The Routledge Companion to Gender and Childhood

This comprehensive academic collection offers a vital exploration of how gender and childhood intersect across diverse global and historical landscapes, moving beyond simplistic narratives to examine the complex ways children both shape and are shaped by gendered systems. The volume brings together scholarly, practical, and activist perspectives to investigate the institutional and cultural forces that define children's relationship to gender, while also highlighting children's own agency in responding to and reconfiguring these norms. It delves into the vast spectrum of children's gender identities, expressions, and embodiments, providing a crucial corrective to universalizing assumptions about youth and gender development.

What distinguishes this work is its commitment to contextual specificity, rigorously analyzing how geography, history, and culture produce distinct experiences of gendered childhood. Readers will find it an indispensable resource for understanding that childhood is not a monolithic, pre-gendered state but a contested site where gender is actively learned, performed, and sometimes resisted. For students, researchers, and anyone seeking to move past superficial debates, this companion provides the scholarly depth and global perspective necessary to engage thoughtfully with the lived realities of young people navigating a gendered world.