The SAGE Handbook of Child Research

Gary B Melton, Asher Ben-Arieh, Judith Cashmore, Gail S. Goodman, Natalie K. Worley, Gary B Melton, Asher Ben-Arieh, Judith Cashmore, Gail S. Goodman, Natalie K. Worley, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781412930161
• eBook ISBN: 9781473971325
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

It is refreshing to see a book such as this which is both broad in its conceptualization of the field of child research and deep in its focus. The volume?s editors are paragons of awareness when it comes to the need for interdisciplinary research and theory to illuminate the lives and experience of children.
- James Garbarino, Loyola University Chicago

"Covers a satisfying and unprecedentedly wide range of research relating to childhood. The contributors include many eminent international scholars of childhood, making the book a valuable resource for child researchers. Child advocates will also find the book to be invaluable in their efforts to improve children's well-being, and to change policies and practices for the better."
- Anne Smith, University of Otago

"A really scintillating collection that will provide a lasting perspective on child studies - stimulating and comprehensive!"
- Jonathan Bradshaw, University of York

In keeping with global changes in children?s social and legal status, this Handbook includes examination of children as family members, friends, learners, consumers, people of faith, and participants in law and politics. The contributors also discuss the methodological and ethical requirements for research that occurs in natural settings and that enables children themselves to describe their perspective.

The book is divided into three parts:

• Part I: Setting-Specific Issues in Child Research
• Part II: Population-Specific Issues in Child Research
• Part III: Methods in Research on Children and Childhood

PART I

Setting-Specific Issues in Child Research

2

The Settings of Childhood

Asher Ben-Arieh

We live in a changing world. Whether discussing information technology and the new era of information (Compaine, 2001; Drori, 2005; Jackson, 2008), changing gender roles (Fagot, Rodgers and Leinbach, 2000; Helwig, 1998; Herold and Milhausen, 1999; Montgomery, 2010), the globalization of markets (Alderson, 1999; Alderson and Nielsen, 2002; Berberoglu, 2005; Berger, 2000; Brady, Beckfield and Zhao, 2007), or the emergence of new global cultures (Featherstone, 1990; Franklin, Lury and Stacey, 2000), it seems one consensus can easily be agreed upon – societies have changed dramatically, and many of the institutions within society have changed as well.

Most of the institutions we refer to as central to children and childhood have undergone extraordinary change in the past generation or two. A partial and short list includes: the family; the law; religion and religious practices; political, health, and educational systems; and the economic market and consumption. These and other institutions have changed to such a degree that anything short of acknowledging the fact that we are dealing with ‘new’ societies would be hard to justify.

The general notion that society has changed is accompanied by the growing acceptance of a new sociology of childhood (Corsaro, 1997; James and Prout, 1997; Mayall, 2002; Qvortrup, 1994) and the consensus that childhood itself has changed as well (Flekkoy and Kaufman, 1997; Jensen et al., 2004). Ample research has shown that childhood and the well-being of children in the twenty-first century differ from how we used to think of them even in the recent past (see, for example, Adamson and Morrison, 1995; Ben-Arieh, 2010, 2009; Bradshaw, 2009; Bradshaw and Mayhew, 2005; Fattore, Mason and Watson, 2007; Hood, 2004, 2007; Land, Lamb and Mustillo, 2001; Lau and Bradshaw, 2010; Richardson, Hoelscher and Bradshaw, 2008; Stanley, Richardson and Prior, 2005). In the realm of this handbook, the concept of child research now differs as well.

Without attempting to address causality or order issues, it is safe to acknowledge that the new society and its changing institutions interact markedly with children and childhood (Arnott, 2008; Hart, 2008; Prout, 2000; Smith, 2007; Thomas, 2007; Tisdall, 2008). Children are affected by these changes as much as they influence them, especially when seen and understood as active agents (Hart, 1999, 1992; Melton, 2005; Tisdall and Davis, 2007; Willow, 2002). As a consequence, childhood and children’s lives are even more affected, to such a degree that we are in fact facing a ‘new’ childhood and dealing with ‘different’ children (Jensen et al., 2004; John, 2003; Flekkøy and Kaufman, 1997; Piachaud, 2007).

These changes are apparent in a number of domains and fields, the research implications of which are described in the chapters of this volume. From reading these chapters, a clear picture of the ‘new child research’ emerges. In the remainder of this chapter, I will discuss a short list of issues that are central to childhood and children today which were not necessarily so in the past.

