: Hüseyin Hilmi Paşa’s Advice for the Maladies of Empire.” Middle Eastern Studies 43.3 (2007): 439–459.
DOI: 10.1080/00263200701246140Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNIn the early 1900s, the Ottoman state sought to restore order in the rebellious region of the Balkans through educational reform. The educational agenda sought to educate the empire’s citizens within their religious beliefs while also inculcating them in state-based identity and loyalty. Due to the pressure of the locals and the empire’s use of inclusion to fight brewing ethnonationalisms, the educational policies were neither purely Ottomanist nor purely Islamist.
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Evered, Emine. Empire and Education under the Ottomans: Politics, Reform and Resistance from the Tanzimat to the Young Turks. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012.
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NNNIn the face of territorial annexation by European rivals and outright secession by minority populations, Ottoman leaders in the late 19th century enacted educational reforms for its population. Local populations adapted, resisted, and negotiated state-led initiatives that ultimately heightened ethnolinguistic and religious identities.
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Fortna, Benjamin C. “Islamic Morality in Late Ottoman ‘Secular’ Schools.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32.3 (1 August 2000): 369–393.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800021140Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNDespite secular reform policies, late Ottoman state schools relied on teaching Islamic morals. There was an attempt to import the Western system and infuse it with the moral content appropriate to the Islamic-Ottoman context. The emphasis on morality allowed the state to assume its new role of standing in for the parent.
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Fortna, Benjamin C. Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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NNNThe Ottoman educational endeavor was not a Western implant nor was it cut off from global trends. The endeavor reworked the Western secular model to include Ottoman and Islamic referents and Islamic morality.
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Fortna, Benjamin C. Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic. Houndmills, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
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NNNReading is a culturally and historically conditioned practice and became widespread only in modern society. The transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic witnessed the coming of an unprecedented degree of literacy that transformed daily life. Reading played a role in individualization, supporting and subverting the agenda of the state, and expanding cultural realms.
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Somel, Selcuk Aksin. The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001.
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NNNThis book looks at educational policies toward non-Turkish Muslim populations in the Tanzimat and Hamidian periods of the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in the 1930s the state used authoritarian measures to turn schools into sites of social disciplining of subjects. Measures to make loyal subjects were inhibited by chronic weak finances, a death in professional trained instructors, and the heterogeneity of the empire.
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Yilmaz, Hale. “Learning to Read (Again): The Social Experiences of Turkey’s 1928 Alphabet Reform.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43.4 (1 November 2011): 677–697.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743811000900Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNTurkey’s 1928 alphabet change was an authoritarian decree that had a multiplicity of implications for people’s lives. Learning the new letters was gradual, oftentimes filled with instances of noncompliance. The government was not able to fully control the process.
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Higher
Herrera 2006 presents an overview of modern Arab universities.
Herrera, Linda. “Higher Education in the Arab World.” In International Handbook of Higher Education. Edited by James J. F. Forest and Philip G. Altbach, 409–421. Springer International Handbooks of Education 18. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006.
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-4012-2_20Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNInstitutions of higher learning in the Arab World date back to the 7th century and transformed to a foreign model in the 18th century. The postcolonial era saw an expansion of universities, specifically helping forge national identities. The Arab university has been undergoing crisis for a number of decades due to political instability, authoritarian and bureaucratic structures, and market-driven privatization.
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Islamic
Scholars explore the ways in which indigenous forms of education encountered modern Western forms of education introduced by early-20th-century reformers. Greenberg 2004, Herrera 2000, Herrera 2002, Herrera 2004, and Ringer 2001 argue that indigenous forms of education must not be dismissed as sites of study during the period of rapid modernization of the early-20th-century Middle East. Houtsonen 1994 takes a more contemporary look at indigenous education, asking how it continues to shape children’s lives today in Morocco.
Greenberg, Ela. “Educating Muslim Girls in Mandatory Jerusalem.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36.1 (1 February 2004): 1–19.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743804361015Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNIn looking at the case of the Islamic Girls’ School, this article argues that the education of elementary school–aged Muslim girls in Mandatory Palestine contributed to the creation of generations of nationalists. The school took an anti-missionary and anti-secular stance, and stood in contrast to the apathy of the British toward education.
