‘Orphans and Rich People’: A Discourse Analysis of the ‘Children's Lives’ Exhibition in Birmingham,UK

In 2012, an art gallery in Birmingham, England presented an exhibition of ‘Children's Lives’. Through its curation of photography, fine art, objects, video and text, ‘Children's Lives’ claimed to ‘let childhood through the ages speak for itself’ and to contribute ‘to a debate over what it means to be a child’. In this article, we offer a critical analysis of the exhibition, examining the relationship between the exhibition as discourse and the ‘external’ discourses around childhood that are reinforced, negotiated and in some cases challenged by the assemblage of image, text and the spatial ‘narrative’ of the gallery.     

Children's Media‐referenced Games: The Lived Culture of Consumer Texts on a School Playground

This article analyses empirical data including observations, videos and interviews from an ethnographic study of a multilingual, multiethnic school playground in London, UK. The analysis examines social uses of media references in playground games, drawing on literature in the field of consumer culture. The main argument is that children's consumer culture is constituted on the playground within media‐referenced play through a combination of creating distinctions and building affiliations. The article addresses a gap in the literature in the fields of sociology and anthropology of consumer culture which largely construct children's consumer culture as exceptional to or derived from adult consumer culture.     

The Trouble with Bullying – Deconstructing the Conventional Definition of Bullying for a Child‐centred Investigation into Children's Use of Social Media

This article deconstructs the conventional definition of bullying through analysis of its historical context, and identifies blind spots using lenses of gender, culture and setting. We explore theoretical and methodological problems associated with the conventional definition and its axiomatic use in bullying research, with particular reference to online bullying. We argue that because children may use ‘bullying’ to mean many different practices not captured in the conventional definition, using this definition often obscures the very phenomena researchers are aiming to describe. As a result, adults risk missing these practices in research and for interventions that use these studies as their evidence base.     

The territories of the practices of the trench: Origins,scope, desire

Our work with children whose rights have been violated, with their families devastated by family violence and where the majority have been left out of the sociocultural systems and experiencing serious economic and educational difficulties, has taken us to our professional limit. The solitary and individual work, in the dim light of the office, left us without tools. As therapists, we can say that it has been necessary to break with our own mental schemes and to take a leap into the territory, the terrain itself. The learned university theories were questioned, forcing us to include a more humanising and less judgmental look at the work. A psychology of the trench was born for us. This paper articulates a work process that required something more than specific training in our subject matter. It summoned us as human beings capable of hosting suffering. From this starting point, and with an open mind and heart to go through its stages, this process is presented as a journey with advances and setbacks in its intervention modalities, systematising programs in permanent construction. Systematising practices is not an easy task. Familias Cuidando (Caring Families) and Adoptar es Posible (To Adopt is Possible) are the developmental spaces of our trench practices, practices that aim to accompany children, adolescents, and their families through the system of promotion and comprehensive protection of their rights. From Vicente López, a district in the province of Buenos Aires, our psycho-socio-educational and legal approach tries to be a link within collaborative and supportive practices; establishing ties, networks, and dialogues to strengthen the new paradigm aiming to support listening to the voice of children and adolescents; rescuing their childhoods, resignifying the different family models, and accompanying the construction of a life project for each one, in which we all fit.     

Understanding the Role of Immigrant Families' Cultural and Structural Mechanisms in Immigrant Children's Experiences beyond High School: Lessons for Social Work Practitioners

The destinies of the contemporary immigrant generation are challenged by the profound reshaping of the U.S. economy and the increasing diversity of new immigrant communities from the Latin American and Asian regions. Family represents a key link between immigrant children's social adjustment beyond high school and relationships with mainstream society. Placing an emphasis on culture and social structure, this article reviews contemporary literature and provides a framework for knowledge that helps social work practitioners and policy planners explore the distinguishing features of immigrant families that confer an advantage within their children's post-secondary education or labor market participation. Also considered is how culture and social structure overlap and interact to exert a significant influence on the future economic prospects of immigrant children.     

