The Challenge of Childhood

Abstract

Three case studies of the position of children within adult institutions are reported. Each study examines the difficulties that surround children speaking for themselves. The studies focus on three different scales of analysis, moving from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to a regional crisis in child protection in the UK, to the constraints and opportunities for children as witnesses in UK courtrooms. At each scale of analysis it is argued that rather than making clear and univocal assumptions about children's capacities, adult institutions display an inability to decide on what status they should accord to children's utterances. As bearers of `childhood', children cut an ambiguous figure within adult institutions. An explanation of this ambiguity is offered in terms of adult institution's characteristic means of procuring their own legitimacy. Childhood's ambiguity, which is at once a product of, and a hindrance to, institutional legitimacy is typically `managed' by institutions by deferring the moment of its resolution. Childhood ambiguity is thus open to distribution and redistribution. Deferral can push the burden of ambiguity onto children's shoulders. It is through this deferral of ambiguity that children's ability to speak for themselves in adult institutions is made problematic. The implications of these case studies for social studies of childhood that aim at increasing children's opportunities for self-representation within adult institutions are explored.