The silencing of the experiences of women and the lasting impact of the Citizenship Referendum on children's lives and identities: A conversation with Dr. Jennifer Okeke

Ethnicity and multi-ethnicity in the lives of Belizean rural youth

This writing describes a literacy project between preservice teachers enrolled in a small university in Montana and an inner city school classroom in Kansas. It shows how the preservice teachers and children negotiate meaning at the beginning of the project as well as what the preservice teachers were learning from the children and from their teacher, Scott. Twenty-three third grade children exchanged letters, cards, drawings, autobiographies, and writing about shared literature with 24 preservice teachers for 10 weeks. Scott, the third grade teacher who assisted with the project, was a former student in Rita’s university language arts classroom and was strongly committed to demonstrating to preservice teachers the rewards of teaching in an inner city classroom ... particularly those coming from communities where people of color or linguistic diversity were few. Through shared written responses and the negotiation of meaning between two age groups, this project opened pathways for greater insight into the cultures and lives of children that the university students might otherwise not have known. It also provided myriad glimpses into the lives of real children, each with his or her own interests, life experiences, and expressive modalities thus shaping the perceptions of the preservice teachers about their role as teacher in supporting and responding to the individual strengths of each child.

Jane Thomas is a Children's Guardian in CAFCASS, Cymru. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences. Sally Holland is a senior lecturer in social work at Cardiff University. She is a former children's social worker. The second edition of her book Child and Family Assessment in Social Work Practice will be published by Sage in 2010. Abstract This paper reports findings from a qualitative research study of twenty-six core assess- ments, concerning thirty-two children, completed over a six-month period in one Welsh local authority. The data reported in the paper come from the twenty-six written assessment reports and interviews with the thirteen social workers who com- pleted the assessments. The study was concerned with how social workers assess and report on children's identities. Identity is one of the seven developmental needs of chil- dren categorised in the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (National Assembly for Wales, 2001b). It is noted that practitioners display a broad understanding of identities when discussing their own identities in interview and report a practice commitment to learning about the details of children's lives in an attempt to 'get to know' the children. However, the assessment reports tend to convey only narrowly defined and negative aspects of the children's identities, with many descriptions standardised and replicated between reports. Similarities to findings from a study conducted by one of the authors prior to the introduction of the Assess- ment Framework are noted, and it is suggested that bureaucratic constraints, the need to argue a case and defensive practices may have impeded change.

Drawing on the laws and practices of three countries—England, France, and Germany—this article examines the constructions of narratives of abandoned children. Although the three countries share the values of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, having ratified it, their laws and practices with regard to the child's identity rights have little in common. Explaining the different approaches to abandonment, the article argues that these are justified by stories about the birth giver as the “real” mother, stories that vary according to place and culture. This leads to different conceptions of the child's identity and of motherhood, to exclusions and stigma. Focusing on the justifications offered in each country for its laws and practices, the article analyzes discourses of nature (England), juridical constructs (France), and pragmatic concerns for the child's life (Germany). The article concludes that, given the myriad of family forms and of life experiences, it is not surprising to find that countries governed by a shared international convention give very different accounts of the meanings of identity and motherhood.

The environment and culture of the rural community in Sarawak has a profound impact on the experiences, values, effectiveness and affective realities of children in the area. The rural communities living in Sarawak are still practicing and maintaining their unique culture and lifestyle. For instance the “nakap kikid” culture which mean the activity of searching or hunting the forest produce as their main sources of daily family food, wedding culture that called “adat aweh” and “petated”, and also the usage of folded leaf as a rice container or “nanga luba tinga” are still commonly practiced. This local living culture has become a meaningful experience in these children's lives and even builds their potential into a great extent. This paper work discusses the self-learning through these experiences can also shape children's identity and personality through the implementation of informal knowledge and skills. Self-regulated learning among children living in the rural is made by the interaction between the experiences that comes from the unique environment and culture within the area. Past literature reviews and studies focused merely on cognitive aspect as benchmark for children potential, which has become a barrier for the rural children. Children living in rural area have different sets of potential and development, as the potential seen through the children living in rural area which involve learning based on experiences is impossible to be thought in a formal learning.

This paper surveys the sense of identity in children without identity documents and the numerous problems they face with it. An identity document is one of the standards and requirements of living in modern societies. This paper seeks to explore the influence of identity documents and its role in the life of children. Due to the lack of prior research in this field, grounded theory was used and the sampling was targeted. The research data were collected through individually interviewing and group discussions with 21 children without birth registration, living in Khake Sefid and Darvaze Ghar regions, Tehran, Iran. Research findings show children lack of identity establishment. Children without identity documents consider having an identity card as the factor of accessing to liberation and enjoying social rights. Lack of identity documents invites many problems, such as lack of access to welfare, training, and educational facilities, and dropouts, the sense of humiliation, powerlessness, and absurdity. Finally, these problems cause difficulties in one’s identity, identification process, and self-discovery in the society.

