Summary – A Childhood Mosaic: What Did We Learn?

Reflections on context and facts In the introduction to the first volume, a general outline provides the ideas that form the basis of this publication. ‘Welfare ’ is used as a broad concept, to include children’s material resources, as well as how children’s use of time and access to space influences their everyday lives. Welfare is also transmitted by the ways in which children are perceived in society, such as how the general feeling towards children outside the private realms and territories is influenced by the diminishing numbers of children. Our purpose with this overview is to provide a ‘mosaic of childhood ’ across European countries. Our aim is to piece together a coherent childhood mosaic from this rich material. Out of the variety of approaches and interpretations found in the country reports, we have attempted to provide a larger and perhaps more generalised picture from the numerous fragments, while highlighting a few recurrent themes. Our material is comprised of thirteen country reports contained in two volumes. They show at first sight a high degree of variability and differences, but a closer scrutiny, paradoxically from a distance, will reveal a number of similarities. In fact, it was not by chance that the COST A19 only included European countries. One reason was of course, that COST is an organisation that consists of European countries (along with Israel, which is also a member of this Action). Another reason was that these countries show clear similarities in a number of respects. We trust that coming together and co-operating in an Action such as this has among its goals to learn lessons and be inspired by each other. Even if it does not result in comparative insights as such, it does help us to cure our ‘cultural blindness ’ that we all are to some extent subject to. When immersed in one’s own country’s conditions and situation, one often fails to make connections between available information, or rather tends to compare it relative to national information as opposed to international information. However, an encounter with other countries is most helpful in revealing not only new conditions an