Being Confined within? Constructions of the Good Childhood and Outdoor Play in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings in Ireland

This study is based on a study of the experience of the outdoors in early childhood education and care settings in Ireland. Central to the analyses are the inter‐linkages drawn between constructions of a ‘good’ childhood, and children’s ‘need’ for outdoor play, as well as the contradictions which arise around competing discourses of safety and protection versus play and autonomy in the structuring of children’s everyday lives. The findings indicate that the outdoors is increasingly marginalised in young children’s everyday experiences. Conclusions are drawn with reference to the implications for the development of real and meaningful outdoor play experiences for children in early childhood education and care settings.     

Conceptualising Listening to Young Children as an Ethic of Care in Early Childhood Education and Care

This paper focuses on recent discourses and practices of listening to young children, in order to highlight listening as an ethical practice in early childhood education and care settings. The paper asks how discourses of listening should be viewed in theoretical terms and explores the work of a diverse range of authors who define autonomy and rights issues as relational. Central to the paper is a consideration of feminist critique of Foucault’s ethics of care argument. To contextualise this, the paper discusses examples of recent research in the field of listening to young children and highlights issues facing the status of the early years workforce. In summary, the paper contends that an ethical view of listening can bring adults and children together in democratic care practices which challenge conceptions of childhood and reconnect ideas of care and education.     

Disabled children’s childhood studies: a distinct approach?

This paper suggests that the emergence of disabled children’s childhood studies as an area of study offers a distinct approach to inquiry; it represents a significant shift away from the long-standing deficit discourses of disabled childhoods that have dominated western culture and its reaches. On the one hand, contemporary childhood studies contest normative, Eurocentric mantras around the ‘standard child’; while on the other, disability studies critique the medical discourses and the scope of its authority. However, while drawing on these two approaches, disabled children’s childhood studies provide more than this combined critique. In disabled children’s childhood studies, disabled children are not viewed as necessarily having problems or being problems, but as having childhoods.     

The enforcement of normalcy in schools and the disablement of families: unpacking master narratives on parental denial

The notion that some parents may be ‘in denial’ is a pervasive theme in dominant discourses on families of children with disabilities. In this analytic essay, I deconstruct cultural and institutional master narratives on parental denial and discuss their role in the marginalization of students with disabilities in schools. I argue that discourses on parental denial privilege the perspectives of those in positions of power and control, leave the practice of ability-based segregation in schools unexamined, and discredit agency among families. Additionally, drawing from existing narrative-based research, I explore alternative interpretations of parents’ responses to their children’s differences, situating these in the framework of critical disability studies.     

Framing the Picture of the Child

The paper studies the forms that are used in planning for a child’s early childhood education and care in Finnish day care from the perspectives of social constructionism and discourse analysis. It asks how childhood is conceptualised in these forms and what are the social functions of early childhood education and care as implied in the conceptualisations. The paper shows that the conceptions of childhood and the understanding of the functions of early childhood education and care are mostly in unison and are rooted in traditional discourses, approaches and practices of Finnish day care. Consequently, the child’s view and the child as an agent in her/his world are not present in the forms.     

Politics by numbers: poverty reduction discourse,contestations and regime legitimacy in Ethiopia

There are contradictory statistics about the number of poor people and changes in number of poor people in Ethiopia with statistics ranging from 26 to 86% of the total population in 2013. This paper analyzed how such contradictory statistics feed into national politics focusing on who uses which statistics and based on what justifications of authoritativeness. Drawing from data collected from print newspapers, blogs, websites, published articles, party publications, and interviews with four key informants and combining an actor’s centered discourse analysis (ACDA) with Van Dick’s (1997) approach of identifying and analyzing political discourses, the paper deconstructed the poverty statistics debate in Ethiopia to understand the basic contestations. Synthesis of the data shows that poverty numbers are being used as tools for, and manifestations of, ongoing power struggles in Ethiopia whereby different actors selectively use poverty statistics that promote their political agenda. While doing so, the underlying rationale of actors for choosing one statistics over another was not based on the merit of their preferred set of statistics over the others but on the suitability of the data for their political purpose. As such, the government disregards statistics except its own which portray rapid poverty decline in the country while opposition groups actively use and promote statistics coming from international organizations that depict increasing poverty or a slow rate of reduction of poverty. The paper argues that the underlying cause of such politicization of numbers is linked with the developmental statism ideology of the ruling party in Ethiopia and how it tries to justify its rule in Ethiopia – claiming that it is reducing poverty and bringing development in Ethiopia and therefore should be allowed to continue in power. Therefore, in debating poverty numbers what is being debated is not just the statistics but the legitimacy of the government, hence politics by numbers.     

