‘Off school sick’: mothers' accounts of school sickness absence

Interview material, collected as part of a wider ethnographic study of sickness absence in an English primary school, is used to examine how mothers accounted for their decisions to keep children ‘off school sick’. Mothers' accounts suggested a process by which they tested their children's claims on sickness against suspicions of feigning illness. The paper describes, from the mothers' point of view, the process of negotiating sickness with children and how children are categorised as ‘pretending’, ‘upset’ or ‘really ill’. These decisions are set within a wider context comprising: a normative discourse of maternal child health care; contradictory demands placed on mothers by the image of children as simultaneously robust and vulnerable; the surveillance and contradictory demands of schooling; and the use by children of sickness as a means of exercising influence on their social situation. It is suggested that locating child health care in relation to childrens' point in their childhood career (for these children the transition to secondary school) and acknowledging the active role that children play in the construction of illness will facilitate a fuller picture of mothers' unpaid health work within the family.     

Representations of the ‘Damaged’ Child: ‘Child Saving’ in a British Children's Charity ad Campaign

This article discusses the representation of abused children as ‘damaged’, drawing on a series of three advertising campaigns for a British children's charity. The pictures and text of the advertisements seek to elicit readers’ concern for abused children by portraying them (a) as passive agents in their development and (b) as signifiers of the dangers of the world and the safeness of the home. The portrayal of abused children in the advertisements serves to reinforce a perception of the vulnerability of all children and the need for adult supervision and ‘care’. Without seeking to dismiss the seriousness of abuse or of the work done by children's charities, the article questions the implications of these representations of childhood and ‘damage’, and argues that the dominant representation of abused children drawn on in such campaigns oversimplifies many complexities in the worlds and the lives of children who have been abused.     

‘Access and achievement or social exclusion?’ are the government's policies working for disabled children and their families?

The past decade has seen significant developments in policy and practice for disabled children and their families. In particular there is a new focus upon access and inclusion, with increasing awareness of the need to see disabled children and families as active partners within policy development and implementation. There is growing awareness of the implications of disability discrimination legislation across children's services and of the importance of improving arrangements for early identification and intervention to maximise disabled children's participation within mainstream services. The National Service Framework, the advent of Children's Trusts and a new Special Education Needs (SEN) Action Programme, together with the introduction of direct payments, give encouraging messages about multi‐agency working and a strategic and ‘joined up’ approach to childhood disability. However, many disabled children and their families continue to experience discrimination, poverty and social exclusion. The challenge for the Government is to ensure that disabled children are ‘mainstreamed’ across all policy initiatives and to recognise the talents and ambitions of disabled children and their families in service design and implementation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond ‘anti‐smacking’: challenging parental violence and coercion

The anti‐smacking lobby concentrates on persuading parents not to smack and persuading the government to prohibit smacking by law. There is much evidence that smacking children is unnecessary and dangerous, and yet smacking continues to be widely practised and accepted in Britain. Our literature review found two underlying reasons for this contradiction: beliefs that children are ‘human becomings’ rather than full human beings and support for ‘parents’ rights' over children's human rights. We suggest that the anti‐smacking lobby's important work will have limited effect until it tackles these two issues, and make comparisons with debates on domestic violence against women to illustrate our argument. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Sticking with your Mates?’ Children's Friendship Trajectories during the Transition from Primary to Secondary School

For many children, the transition to secondary school is marked by both anxiety and excitement, particularly in relation to friendship. This article draws upon the concept of social capital — the resources individuals and collectives derive from their social networks — in order to understand the significance of change and continuity in children's friendships during a challenging period in their lives. Children's social networks often provide important, but under‐researched resources which aid their progress through the transition. This article presents findings from a three‐year ESRC study exploring children's and parents’ use of social capital during their secondary school transfer.     

Divorced Parents’ Qualitative and Quantitative Reports of Children's Living Arrangements

We use data from a sample of divorced parents in Wisconsin (N = 1,392) to examine how parents describe their children's living arrangements. When the children spend substantial time in both parents’ homes, both parents are less likely to use the phrase live with to describe living arrangements. When children spend most nights with their mother, mothers are more likely than fathers to state that the children live with their mother. Together, these findings suggest that family researchers no longer can rely on simple questions to capture complex living arrangements. We need clearer and more careful question wording and, in some instances, follow‐up questions to accurately describe where children live.     

What's in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of ‘mixed’ children for parents from different racial,ethnic and faith backgrounds

This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their children's personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in‐depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their children's heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.     