One of these major changes is the new legal status of children and the revolution in children’s rights (Alaimo and Klug, 2002; Alderson, 2010; Archard, 1993; Freeman and Veerman, 1999; Hale, 2006; Hart, 1991; Leena, 2010; Reynaert, Bouverne-de Bie and Vandevelde, 2009; Wilcox and Naimark, 1991). Roger Levesque (Chapter 3, this volume) describes how the ‘new’ legal status of children testifies to the developments and transformations in societal understanding of children and their place in society, ultimately creating new settings for them. However, this new legal setting in children’s lives brings with it new challenges for children’s wellbeing in general and child research in particular. Drawing again on Levesque’s observations, one must agree that children continue to occupy a peculiar status in law and society. While all modern societies now champion the importance of recognizing and fostering a wide range of children’s rights, children still may not actually control their own rights. Perhaps more significantly, a great disjuncture often appears when we examine claims of children’s rights and compare them with the reality of children’s lives. Children have gained recognition under the law, but it remains to be determined what that recognition means in practice.

Many would argue that the impact of the children’s rights revolution extended far beyond their legal status. In many ways a consequence of the children’s rights concept, another new setting for children and childhood is the child’s role in political process and socialization. Anu Toots and her colleagues devote their chapter (Chapter 4, this volume) to this issue and its implications for child research. Political socialization research offers insights into the political knowledge and attitudes of children and youth (Furnham and Stacey, 1991; Torney-Purta et al., 2001). Similarly, large-scale longitudinal surveys of youth, such as the American Freshman Survey (Sax et al., 1999), have studied youths’ civic values, their motivation to participate in community activities, and the effects of child and youth participation in school and community activities on academic achievement, youth behaviour, and future civic involvement (Eccles and Barber, 1999; Lamborn et al., 1992; Yates and Youniss, 1998). These studies are only starting to unveil the civic setting of childhood in the twenty-first century, yet they are a good start for a thorough discussion of child research in a new society and setting.

In the new setting of childhood, spirituality is no longer a distant and marginal issue. As Eugene Roehlkepartain (Chapter 5, this volume) clearly articulates, if issues of children’s religion and spirituality have been relegated to the margins in the social sciences in the past, they are now enjoying a resurgence of interest in and attention to spiritual and religious development. In the ‘new’ childhood, he argues, spiritual development is a normative developmental process involving critical developmental tasks such as connectedness, belongingness, purpose, and contribution. All persons in all societies ‘do’ spiritual development, though culture plays a major role in its process and content. Spiritual development does not require divinity or belief in a supernatural power, although many people include these in their own stories. From this perspective, spiritual development ‘happens’ among secular humanists, atheists, Muslims, Methodists, Buddhists, animists, artists, scientists, young, and old. Spiritual development is a normative developmental process that, like cognitive or social development, is informed and shaped by family, kinship, peers, school, culture, social norms, and programmes.

In addition to spiritual settings, the ‘new’ childhood is posing new settings in regard to child research in the health domain. As Priscilla Alderson (Chapter 6, this volume) argues, traditional research about children as patients in traditional settings focused on causes, prevention, and treatment of physical and psychological disorders. Indeed, scientific and clinical medical and nursing research, particularly from the 1960s, has brought more benefit to children than any other research field. Society has seen great gains in child health and survival and for preventing and treating children’s illnesses, injuries, and impairments. It is social research about child patients’ own views and experiences, however, which has shaped the new setting of child health research within the ‘new’ childhood.

In this new setting, research does not utilize a clear differentiation between sick and healthy children. The new child health research instead identifies pathology within social and political contexts. Paediatricians observe many problems in the unhealthy behaviours and relationships, diet and housing, families and communities that damage children, but they often feel uncertain how to explain, prevent, or cure children’s suffering. Health care and social research collect innumerable visible data but seldom consider underlying ‘real’ explanations.

Ragnhild Brusdal and Ivar Frønes (Chapter 7, this volume) present yet another new setting of childhood – that of consumption and consumerism. Although the majority of the world’s children do not live in conditions of affluence and consumerism, new groups of children are continuously entering this world, to such a degree that consumption is a pivotal part of socialization in modern societies. The setting of consumer childhood differs from earlier settings of childhood in terms of the scale and content of consumption, penetrating everyday life and culture. Children’s consumption, as illustrated by the concept of shopping, is a display of the economic and moral economy of the family as well as the values of children’s cultures and the dynamics of the market.

Child consumerism often is associated with the market for specific childhood products and their related advertisements, but this is only a minor part of children’s consumption. The understanding of children as consumers cannot be restricted to what they buy themselves or indirectly through their ‘pester power’. Children’s engagement in the marketplace includes parents’ purchases of computers, books, and education itself as investment in their children’s future. Children’s place in the economy extends to household safety equipment, family holidays, as well as the hamburgers that children buy with their pocket money. To a large degree, modern settings of childhood are displayed and developed through children’s consumption. (We recognize, of course, that many children in developing societies and agricultural communities serve as family breadwinners, not just earners or possessors of discretionary income.)