The thesis aims to extend the child brand relationship theory, a significant part of consumer culture theory (CCT), and consequently, provide a deeper understanding of the roles that brands play in the lives of children. It draws upon the literature of CCT, brand relationship theory and children as consumers. The objectives of this research are to explore children’s understanding of the symbolic meanings of their brands, gain an understanding of how children use these meanings in their lived experiences and, in order to gain an understanding of the child brand relationships in context, explore different aspects of children’s social and personal lives. The methodological approach of this research is qualitative because this research is primarily explorative in its nature. Thirty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with children of both genders, aged between 5 and 9 years old. The data was analysed using a coding process together with thematic analysis. In keeping with marketing scholarship, children in this research are viewed as active consumers who construct their individual and social identities and contribute to the social world. Consequently, children’s own experiences and opinions were captured and ten themes emerged which reveal that children have purposive and meaningful relationships with brands at earlier ages than existing research suggests and these relationships are important for their social and personal lives. These themes provide the key findings of this research. The first theme explains that children’s selfesteem is enhanced in the context of the digital age. Themes two and three demonstrate that brands help children develop their desired selves, gain social acceptance and position themselves and others in a social world. The fourth theme reveals that children, through the gendered symbolic meanings they attach to brands, are seeking to express their individuality amongst their peers. Next, this research establishes that children use brands to support their transition into adulthood and complete their social identities. The concepts of fantasy and brand relationships are explored in theme six which clarifies that superhero brands help children to create their “fantasy” worlds. Theme seven demonstrates that children have meaningful connections with brands which are embedded into their social relationships with parents/ caregivers. The final three themes show that certain brands which children use help them to obtain social affiliation in school, support their life-projects and entertain them. This research contributes to scholarship in the fields of CCT, brand relationship theory and studies of children as consumers. It provides new insights into children as active consumers which extends the brand relationship theory and is also valuable to marketing practitioners. Research limitations and future research are presented in the final chapter.

Media's effects on children's behaviour and emotional status, as well as their vulnerability as Internet users and exposers are with no doubt two important areas within children and media studies. Nevertheless, research including children in the assumptions of media's role in everyday life needs to be emphasized. How children navigate in complex life worlds is of importance to many different research fields. Studies of media's role in children's lives will gain from including aspects of everyday life and notions of culture and identity processes. In order to understand the complexity of the modern landscapes of media and culture, the theoretical perspectives in this article are based on media and space, and how media influence cultures locally and globally. The aim is to discuss how children and adolescents reflect on culture and identity in their relationship to media. This discussion is based on two studies involving children in three disparate places, but with the similarities of having an extraordinary complex cultural and national structure: The Faroe Islands, Åland and Canada. The studies are based on different research methods, like interviews and text analysis. The findings suggest broader paths for the research of children and media for a deeper understanding of young media users' awareness of media's role in shaping and maintaining cultural identities.

The teaching of writing has been a relatively neglected aspect of research in literacy. Cultural and socio‐economic reasons for this are suggested. In addition, teachers often readily acknowledge themselves as readers, but rarely as writers. Without a solid grasp of compositional processes, teachers are perhaps prone to adopt schemes that promote mechanistic writing approaches, which are reinforced by top‐down discourses of literacy. This ‘schooling literacy’ is often at odds with children's lives and their narratives of social being. After discussing theories of writing, tensions between ‘schooling literacy’ and ‘personal literacy’ are debated. It is suggested that the disjuncture of the two exposes gaps that provide teachers with spaces in which to construct a writing curriculum embedded in children's language and funds of knowledge. The elevation of this ‘personal literacy’ is viewed as an imperative to enhance children's identities as writers, as well as their engagement with writing.

