Children's Welfare in Ageing - Volume I

The new precariousness of the welfare state and the growing influence of the market, are challenging children’s life worlds, their everyday lives in families, schools, kindergartens and leisure areas. Demographic changes are leaving children vulnerable in the competition for public resources, access to space and use of time. Children are marginal at the big stage of political and economic actors. They do not have strong interest group to defend their rights to resources. But societies can not do without children’s contributions to society. Broad social changes call for deeper analyses as to the cultural blindness to children’s input to the societal fabric, and their consequences for children. These country studies explore children’s welfare from available sources across European countries. Three areas are highlighted: material welfare, access to space and use of time, and children’s rights and discourses.
Children’s Welfare in Ageing Europe is a result from an international scientific network within COST under the European Science Foundation. The network started in 2001 and includes child researchers in social sciences from twenty European countries.