The life history method is a qualitative research approach that collects and interprets detailed personal histories to situate individual experiences within broader social, cultural, and historical contexts. While its roots trace back to early anthropological studies in colonized societies, the methods have since evolved to emphasize the power of personal storytelling, particularly within communities that have been historically misrepresented in scholarship, including people of African des...

Each of the essays in this collection considers what lies beyond the limiting discourses of childhood innocence. Instead of focusing on how children “grow up,” as has been the focus of developmental science for over a century, we ask what it might mean for discourses of childhood to finally “grow out” of childhood innocence? The authors featured in this volume explore this question through critical approaches that actively refuse the limits of normative and normalizing conceptions of the c...