by Richard Rose and Terry Philpot London : Jessica Kingsley, 2005 ISBN 1843102870, 160 pp, £14.95 (pb) The New Life Work Model: Practice Guide . by Edith A Nicholls Lyme Regis : Russell House, 2006 ISBN 1903855810, 198 pp, £19.95 (pb) Life story work has had a mixed history in social work practice. Specialist social workers preparing a child for a home with a new adoptive family have seen life story work as an essential part of their task. Its aim is to help the child understand what has happened in their life so that they can move into a new family with some sense of where they come from. Ryan and Walker (2003) have explained how to do it well. However, one effect of huge workloads and constant reorganisation of teams in social services has been to put life story work under threat. Most social workers could write a life story book of their own about the changes they have been subject to; changes which have something of the same disruptive effect for them as do a succession of disrupted placements for the child. The task of life story work is sometimes given to a student on placement and then considered done. These books explain why this will not do. Edith Nicholls’The New Life Work Model grew out of her frustration with the sidelining of life story work through the rigidity of the child protection system. She argues convincingly that all children in the looked after system need help in making sense of their identity and the opportunity to grieve separations and losses. Therefore, the work must start ‘from the very moment a child is separated from their family’ (p. ix) and be a continuing and integral part of the care planning process, not something that takes place only when plans for permanence are being made. She suggests that a specialist fostering and adoption team carries out the work in parallel with the work of the child protection team. Nicholls goes on to describe practically how such work can be performed, initially for, rather than by, the child, with the worker collecting information relevant to the child's identity development whose value might otherwise be overlooked. Her book, enlivened by drawings and charts, conveys a sense of how aspects of a child's experience can be caught and preserved. She discusses memory books and boxes, photograph albums and family history books. The book is supported by three Memory Books designed to record the experiences at different ages of a child separated from their birth family (My Memory Book 0–4; 4+ and 8+. £12.95 each). She emphasises the importance of life story work being a shared responsibility, with foster carers and adoptive parents not only becoming the guardians of the child's memory books and albums (with copies kept safely elsewhere) but also continuing the work into the future. She includes a welcome recognition of the need to attend to carers’ feelings, such as their loss and grief when a child moves on, without which they become less able to continue the involvement that the next child needs. The Child's Own Story: Life Story Work with Traumatised Children is one of a series of books from SACCS about how to provide treatment for the most damaged children, those whose earliest life experiences involved neglect and abuse, and whose attachments were most damaged. Their inner worlds lack any coherence or integration and they view the world as hostile and themselves as unlovable. They are the children who have had numerous broken foster and other placements. There are a large number of such children on the books of social work agencies but few get the integrated therapeutic residential or foster treatment which can lead to recovery. Such integrated treatment involves ‘therapeutic parenting’ where every aspect of the child's daily experience is thought about and managed by those directly caring for the child. For example, the meaning of violent and demanding behaviour around bedtime can be seen as a sign of the child's fear connected to previous abuse or abandonment. Once the underlying symptom of fear has been identified it is possible to work out how to lessen it. Through reliable and thoughtful provision the child can start to feel safe and so is more able to think rather than act out. The provision of one-to-one therapy sessions is a vital support to therapeutic parenting but cannot replace it. The third strand of the recovery programme is life story work. Once children feel safe to begin to think and feel, and to connect the two, they are ready to start to make sense of what has happened to them in their lives. A pioneer of residential childcare, Barbara Dockar-Drysdale (1990), explained how an unintegrated child requires first a version of the good primary experience they have missed, with help to realise it is good, then the opportunity to internalise it through symbolisation and symbolic communication; and finally help to put experience into words where it can be thought about. This last stage of conceptualisation is the particular (if not exclusive) province of life story work. A child cannot simply ignore the past and move on. The past must be ‘understood, analysed and accepted as a means to progressing’ (Rose and Philpot p. 18). Distorted views of what happened, including self-blame, can be let go. Attachment theory makes clear that mental health requires a reflective capacity, the ability to give a coherent narrative of one's experience, however difficult that experience was. Multiple placement breakdowns mean that these children's histories are essentially lost. (Nicholls’ suggested procedures would improve matters). The painstaking work of the SACCS life story team is to carry out the detective work needed to reconstruct this history, using much the same tools as those engaged in the current popular occupation of researching their family history; that is, searching through documentary records and interviewing family members and others in the community to hear their stories. The aim is similar: the search for identity and meaning. On visits to places where they have lived or gone to school the children, where possible, accompany the worker. Richard Rose and Terry Philpot have plenty of helpful suggestions to aid the research, including the need to learn a lot about the complexity of a child's ethnic background. They emphasise that life story work takes time, going at a pace that is bearable for the child, and expect the whole process to take up to two years. As the information is gathered, fortnightly life story sessions with the child help with the process of internalising what has been understood and integrating it into the child's inner world. Amongst the arrays of tools such as family trees, ecomaps and so on, wallpaper rolls allow the child to collect material and write about their lives without ever turning over a page, where it may be forgotten. Only then comes the final task of writing the Life Story Book, the responsibility of the child's life story worker. This is written in the first person if possible, but sometimes it is only bearable for the child if the story is told in the third person. The worker needs to stay with the truth but express it in ways which the child can bear to hear and to learn from. The aim is a narrative that avoids either idealisation or denigration. This raises the issue of the power of the child's painful feelings which the worker must be able to tolerate and think about, providing emotional containment. This ‘holding’ demands a great deal of the worker's own capacity to stay with painful feelings rather than defend against them. The exercises at the ends of chapters hint at the necessary and usually painful task for workers of reflecting on their own experience, a task best performed in the context of a supportive facilitated group. So here are two thought-provoking books, very different in style; Rose and Philpott's a fluent and engaging narrative and Nicholls’ a breezy, informal unpolished handbook. Both are passionate about the place of life story work for children in the childcare system. They show what change is needed and how it can be performed.

