For the past twenty years, the various childhood studies produced have been less keen on providing a relevant analytic framework than on pointing out new ideas for forthcoming research in the area. Such an endeavour, however, bears a double-edged effect of which sociologists should be aware. On the one hand it helps a self-sustaining community of researchers, relatively isolated from mainstream sociology, to mark out its own field of activities by consolidating and unifying its object, by structuring the knowledge thus yielded around the issue of childhood. On the other hand it could lead otherwise well-intended empirical researchers, entirely absorbed in their daily work and fully devoted to the understanding of children, into a theoretical stalemate. So many well-documented ideas have arisen from childhood studies that much energy has been concentrated on translating these into everyday knowledge; accordingly the capacity to theorize childhood has been set aside with unfortunate consequences (James et al. 1998).

These effects act as constraints on the development of sound knowledge of childhood. While this is not to suggest that contemporary sociology of childhood is in need of a theoretical overhaul, there remain urgent questions to address. The coming of age of a theoretically more productive approach can be seen as a sign of maturity; perhaps childhood is no longer either a residue of social theory or a peripheral phenomenon of adult society (Alanen 1992; Ambert 1986; Turmel 1998).

An ongoing debate must be sustained.