Hello there and welcome to Contemplating Childhoods.  You may be reading this because you are either a student studying children, someone with experience of working with children or someone who has taken an interest in studying or reading about children and their lives for several years. All are welcome!  We wanted to start this blog for several reasons including supporting students to feel part of an important community – those who care about what happens to children.  We hope to be able to help those who want to develop their subject knowledge, those who want to develop their academic work and those who want to do both.

Here are photographs of us as children. One thing that all students, early years professionals, parents and academics have in common is that we were all children once. However we may have had very different childhoods depending on the part of the country (or world) we grew up in, our family background and the education we had access to. This blog is our opportunity to reflect and contemplate on the childhoods that are, and have been, experienced and think about all the areas that make early childhood such an important area to consider. We hope that you enjoy reading it.