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Herrera, Linda. “The Sanctity of the School: New Islamic Education and Modern Egypt.” PhD diss. Columbia University, 2000.
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NNNEducation movements in Egypt from mid-19th century to the early 21st century indicate that there have always been indigenous alternatives to government secular schools.
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Herrera, Linda. “‘The Soul of a Nation’: Abdallah Nadim and Educational Reform in Egypt (1845–1896).” Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies 7 (2002): 1–24.
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NNNEducational reform in 19th-century Egypt was not solely Westernized. Abdallah Nadim is an overlooked figure who combined “modern” educational reforms with anticolonial, protonationalist, and conservative Islamic influences.
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Herrera, Linda. “Education, Islam, and Modernity: Beyond Westernization and Centralization.” Comparative Education Review 48.3 (1 August 2004): 318–326.
DOI: 10.1086/421179Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNSocial historians today are moving beyond the traditional paradigm of viewing the school in the Muslim Middle East as under the cloak of a centralized government and as a passive receptor of Western educational imports. The three studies in this review essay look at the education in the late Ottoman Empire (Fortna and Somel) and Qajar Iran (Ringer).
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Houtsonen, Jarmo. “Traditional Quranic Education in a Southern Moroccan Village.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26.3 (1 August 1994): 489–500.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800060761Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis is a study of education in a poor southern Moroccan village in the early 1990s. Qurʾanic schools continued to hold importance despite the rise of modern schools because of their perceived social and economic benefits.
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Ringer, Monica. Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Multiple Reforms in Qajar Iran. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2001.
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NNNThe system of education in 19th-century Iran was the subject of intense debate among reformers confronting modernity. There was a spectrum of responses for how to deal with the competing forces of modernization, Westernization, and indigenous culture and religion. The introduction of European-style education during this period shaped Iranian identity in subsequent history.
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Conflict
The impact of violence on children and youth in the Middle East is largely under-studied by scholars. Reports by international human rights agencies might be a place to explore for more information, although they are not included in this bibliography.
Palestine
Many studies on Palestinian children and youth in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict deal with quantitative data such as instances of bedwetting, nightmares, and injury (Solomon and Lavi 2005 and Masalha 2003). The selection here deals mostly with the qualitative aspects of the conflict. Media and political representation of children in the conflict are the focus of Aqtash, et al. 2004 and Duschinsky 2011. The lived experience of children in war and their agency are the focus of Bucaille 2004, Habashi 2008, and Warshel 2012. Various other topics addressed in scholarship include the look at child martyrs in Habiballah 2004; the look at children and the law in Viterbo 2012; and Ichilov 2004 on citizenship education.
Aqtash, Nashat A., Anna Seif, and Ahmed Seif. “Media Coverage of Palestinian Children and the Intifada.” Gazette: International Journal for Communication Studies 66.5 (October 2004): 383–409.
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NNNPalestinian children during the second intifada generally did not have access to the media, and issues impacting them were not covered in the mainstream US media. Representations of children as in places other than demonstrations and as stone-throwers were rare. Journalists rarely gave names of children or details about their daily lives and families.
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Bucaille, Laetitia. Growing Up Palestinian: Israeli Occupation and the Intifada Generation. Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
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NNNThis book tells the story of the first intifada through the lives of three adolescent Palestinian males. The story of their coming of age in a time of war makes clear that the conflict cannot be solved by treating it solely as a security issue.
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Duschinsky, Robbie. “Slaughtered Innocents: Child Victims in Political Discourse during the Second Intifada and Gaza Conflict.” Social Semiotics 21.1 (February 2011): 33–51.
DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2011.535669Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNBoth the Israeli and Palestinian sides in the second intifada employed narratives of childhood innocence in a situation where violence has become otherwise routine. Representations of the child as victim render the enemy who harms this figure as immoral. The representations also justify aggression.
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Habashi, Janette. “Palestinian Children Crafting National Identity.” Childhood 15.1 (February 2008): 12–29.
