Search

This article addresses the methodological challenge of capturing and comparing children's experiences of everyday life by using a novel rhythmanalysis approach to explore the experiences of a small sample (N = 16) of home based children aged 7–10 in England and Greece during the 2020 global lockdown. The children kept a 1 day diary in which they recorded their activities and feelings at regular intervals during their waking hours. The data collected indicates that the children's lives were both disrupted and synchronised during this period, and highlights how their individual experiences were interconnected in time and space by shared rhythms which underpinned the patterns of their day. The paper highlights the utility of the specially designed rhythmanalysis data collection tool and analytical approach for future comparative international studies of children's everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late Black feminist scholar, bell hooks, suggested that the margin can be a place of radical possibility, where marginalized people nourish their capacity for collective resistance. On the margin, it is possible to generate a counter-language. In this paper, we chronicle, describe and reflect upon how bell hooks' ideas inspired the creation of a national 2-day conference titled, 'Listening to the Margins'. This conference was focused on understanding the intersectional experiences of childhood disability and race with a view to better supporting racialized disabled children, youth, and their families. This conference was needed because intersectional experiences of childhood disability and race have been silenced in childhood disability studies, critical race studies, and various other resistance-oriented systems of thought. Racialized children with disabilities and their families are often unsupported as they navigate Euro-centric healthcare systems. Reflecting on lessons learned from our conference, we suggest several strategies for advancing meaningful research programs with racialized disabled children. Strategies include centering the art of listening, amplifying the margin, engaging the arts to promote empathy, embracing psychosocial support in work on ableism and racism, developing clinical tools and practices that are grounded in lived patient experiences, and advancing decolonizing research that recognizes the role research has historically played in perpetuating colonial violence. In totality, this article unpacks how sitting on the margins, as bell hooks suggested, has allowed us to occupy a place of discomfort and creativity necessary to disrupt dominant discourses. In so doing, we have made space for the hidden narratives of racialized disabled children and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late Black feminist scholar, bell hooks, suggested that the margin can be a place of radical possibility, where marginalized people nourish their capacity for collective resistance. On the margin, it is possible to generate a counter-language. In this paper, we chronicle, describe and reflect upon how bell hooks' ideas inspired the creation of a national 2-day conference titled, 'Listening to the Margins'. This conference was focused on understanding the intersectional experiences of childhood disability and race with a view to better supporting racialized disabled children, youth, and their families. This conference was needed because intersectional experiences of childhood disability and race have been silenced in childhood disability studies, critical race studies, and various other resistance-oriented systems of thought. Racialized children with disabilities and their families are often unsupported as they navigate Euro-centric healthcare systems. Reflecting on lessons learned from our conference, we suggest several strategies for advancing meaningful research programs with racialized disabled children. Strategies include centering the art of listening, amplifying the margin, engaging the arts to promote empathy, embracing psychosocial support in work on ableism and racism, developing clinical tools and practices that are grounded in lived patient experiences, and advancing decolonizing research that recognizes the role research has historically played in perpetuating colonial violence. In totality, this article unpacks how sitting on the margins, as bell hooks suggested, has allowed us to occupy a place of discomfort and creativity necessary to disrupt dominant discourses. In so doing, we have made space for the hidden narratives of racialized disabled children and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Method: There is an absence of research on the prevalence of bereavement during early childhood and the relationship between childhood bereavement and socioeconomic status (SES) and this poses a challenge in both understanding and supporting children's bereavement experiences. Using longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Scotland study, which tracks the lives of three nationally representative cohorts of children, this paper aimed to address these gaps in research. It specifically drew on data from Birth Cohort 1 to document the recorded bereavements of 2,815 children who completed all 8 sweeps of data collection, from age 10 months to 10 years. Findings: The study found that 50.8% of all children are bereaved of a parent, sibling, grandparent or other close family member by age 8 and this rises to 62% by age 10. The most common death experienced was that of a grandparent or other close relative. The study also found that children born into the lowest income households are at greater risk of being bereaved of a parent or sibling than those born into the highest income households. Discussion and Conclusion: Given the prevalence of childhood bereavement and its relationship with disadvantage, this paper argues that there is an important need to understand bereavement as a universal issue that is affected by the social conditions in which a child becomes bereaved, as well as an individual experience potentially requiring specialist support. This paper thus seeks to position childhood bereavement more firmly within the public health approach to palliative and bereavement care discourse and contends that doing so provides a unique and comprehensive opportunity to better understand and holistically respond to the experience of bereavement during childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Method: There is an absence of research on the prevalence of bereavement during early childhood and the relationship between childhood bereavement and socioeconomic status (SES) and this poses a challenge in both understanding and supporting children's bereavement experiences. Using longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Scotland study, which tracks the lives of three nationally representative cohorts of children, this paper aimed to address these gaps in research. It specifically drew on data from Birth Cohort 1 to document the recorded bereavements