Parents’ Working Hours: Adolescent Children's Views and Experiences

As dual‐earner families have become the norm, the different kinds of ‘time’ children spend with parents has become an important issue. We use the 2000 Time Use Survey to identify adolescent children spending time alone at home, and interviews with 50 children aged 14 and 15 to explore young people's experiences. We investigate their views on their situations, appropriate domestic responsibilities and how they manage their time. We suggest that simple parental presence or absence is not necessarily the main issue for children. However, parental employment may be problematic for some adolescent children.     

‘Similar but Different’ Conversations: Working with Denial in Cases of Severe Child Abuse

This article describes a particular aspect of a service called ‘Resolutions’ that has been developed at the NSPCC Child and Family Centre in Bristol, England. The Resolutions service works with families where parents and/or carers are disputing responsibility for serious abuse of their children, but where child protection agencies deem at least one of them culpable on a balance of probabilities. The service's general approach to developing partnerships with families is briefly considered, but the article concentrates on a particular approach. This is where parents and/or carers who are disputing abuse of their children roleplay a ‘similar but different’ family. This enables key issues in relation to child abuse to be discussed by the parents and/or carers. It also facilitates the gaining of greater understanding that helps them ensure the future safety of their own and other children.     

What happens during and after school: Conditions faced by working parents living in poverty and their school-aged children

Past research has not looked directly at how parental working conditions are affecting the lives of school-age children living in or near poverty. This study examines the effects that the working conditions faced by low-income parents have on the care their school-age children receive and on parental involvement in their children's education and development. In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 74 families with school-age children, including 44 families living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level and 30 families living above 150% of poverty. Teachers at every public afterschool program in the city were interviewed. One out of two low-income working parents faced barriers to becoming involved in their children's education. Two out of five faced barriers to participating in school meetings, school trips, or school events. Many parents had difficulty finding any time to spend with their children, let alone time to assist them with their schoolwork. The difficulties they faced are described in detail. Implications for educational and labor policy are discussed.     

Time,Space and Gender: Understanding ‘Problem’ Behaviour in Young Children

The following article reports on a small‐scale, exploratory study of aggressive and ‘problem’ behaviour in pre‐school children. This project was conceived in the wider context of anxieties about childhood and New Labour’s policy focus on ‘anti‐social’ behaviour in children. Based on interviews with nursery staff and parents in addition to participant observation undertaken in nursery playrooms, this article examines the relevance of time, space and gender for understanding problem behaviour in young children. Taking a social constructionist perspective and drawing on Foucault's ideas in particular, it examines the social processes which regulate and normalise behaviour in young children. © 2006 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2006 National Children's Bureau.     

‘It’s the way they do it’: Expressions of Agency in Child–Adult Relations at Home and School

This article examines children's (8–9 years) and young people’s (14–15 years) views about their own participation in decision‐making processes with adults, within the context of home and school in Norway. A difference‐centred theoretical perspective is used to identify children’s participation as expressions of agency embedded in intricate child–adult relations, in which children and adults are positioned differently. It is argued that children not necessarily ask for increased independence from adults, but rather to be recognised as ‘differently equal’ partners in shared decision‐making processes, where children are being treated with dignity and respect as valuable persons.     

‘Cleaning Your Glasses’: A Prerequisite for ‘Catching Your Child Being Good’

Used widely throughout the parenting literature, the phrase ‘Catch them being good’ encapsulates much of current practice that has been shown to be effective in reducing instances of non‐compliance in children with complex and challenging behaviours. ‘Catching your child being good’ is obviously in line with the strategies of praise, encouragement and positive reinforcement. But for some parents, ‘Catching their child being good’ after long periods of defiance becomes almost an impossible task. Metaphorically speaking, ‘Cleaning your glasses' is a necessary prerequisite for effectively ‘catching your child being good’. This metaphor and an associated six‐phase therapeutic intervention seek to enhance a parent's ability to ‘Catch their child being good’, by working through parental distortions, restraints and negativity. This paper introduces the metaphor's origin and use; describes keys concepts; and gives a detailed case example to highlight the advantages and limitations of the intervention.     

‘All feasible measures’—Children's Rights and Violent Conflict in Northern Ireland

SUMMARY: The UK, having ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is bound to take ‘all feasible measures' to protect children in armed conflicts; yet in its First Report on progress on the Convention, the Government barely acknowledged the impact on children and young people of violence in Northern Ireland. By contrast the Children's Rights Development Unit in its ‘alternative’ report, the ‘UK Agenda for Children’, examined in detail children's rights in Northern Ireland, and how the Government could comply with the Convention. This article describes the consultation process informing CRDU's report, and highlights the need for children's rights to be addressed as part of both healing the past and shaping the future of Northern Ireland.     

