Key Concepts in Childhood Studies

Allison James, Adrian James

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781446289679
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

"Arranged alphabetically, core ideas about ?Agency? and ?Development? through to ?Socialisation? and ?Youth? are explained in straightforward language, with a concise introduction to key theoretical debates, as well as up to date references."
- Martin Woodhead, The Open University

"A challenging text that is recommended for all levels of the BA in Childhood Studies programme. The short, focussed chapters provide students with a comprehensive overview of a topic which they can then research in further depth."
- Sharron Galley, Centre for Childhood Studies, Stockport College

"This book gives a fantastic first look at many key concepts which are new to students in a way that is easily approachable and understandable. A great place to start further studies."
- Kathryn Peckham, Chichester University

This book has already proved itself as a market leader in Childhood Studies. All of the strengths of the First Edition have been retained. The book is comprehensive and judged with the needs of students in mind. It is a model of clarity and precision and has been acknowledged as such in reviews and course feedback. The new edition thoroughly revises old entries and adds new ones. The book is the most accessible, relevant student introduction to this expanding, interdisciplinary field. It is an indispensable teaching text and an ideal prompt for researchers.

Spaces for Children and Children's Places

The idea that certain physical spaces are conceptualised as being specifically suitable for use by children; it also describes the spaces which children themselves choose to occupy and make use of in their everyday lives and the ways in which they understand the environments that they inhabit.

Research into children's spaces has been undertaken from within a wide variety of disciplines, with the main contributions coming from sociology, anthropology, geography and psychology. While there is some overlap between these approaches, in terms of the ways in which each discipline addresses the conceptual relationship between children and space, there are also some significant differences. For example, while developmental psychologists might be interested in the impact that the physical environment has on young children's physical and cognitive development and well-being, geographers and sociologists are often more interested in understanding the meanings that children attribute to particular spaces and the ways in which they choose to use them, as Hart's early (1979) work on children's use of space in the USA demonstrates.

One widespread assumption is that children have an affinity with the natural world that is somehow inherent to their being children, and often this is used by policy-makers and planners to draw attention to the benefits for health and well-being that supposedly accrue to children through their contact with nature. Reviewing a range of experimental and correlational studies, Taylor and Juo (2006) are hard put, however, to find much conclusive evidence to support this assumption. While tentatively concluding that ‘contact with nature is supportive of healthy child development’, they caution that any causal relationship is not yet proven (2006: 136). It may be, for example, that it is the kinds of activities that children are able to do in outdoor green spaces, as opposed to indoor spaces, that are facilitative of healthy development, rather than the contact with the natural world per se. The Norwegian Nature Kindergarten movement, which has developed in recent years, provides a good example here, as do the Forest Schools now appearing elsewhere in Europe. Nielsen (2008), for instance, describes how in the outdoor kindergartens that have been established for pre-school children in Norwegian forests and woodland, 3- and 4-year-old children spend their days, even in extremely cold weather, learning skills of nature-craft that teach self-reliance and independence. For Nielsen, however, this is not just – or even – a matter of health; it is about teaching children what it is to be a ‘proper’ Norwegian: that is, someone with a love of nature and the outdoor life.

Other research (Holloway and Valentine, 2000) has explored how discourses of the rural idyll shape other adult attitudes towards children in industrialised societies, where parents regard the countryside as somehow a safer and better place for children to grow up. However, as Matthews and Tucker (2006) note, when rural teenagers themselves talk about life in rural areas, their accounts tend to stress its negative aspects. They describe being bored and see themselves as having a restricted social life due to their lack of independent mobility, given the poor transport services that often characterise the rural hinterlands of urban industrial societies.

These studies exploring the benefits and drawbacks of rural idylls speak, for the most part, to children who live in modern industrialised societies. For children of the majority South, who live and work in poor rural areas, their contact with nature is much more mundane, since the natural world provides them with a living. For working children and their families, it is the urban centres that may appear to promise a better life.

As these examples indicate, there is a close relationship between the concepts of space and place. Place is more than simply a geographical location: it is a space imbued with social and cultural meanings. Thus, in their discussion of children and their environments, Spencer and Blades (2006) make an important distinction between environments for children and environments of children. Through this, they draw attention to the fact that some places are designed specifically for children, to meet their needs (these are for children), whereas other spaces (of children) are leftover kinds of spaces in the environment that children appropriate for their own use. Thus, for example, schools are institutional spaces, intended for the schooling of children, whereas waste-ground and urban streets are often used by children for play.

What is important about this distinction is that it draws attention to the ways in which meaning is attributed to space (Fog Olwig and Gulløv, 2003). For example, spaces that have been designed and designated for children may be considered to be child-friendly: that is to say, they are said to meet the needs and interests that children have. However, the extent of children's participation in the design and function of that space is often limited. This means that these places may represent adults’ views of the kinds of places that they think are suitable for children – often safe, protected places, like playgrounds, that are separated from other spaces and often controlled by adults. Children themselves may, however, find these spaces too restricting, preferring to create their own places on their own terms. Matthews et al. (2000) show, for example, how children and young people use the street as an important place for socialising and that this re-use of the street is as important for girls as it is for boys.

A relatively new space for children is ‘cyberspace’, and as Valentine et al. (2000) argue, children's facility with new technology is giving them alternative ways to communicate with their friends and to develop their hobbies on-line. While adult concern often focuses on information and communications technology (ICT) as damaging to children's welfare and well-being, fostering social isolation through encouraging them to stay indoors rather than go outside to play, much child-focused research demonstrates that cyberspace is not, in fact, isolating children from their friends: indeed, it may be helping to foster wider friendships. Children's access to and participation in cyberspace also raise adult fears about children's vulnerability and innocence, and therefore their need for protection. However, while there are examples of children accessing pornographic websites and being ‘groomed’ by older people through chat rooms, Valentine et al. show that ‘children tend to use ICT in balanced and sophisticated ways’ that are not, in general, harmful (2000: 170).

Research on space and place within childhood studies draws attention then to the importance of structure in the sequestration of places designed to separate children from adults. However, it also enables exploration of children's agency in the many studies of the innovative ways in which children take over or appropriate different spaces for a range of activities and, in so doing, transform these into children's places (Rasmussen, 2004)

Further Reading

Fog Olwig K., and Gulløv E. (eds) (2003) Children's Places: Cross-cultural...