COVID-19 and Childhood Inequality

Nazneen Khan is an associate professor of Sociology at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, USA. She is an active member of the Children and Youth Section of the American Sociological Association and currently serves as the section’s Treasurer-Secretary. Her research and teaching employs intersectional theory and methodology and focuses on families, childhood, and motherhood at the crossroads of broader racial, economic, and political formations in the USA. Her recent scholarship has been published in Children & Society, Contexts, Sociological Focus, Critical Research on Religion, and Understanding and Dismantling Privilege.

Khan’s timely collection of essays helps us understand the true losses children, youth, and their caretakers are forced to reckon with under COVID-19. Contributing scholars shine a spotlight (as the pandemic does) on gender, race, class, health, educational, and digital inequalities that were already far-reaching in global childhood; however, there is hope in children’s agency and activism and a heightened imperative to work toward true human connection and, ultimately, real social change. Ingrid E. Castro, Professor of Sociology, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, USAThe COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly disrupted the daily lives of children across the globe. COVID-19 and Childhood Inequality offers a powerful, empirical, multidisciplinary look at how children have experienced and interpreted social inequality within the context of a pandemic. From housing instability to online schooling to access to health care to detention centers’ responses to family dynamics and beyond, this book provides rich insights that can help us all think more carefully about childhood inequality both during a pandemic and in the eventual aftermath of one.Margaret A. Hagerman, Associate Professor of Sociology, Mississippi State University, USA

• Introduction: Unmasking Childhood Inequality Part 1: Unmasking Childhood Inequality 1. Pandemic Eugenics: Reproductive Justice and Racial Inequality in Childhood 2. LGBTQ+ Youth and the COVID-19 Pandemic 3. Turning a Blind Eye: COVID-19 and Homeless Children 4. The Impact of COVID-19 on Children with Thalassemia and Their Families in India Part 2: Unmasking Institutional Entanglements 5. Youth at the Margins: Continuity of Services During the COVID-19 Pandemic 6. Consequences of COVID-19 Realities and Misconceptions for Rural PK–12 Students: Implications from Rural Education Research 7. The Impact of Parental Burnout and Time with Children: Family Stress in a Large Urban City During COVID-19 Part 3: Unmasking Pandemic Agency 8. When Six Feet Feels Like Six Miles: Children’s Images of Their Lives During the COVID-19 Pandemic 9. The COVID-19 Pandemic: Childhood Inequalities Unmasked in the Caribbean 10. Risk-Taking Among Older Youth at the Outset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the USA