Questioning Research with Children: Discrepancy between Theory and Practice?

This paper argues that current child and childhood research is problematical in as much as there is a discrepancy between theory and research practice. Although in theory, children are conceptualised as active agents in the social world, the type of research that children are typically involved in implies that children are competent, knowledgeable and affective only in terms of their own lives, their own spaces, their own childhoods. The implications of this discrepancy are discussed. The paper concludes that although research that contributes to a greater understanding of childhood experiences is important, it is equally important to involve children in research that goes beyond 'childhood'.     

Children in separated families: A group-based intervention strategy

The effects of divorce and separation on children can be traumatic and long lasting. Any intervention has to be aware of, and sensitive to, the aims of custodial parents. A group-based intervention aimed at helping children to be less vulnerable to both emotional problems and future abuse is described. The results of such groups suggest that future intervention needs to treat the panacea of increasing child-parent communication with some caution, and should instead recognize that children make their own choices about when to speak out and what to say within their own family situation. Intervention should instead be geared towards helping children to sort out their own feelings and letting them decide how they want to express them.     

Healing the Hidden Injuries of Class? Redemption Narratives,Aspirational Proxies,and Parents of Low‐Income,First‐Generation College Students

Existing scholarship has examined how low‐income individuals conceptualize their socioeconomically constrained positions in relation to the meritocratic ideologies and stratified mobility structures of the United States, but little is specifically known about how these individuals' ideas regarding their own status may be impacted by raising children who surpass their educational and occupational achievement levels. Drawing on interview data from both low‐income first‐generation (LIFG) college students and the parents of those students, this article examines how parents framed the achievements of their upwardly mobile, college‐going children in relation to their own experiences of socioeconomic, educational, and occupational constraint. Engaging qualitative understandings of the “hidden injuries of class,” the analysis demonstrates how parents of LIFG college students reconciled their own experiences of limited mobility despite hard work with their steadfast beliefs in meritocratic ideals by (1) invoking narratives of personal “redemption” from past “mistakes” or “failures” in relation to their children's educational accomplishments, and (2) conceptualizing their upwardly mobile children as “aspirational proxies” through whose accomplishments they measured their own success.     

Kids Talking About Race: Tween‐agers in a Post‐Civil Rights Era

Our research examines how American children understand and talk about how race matters in their everyday lives. We draw on interviews with 44 middle school children who attend schools in an integrated county‐wide system and find that while some use color‐blind rhetoric, most children in our study know that race matters, while they offer alternative accounts for why and how. Some explain race as social inequality, while others offer cultural accounts of racial differences. Our analysis suggests that for white children, gender matters; more girls describe racial inequality than boys. For children of color, class seems to be key, with middle‐class children giving cultural explanations, including negative evaluations of others in their own racial group. We use an intersectionality framework to analyze the alternative and complex narratives children give for their own experiences of race and race relations between peers.     

Children's standards for judging their own facial expressions of emotion

This study examined three- to seven-year-old children's abilities to recognize and label their own facial expressions of emotion. Each child posed four facial expressions (Happy, Sad, Angry, and Scared) which were photographed with a Polaroid camera. The child then selected each expression from the array of his/her own photos and labeled the facial expression of each photo. In addition to children's self-evaluations, the photo set's expressive content was evaluated by a panel of adult raters. Happy was the expression easiest for children to pose; Scared was the most difficult. Abilities involved in evaluating one's own facial expression (i.e., recognizing and labeling) appear not to be acquired simultaneously with the ability to pose the expression. Not all children conformed to adult standards in evaluating their own expressions. Nearly one-fifth of the children studied exhibited evidence of an idiosyncratic expressive scheme for at least one of their facial expressions.     

‘Just teach us the skills please,we'll do the rest’: empowering ten‐year‐olds as active researchers

This paper discusses the outcomes of an initiative to empower ten‐year‐olds as active researchers. It debates some of the barriers that are commonly cited with regard to children of this age taking ownership of their own research agendas—power relations, competence, knowledge and skills—and challenges the status quo. It describes a study in which a group of ten‐year‐olds participated in a taught programme aimed at equipping them with the knowledge and skills to design their own research. This empowering process resulted in the children undertaking research projects of their own choosing, designed, carried out and reported entirely from their perspective. Reports from two of those projects are presented as part of this paper.     