School and learning pose an additional setting of childhood which has changed dramatically. Jan Kappmann (Chapter 8, this volume) describes how the idea of viewing children as learners, while neither surprising nor unique, has been used in recent years for setting a new agenda in the politics of early childhood education and care. Similarly, one can see how the interest in children’s learning has narrowed down the question of how to make learning more efficient by controlling and creating a setting of tests and academic outcomes while diminishing almost all other goals of schools.

I have discussed (even if briefly) the changing nature of family and home settings for children. Jennifer Mason and Becky Tipper (Chapter 9, this volume) describe in greater detail the ‘new’ settings of the family and the home for children. In regard to child research they argue that the major problem central to the discussion of children as family members is the faulty assumption that family research automatically includes child research and that, by extension, if we have done research on families then we know about children. Until recently (Brannen and O’Brien, 1996), surprisingly little research on ‘the family’ actually incorporated, let alone focused on, children’s everyday experiences of family life. Children were part of the picture, certainly, but more often as the inert recipients of parenting, childcare, and socialization than as active members or participants in their own right.

Peer groups and friendships have always been considered to be a central setting of childhood. Steven Asher and his colleagues (Chapter 10, this volume) analyse the new setting of friendship as well. A close friendship is, for many children, the first non-familial intimate relationship that is freely chosen. Friendships between children often have been contrasted with parent–child relationships by emphasizing the more egalitarian nature of friendships. It is said that, in friendships, children are likely to have similar levels of power. This is in contrast to the parent–child relationship in which there is often a clear asymmetry in the power of the parties involved. This contrast, however, can be overstated. Many peer relationships, and even close friendships, are characterized by imbalances in power, whereas some parent–child relationships have a fairly equal distribution of power. More importantly, the attention to the balance-of-power dimension of peer versus family relationships may result in our overlooking one of the critical differences between children’s friendships and their family relationships, namely that children’s friendships are typically voluntary relationships (for a discussion of cultures that are exceptions to this, see Kappmann, 1996). In friendships, the parties generally can withdraw from the relationship if things are not going well, whereas in parent–child relationships the parents and children generally stay in contact for life, even if their relationship is stressful or disappointing. In friendship, one or both participants are likely to leave the relationship if large problems, or sometimes even minor problems, go unresolved.

Finally, I would argue that one of the best ‘new’ settings to observe and study the status of children’s lives in the ‘new’ society is in the political process, particularly through child participation (see Toots et al.’s discussion). As Levesque describes, children’s participation in decision making became an international standard in 1989 with the enactment of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). One of the general principles of the Convention was (and still is) to respect children’s opinions and to enable their expression (see arts. 12–17). This principle effectively expands children’s autonomy by giving them an opportunity to participate directly in their community life, while also giving them the skills to do so (Cavet and Sloper, 2004; Glanville, 1999; Hart, 1992, 2008; Hinton, 2008; Hinton et al., 2008; Lansdown, 2001; Melton, 2006; Riepl and Wintersberger, 1999).

I end this commentary with the new activity setting of child participation, because it has the most direct impact on child research. The new norm of child participation and, underlying it, the concept of children as active citizens imply that child research itself must change. We must take children’s participation seriously, so that they can become partners in the quest for knowledge, not merely subjects of researchers’ manipulations.

NOTE

In this introduction, the language describing the contributors’ core ideas is drawn with minimal exception from the chapters themselves.

REFERENCES

Adamson, P. and Morrison, P. (eds.) (1995) The Progress of Nations. New York: UNICEF.

Alaimo, K. and Klug, B. (eds.) (2002) Children as Equals: Exploring the Rights of the Child. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Alderson, A.S. (1999) ‘Explaining deindustrialization: globalization, failure, or success?’, American Sociological Review, 64(5): 701–21.

Alderson, P. (2010) Review of Young Children’s Rights: Exploring Beliefs, Principles and Practice (2nd Edition). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Alderson, A.S. and Nielsen, F. (2002) ‘Globalization and the great U-turn: Income inequality trends in 16 OECD countries’, American Journal of Sociology, 107(5): 1244–99.

Archard, D. (1993) Children: Rights and Childhood. London: Routledge.

Arnott, M.A. (2008) ‘Public policy, governance and participation in the UK: A space for children?’, International Journal of Children’s Rights, 16(3): 355–67.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication to Stewart Asquith
• Notes on the Editors and Contributors
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I SETTING-SPECIFIC ISSUES IN CHILD RESEARCH
• PART II POPULATION-SPECIFIC ISSUES IN CHILD RESEARCH
• PART III METHODS IN RESEARCH ON CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD
• Name Index
• Subject Index