Childhood poverty, early motherhood and adult social exclusion

Childhood poverty and early parenthood are both high on the current political agenda. The key new issue that this research addresses is the relative importance of childhood poverty and of early motherhood as correlates of outcomes later in life. How far are the ‘effects’ of early motherhood on later outcomes due to childhood precursors, especially experience of childhood poverty? Subsidiary questions relate to the magnitude of these associations, the particular levels of childhood poverty that prove most critical, and whether, as often assumed, only teenage mothers are subsequently disadvantaged, or are those who have their first birth in their early twenties similarly disadvantaged? The source of data for this study is the National Child Development Study. We examine outcomes at age 33 for several domains of adult social exclusion: welfare, socio‐economic, physical health, emotional well‐being and demographic behaviour. We control for a wide range of childhood factors: poverty; social class of origin and of father; mother's and father's school leaving age; family structure; housing tenure; mother's and father's interest in education; personality attributes; performance on educational tests; and contact with the police by age 16. There are clear associations for the adult outcomes with age at first birth, even after controlling for childhood poverty and the other childhood background factors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the widest gulf in adult outcomes occurs for those who enter motherhood early (before age 23), though further rein‐forced by teenage motherhood for most adult outcomes. We also show that any experience of childhood poverty is clearly associated with adverse outcomes in adulthood, with reinforcement for higher levels of childhood poverty for a few outcomes.     

Representations of Jewish Childhood From 1950s Communist Romania in Memoirs by Women Émigré Authors to the United States

ABSTRACT

This article examines the memoirs of three Jewish women – Marianne Hirsch, Anca Vlasopolos, and Haya Leah Molnar – to understand how they remembered childhood in 1950s communist Bucharest. I first show how Marianne Hirsch’s part-memoir, part-critical book, Family Frames, uses her personal experiences to theorize tropes of transcultural dislocation as specific features of post-World War II Jewish children’s identities in 1950s Romania. I analyze how these tropes equally permeate the memoirs by two of her generation’s peers, Anca Vlasopolos and Haya Leah Molnar, highlighting how the two authors deploy them in their narratives. Overall, I show that writings of one’s 1950s childhood experiences in Bucharest by Jewish emigrées to the US offer new alternative discourses about facing the past and the present in Eastern Europe and the US by the tropes of initial transcultural, dislocating experiences at the start of their lives.     

Performing Child(hood)

Taking an example of play as our point of departure, we consider what it means to be a child and to perform (Butler, Feminism/Postmodernism, 1990; Gender, 1990. Routledge: New York) childhood. By drawing on poststructuralist accounts of subjectivity, language and meaning (Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1979. Penguin: Harmondsworth; Derrida, Dissemination, 1974. Athlone: London), we argue that despite powerful discourses that seek to contain childhood, children manage to exceed or interrupt sites of containment. We then go on to suggest that if children themselves are moving beyond some of the discourses in which they are enwrapped, how might we seek to further destabilise what ‘becoming’ (Deleuze,1990: http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze3.htm ) child might mean and what might be the implications for our practice(s) with children.     