DOI: 10.1177/0907568207086833Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis article moves away from depicting Palestinian children as only vulnerable and traumatized, and instead considers them as agents contending with world politics and hegemony. Children construct and reconstruct national identities based on their relationship with past generations, the media, present-day trauma, and collective consciousness.
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Habiballah, Nahed. “Interviews with Mothers of Martyrs of the Aqsa Intifada.” Arab Studies Quarterly 26.1 (Winter 2004): 15–30.
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NNNMothers who lost their children in the second intifada were not passive in protecting their children. There are a number of obstacles complicating the mothers’ ability to mourn, such as a culture of martyrdom (idealization of victims who lost their lives, intentionally or unintentionally, in the struggle for Palestine).
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Ichilov, Orit. Political Learning and Citizenship under Conflict: The Political Socialization of Israeli and Palestinian Youngsters. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203335093Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNYoungsters learn political orientations from multiple levels of their environments, including the global, national, and local. Israeli and Palestinian societies show that youngsters’ exposure to violent behavior perpetuates and prolongs conflict. Wars create only temporary bonding forces among contesting groups in society. Citizenship education (civics) is critical to democratic societies but is only sporadically taught.
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Masalha, Shafiq. “Children and Violent Conflict: A Look at the Inner World of Palestinian Children via Their Dreams.” Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture 10.1 (March 2003): 62.
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NNNDreams are a window into the psychological effect of war on children, particularly their attitude toward the present and future. Palestinian children in the early 2000s reported a large majority of disturbing political dreams, with few reporting dreams that dealt with personal wishes.
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Solomon, Zahava, and Tamar Lavi. “Palestinian Youth of the Second Intifada: PTSD and Future Orientation.” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 44.11 (November 2005): 1167–1175.
DOI: 10.1097/01.chi.0000161650.97643.e1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis is a study of post-traumatic stress syndrome and future orientation of Palestinian youth living through the second intifada. Palestinian youth who are Israelis experienced less violence than those living in the Occupied Territories, but both groups reported chronic stress from traumatic threats.
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Viterbo, Hedi. “The Age of Conflict: Rethinking Childhood, Law, and Age through the Israeli-Palestinian Case.” In Law & Childhood Studies: Current Legal Issues. Vol. 14. Edited by Michael Freeman, 133–155. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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NNNIsraeli criminal law demarcates the age of childhood along national lines, with Israeli children having a higher age of majority than children in the Occupied Territories. The law also changes the significance of a Palestinian child’s age based on the situation. For example, a Palestinian child in an Israeli military court may face different consequences based on the age at which he/she is heard in court, versus the age at which the alleged crime occurred.
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Warshel, Yael. “Its All about Tom and Jerry, Amr Khaled and Iqra, Not Hamas’s Mickey Mouse: Palestinian Children’s Cultural Practices around the Television Set.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 5.2 (2012): 211–245.
DOI: 10.1163/187398612X637351Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNPalestinian children are less interested in watching local children’s programming geared at martyrdom than they are at watching global children’s programming. Children, not parents, play a larger role in deciding what to consume.
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Lebanon
Despite the gravity and length of the 1980s Lebanese civil war, very little scholarship has addressed its impact on children. Larkin 2010 looks at present-day legacies of the war in young people.
Larkin, Craig. “Beyond the War? The Lebanese Postmemory Experience.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42.4 (1 November 2010): 615–635.
DOI: 10.1017/S002074381000084XSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNLebanese youth today have grown up surrounded by other people’s memories of the traumatic events of the civil war, but not their own. Visual landscapes and oral narratives of the pain of others mean this generation is not detached from identifying and positioning themselves in society based on memory of the war.
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Early and Medieval Islam
Children and youth as a primary focus of study by scholars of the premodern Middle East are negligible, except for the pioneering work of Avner Giladi (Giladi 2009 and Giladi 2011, both cited under Conceptions of Childhood, and Giladi 1990, Giladi 1999, and Giladi 2010, all cited under Medical Practices).
Conceptions of Childhood
Giladi 2009 and Giladi 2011 explore broad conceptions of childhood in premodern Islamic texts.
Giladi, Avner. “Islam.” In Children and Childhood in World Religions: Primary Sources and Texts. Edited by Don Browning and Marcia Bunge, 151–216. The Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.
