The globalized “whole child”: Cultural understandings of children and childhood in multilateral aid development policy, 1946–2010

Current global conceptions of childhood dictate that all children are entitled to a childhood that provides protection, preparation, and child development for the whole child. We analyze 65 years of policy documents from the influential multilateral agency UNICEF focusing on how cultural ideas have changed over time and how they have blended into the contemporary idea of the child and childhood that is distinctly different from the period immediately following World War II. The results present a rich description of these trends including the greater elaboration of educational development during childhood, movement from an image of the simple unidimensional child to greater complexity and multiple dimensions, the whole child, and a shift away fromimagining children as creations of particular local cultural contexts to a global, one-size-fits-all child with universal requirements and rights to human development, the globalized whole child.