Messages Matter: Investigating the Thematic Content of Picture Books Portraying Underrepresented Racial and Cultural Groups

Books depicting underrepresented racial or cultural groups and the messages they convey offer vehicles for change. But not all messages have the same impact, and thought should be given to which messages are used when and for what purpose. Our research contributes to the national conversation about diverse children's books by illuminating nine themes dominant in fiction and narrative nonfiction picture books (K–3) published between 2008–2015 featuring characters who are Asian/Pacific Islander, black/African/African American, Central and South American (Hispanic/Latinx), Middle Eastern/North African/Arab, First/Native Nations, and bi‐/multiracial. We also provide insight into the messages communicated by the relative prevalence of characters portrayed in each theme from each group. Inviting those who use books with children to turn their attention to overarching messages, we provide a model of how these themes can be used to interrogate a collection and its nuances of representation.     

Re-imaging everyday routines and educational aspirations under COVID-19 lockdown: Narratives of urban middle-class children in Punjab,India

Based on in-depth interviews with 24 middle-class Indian child participants, this is the first exploratory qualitative study, in India, to demonstrate the ways in which children as reflexive social actors re-negotiated everyday schedules, drew on classed resources at their disposal and made sense of the impact of the pandemic on their educational pathways and future aspirations. These narratives offer a unique lens on the politics of middle-classness and its constitutive relation to constructions of normative childhoods in contemporary India. Study findings contribute to the sociology of Indian childhood and more generally help enrich our understanding of southern childhoods and the reproduction of inequalities in contemporary India.     

“Don't Cry,You're Not a Baby!”: Emotion,Role and Hierarchy in Korean Language Socialisation Practice

I examine how South Korean children learn culturally specific emotional knowledge, especially affective hierarchy and the association between emotional displays and social roles, through participation in peer talk. An analysis of children's and teachers’ everyday emotional discourses shows that children, rather than passively adopting adult emotional discourses, creatively employ a range of linguistic and communicative features regarding emotions to construct their own culture‐laden emotional world. Findings articulate the role children's peer talk has in cultural reproduction and dynamic aspects of the language socialisation processes.     

Childhood in Children's Eyes: Analysis of a Discourse among Middle‐Income Sectors in Santiago,Chile

This article describes the results of a qualitative study, based on the perspective of critical discourse analysis, which explores the discourse on childhood of 10‐ and 11‐year‐old boys and girls from a middle‐income socioeconomic sector in Santiago, Chile. Among the findings, a complex and relational notion of childhood is highlighted. The children perceive themselves as overwhelmed and subjected to excessive demands by grown‐ups, and conceive of adulthood as a state without real freedom due to the excessive demands of work and family.     

International women's magazines in China: Global and local perspectives

Unlike other global media products that are imported from overseas, international women's magazines in China are published via licensing agreements or joint ventures with local companies. These ownership patterns allow local editions of international women's magazines to negotiate the tensions and contradictions between the global players and local publishers. Given the influence of cultural and commercial forces in different economic environments, international women's magazines provide a challenging platform for exploring the interaction between global and local forces. Through a theoretical framework of hybridity theory and in-depth interviews with editorial personnel from the magazine industry, this study explores the global and local forces that have contributed to the production process of international women's magazines in China. The findings reveal that these magazines are a result of a multi-level convergence of local realities and global influences. Although there are factors of control and dependence in many areas such as the publishing ideas, editorial policies, the training of personnel, and the quality of production, both Western-style and Japanese-style women's magazines tend to appropriate and rework global cultures to satisfy local readers' needs, albeit in different ways. As a result, local and transnational influences are inextricably interwoven in the production process of international women's magazines in China. The study provides an extensive understanding of the global processes, the consumers, and the cultural forces that are shaping the media, particularly magazines in China.     

Measuring Children's Experience of Their Right to Participate in School and Community: A Rights‐Based Approach

This paper discusses the development of a children's rights‐based measure of participation and the findings from its use in a survey of 10‐ to 11‐year‐old children (n = 3773). The measure, which was developed in collaboration with a group of children, had a high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89). Findings suggest that children's positive experience of their participation rights is higher in school than in community, and higher for girls compared to boys. It is argued that involving children in the ‘measurement’ of their own lives has the potential to generate more authentic data on children's lived experiences.     