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NNNThis chapter examines the theme of children in Islam, focusing primarily on rites, education, parental love, infanticide, child rearing and pediatrics in the medieval Islamic context.
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Giladi, Avner. “Herlihy’s Thesis Revisited: Some Notes on Investment in Children in Medieval Muslim Societies.” Journal of Family History 36.3 (July 2011): 235–247.
DOI: 10.1177/0363199011407262Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNUrban society in the premodern Muslim Mediterranean world committed itself to education and training of children. Adults invested in the intellectual, emotional, and economic levels of childhood.
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Legal Practices
Scholarship on the legal standing of children in the premodern Middle East usually comes as a tangential aspect of scholarship on women and gender, as reflected in Berkey 1996, Meriwether 1996, and Richardson 2009.
Berkey, Jonathan P. “Circumcision Circumscribed: Female Excision and Cultural Accommodation in the Medieval Near East.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28.1 (1 February 1996): 19–38.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800062760Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThis article looks at medieval Islamic jurists’ attitudes toward the practice of female excision. The practice predates Islam and has not been universally applied because Islam, like any cultural tradition, is always engaged in the process of redefinition and change. Patriarchy and the attempt to control women’s sexuality shaped discourse on the permissibility of female excision.
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Meriwether, Margaret L. “Rights of Children and the Responsibilities of Women: Women as Wasis in Ottoman Aleppo, 1170–1840.” In Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History. 1st ed. Edited by Amira El-Azhary Sonbol. Contemporary Issues in the Middle East. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
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NNNCourt cases from Ottoman Aleppo reveal a discrepancy between family law theory and social practice. Women’s’ guardianship/custody rights of children in cases of divorce or death of the father were technically lost; however, her responsibilities as a mother continued, particularly in regards to managing the child’s property.
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Richardson, Kristina. “Singing Slave Girls (Qiyan) of the ‘Abbasid Court in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries.” In Children in Slavery through the Ages. Edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller, 105–118. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009.
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NNNThere were many nuanced master-slave relationships in the medieval Islamic world, where dependency and domination between master and slave were not the absolute. Motherhood, for example, could better a slave woman’s position. Singing slave girls occupied a space between free entertainers and the secluded sphere of women.
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Medical Practices
Giladi 1999, Giladi 2010, Giladi 1990, and Rogers 1999 discuss medical issues relating to children in the premodern Middle East, particularly those surrounding birth.
Giladi, Avner. “Some Observations on Infanticide in Medieval Muslim Society.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 22.2 (1 May 1990): 185–200.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743800033377Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNThe Qurʾan prohibited infanticide, but it took many centuries to disappear because of economic, demographic, and social circumstances.
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Giladi, Avner. Islamic History and Civilization. Vol. 25, Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses: Medieval Islamic Views on Breastfeeding and Their Social Implications. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 1999.
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NNNGiladi looks at early Islamic theories and practices regarding breastfeeding, particularly its impact on the lives of women and children. He also looks at non-maternal breastfeeding and its impact on relations between different families.
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Giladi, Avner. “Liminal Craft, Exceptional Law: Preliminary Notes on Midwives in Medieval Islamic Writings.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42.2 (May 2010): 185–202.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743810000012Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNMidwifery in premodern Islamic societies was a target of implicit and explicitly misogynistic sentiments as well as admiration. Men acknowledged the power of the midwife, who ensured a continuation of lineage. Midwives held special legal status as witness in the court because they were overseers of the birthplace. The purpose of the midwife was to be an agent of the patriarchal system that sought to control the female domain.
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Rogers, Therisa. “The Islamic Ethics of Abortion in the Traditional Islamic Sources.” The Muslim World 89.2 (April 1999): 122–129.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.1999.tb03673.xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
NNNEarly Islamic sources reveal that abortion in the first 120 days of gestation was not considered morally wrong. The killing of one’s children was a grave sin, leaving in question the ethics of abortion of a fetus after 120 days.
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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
- Evolutionary Studies of Childhood
- Family Meals
- Fandom (Fan Studies)
- Fathers
- Female Genital Cutting
- 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
- 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
- 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...
