Introduction

All children deserve a good childhood. Few would disagree with a claim of this nature. But what exactly makes for a good childhood? How do we know if we have experienced one? These questions are easily posed, but not so easily answered. They evoke a multitude of different and often conflicting associations. Everyone has had their own childhood, which they experienced as good or bad, or at least as better or worse in certain respects. When dealing with one’s own childhood and with that of others, several different patterns of interpretation are invoked, some biographical, some sociocultural, and some historical. In these patterns of interpretation, very different ideas of a good (or not as good) childhood often come to bear. While some nostalgically indulge in memories of their own childhood as a kind of lost paradise, others see their childhood as a nightmare from which they are glad to have woken.