Discusses the impact of globalization on children’s lives, both in the United States and on the world stage. Globalization, privatization, the rise of the “work-centered” family, and the triumph of the unregulated marketplace, she argues, are revolutionizing the lives of children today. Fass begins by considering the role of the school as a fundamental component of social formation, particularly in a nation of immigrants like the United States. She goes on to examine children as both creators of culture and objects of cultural concern in America, evident in the strange contemporary fear of and fascination with child abduction, child murder, and parental kidnapping. Finally, Fass moves beyond the limits of American society and brings historical issues into the present and toward the future, exploring how American historical experience can serve as a guide to contemporary globalization as well as how globalization is altering the experience of American children and redefining childhood.

Introduction: Children in society, culture, and the world -- Immigration and education in the United States -- The IQ : a cultural and historical framework -- Creating new identities : youth and ethnicity in New York City high schools in the 1930s and 1940s -- Making and remaking an event : the Leopold and Loeb case in American culture -- A sign of family disorder? : changing representations of parental kidnapping -- Bringing it home : children, technology, and family in the post-World War II world -- Children and globalization -- Children in global migrations -- Children of a new world.