The politics of fear and empathy: emotional ambivalence in ‘host’ children and youth discourses about migrants in Cyprus

This article looks at the emotion discourses among 30 Greek-Cypriot children and youth interviewees when they describe their feelings about migrants in Cyprus. It looks at how migrant representations and narratives are highly emotional constructions that children and youth utilize to make sense of their views about how migrants are different or similar to themselves. In particular, the article focuses on the simultaneous contradictory positions and feelings of fear and empathy. Two important implications for intercultural education are discussed. First, it is suggested that it is valuable to acknowledge that the emotion work required from ‘host’ children and youth in their interactions with migrants should not be taken for granted. Second, rather than painting a ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ image of children and youth’s responses to migrants – which categorizes children and youth in simplistic ways – it might be more productive to examine how their emotions are linked to ambivalent discourses and inform actions in negotiating the presence of the other and one’s sense of belonging.     

Displacement,integration and identity in the postcolonial world

Defining the relationship between displaced populations and the nation state is a fraught historical process. The Partition of India in 1947 provides a compelling example, yet markedly little attention has been paid to the refugee communities produced. Using the case of the displaced ‘Urdu-speaking minority’ in Bangladesh, this article considers what contemporary discourses of identity and integration reveal about the nature and boundaries of the nation state. It reveals that the language of ‘integration’ is embedded in colonial narratives of ‘population’ versus ‘people-nation’ which structure exclusion not only through language and ethnicity, but poverty and social space. It also shows how colonial and postcolonial registers transect and overlap as colonial constructions of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ fold into religious discourses of ‘pollution’ and ‘purity’. The voices of minorities navigating claims to belonging through these discourses shed light on a ‘nation-in-formation’: the shifting landscape of national belonging and the complicated accommodations required.     

Constructing the sick child: the cultural politics of children's hospitals

Drawing on an ESRC funded study of children's experiences of hospital space this article explores the cultural politics of contemporary English childhood. Using the words and commentaries provided by both children and young people, the article argues that although, as patients, children and young people share the same hospital spaces, their experiences of them are quite different. Through mundane material and symbolic practices, a number of experiential continuities are created for the youngest children between life in hospital and life at home, continuities that work to downplay their identities as children who are sick. For young people, however, these practices are more problematic since the discourses of childhood that are recreated have little resonance with young people's own experiences and sense of self and identity. Thus this article provides evidence of the need for a more nuanced understanding of not only young people's needs in relation to hospital services, but also of the significance of understanding the ways in which particular constructions of ‘the child’ and ‘childhood’ are threaded through public discourses and come to be realized in institutional settings.     

‘No,living well does not mean being rich’: Diverse understandings of well-being among 11–13-year-old children in three Ethiopian communities

Participatory research into how people living in material poverty define and experience well-being and ill-being is increasingly common in developed and developing countries. Such research highlights the importance of experiential aspects, such as being respected and able to preserve one's dignity, and having meaningful choices. Nevertheless, these findings rarely cover children's experiences and are often not contextualized or triangulated with other data. The paper will extend this exploration using data from qualitative research with a sub-sample of children aged 11–13 in three urban and rural communities, drawn from Young Lives, a long-term international research project investigating the changing nature of childhood poverty in four countries, including Ethiopia. Firstly, it addresses how understandings of a good life and what is needed to achieve one varies between communities and amongst children of different backgrounds living in those communities; for example, boys and girls and children from richer or poorer households. Secondly, the study examines how one's place in social relationships also contributes to how children perceive and understand what a good life is. The paper confirms the importance of allowing children to take at least a ‘partial role’ in measuring and monitoring their well-being (Ben-Arieh 2005, 575) and provides examples of how this might be done.     

Gutter to Garden: Historical Discourses of Risk in Interventions in Working Class Children’s Street Play

This article investigates interventions in the gutter play of British working class children in the first decade of the 20th century through their re‐location within Free Kindergartens. In contemporary literature, the street child was viewed through a binary lens, as both ‘at risk’ and ‘as risk’, reflecting wider societal discourses in a period of rapidly developing social policy. The paper interrogates the motivations of free kindergarten activists from the standpoint of a range of theory and builds on recent papers discussing 21st century urban childhoods. The findings suggest both historical continuities and discontinuities in the theorisation of risk, which have implications for current social policy, urban design and early childhood education. The questions raised include issues of children’s rights, citizenship, inclusion and cultural diversity.     

