In Radical Play Rob Goldberg recovers a little-known history of American children’s culture in the 1960s and 1970s by showing how dolls, guns, action figures, and other toys galvanized and symbolized new visions of social, racial, and gender justice. From a nationwide movement to oppose the sale of war toys during the Vietnam War to the founding of the company Shindana Toys by Black Power movement activists and the efforts of feminist groups to promote and produce nonsexist and racially diverse toys, Goldberg returns readers to a defining moment in the history of childhood when politics, parenting, and purchasing converged. Goldberg traces not only how movement activists brought their progressive politics to the playroom by enlisting toys in the era’s culture wars but also how the children’s culture industry navigated the explosive politics and turmoil of the time in creative and socially conscious ways. Outlining how toys shaped and were shaped by radical visions, Goldberg locates the moment Americans first came to understand the world of toys—from Barbie to G.I. Joe—as much more than child’s play.

African slaves in Haiti emancipated themselves from French rule in 1804 and created the first independent black republic in the Western Hemisphere. But they reinstituted slavery for the most vulnerable members of Haitian society—the children of the poor—by using them as unpaid servants to the wealthy. These children were—and still are—restavecs, a French term whose literal meaning of "staying with" disguises the unremitting labor, abuse, and denial of education that characterizes the children's lives.

In this memoir, Jean-Robert Cadet recounts the harrowing story of his youth as a restavec, as well as his inspiring climb to middle-class American life. He vividly describes what it was like to be an unwanted illegitimate child "staying with" a well-to-do family whose physical and emotional abuse was sanctioned by Haitian society. He also details his subsequent life in the United States, where, despite American racism, he put himself through college and found success in the Army, in business, and finally in teaching.

What should we do with teenagers who commit crimes? Are they children whose offenses are the result of immaturity and circumstances, or are they in fact criminals?

“Adult time for adult crime” has been the justice system’s mantra for the last twenty years. But locking up so many young people puts a strain on state budgets—and ironically, the evidence suggests it ultimately increases crime.

In this bold book, two leading scholars in law and adolescent development offer a comprehensive and pragmatic way forward. They argue that juvenile justice should be grounded in the best available psychological science, which shows that adolescence is a distinctive state of cognitive and emotional development. Although adolescents are not children, they are also not fully responsible adults.

Elizabeth Scott and Laurence Steinberg outline a new developmental model of juvenile justice that recognizes adolescents’ immaturity but also holds them accountable. Developmentally based laws and policies would make it possible for young people who have committed crimes to grow into responsible adults, rather than career criminals, and would lighten the present burden on the legal and prison systems. In the end, this model would better serve the interests of justice, and it would also be less wasteful of money and lives than the harsh and ineffective policies of the last generation.

In 1877, the American Humane Society was formed as the national organization for animal and child protection. Thirty years later, there were 354 anticruelty organizations chartered in the United States, nearly 200 of which were similarly invested in the welfare of both humans and animals. In The Rights of the Defenseless, Susan J. Pearson seeks to understand the institutional, cultural, legal, and political significance of the perceived bond between these two kinds of helpless creatures, and the attempts made to protect them.

Unlike many of today’s humane organizations, those Pearson follows were delegated police powers to make arrests and bring cases of cruelty to animals and children before local magistrates. Those whom they prosecuted were subject to fines, jail time, and the removal of either animal or child from their possession. Pearson explores the limits of and motivation behind this power and argues that while these reformers claimed nothing more than sympathy with the helpless and a desire to protect their rights, they turned “cruelty” into a social problem, stretched government resources, and expanded the state through private associations. The first book to explore these dual organizations and their storied history, The Rights of the Defenseless will appeal broadly to reform-minded historians and social theorists alike.

    Trick-or-treating. Flower girls. Bedtime stories. Bar and bat mitvah. In a nation of increasing ethnic, familial, and technological complexity, the patterns of children's lives both persist and evolve. This book considers how such events shape identity and transmit cultural norms, asking such questions as:
 
    * How do immigrant families negotiate between old traditions and new?
    * What does it mean when children engage in ritual insults and sick jokes?  
    * How does playing with dolls reflect and construct feelings of racial identity?  
    * Whatever happened to the practice of going to the Saturday matinee to see a Western?
    * What does it mean for a child to be (in the words of one bride) "flower-girl material"?  How does that role
        cement a girl's bond to her family and initiate her into society?  
    * What is the function of masks and costumes, and why do children yearn for these accoutrements of disguise?

    Rituals and Patterns in Children's Lives suggests the manifold ways in which America's children come to know their society and themselves.

Disruptive events such as economic recessions, natural disasters, job loss, and divorce can have a long-lasting impact when experienced during childhood, potentially altering children’s academic achievement, health and development, and later socioeconomic attainment. While much research has considered the overall impact of disruptive events on children’s lives, the consequences of disruption vary across groups. The same disruptive event may have profound negative consequences for some groups, minor or no impact for others, and even present a positive turning point for other groups. In this special issue of RSF, an interdisciplinary group of experts examine the disparate consequences of disruptive events on children.
 
Drawing on accumulated insights of empirical work from several social science disciplines, including sociology, psychology, and economics, the editors provide a nuanced consideration of theoretical approaches and methodological challenges in identifying unequal impacts. They argue that variation in the effects of disruptive events depends on different, and sometimes offsetting, mechanisms. For example, Martha Bailey and colleagues find that more disadvantaged male youth were less negatively impacted by the macroeconomic shock of the Great Depression than more advantaged youth. Black youth, however, were more negatively impacted. Anna Baranowska-Rataj and colleagues find little evidence that parental job loss leads to worse birth outcomes or that effects vary across regions with different unemployment levels in Sweden, a nation with a relatively generous safety net and universal health care. Regarding the household disruption of parental incarceration, Kristin Turney and colleagues find that some children seamlessly step into new responsibilities, while others, especially older children who had witnessed their fathers’ frequent entanglements with the criminal legal system, consciously step away from these responsibilities. Stefanie DeLuca and colleagues argue that as youth grow accustomed to disruptive events, these exposures become less remarkable and impactful on their life outcomes. Looking at the disruption to education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Douglas Harris and colleagues find that \high school graduation has remained remarkably steady since the onset of the pandemic, but entry into two-year colleges was hard hit, especially for colleges serving more people of color and those from low-income families. Finally, considering environmental disruptions, Nazar Khalid and colleagues show that severe floods in India have a stronger impact on the educational outcomes of children from marginalized communities.
 
Through its systematic examination of the variation in the consequences of disruption, especially in early life, this volume of RSF provides an insightful and practical resource for both researchers and policymakers.