The future of childhood studies By Rita Braches-Chyrek (ed.) Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2021. ISBN 978-3-8474-2448-2, 195 pp., $67.50 (hb)

The material in the anthology The Future of Childhood Studies outlines how the field needs to and might develop in the future. After a decades-long theoretical hibernation, scholars of Childhood Studies have begun making a reconnaissance of our once-so-bold onto-epistemologies and breaking new grounds in terms of reconceptualizing children and childhood. This anthology is warmly welcomed as one of the many attempts to push the state-of-the-art of our field forward, into the future. In the preface, several topics of interest are raised by the editor, Braches-Chyrek, related to key features of the early developments of the field. This includes childhood as a generational order, children's agency, children's rights, the field's interdisciplinarity and the (lack of) connection between social theory, social policy and empirical studies. As such, several of the chapters engage with some of the most heated topics in contemporary Childhood Studies.

The theoretical focus of many of the chapters is acclaimed in a field that has at times been theoretically weak. Major concerns are raised, such as the field's tendency to prioritize micro studies of children and childhood at the expense of the wider structures and changes (Moran-Ellis, 2021). New inquiries into how childhood might be best understood and analysed are much needed. However, I miss a strong connection to the ongoing debates in the field. For instance, some of the theorization concerning agency speaks very well to other (and perhaps more sophisticated) approaches emerging in the field, such as post-humanism and socio-materialism. Positioning themselves according to these debates could have made it easier for the reader to understand what the proposed concepts have to offer.

The anthology is an ambitious and manifold endeavour. The most interesting reads in the anthology are the empirical chapters, such as Bühler-Niederberger's analysis of intergenerational solidarities across diverse socioeconomic and cultural contexts, including data from Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, the chapters lack a common thread as they are weakly linked to other chapters and to the future (as suggested by the title). Some chapters seem underdeveloped and would have benefitted from a better editorial process. However, The Future of Childhood Studies provides an interesting and much-appreciated glance into what is cooking in German Childhood Studies, a less familiar corner of our field for many.