Children & Society最新文献

Reasons for the increased incidence of depression in Chinese children remain poorly understood. Therefore, this study explored the influence of paternal companionship and peer relationships on depression in children based on OLS method using data reported by 2498 children from China (children Mage 10.7; 52.1% girls). We found that both variables could alleviate depression among children, but the effect of peer relationships was significantly greater than that of paternal companionship. This conclusion remains robust after considering gender, age and family structure. Heterogeneity studies have found that paternal companionship significantly impact boys, while peer relationships significantly impact girls. Mechanism analysis demonstrated that both factors can indirectly alleviate depression in children by regulating anxiety. Our research results emphasize the importance of increasing paternal companionship and peer relationships to alleviate depression in children.

This qualitative study explores the experiences of LGBTI+ youth in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on family, social, educational and healthcare support mechanisms. The findings, based on five focus groups, highlight the pivotal role of family support during the pandemic, increased isolation and a reliance on online connections, the challenge of transitioning to online school platforms and insufficient understanding amongst healthcare professionals. The study examines adult and institutional support structures in relation to the complexities of LGBTI+ youth experiences beyond heteronormative and cisgender paradigms. It advocates applying a child-centric approach to policies and services tailored to LGBTI+ youth needs.

This policy review introduces the Policy Guidance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Children, produced by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). This Policy Guidance is the first international-level output to boost the development of child-centred AI and relevant policies. A main contribution of this Policy Guidance is that it outlines the foundations, requirements and specific recommendations for developing child-centred AI and surrounding policies. The shortcomings of this Policy Guidance are also introduced, especially the insufficient gender responsiveness and age sensitivity, plus relatively low representation of the developing world. Possible suggestions for future updates of the Policy Guidance and improving policies on child-centred AI are provided in this review, such as the inclusion of a broader age range of children during the consultation process. The coexistence of contributions and limitations of this Policy Guidance reflects the situation of development of child-centred AI and relevant policies, which is currently immature but promising.

This paper examines the outcomes of a disability awareness programme aimed at rethinking concepts of special educational needs and disability (SEND) with children aged 8–9 years old. Designed specifically for this research study, the work was undertaken in a mainstream primary classroom in England. Although research has been undertaken in this area, it is limited and often focused on children's friendships. Drawing upon a disability studies in education lens, the study contributes to the literature through its use of interactive methods to elicit and deconstruct children's thinking. The findings suggest that many children continue to hold deficit perceptions about SEND, rooted in medical model perspectives. However, carefully designed programmes which enable children to consider first-person experiences, and encourage the deconstruction of ableist discourses, can promote more flexible understanding and progressive attitudes towards SEND in childhood.

The arrival of migrant children at the US–Mexico border has prompted vigorous debates about how to handle their admission and manage their access to resources. Portrayals of child migrants often draw on dominant conventional notions of childhood, creating binary representations that simultaneously infantilize and adultify them. This binary representation either strips children of their agency or criminalizes their actions and denies them protection. This paper exposes the inadequacies of the infantilization and adultification binary to represent and understand the experiences of child migrants, particularly youth who immigrate as teenagers, through a transdisciplinary approach. Integrating original historical analysis via archival research with contemporary social scientific analysis from qualitative research, this paper examines the longstanding binary representations of migrant children and their harmful impacts. The historical analysis shows that infantilization and adultification have defined the US response to child migrants since the mid-1960s. Making connections to the present, through the stories of two unaccompanied teenage arrivals, we show how the binary is experienced and how Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) reflects and reinforces the binary. The paper also highlights how young people, who do not fit neatly into the binary, come to subjectively feel adult, elucidating the need for an alternative narrative that embraces child migrants' agency and advocates for support and protection for all youth.

The marginalisation of children globally is frequently justified by appeal to medical, developmental science. While childhood has increasingly become recognised as a social construct, this research has focused largely on education and legal structures, leaving this medicalisation unexamined. This essay closes that gap by examining the medicalisation of childhood and the contribution of the medical system to adult power. These are approached in separate sections. The first portion of this essay addresses the theoretical and rhetorical manner in which children are medicalised, using Piaget's theories as examples of a trend to over-state the universality of childhood deficiencies and assume adult competences. Latour's work on the scientific black-box is combined with Halliday's assessment of scientific language to examine how these theories are transformed from specific psychological findings, into assumed objective truths, carrying disenfranchising assumptions about children into public discourse. The essay's second part examines the practical role of the medical system in mobilising adultist discourses and disempowering children, through the operation of scientific management. This is built up from discussions of childbirth and adolescence to wider issues of medical power as it permeates educational, legislative and media spaces through Samuel's concept of biocertification. Finally, these two parts meet in highlighting the role of medicalisation in maintaining the hegemony of adult power through its veil of objectivity and expansive reach. I contend anthropological works referenced throughout the essay show that medicalised narratives of childhood are insufficient but culturally contingent and thus open to revision.

In recent years, there has been an increased focus on the development of children's social, emotional and behavioural skills in schools, via a swathe of classroom-based schemes and more general, relational and emotional approaches to pedagogy. With a now established but growing evidence base focusing upon the outcomes of such social, emotional and behavioural work for schools and children, calls have been made for research that makes a gender critical analysis of such work. This article is grounded in a conceptual framework that positions gender as socially constructed and performative and draws on qualitative data gathered in a series of focus group and individual interviews with primary school practitioners. The findings demonstrate how gender binary beliefs influence perceptions of the behaviours displayed by boys and girls in play-based situations as well as the social, emotional and behavioural work carried out by staff in response. The implications of these findings, in terms of the positioning of, and responses to the social, emotional and behavioural difficulties presented by boys and girls on the schoolyard are discussed and suggestions for future practice are made.

This study examined the effects of peers' civic-mindedness on elementary school students' civic-mindedness. Raising civic-minded and socially responsible adolescents has become a focus of attention in many countries in recent years. This study used fourth-grade elementary school panel data from the Seoul Education Longitudinal Survey 2010, identifying causality based on fixed effects and instrumental variable estimation from students' random classroom assignment. Results showed that the high civic-mindedness among classmates increased students' own civic-mindedness. Based on these findings, implications for adolescent education are discussed.

This study explores how left-behind children in rural China maintain long-distance family relationships through WeChat, highlighting the significant role of social media during family separation. It underscores the importance of considering children's voices in understanding family relationships in the digital age. Drawing on online workshops and interviews with 41 participants, the research examines how Chinese left-behind children use WeChat to facilitate parental engagement and manage their emotions. It also investigates the challenges children face in online communication and their perspectives on grandparental involvement. This article argues that children's agency is situated within structural conditions shaped by a confluence of factors, including technological affordances, unique familial contexts, and socio-economic inequalities. This situatedness fosters creativity, compromises, and adaptations in ‘being family’ at a distance.

A wide range of benefits are associated with children's positive transition to school. Applying a critical sociological lens in understanding transitions allows for cycles of sociocultural inequality to be challenged and disrupted. This is of particular importance for understanding transition experiences of children from socially demarcated groups, such as children from refugee backgrounds. This paper outlines how critical sociological theory can be used to identify settler-colonial ideology and to unpack how children are understood and positioned within their broader sociocultural context, and how this understanding can lead to a strength-based approach that recognises the rights, agency and voice of children and their families.