Re‐framing the Analysis: A 3‐dimensional Perspective of Prisoners’ Children's Well‐being

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well‐being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.     

‘I'm Home for the Kids’: Contradictory Implications for Work–Life Balance of Teleworking Mothers

This study explores the experience of time flexibility and its relationship to work–life balance among married female teleworkers with school‐aged children. Drawing from a larger study of teleworkers from a Canadian financial corporation, 18 mothers employed in professional positions discussed work, leisure and their perceptions of work–life balance in in‐depth interviews. Telework was viewed positively because flexible scheduling facilitated optimal time management. A key factor was the pervasiveness of caregiving, which could result in ongoing tensions and contradictions between the ethic of care and their employment responsibilities. The ideology of ‘intensive mothering’ meant that work schedules were closely tied to the rhythms of children's school and leisure activities. The different temporal demands of motherhood and employment resulted in little opportunity for personal leisure. Time ‘saved’ from not having to commute to an office was reallocated to caregiving, housework or paid employment rather than to time for their self. The women also experienced a traditional gendered division of household labour and viewed telework as a helpful tool for combining their dual roles. Time flexibility enhanced their sense of balancing work and life and their perceived quality of life. At the same time, they did not question whether having the primary responsibility for caregiving while engaged in paid employment at home was fair or whether it was a form of exploitation.     

Social Constructions of Young Children in ‘Special’, ‘Inclusive’ and Home Environments

The paper tells of the social constructs surrounding young children with learning difficulties in their home, ‘special’ early education setting and ‘inclusive’ or mainstream early education setting in England. The exploratory study focused on how three‐ to four‐year‐old children made sense of their environments and how their identities were constructed by different parties in the different contexts. Ethnographic case studies were conducted using semi‐structured and informal interviews with parents and practitioners, documentary analysis, fieldnotes, and live and video observations. Shared constructions across the contexts for each child were common, with constructions of them being happy and making progress pervasive across the children and settings. Differences in constructions across settings indicated that qualities could shine or negative constructions be tempered, thus showing the role of the environment and the culture of inclusion in socially constructing children with special needs.     

‘A Pest to Society’: The Charity Organisation Society's Domiciliary Assessments into the Circumstances of Poor Families and Children

This article examines the work of the Charity Organisation Society (COS) in assessing applications for children's admission to care in the late nineteenth‐century. It is based on an archive study of records kept by the ‘Waifs and Strays’ Society in England and Wales between 1882 and 1899, in particular 270 family assessments conducted by the COS. The focus was on parental behaviour rather than children's needs, with a strong narrative of taking children away to relieve parents of a burden. The research illuminates contested assumptions about childhood in the period, with resonance for current issues in policy and practice.     

Transnationalizing the ‘Asian’ family: imaginaries,intimacies and strategic intents

Abstract In this introductory article, we emphasize the significance of considering the politics and practices of transnationalism as they impinge on the social morphology of transnational ‘Asian’ families. Three strands of work in this arena are discussed. First, transnational families draw on ideologically laden imaginaries to give coherence to notions of belonging despite the physical dispersal of their members; these imaginaries may in turn act as a conservative force exerting control over particular female members, an increasing salient issue given the feminization of various streams of labour migration. Second, transnational families are also realized through lived experiences, where variants and degrees of intimacy are negotiated across transnational spaces with both ‘regular’ members and ‘irregular’ others. In the process, social identities may be reinforced or reconfigured. Third, families may assume transnational morphologies with the strategic intent of ensuring economic survival or maximizing social mobility. In this context, children's education has emerged as a particularly important project which provides strong impetus for families to go transnational.     

Transnational families and their children's education: China's ‘study mothers’ in Singapore

Abstract For many middle‐income Asian families from the region's less developed countries, the education of children in a more developed country has become a major ‘project’ requiring the transnational relocation of one or more members of the family. As an aspiring global education hub, Singapore has been a recipient of many international students. In our article we examine the case of ‘study mothers’ from the People's Republic of China who accompany their children to Singapore during the course of the latter's study, while leaving their spouses at home. In the analysis we demonstrate that the transnational ‘project of education’ for these young Asian children hinges crucially on the notion and realization of the ‘sacrificial mother’. Unlike the women in elite Chinese transnational families who enter western countries as potential citizens and are able to regain their relatively privileged lifestyles after a period of transition, the study mothers are admitted to, and remain in, Singapore as transient sojourners whose lives are characterized by continuing challenges and fluidity.