Gender and childhood in neoliberal times: Contemporary tropes of the boychild in psychological culture

Abstract

This chapter addresses political ambiguities surrounding recent reconfigurations of gendered childhood, both as markers of ‘old’ and ʼnew’, and as key effects of a contemporary political economy that is increasingly governed by modes of psychologization and feminization. While also central to prevailing modes of affect and subjectivity, the motif of childhood has long been a forum for the articulation of cultural concerns around nature, technology and sociocultural change-including around gender and familial relations.