Performative and subversive negotiations of face in parent–child communication about childbearing choice across generations

Some women who previously told others they never wanted to have children ultimately do become mothers. These women negotiate their own and their children’s childbearing identities. Using performative face theory, a critical poststructural interpersonal and family communication theory of identity and difference, this study analyzed intergenerational shifts in parent–child communication between families-of-origin (when participants were children) and families-of-creation (when participants were parents). Most participants described how their parents articulated either pronatalist face threats or antinatalist face support, which constrained possibilities for their childbearing identities. Participants, however, stressed that they have talked or plan to talk to their own children in a different, more neutral-natalist way by sharing their stories, emphasizing childbearing agency, and quietly desiring grandchildren. Negotiations of childbearing face are therefore informed by—and in turn sustain, resist, or sometimes subvert—discursive articulations of power/knowledge that circulate throughout culture about (never) having children.     

Foster care: The protection and training of carers' children

One of the risk factors in foster placement breakdown is the presence of the carers' own children. A project is described through which carers' children express their feelings and conflicts and present a demand for a review of foster care, to be seen as care by families, not only parents. Many children in care have a powerful psychological impact on their carers, and the impact on other children in the household is underestimated and poorly understood. There is a confusion of role between carers' children and children who are fostered—on the one hand, the former are peers, and on the other, considerable demands of patience and understanding are made on them. This understanding, and perhaps also fear of allegations, may make them prematurely adult and distort aspects of their own development. The need for further research into the direct experience of foster care is highlighted and a training model of preparation for carers and their children is described, based on direct work with adolescents.     

A treatment program for children with sexual behavior problems

This paper discusses the problems and treatment of children with sexual behavior problems. These children coerce, intimidate or force other children by threats of physical harm to comply with their sexual requests, frequently a reenactment of their own experiences. This paper describes a comprehensive therapeutic foster care approach to these children.     

A Children's Standpoint: Needs in Out‐of‐Home Care

This article discusses research reported in ‘The Needs of Children in Care’ ( Mason and Gibson, 2004 ) in which children participated in defining their needs in out‐of‐home care. In this study a central research presumption was that children are knowledgeable about their own needs. The methods used to facilitate the involvement in the project of children and adult stakeholders in out‐of‐home care are described. Also described are findings from the research which identified that of prime importance to the children were their connections with others and their agency in their own lives. These findings are compared with findings from the narratives of the adult stakeholder groups. Finally, the implications of the findings, for improving children's participation in decision‐making around their needs in care are considered in the context of broad adult–child social relations in the care system.     

Family Group Conferences and youth advocacy: The participation of children and young people in family decision making

The notion of independent advocacy does not sit easily with the principles of Family Group Conferences (FGC). The integrity of conferencing is in the competence of family members to make their own decisions. The challenge of enabling the voice and agency of children and young people within their own family networks however is formidable. The familial nexus can be as institutionally excluding as any other adult forum. This paper focuses on the work of a FGC project in Wiltshire, England, which used a small grant to provide independent advocacy for children and young people involved in conferences. Drawing on an evaluation of the project, the article argues that distinguishing children and young people's power from parental and professional power permits their empowerment through the use of advocacy.     

Finnish children in foster care: evaluating the breakdown of long-term placements.

Save the Children studied risk factors associated with placement disruption or breakdown in cases where long-term foster care was intended. Before their placement in 180 foster families, most of the 234 children studied (75%) had experienced neglect. The followup time after initial placement averaged four years and two months. Achieving long-term beneficial foster care placement of children of varied ages and experiences with abuse and neglect, involved considering the needs of the foster parents who may or may not have their own children or other children in their care. Some children were reunified with their parents; careful evaluation is needed before such reunion.     

Parents and Educators: Dialogue and Development Through Partnership

SUMMARY. This paper describes an approach to working with parents which emphasises the parents' own learning process and which might be termed ‘developmental partnership’. By this is meant a relationship in which not only are the parents explicitly acknowledged as the primary educators of their own children but also that, through a process of mutual enquiry into the activities and development of these children, parents, educator and children learn and work together. A number of issues are raised about working in ‘developmental partnership’ with parents, including the role of the unconscious in relationships focused upon learning.     

Kinship care of the abused child: the New Zealand experience.

