Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : childhood in world history -- Childhood in agricultural societies -- Childhood in the classical civilizations -- Childhood in postclassical world history : the impact of religious change -- Contacts and contrasts in the postclassical world -- Forces of change and the modern model of childhood : developments in the west, eighteenth century to 1914 -- Alongside the modern model : the pressures of colonialism -- Modern childhood in Asia : Japan adapts the new model -- Childhood and communist revolutions -- Childhood in the affluent societies, twentieth and twenty-1st centuries -- The dislocations in the twentieth and twenty-1st centuries : children face war and violence -- Globalization and childhoods -- The dilemma of children's happiness -- Conclusion : childhoods from past toward future.