Children & Society最新文献

Using mixed methods, we looked into USA children's reasons behind their non-participation in the 2018 Parkland school shooting protests from newsletters of randomly sampled 57 middle (MS) and high schools (HS) across USA. We found five themes of reasons that point to non-protesting children's concern about protest method and issues. The MS and HS non-protesters' concerns overlapped and differed. The reasons reveal the protests to pose adherence issues to most CRC articles on and almost all of the basic requirements of child participation. We attribute the adherence issues to problems on assigning duties in non-adult-provided child participation spaces like protests. To identify protest as child participation necessitate propping children's freedom of expression as the animating force behind child participation's first key element and children's right to information a prerequisite for both. In this reframing, organizing/leading children become duty-bearers while adults primarily remain so.

The aim of the study was to acquire an insight into the experiences of 84 children from two schools in the United Kingdom who were asked to describe their interpretation of ‘excellent sports coaching’. Using visual and narrative research methods it was found that the influence of social class was significant. Children from higher socioeconomic groups described excellent sports coaching as a structured and adult-led process, whereas children from lower socioeconomic classes described it as being more play-like and self-determined. Reasons for this difference are explained through the contrasting attitudes to sport and physical activity present amongst different social classes.

This article examines the concept of ‘child-friendliness’ through different notions of innocence in a Danish context. It looks at how such notions are upheld, negotiated and inform ideas of race, making race seem a concern primarily for adults. The analysis is based on empirical material conducted with children (age 11–12) and their discussions about a storyline for a video game. Here race becomes central when the children call one of the locations in their game ‘n-word Island’. They later reconsider the name because, according to the children, the name is racist and thus not ‘child-friendly’.

This paper explores an NGO-based non-formal education (NFE) intervention in Pakistan from the perspective of its recipients, children in street situations. Recognizing children as agential beings, we draw on participant observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 20 children, aged 10–19 years. Young people discussed the impact of the intervention on their self-worth and future aspirations. They also reflected on their growing awareness of civic issues and citizenship rights. The study emphasizes the importance of NFE in providing opportunities to the most marginalized and those without adequate documentation, particularly in a context when state support can be lacking.

Children's right to participate has been one of the most challenging rights to implement due to dominant norms which position children under adults' authority. Notably, this has more negatively impacted girls than boys due to traditional gender norms and practices that often restrict girls' agency and are reproduced and unchallenged in many societies. To contest these struggles, young female activists (13–17 years) in Sierra Leone, who are the focus of this paper, engaged in direct actions to influence public decision-making and prevent girls from being married during childhood. Drawing upon empirical evidence exploring the girls' activism experiences, this article explore, young female activists' practical work is an example of what intersectionality as praxis means by connecting social categories to inequalities and highlights that they saw themselves as social actors with the ability to negotiate power, take part in community-based activism to end child marriage and network with others to seek justice for practices and attitudes they perceived to be abusive.

The whole of society has been passing through difficult times due to the effects of COVID-19. Such a lengthy period has greatly impacted lifestyles and living standards. Accordingly, this paper aimed to examine the role of Jordanian children in purchasing decision-making within the framework of parental mediation during COVID-19. A quantitative methodology was applied, and a questionnaire targeted 287 children aged 8–12. Findings demonstrated a correlation between the influence of COVID-19. They changed the purchasing behaviour of children, as their daily habits have changed to increased periods of stay at home, leading to a long preoccupation with watching the Internet/commercials.

The material in the anthology The Future of Childhood Studies outlines how the field needs to and might develop in the future. After a decades-long theoretical hibernation, scholars of Childhood Studies have begun making a reconnaissance of our once-so-bold onto-epistemologies and breaking new grounds in terms of reconceptualizing children and childhood. This anthology is warmly welcomed as one of the many attempts to push the state-of-the-art of our field forward, into the future. In the preface, several topics of interest are raised by the editor, Braches-Chyrek, related to key features of the early developments of the field. This includes childhood as a generational order, children's agency, children's rights, the field's interdisciplinarity and the (lack of) connection between social theory, social policy and empirical studies. As such, several of the chapters engage with some of the most heated topics in contemporary Childhood Studies.

The theoretical focus of many of the chapters is acclaimed in a field that has at times been theoretically weak. Major concerns are raised, such as the field's tendency to prioritize micro studies of children and childhood at the expense of the wider structures and changes (Moran-Ellis, 2021). New inquiries into how childhood might be best understood and analysed are much needed. However, I miss a strong connection to the ongoing debates in the field. For instance, some of the theorization concerning agency speaks very well to other (and perhaps more sophisticated) approaches emerging in the field, such as post-humanism and socio-materialism. Positioning themselves according to these debates could have made it easier for the reader to understand what the proposed concepts have to offer.

The anthology is an ambitious and manifold endeavour. The most interesting reads in the anthology are the empirical chapters, such as Bühler-Niederberger's analysis of intergenerational solidarities across diverse socioeconomic and cultural contexts, including data from Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, the chapters lack a common thread as they are weakly linked to other chapters and to the future (as suggested by the title). Some chapters seem underdeveloped and would have benefitted from a better editorial process. However, The Future of Childhood Studies provides an interesting and much-appreciated glance into what is cooking in German Childhood Studies, a less familiar corner of our field for many.

While there is growing recognition of the importance of meaningful youth participation in activities and decisions which impact their lives, facilitating such engagement within different forums requires varied approaches. A programme of youth research at one Western Australian university has sought to embed pathways for ongoing youth participation in longitudinal research. In particular, we discuss Navigating Through Life, a large-scale WA research project comprising three sub-studies exploring young people's transitions from out of home care (OOHC) to independence. We established a youth advisory group to run alongside the project and employed peer researchers to conduct research tasks. In this paper, we seek to explicate the development and various iterations of youth participation in the project. We utilise our reflections, interview data and documentation from YAG meetings and feedback sessions with the peer researchers to illustrate the processes of transformation and flexibility required to develop and maintain youth participation in various ways across the project's life. Drawing on our findings and current literature, we highlight how funding bodies and researchers must consider the additional needs, unique and changeable life circumstances of young people to best facilitate their involvement in research.

Research from the perspective of parents, educators and mental health professionals has documented the negative impacts of pandemic isolation on children, but few studies have sought children's own perspectives on this difficult year. The current study aims to provide a first-person perspective on children's psychological health by asking children directly about their experiences of isolating at home. We interviewed 28 seven- to eleven-year-olds in early days of lockdowns with follow-ups 6 months later. Children answered questions about family, school, friendships and feelings about the changes in their lives during lockdown. Children's reflections showed resilience, adaptability, positive appraisals and an ability to maintain meaningful social connections. This data underscores the value of including children's narratives to better understand the pandemic's lasting effects on their lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted life across the world in multiple ways and those already minoritised and disenfranchised, like care-experienced young people, bore the brunt of losses and mental health difficulties. This article reports on the findings of ‘Feeling Well, Feeling Cared For’ an innovative knowledge exchange project on care experience and mental health in Scotland that was seriously disrupted by the pandemic. The article explores how these disruptions created new opportunities for deepening and slowing down coproductive practices, allowing relationships between collaborators to become stronger. Three finding areas are presented and discussed through the lenses of coproduction and quiet activism. These include lessons developed through the process of carrying out this project during a pandemic, the findings from our discussions with young people about mental health, and our reflections on the meanings of activism in the context of a coproductive knowledge exchange process. The discussion highlights how learning from this project might benefit coproductive practices in the future, especially as global interest in coproduction continues to grow across a range of disciplines.