Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction Linda Mahood Welcome to Volume 17.2 of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth. The JHCY embraces a wide range of historical methodologies as well as scholarship in other disciplines that share a historical focus. The journal publishes original articles based on empirical research and essays that place contemporary issues of childhood and youth in a historical context. We are looking for articles; please consider us for your next publication. This special issue on Children in Crisis begins with an object lesson that contextualizes recent debates about how the concept of agency has been deployed in research on the history of childhood and youth. The idea for this object lesson emerged from a roundtable at the 2021 Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences conference on The History of Experience and Agency. The contributors are leading scholars, theorists, researchers, and activists: Stephanie Olsen, Kristine Alexander, Susan Miller, Ville Vuolanto, Simon Sleight, Mischa Honeck, Sarah Emily Duff, and Karen Vallgårda. Each contributor assesses the strengths and limitations of "the agency trap" as an analytical concept and how and where the concept privileges certain kinds of actions and resistance over more complex forms of behavior and suggests where the concept could be replaced or redefined. Children are the most silenced and marginalized members of society. I support the contributors' call for greater nuance and clarity in histories of young people that invoke the concept of agency. A sole focus on agency may silence children's voices and be counterproductive to the best interests of the child and child's rights-based policies and child welfare practices. Following such a thought-provoking object lesson is the special issue on Children in Crisis. In November 2022, guest editors Paula Fass, Kriste Lindenmeyer, Steven Mintz, and Bengt Sandin organized a cross-disciplinary workshop seeking to understand how past examples of children and youth who have undergone difficult experiences because of disease, war, community End Page 167 disruptions, and other forms of extraordinary change might illuminate research on children's experience of the COVID pandemic. This is the history of childhood and youth in action. End Page 168 Copyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press