Childhood current issue

Editorial: Ratifying the Convention amidst the messy cultural politics of American childhoods

Cook, D. T. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

Accountability in Family Discourse: Socialization into norms and standards and negotiation of responsibility in Italian dinner conversations

Sterponi, L. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

This article explores morality as situated activity and approaches the discursive practice of accountability in Italian family dinner conversations as an avenue for understanding the construction of moral behaviour in everyday interpersonal interaction. The article focuses in particular on vicarious accounts, namely accounts, or explanations, provided by parents for a child’s misbehaviour. It examines the multiple socializing functions that vicarious accounts accomplish and the different dimensions of responsibility that they mobilize. While scaffolding children’s participation in episodes of accountability, vicarious accounts set up constraints on children’s autonomy of action, neutralizing more subversive and blameworthy interpretations of their problematic conduct. In this sense, vicarious accounts are qualified concessions and are face-saving acts both for the child whose action was signalled as improper and for the parent who initially requested the account.

How Children with Parents Suffering from Mental Health Distress Search for 'Normality' and Avoid Stigma: To be or not to be . . . is not the question

Haug Fjone, H., Ytterhus, B., Almvik, A. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

Using data from in-depth interviews with 20 children, this study finds that children with parents suffering from mental health distress struggle hard to present themselves as ‘normal’ and equal among their peer group. The study shows how they avoid stigma in their presentation of self in everyday life. All the children in this study, regardless of age or parents’ suffering, are active participants and impression managers in and of their own lives. The authors question whether their active responsibility for their own and their family’s well-being becomes too heavy a burden and should be moved from children’s private sphere into public arenas such as schools or social and healthcare services.

Children's Actions when Experiencing Domestic Violence

Overlien, C., Hyden, M. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

The aim of this article is, by analysing children’s discourses, to investigate their actions or absence of actions during a domestic violence episode. The empirical data are recorded group therapy sessions and individual interviews with children who have grown up experiencing their fathers’ violence against their mothers. The analysis shows that the children’s stories contain two aspects of actions: one related to the actions during the ongoing episode, and one the child perceives as possible/ desirable for the future. The findings are discussed in the light of Lazarus and Folkman’s theory of coping.

Gaming and Territorial Negotiations in Family Life

Aarsand, P. A., Aronsson, K. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

This article examines territorial negotiations concerning gaming, drawing on video recordings of gaming practices in middle-class families. It explores how private vs public gaming space was co-construed by children and parents in front of the screen as well as through conversations about games. Game equipment was generally located in public places in the homes, which can be understood in terms of parents’ surveillance of their children, on the one hand, and actual parental involvement, on the other. Gaming space emerged in the interplay between game location, technology and practices, which blurred any fixed boundaries between public and private, place and space, as well as traditional age hierarchies.

A Review of Children's Rights Literature Since the Adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Reynaert, D., Bouverne-de-Bie, M., Vandevelde, S. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

Children’s rights have become a significant field of study during the past decades, largely due to the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989. Today, scholarly work on children’s rights is almost inconceivable without considering the Convention as the bearer of the children’s rights debate. The goal of this article is to critically explore academic work on the UNCRC. By means of a discourse analysis of international literature, the article maps the academic discourse on children’s rights. Three themes are identified that predominate in the academic work on the UNCRC: (1) autonomy and participation rights as the new norm in children’s rights practice and policy, (2) children’s rights vs parental rights and (3) the global children’s rights industry. That these three themes distinguish contemporary scholarly work on the UNCRC might not be a coincidence, analysed from the process of ‘educationalization’ that has characterized childhood in western societies since the 19th century. The perspective of educationalization presents a contemporary research agenda for children’s rights for the coming decades.

Children Representing Children: Participation and the problem of diversity in UK youth councils

Wyness, M. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

This article is concerned with the relationship between children’s participation and the diversity of childhoods. While there are a number of different arrangements for encouraging children and young people to participate, the article focuses on a dominant mode of participation through which children are elected to represent the interests of other children within formal institutional structures. Drawing on empirical data from work with school and civic councillors in the UK, the article critically addresses two questions: what level of involvement do these child representatives have within their schools and communities that allow them to articulate the interests of their peers? To what extent do these representative forms of children’s participation reflect the interests of diverse groups of children? The article concludes that the implementation of electoral forms of participation reinforce existing inequalities between groups of young people and are less likely to incorporate the voices of disadvantaged and socially excluded groups of young people. Formal structures of democratic representation may need to be revised in exploring more fruitful ways of articulating the voices of diverse groups of children and young people.

Forming Identities in Residential Care for Children: Manoeuvring between social work and peer groups

Stokholm, A. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:49 PST

The general goal of Danish residential care institutions with a therapeutic objective is to change children’s behaviour and redirect their identity formation. This goal is pursued through an individualized focus on development. Dynamics of the resident group is rarely targeted directly in the pedagogical work. This article challenges the implicit understanding that social work is the primary source of identity transformation and that peer group interaction is mainly an obstacle to overcome. On the contrary, this article argues that learning about the social dynamics of the children’s group is a precondition for understanding how social work influences individual children.

Book Review: De Block, Liesbeth and David Buckingham (2007) Global Children, Global Media: Migration, Media and Childhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (222 pp.). ISBN 0230506992

Leinaweaver, J. B. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:50 PST

Book Review: Cassidy, C. (2007) Thinking Children. London and New York: Continuum. (196 pp.). ISBN 0826498183

Melchiorre, A. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:50 PST

Acknowledgement of Reviewers

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:03:50 PST