Protagonists' and Adoptive Process Representations in Italian Children's Books About International Adoption: A Qualitative Study

This qualitative study aims at identifying the main representations of the international adoption process through a comparative analysis of 62 Italian stories about international adoption. Content analysis involves the use of thematic analysis as well as computer-assisted text analysis. Results show that adoption is represented varying from a polarization in which “the positive” is situated in the “adoptive world” while “the negative” pertains to the world of the origins, to a more integrated representation in which both the adoptive context and the origins entail positive aspects.     

Reframing from Site Bias to Site Identity: Pedagogic Issues in Delivering Social Work Courses via Interactive Television

SUMMARY

Tension between instructors and students at distance sites has been called site bias. Additional sources of site tension sometimes occurs between cohorts at different sites and within the originating site cohort. This paper describes how site tension can be reframed as site identity and utilized to promote goals of teaching about social justice and diversity.     

The impact of migration on the well-being of transnational families: new data from sending communities in Mexico

We present results from a new study of the effects of migration to the USA on the well-being of transnational families in high emigration communities within Mexico. Our survey measured the well-being of family members in a variety of domains: economic, health, education, and child development for a representative sample drawn from high migration municipalities. Compared to those with no recent emigrants to the USA, Mexican households sending non-caregivers to the USA appear to gain economically without contributing to problems faced by children. However, when family caregivers migrate to the USA, the remaining members in Mexico struggle to meet the family's needs and children are more vulnerable to educational, emotional, and health problems. Children in households where a caregiver migrated were more likely to have frequent illnesses (10% vs. 3%, p<0.0001), chronic illness (7% vs. 3%, p=0.011), emotional problems (10% vs. 4%, p=0.006), and behavioral problems (17% vs. 10%, p=0.018) compared with children in households where the migrant was not a caregiver. Research, policy, and program implications of these findings are discussed.     

Remarriage and Stepfamilies: Strategic Sites for Family Scholarship in the 21st Century

This article reviews areas of advancement over the past decade in our understanding of remarriage and stepfamilies and suggests promising new directions for future work. Profound shifts in the demographic context of family life motivate central themes in recent scholarship on remarriage and stepfamilies, including the diversity and complexity of stepfamily structures and processes, the consequences of multiple partnerships for adults and children, and potential selectivity in the characteristics of individuals entering remarried families and stepfamilies. Despite challenges to further progress, I argue that remarriage and stepfamilies offer strategic opportunities to investigate many core concerns of family scholars.     

Deciding Not to Adopt: The Role of Normative Family Ideologies in Adoption Consideration

ABSTRACT

Americans view adoption favorably, yet few consider adopting or actually adopt a child. Using qualitative data from the representative National Survey of Fertility Barriers, we explored why women who had considered adoption decided not to pursue it as a pathway to parenthood. Our sample includes responses from 1,747 women who considered adoption at some point. Seven themes emerged: prioritization of biology, economic concerns, family building prerequisites, relationship barriers, barriers to adoption, family barriers, and change of heart. Findings highlight that barriers to adoption are not always the primary reasons women opt out of adoption; normative conceptualizations of “family” are also important.     

‘What Does Donor Mean to a Four‐Year‐Old?’: Initial Insights into Young Children's Perspectives in Solo Mother Families

This study reports on the questions, thoughts and feelings of children aged 4–9 conceived by donor insemination to single mothers. Fifty‐one mothers and 47 children from the same families were each administered a semi‐structured interview. Mothers generally reported that while children either lack understanding, or have not yet been told, about their donor conception, they may be thinking and talking about the absence of a father. Most children did not mention either donor conception or father absence and reported positive feelings about their families and friendships. Possible explanations for the discrepancy between mothers’ and children's reports are discussed.     

Approaches to Reduce Bullying in Schools – A Critical Analysis from the Viewpoint of First‐ and Second‐Order Perspectives on Bullying

In this article, recent research literature on bullying in schools is discussed. The authors approach the discussion from a critical angle, distinguishing between first‐order perspectives (bullying as part of individuals’ dysfunction) and second‐order perspectives (bullying as part of social processes) to embrace the different understandings of bullying and to discuss these critically. The purpose is to present important knowledge to reduce bullying and to engage in a discussion of different perspectives on bullying. This article contributes to the existing knowledge of the field by discussing and developing the original concepts of first‐ and second‐order interventions.