The concept of continuity--keeping children within their own kinship, community, and cultural networks--has found international favor in contemporary child welfare practice. This principle is reflected in the 1989 New Zealand Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act. The Act represents a significant shift--from the state to the family--in responsibility for children in need of care. The increasing use of the Family Group Conference process allows families to make decisions about the future of kin children and reflects the belief that, although most abuse is intrafamilial, the family will also be the most committed to keeping the child safe. Other countries have adapted this model to suit their own cultural child welfare needs. The international trend toward formal use of kinship care for children who have suffered abuse or neglect is likely to continue as foster care resources shrink. Drawing on qualitative research, this article describes the experiences of caregivers and their kin children who have been the subject of a care and protection order.     

Touch in residential child care: staff’s bodies and children’s agency

This paper concerns the significance of touch in the everyday life of those living and working in residential child care. Public and professional awareness about child abuse has focused attention on the bodies of children and their vulnerability – but the same cannot be said of the bodies of staff members who touch children. This ethnographic study of a Scottish residential child care unit shows such touch to be central to the everyday participation of children and young people in care. On the basis of participant observation, the paper analyses how care workers influence the agency of children and young people by bringing their own bodies into their relationships with them. Based on a relational understanding of care, the paper elaborates on how tender and restraining forms of touch form part of care workers’ professional repertoire of actions. The analysis of various instances of touch in terms of sociology of the body shows how staff members can help to shape children and young people’s opportunities for participation with their own bodies. In conclusion, the paper therefore argues for a professional and reflexive engagement with bodies rather than a general avoidance of touch between care workers and young people.     

Fatherhood: Comparison Between Divorced Custodial Fathers,Married Fathers,and Divorced Non-Custodial Fathers in Israel

Paternal involvement and acceptance were compared among 218 custodial fathers, 222 married fathers, and 105 divorced noncustodial fathers. Findings show that the custodial fathers were more involved with their children, coordinated less with their children’s mother, and viewed their children as more difficult than the other fathers. Two regression analyses were conducted. One revealed that greater paternal involvement was predicted by greater self-differentiation, greater sense of having received care from one’s own father, and a less avoidant caregiving disposition. The other showed that greater paternal acceptance was predicted by greater self-differentiation, greater sense of having received care from one’s own father, and a less anxious caregiving disposition. Finally, the findings show that coparenting, social support, and sense of the child as difficult moderated the associations between the fathers’ personal variables and their involvement, but not their acceptance.     

Children in poverty in germany: reflections on recent social work research

This project focuses on children growing up in impoverished life circumstances, originating from an increasing level of poverty in Germany. There are two perspectives in social work research on children living in poverty: first, current research on childhood recognises that children are social agents in their own practices of life; second, research on poverty draws attention to the issue of social inequality, and broaches the question of the structural constraints and limitations of daily life. We report on current German research on children living in poverty, and focus on the role of peer relationships in coping with discrimination. This research is substantiated with the results of our own research project. We find that children develop strategies to mitigate the effects of poverty. The family can also help by providing the child with an interpretation of their poverty, and through daily coping mechanisms. Additionally, children can gain support from their peers. However, bridging social capital and gaining access to other social milieus is seldom successful. We conclude with a discussion of strategies that point the way out of child poverty. Such an optimistic goal, however, would require an alliance of practice, research and policy in the field of social work.     

Factors That May Influence Parent Treatment Decision Making for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ABSTRACT

The number of interventions available for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has expanded greatly in recent years, although relatively little is known about the factors that influence family caregivers as they make treatment decisions for their children. This study involved a statewide survey of parents of young children with ASD to examine the relative weights of the factors that influenced their treatment decisions. Results suggested that caregivers rely on their own intuition for much decision making, although selected professionals are also influential. Implications for professionals working with children with ASD and their families are discussed.     

Charting the Emergence of National Identity in Children in Wales

This multimodal study, set in Wales, demonstrates that children aged nine and ten can clearly define and rationalise their own national identity. It contributes to age related discussions on how children categorise themselves in terms of national identity and the rationale for their choices. The children in the study used single and multiple definitions of national identity and illustrate the increasing plural nature of 21st century Wales. Family, birthplace and residency were identified as factors in shaping their national identity, more so than language, despite the current bilingual policy drive in Wales.