Conclusion

This volume set out to achieve two specific aims. Firstly, it sought to explore the efforts that have been made to export, or transport, to other societies around the world particular notions of childhood and child development which are intricately bound to historical developments that have taken place in Western Europe and North America in the last 300 years or so. These efforts became particularly apparent during the colonial period when various European governments sought to impose their own conceptions of childhood on ‘uncivilized’ others in the name of science, civilization, modernity and morality.