Poor,powerless and poisoned: The social injustice of childhood lead poisoning

Poverty is fertile ground for the health and educational deprivation that diminishes the prospects of poor children. Restated, the tragedy of the income gap between the rich and poor is that economic deprivation and its attendant health consequences are disproportionately experienced by the most vulnerable of citizens, children. Over 12 million children (17% of all American children) live in poverty and 39% live in or near poverty (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2001). This examination of the distribution and consequences of childhood lead poisoning reveals much about poverty policy interventions and the ongoing plight of America's powerless poor children. Since social injustice in the context of this article is construed as the failure of institutions and society to intervene on behalf of suffering populations when the resources and know how to do so exist, childhood lead poisoning provides a clear example of injustice. While the subject of this article is childhood lead poisoning, the precursors to toxicity--substandard housing, poor nutrition, restricted access to health care and polluted environments--are all representative of the dilemmas that characterize the lives of poor children.     

At the Age of Twelve: Migrant Children and the Disruption of Multicultural Belonging

This paper troubles seductive discourses of Canadian multiculturalism and the centrality of whiteness to national belonging, highlighting how migrant children understand and navigate assimilation. Evolving out of childhood migration stories shared by 12 interviewees in the documentary Twelve, the article addresses the ways ‘childist’ logics are used to separate childhood from the realities of race and racism. In working towards anti‐racist praxis, we address how storytelling challenges adult–child power hierarchies, exposing how childhood continues to be framed as a time of innocence, disconnected from the violence, danger and pain involved in migrating to Anglophone Canada.     

On Childhood and the Logic of Difference: Some Empirical Examples

This article argues that universal documents on children’s rights can provide illustrative examples as to how childhood is identified as a unity using difference as an instrument. Using Gille Deleuze’s theorising on difference and sameness as a framework, the article seeks to relate the children’s rights project with a critique of representation. It seeks to illustrate how the children’s rights project seems to be promoting an image of childhood that is sharply contrasted by adulthood in a dichotomised sense, as well as how, in these documents, the fate of the child is being intertwined with the fate of the state.     

Addressing inequality: Educators responding to the contexts of young children’s lives?

A child's early relationships and experiences influence their long-term development and learning. In Australia, some children can face complex levels of deprivation when compared to their peers. This study sheds light on how educators are responding. Data analysed consist of individual interviews with early childhood educators working in diverse communities. The findings highlight educators’ accounts of responsiveness as narrowly framed with attention focused on children's cultural heritage which overshadows other equity groups. The paper argues that by becoming sensitive to the contexts of children's lives, there is potential to build the early childhood workforce's capacity for addressing inequalities in childhood.     

The Everyday Costs of Poverty in Childhood: A Review of Qualitative Research Exploring the Lives and Experiences of Low‐Income Children in the UK

This review of 10 years of qualitative research with disadvantaged children in the UK shows that despite some gaps in the knowledge base, there is now a substantive body of evidence exploring children’s lives and experiences from their own perspectives. The review reveals that poverty penetrates deep into the heart of childhood, permeating every facet of children’s lives from economic and material disadvantage, through the structuring and limiting of social relationships and social participation to the most personal often hidden aspects of disadvantage associated with shame, sadness and the fear of social difference and marginalisation.     

Poverty,exclusion and child protection practice: the contribution of ‘the politics of recognition&respect’

The affective dimensions of poverty, including the impact of wider policy discourses and services that ‘other’ and shame people in poverty, are increasingly recognized. In response, Lister [(2013). Power, not Pity: Poverty and Human Rights. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7(2), 109–123] advocates for ‘a politics of recognition&respect’ that centralizes the voices, participation and lived experiences of those who live in poverty. This paper considers how applying Lister’s theory could improve child protection (CP) social work in England, from a human rights and social justice perspective. The paper draws on findings from an ATD Fourth World participatory research project aimed at updating the course content for a pre-existing social worker training module on poverty awareness. The project brings together families with experience of poverty and CP interventions, social work practitioners and academics.