The early period of a child's life is a very important time in shaping the individual's identity. During this period of development, outdoor games provide opportunities for children to strengthen the concept of identity. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the extent to which the application of outdoor games can be effective in shaping children's identity skills. This study used experimental research (quasi-experiment) with a one-group pretest-posttest design. The sample of this study was selected using purposive sampling with criteria including students aged 5-6 years at Al-Furqan Kindergarten, Sapobonto Village, Bulukumpa District, Bulukumba Regency. Data collection techniques using observation sheets and data analysis using parametric inferential statistics that require data normality to test hypotheses, using paired sample t-test analysis. The results showed that outdoor game activities have a positive effect on improving the ability of students' identity, including their ability to improve gross motor skills, coordination and balance, social, cognitive, and self-confidence and courage.

Introduction: Sharenting has become a common practice in which parents publicly share aspects of their children's lives on social media platforms. This study explores how parent influencers manage their children's visibility, vulnerability, and privacy, as well as the underlying purposes of sharenting. Methodology: Through a comparative approach, the practices of 12 parent influencers—mothers and fathers—from France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom are examined. A total of 1,789 posts on Instagram and TikTok are analysed using content analysis. Results: Cultural differences are identified in the representation of parental roles: mothers take on a leading role, particularly in Italy, while French male influencers frequently depict involved fatherhood. A concerning trend is observed regarding the lack of safeguards to protect children's identities, increasing the risks associated with their digital exposure. Sharenting is not primarily commercial – the UK is the country where children are most used for promotional purposes – nor is it a space for parental support. Discussions: This study critically examines how mediated parenthood and child representation are negotiated in contemporary digital communication. Conclusions: Influencers, as parents, construct self-representations of themselves as caring and competent caregivers embedded within the logics of digital entertainment.

This study examined whether racial identity moderates the relation between pain and quality of life (QOL) in children with sickle cell disease (SCD). 100 children 8-18 years of age with SCD participated during a regularly scheduled medical visit. Children completed questionnaires assessing pain, QOL, and regard racial identity, which evaluates racial judgments. Analyses revealed that regard racial identity trended toward significance in moderating the pain and physical QOL relation, (β = -0.159, t(93) = -1.821, p = 0.07), where children with low pain and high regard reported greater physical QOL than children with low pain and low regard. Regard racial identity did not moderate the relation between pain and other QOL dimensions. Pain significantly predicted all dimensions of QOL and regard racial identity significantly predicted social QOL. Racial identity may be important to consider in future research examining QOL in children with SCD.

