Children’s rights and childhood studies as a challenge and a driver of social change

This paper contains an introduction to a selection of papers across social sciences and humanities, based on empirical explorations and theoretical conceptualizations. Authors highlight the issues of parental roles, parental styles, child and family positioning in the family and society. The lens of children’s rights and participatory approaches is also discussed. Authors focus on diverse practices in parenting, different approaches to children’s agency and freedom of choice, family as a negotiated space mediated by culture, children’s position in family and society, life chances and wellbeing, critical approaches to children’s rights perspectives, early intervention, socio-political context, finally Freire’s and Korczak’s pedagogies.