Fertility rates have fallen dramatically around the world. In some countries, there are no longer enough children being born to replace adult populations. The disappearance of children is a matter of concern matched only by fears that childhood is becoming too structured or not structured enough, too short or too long, or just simply too different from the idealized childhoods of the past.

The End of Children? brings together scholars who draw on their expertise in multiple disciplines -- sociology, demography, history, anthropology, family studies, social work, and education -- to provide a more balanced, less alarmist perspective on the meanings and implications of these issues. Contrary to predictions of the end of children and the end of childhood, their investigations of developments in Canada and the United States, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the world, show that fertility rates and ideas about children and childhood are not uniform but rather vary around the globe based on factors such as time, culture, class, income, and age.

These timely explorations of how changing ideas about the child are reshaping when and why people have children and how they choose to raise them opens a new dialogue on the production and place of children in modern society.

Nathanael Lauster is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Graham Allan is professor emeritus of sociology at Keele University, United Kingdom.

Contributors: Graham Allan, Anita Ilta Garey, Mona Gleason, Edward Kruk, Nathanael Lauster, Megan Lemmon, Todd F. Martin, Adena B.K. Miller, Jay Teachman, Nicholas W. Townsend, Rebecca L. Upton, James M. White, Mira Whyman, and Jing Zhao