Protecting children is one of the long-term functions of human communities. This book addresses the protection of children as a historical phenomenon and as part of a more general change to childhood and youth in the Nordic context, with a particular focus on Finland.

Exploring how the forms of organising the protection of children have changed from the Middle Ages (c. 1100) to the present (2020s), as well as situating these developments within wider transformations in generational relations and their governance, this book draws on legislation and law-making documents as empirical indicators of changes in generational relations and the organisation of protection across time and place. The analysis is based on a theorisation of generational relations, through which governance is understood as the structuring of the relationship between adulthood and childhood within practices of protecting children.

This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work, child welfare/protection, childhood studies and youth work, social policy and social welfare provision, as well as education and criminology.

Timo Harrikari is Professor of Social Work at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is the author, editor or co-editor of Towards Glocal Social Work in the Era of Compressed Modernity; Social Work and Social Change. The Changing Societal Conditions of Social Work in Time and Space; and Social Work During COVID-19: Glocal Perspectives and Implications for the Future of Social Work, all published by Routledge.