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Chapter two discusses the models, methods and value metrics used in this book. It presents the ecological model developed by sociologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, which places the child at the center of overlapping and intersecting microsystems (e.g., family, school, peer group) where children’s daily lives unfold. Encircling these microsystems are layers of exosystems (e.g., healthcare, justice systems and labor markets) where children may rarely go but that powerfully affect them. Surrounding and permeating the entire ecological diagram are macrosystemic forces, defined as the dominant ideas, values, prejudices, and powers of the surrounding society. The primary methods or frameworks for analysis deployed in the book are comparative legal method, sociology, ethnography and an environmentalist perspective, incorporating ideas like sustainability and the precautionary principle of avoiding harm. However, evaluating outcomes requires identifying a value system. Drawing on the work of Erik Erikson, the book proposes ecogenerism, a value system that treats the meeting of children’s essential needs and the welfare of succeeding generations as the paramount goals of society. The chapter closes with a description of how and why the two villages, Scanno, Italy and Cedar Key, Florida, were chosen to serve as petri dishes for comparative ethnographic study.

Chapter one provides a chronological account of the evolution of the project. It began in 2008 as a study comparing Italy’s social welfare approach and with the United States’ free market approach, to explore how social polices affect the ecology of childhood in rich nations. It rapidly became the story of an environmental crisis on a global scale. When the great recession struck both countries, the vulnerability of both systems was revealed. Even as politicians seeking to stabilize markets slashed at existing safety nets, neuroscientific research was documenting the lifelong effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) on brain development, adult health and well-being. The strains of recession fuelled a populist backlash and nationalistic political leaders in both countries gained control by inflaming anti-immigrant and white nationalist sentiments. The discontents of globalization, including market economics, technological revolution, rising inequality, mass migration, and climate change, were clearly calling into question dominant assumptions about prosperity through limitless growth. The book evolved to document these changes over a ten-year period. Chapter one closes by explaining the rationale for starting at the micro level; examining the small worlds of children provides a foundation for understanding how global forces are affecting the intimate ecologies of childhood.

This concluding chapter integrates the findings of the book’s chapters in two ways. First, it outlines five general themes emerging from the chapters, namely, the need for legislation; the importance of promoting participation among professionals; the challenge of shifting from token to inclusive participation, the need for managing expectations, and an understanding of participation as relational. Second, the chapter presents an ecological model that maps the multiple layers of elements affecting child participation. Beyond the specific circumstances of each case, child participation is affected by six tiers of ecological variables: the individual child’s characteristics, the family, professional considerations, state structures, cultural values and international norms. These influence child participation in three parameters: the level of participation, the temporal elements of participation, and the degree of systemic use of participation. These parameters, in turn, affect children’s sense of fairness, satisfaction, and wellbeing.

Using a social ecological framework, we explore the proposition that love is manifested in the personal projects of everyday life. Three types of personal projects relevant to love are distinguished—connection, romancing and caring projects—along with the sustainable pursuit of these aspects of love enhances well-being. We also identify factors that can facilitate or impede such project pursuit. Internal factors include stable individual differences in person-orientation that increase cognitive, affective and behavioural engagement with others. External factors include the nature of the community resources, including virtual resources, through which love might be pursued, as well as macro-level political forces that can forestall and frustrate the sustainable pursuit of intimacy. We conclude by emphasizing the distinctive questions raised by our model and the importance of the answers that continuing research should provide.