Children of the welfare state explores the civilizing processes embedded in child-rearing practices in kindergartens, schools, and families in Denmark. The book, first published in Danish in 2012, is by Laura Gilliam and Eva Gulløv, with contributions from Karen Fog Olwig and Dil Bach, and is based on ethnographic fieldwork within various Danish institutions and contexts as part of the research programme ‘Civilizing Institutions in a Modern Welfare State’. The volume consists of nine chapters, each of which can be read in its own right, although the chapters build on each other to produce an overall argument. The general theoretical perspective is Norbert Elias's notion of ‘the civilizing process’: that is, an increasing structuring and restraining of behaviour and personalities through socialization. The first chapter introduces this concept as a lens through which to examine child-rearing practices. The authors offer this as ‘a perspective that we can use to elucidate the phenomenon of childrearing in relation to the values, norms and standards that underlie the requirements, prioritisations and evaluations of children in families and in public children's institutions in contemporary Danish welfare society’ (p. 17). In my opinion, this perspective helps the authors successfully present an analysis that sheds new light on the central mechanisms shaping child-rearing in Danish society. Chapter 2 outlines a history of the shifting perceptions of children and child-rearing and of what represents ‘civilised behaviour’, all of which can be seen to reflect both the changes in power relations and conflicts within Danish society. Through this the authors emphasize that values are ‘realised, manifested and have an effect’ in everyday interactions between children and adults in institutions today (p. 53). Such values are influenced by specific ideological rationales and political currents that must be understood in the context of the ethos and development of the Danish society and state. The following six empirical chapters explore how ideals such as ‘equality’ and ‘becoming social’ underpin this ongoing process and examine underlying power-relations such as ethnicity and class (particularly middle-class ‘norms’). Gulløv's chapter 3 and Olwig's chapter 4 explore how these values manifest as social processes in kindergartens. As most children in Denmark attend kindergarten from the age of 1, it is usually formative for young children's identities and social lives. Chapters 5-7, by Gilliam, focus on the ‘civilising’ of schoolchildren across different ages, geographical areas, and socioeconomic backgrounds. She demonstrates how these processes in effect display value-based differences grounded within ethnicity and class. For example, ‘Danish’ values are contrasted to those of ‘immigrants’ (or ‘ethnic’ communities), the latter being communicated as second-rate and not an alternative to Danish ‘core values’. Similarly, class is also made visible through a contrast between the lifestyle and ethics of the ‘affluent’ and the Danish ‘middle classes’. The eighth, and last, chapter is based on Bach's fieldwork among fifteen affluent Danish families. She discusses how family practices are crucial to the ways households relate to one another and central to how a family's identity and social status are shaped. Bach concludes that affluent families’ investment of time and resources in their children can be understood as a ‘“defensive strategy of respectability” and not only an offensive strategy of civilising and distinction’ (p. 233). I found the analysis of the symbolic meaning of childhood and children, their behaviour, and the shaping of their identities among the affluent particularly interesting as it provides a great example of the child-centred orientation of both Nordic societies and welfare states. While the empirical arguments are comprehensive and convincing in the presentation of social change in Denmark and the mechanisms that shape processes of civilization, I missed some reflection on how neoliberal forces might influence Danish institutions. This is only briefly mentioned in the book's last pages while discussing ‘decivilising’ tendencies (pp. 265-7). As a result, the book's argument is focused on understanding how contemporary processes stabilize the social order and moral ideals, rather than seeing these, at least in part, as resulting from processes of globalization and/or neoliberalism. The overall argument therefore underplays the increasing influence of neoliberalism and New Public Management on formal teaching, pedagogical methods, and assessments in Danish (and Nordic) public schools and childcare institutions – as elsewhere in the public sector. In brief, the book's empirical descriptions and analyses of child-rearing and civilizing processes are convincing. The authors present in a recognizable and interesting way everyday child-rearing practices in Danish families and other institutions. Children of the welfare state is well worth reading and reflecting upon, for anthropologists and anyone else interested in civilizing processes in Danish – or Nordic – society.

At Play in Belfast. Donna M. Lanclos. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2003. 208 pp. ISBN 0-8135-3322-8. $21.95 (paper). Donna Lanclos provides an in-depth documentation of children's folklore and social identities based on her time on five playgrounds in Belfast. Lanclos spends time with children and provides us with their view in their words. She provides numerous examples of children's songs, rhymes, and games to illustrate her conclusions and bases her analysis within three broad categories of age, gender, and sectarianism. Lanclos does an excellent job with her ethnography, providing a detailed description of her data-gathering strategies and placing all analyses within a theoretical context. She describes the difficulties in watching children and gaining their trust as an adult. The first two chapters provide the reader with background on the research study and the children involved. The introduction is an overview of the study and a definition of folklore. She justifies extremely well the use of folklore studies to examine the lives of children. It also summarizes the research conducted on children in Northern Ireland and how this study compares. The author's initial assumptions are provided and how her views evolved throughout the process. Chapter 1 provides the reader with an overview of what the researcher's day was like and the general activities that the children were involved in during their time on the playgrounds. It grounds the reader and helps to place the remaining quotes and examples in the context of the overall day of the children. Many parents and teachers will recognize their own children's activities in the examples. Chapter 2 begins an analysis of the children's rude talk on the playgrounds and how children view the line between childhood and adulthood. Lanclos analyzes the societal view of an innocent childhood and how children construct a different set of values than the adults around them. She does an excellent job describing the children's view of talk and placing it in context of what adults want and expect of children. Rather than assuming, as many adults do, that children do not know about dirty topics, Lanclos lets the children tell her what they know. This chapter also begins an exploration of the talk around violence in these children's lives. Chapter 3 focuses on how the children divide themselves into groups based on gender. As expected, gender is very important to the children, and many of the folklore rhymes focus on the roles of males and females. Lanclos's analysis of the children's games and rhymes provides a clear grounding that children all over are in some ways the same-boys and girls are different. She also emphasizes the particular societal culture that these children exist in and the apparent contradictions in their play and the adult world around them. …