More than half the population of Iran is under the age of seventeen, but despite these more than 30 million children and adolescents, social scientists know little about their experiences, culture, or history.

This ignorance is a reflection of what social scientists deem important. The dismissive attitude toward research with children is similar to earlier attitudes toward research with women: at best women were quantified and described. Most social scientists were male, seeing women from a male point of view. Out of the innocent arrogance that a male-dominated science breeds in its practitioners, women's own culture was largely ignored; “culture” was male culture. This changed only when women social scientists started to look at women through their own eyes.