A new volume co-edited by Boston College English Associate Professor James M. Smith and Maria Luddy of the University of Warwick offers significant scholarly contributions to the fields of Irish studies and childhood studies. Reflecting the interests of historians, literary critics, and the discipline of social work, the essays in Children, Childhood and Irish Society: 1500 to the Present  (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2014) examine how attitudes to children have changed in Ireland over the past half millennium. Smith is the author of Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment.