Australian children's independent mobility levels: secondary analyses of cross-sectional data between 1991 and 2012

This study investigated changes in Australian children's independent mobility levels between1991 and 2012. Data from five cross-sectional studies conducted in 1991, 1993, 2010, 2011 and 2012 were analysed. Parent and child surveys were used to assess parental licences for independent mobility and actual independent mobility behaviour in children aged 8–13 years. Findings show declines in the proportion of young children (≤10 years of age) being allowed to travel home from school alone (1991: 68%, 1993: 50%, 2010: 43%, 2011: 45%, 2012: 31%) and travel on buses alone (1991: 31%, 1993: 15%, 2010: 8%, 2011: 6%, 2012: 9%). Furthermore, the proportion of children travelling independently to school decreased (1991: 61%, 1993: 42%, 2010: 31%, 2011: 32%, 2012: 32%). Significantly fewer girls than boys travelled independently to school at each time point (p?≤?.001). Overall, the findings suggest that Australian children's independent mobility levels declined between 1991 and 2012.     

City streets and the city edition: newsboys and newspapers in early twentieth-century Ireland

This article examines the newsboy as both an important figure of early twentieth-century Irish streets and also a vital final link in the chain of media production and distribution at the time. Despite the advent of industrial communications and manufacturing processes in print culture well before the end of the nineteenth century, newspapers in particular were ultimately dependent upon boys as young as eleven years old to sell copies, especially in urban areas. Newsboys were very visible and audible figures on Irish city streets, and presumably because of this were themselves the subject of frequent newspaper stories. This article explores the way in which newsboys were both part of the newspaper industry while simultaneously being represented in the press as exemplars of the urban working classes for middle-class readers.     

Visions of My Youth: Representations of the Childhood of Medieval Visionaries

This article is based on visionary narratives and vitae of twenty‐seven female and thirteen male visionaries from Britain and Europe, from the late eleventh to the early fifteenth century. Across this chronological and geographical span, the differences between the childhood representations of male and female visionaries are shaped by prevailing beliefs about the nature of men and women. Male visionaries rarely include reminiscence of their childhood in their narratives, while women offer childhood memories relatively consistently. For male visionaries, childhood seems irrelevant in terms of their adult spirituality. For women, childhood reminiscences reaffirmed their association with the purity of virgin childhood.