The series will explore changes in family, church, school, courts, the media, intermediate technology, and genetic engineering. The membrane between the local and the global is porous. At this border, the position of children is in flux. In some communities, the membrane may tear, challenging their abilities to sustain children well enough. In contrast, the description of an ideal of childhood has recently been given powerful expression through international policy mechanisms and institutions.
Ideals can obscure the reality of experience.
Profound alteration in children s security and opportunities can occur rapidly when communities are dislocated and when accepted forms unravel. The nature of the times calls for meticulous attention to and acknowledgement of contestations that imbue young lives with inordinate stress. A keen awareness of transformations and participation in realigning the contours of policies may contribute to the resolution of conflict. There is, perhaps, an originative contestation between adults who resist forces that militate against their desire for continuity and the young who step forward to meet the new. There has been a recent hiatus in theoretical advances so that we are left bereft of insights into the condition of children and youth as we tip over the cusp of the millennial divide.