The social approach to childhood, though having earlier antecedents, flourished from the 1990s onwards in geographies of children, youth and families. Some researchers such as Matthews came to this from a history in children’s environmental cognition, but this shift in sub-disciplinary approach was also in large measure shaped by the advent of interest from new researchers with backgrounds in feminist, Marxist and post-structural approaches. This in part explains the lack of a hard-fought intellectual struggle over a ‘paradigm shift’: this new wave of researchers often took their inspiration from elsewhere (seeing spatial cognition as largely irrelevant to their concerns). This social approach to children’s geographies – which concentrated on understanding children’s experiences as subjects in the world, rather than their abilities to perceive space – was further fuelled by the changing global landscapes which have elevated children’s position on the political agenda.