Revisar OPCIONES
The contributors to this volume address a number of issues connected with children and childhood. Their focus is mainly on Canada and the US, although two of the pieces briefly touch on South Africa and China. Included are such topics as declining fertility rates and their significance for the status of children; "performances of motherhood" and how they have changed over time; the growing numbers of professionals who make their living from pathologizing childhood; the increasing tendency of child protective services to remove children from their homes; children as status symbols for their parents; the greater numbers of people in their twenties who live with their parents; and strategic infertility (couples who claim to be infertile rather than admit to their relatives that they choose to remain childless). The collection is quite uneven. Chapters 2, 3, and 5 are nuanced discussions of complex phenomena; they raise excellent questions and point the way to future research. In contrast, a few of the articles (chapters 1, 4, and 6, in particular) are tedious, unconvincing, or insensitive to differences across race, class, and gender. Of interest primarily to sociologists and demographers. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, practitioners. A. H. Koblitz Arizona State University