of 2,815 children who completed all 8 sweeps of data collection, from age 10 months to 10 years. Findings: The study found that 50.8% of all children are bereaved of a parent, sibling, grandparent or other close family member by age 8 and this rises to 62% by age 10. The most common death experienced was that of a grandparent or other close relative. The study also found that children born into the lowest income households are at greater risk of being bereaved of a parent or sibling than those born into the highest income households. Discussion and Conclusion: Given the prevalence of childhood bereavement and its relationship with disadvantage, this paper argues that there is an important need to understand bereavement as a universal issue that is affected by the social conditions in which a child becomes bereaved, as well as an individual experience potentially requiring specialist support. This paper thus seeks to position childhood bereavement more firmly within the public health approach to palliative and bereavement care discourse and contends that doing so provides a unique and comprehensive opportunity to better understand and holistically respond to the experience of bereavement during childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread privileging of children's voices in recent times has triggered expansion of differing forms of qualitative enquiry that aim to "give children a voice." Engaging children in research and eliciting their voices on matters that affect them is often showcased as being a more "authentic" way to capture children's lived realities and afford their agency. Yet, the uptake of voice in qualitative enquiry, and how it may contribute to the privileging of particular ways of knowing (some) children's lives, is rarely interrogated. Drawing on examples from our own research, in this paper we critically reflect on the frequent invoking of the term voice in qualitative health research with children. In doing so, we challenge claims of authenticity by exposing the tricky epistemological tensions and relations of power that are embedded within the production and legitimation of particular voices as being "correct" ways of knowing about health—including the ways our research intentions and methods contribute to these processes. We reflect on the methodological and epistemological value of silences, dissenting voices and other modes of expression to highlight forms of resistance to adult-led health agendas. We conclude by illustrating how dominant relations of power are (re)produced within and across research spaces, and through the mobilizing or pathologizing of particular young voices through research. Possibilities for advancing ways to harness children's preferred modes of expression in qualitative research are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a critical analysis of a chain of retail outlets called 'Girl Heaven', aimed primarily at 3-13-year-old girls, described variously as 'a piece of retail folklore' (Lumsden, 1999) and as 'Guardian Wimmin Hell' (Kettle, 1999). It argues that while on the one hand Girl Heaven appears to provide a celebratory social space in which girls can affirm their femininity, it also seems to epitomize the commercial appropriation of childhood femininity. As a way into exploring these two alternatives, this article is concerned initially with what it means to 'do' feminine childhood against the backdrop of contemporary consumer culture. It then outlines the methodological approach that we take to researching Girt Heaven, and the ways in which we explore young girls' lived experience of consumer culture and gender acquisition. We then consider the commercial context of Girl Heaven in rotation to the increasing market recognition of 'tweenies', as well as the significance of pester power and branding in childhood approaches to consumption. We subsequently focus on Girl Heaven as a cultural text, concentrating on its construction of femininity. Our analysis culminates in an attempt to reflect critically on the complex relationship between consumer culture and the process of becoming a woman. We reflect on Girt Heaven -- with which, our research suggests, young girls themselves are acutely aware of having a relationship that is far from straightforward -- as a notable manifestation of this complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual methods such as photography are under-used in the active process of sociological research. As rare as visual methods are, it is even rarer for the resultant images to be made by rather than of research participants. Primarily, the paper explores the challenges and contradictions of using photography within a multi-method approach. We consider processes for analysing visual data, different ways of utilising visual methods in sociological research, and the use of primary and secondary data, or, simple illustration versus active visual exploration of the social. The question of triangulation of visual data against text and testimony versus a stand-alone approach is explored in depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past two decades have seen rapid changes in the ways in which sociologists think about children, and a growing cross-fertilisation of ideas between researchers in a variety of social science disciplines. This paper builds upon these developments by exploring what three inter-related ways of thinking about spatiality might contribute to the new social studies of childhood. Specifically, we identify the importance of progressive understandings of place in overcoming the split between global and local approaches to childhood; we discuss the ways in which children's identities are constituted in and through particular spaces; and we examine the ways in which our understandings of childhood can shape the meaning of spaces and places. These ideas are illustrated by reference to our current research on children's use of the internet as well as a range of wider studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore some key antionomies which have emerged in relation to children and childhood in late modernity: tensions between autonomy and protection and between perceptions of children as 'at risk' and as potentially threatening. A particular focus here is on the sexualisation of risk, the degree of public concern expressed whenever the sexual 'innocence' of children is thought to be endangered. We argue that the concept of risk anxiety provides a useful means of analysing contemporary fears about children and childhood and may thus be understood as contributing to the ongoing social construction of childhood. Here risk anxiety must be located within the context of gendered and generational power relations, in which children's lives are bounded by adult surveillance. Furthermore, risk anxiety may have material consequences for children's daily lives and for everyday adult-child negotiations around safety and danger, protection and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]