Introduction : childhood in world history
Childhood in agricultural societies : the first big changes
Childhood in the classical civilizations
Childhood in postclassical world history : the impact of religious change
Debating childhood in the premodern west
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, twentieh and twenty-first centuries
The dislocations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries : children face war and violence
Globalization and childhoods
Conclusion : childhoods from past toward future.