Discourses Of Childhood Research Articles

Wholesome homosexuality: Normative childhoods in same-sex family advertisements

Conducting a multimodal discourse analysis of 40 television advertisements featuring same-sex families across 10 countries between 2005 and 2015, this article examines the discourses of childhood that emerge within the advertisements. It argues that same-sex parented children are dominantly framed within mainstream advertising in ways that are normative in terms of gender and social class. The study shows how same-sex families, while increasingly visible in mainstream advertising, are often discursively constructed by television advertisements in ways that limit subject positions that family members can occupy if they are to be seen as an ideal family unit. The article discusses how exclusionary discourses of same-sex families have implications for social inclusion of such families into social ideals of familyhood, as well as for how children of same-sex parents can be anticipated through discourse prior to being materially encountered.

A threat to childhood innocence or the future of learning? Parents’ perspectives on the use of touch-screen technology by 0–3 year-olds in the UK

The rise in personal ownership of touch-screen technology such as iPads and smartphones in the UK in recent years has led to the increasing use of such technology by babies and very young children. This article explores this practice via an online parental survey with 226 UK parents of children aged 0–3 years within the context of the current debate around whether technology is a problematic or advantageous aspect of contemporary childhood. Using a theoretical framework which draws on dominant discourses of childhood, the article presents and analyses data from this survey in order to ascertain how 0–3s are using touch-screen technology in UK homes, and what parents perceive to be the potential benefits and disadvantages of their usage. The findings are discussed in terms of changes in parenting practice, and the importance of further research in the area is emphasised.

Childhood and Modernity in Mexico City: Print Media and State Power during the “Mexican Miracle”

In post-1940 Mexico City, images and discourses of childhood proliferated in print media. While the state monitored all media, critics of the ruling party managed to communicate failures of Mexico’s post-revolutionary modernization project through discussions of children’s socioeconomic conditions and real or imagined moral corruption. Photojournalists turned their cameras to the capital’s burgeoning child population to document child poverty and, to a lesser extent, idealize childhood. In combination, these efforts worked ideologically to promote the notion that all children, at least in theory, deserved a modern, protected childhood.

Barnbruden ”Thea” - om barnbloggen som utställning och samtidsarena för konstruktioner av barndom

Children’s blogs are becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon in what could be seen as a contemporary space for communication over age boundaries. This article is an attempt to shed light on the importance of an intersectional approach in the analysis of childhood constructions in social media. On the basis of a fictional child blog made up by Plan Norway, as part of a controversial campaign against child marriage, this article focuses on age, but also, gender, sexuality and ethnicity as main social variables in the process of constructing “Another” Scandinavian child portrait. An exhibitional approach involving both text and visuality is used in an extended discussion of online constructions of childhood. Children’s blogs are presented as a “glocal” arena with huge social and political potential regarding one of today’s strongest discourses of childhood: the discourse of the competent but vulnerable child.

Romanticism and Childhood: The Infantilization of British Literary Culture by Ann Wierda Rowland

298 BOOK REVIEWS of Austen’s novels and letters, Jane Austen’s Erotic Advice succeeds most in demonstrating how “eroticism resides in the very forms of [Austen’s] fiction” (n). Raff’s argument that the phenomenon of “Janeism” is in fact the consequence of Austen’s intentional design, and stems from the novel­ ist’s rhetorical seduction of her readers, will surely challenge—and perhaps change—the way we analyze and discuss the often cult-like devotion the author and her works continue to inspire. Less successful, at least for this reader, is Raff’s characterization of Austen as a stalwart “prophet of love” (41), as well as her reduction of each ofthe later novels to a kind of roman a clef (10) about Fanny Knight. In terms of the former, I am not the only reader to note that, in her letters to Knight, Austen does not always come off as the confident, Pygmalion-like creator Raff describes; indeed, she not only expresses hesitation at offering love advice, but flatly instructs her niece not to rely upon the opinion of others in such matters: “Your affec­ tion gives me the highest pleasure, but indeed you must not let anything depend on my opinion. Your own feelings & none but your own, should determine such an important point” (Letter to Fanny Knight, Wednesday, 30 November 1814). And for the latter, the larger payoff of Raff’s insis­ tence that Fanny Knight is a “key” to our interpretation of the later novels is not entirely clear (or, in my opinion, convincing). Perhaps Austen’s own advice applies as well to critical interpretation as to matters of the heart in this respect: “Your own feelings & none but your own, should determine such an important point.” John C. Leffel SUNY, Cortland Ann Wierda Rowland. Romanticism and Childhood: The Infantilization of British Literary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. vii+ 305. $90. Wordsworth’s inventive adage on childhood—“The Child is Father of the Man”—has by now become a familiar topos. For Wordsworth, this figuration of the child as generative source represented the poet’s idealized vision of a primitive, innocent, yet profound state of being. It is from this famous phrase that Ann Wierda Rowland initiates her recent study, Romanticism and Childhood: The Infantilization of British Literary Cul­ ture. Because Wordsworth’s child embodies those qualities we associate with Romantic poetry—imagination, innocence, sentiment, spirituality, naturalism—Rowland sets out to uncover the rhetorical precedents that made Wordsworth’s seemingly paradoxical articulation an epistemological SiR, 55 (Summer 2016) BOOK REVIEWS 299 possibility at the end of the eighteenth century. She aims to track the his­ tory ofan idea: the Enlightenment search for origin stories that brought to­ gether a discourse of childhood and infancy with the history of history itself. Wordsworth’s ideological child was not produced in a vacuum. By trac­ ing writings across the Scottish Enlightenment to Romantic-era antiquarianism , Rowland demonstrates how Wordsworth’s notion was not only possible, but also inevitable. She begins with Wordsworth as well as with Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose parenthetical aside in Defence ofPoetry es­ tablished yet another important paradigm: “the savage is to ages what the child is to years.” For Wordsworth and Shelley, as well as for eighteenthcentury thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, and others, the imagery ofchildhood (the infant, the savage) epitomized the foundations and beginnings of human culture. Through its analogical links to the savage, the infant formed the iconic roots out of which European nations sprouted. Even though Wordsworth and Coleridge had enthusiastically ex­ perimented with child-like rustic and primitive diction in their Lyrical Bal­ lads, by the time Romanticism’s second generation rolled around, this seemingly rampant “infantilization” ofliterary culture was met with dispar­ agement. Byron haughtily dismissed Wordsworth’s “namby-pamby” vers­ ification, and newspapers complained frequently about the simplistic nursery-rhyme stylistics then becoming popular. The new vogue for natu­ ralism and primitivism, Rowland surmises, threatened poetry’s ethos as a masculinized form of high art. Taking these complaints of “infantilization” seriously, however, Rowland confronts such early nineteenth-century cri­ tiques in order to suggest that the fashion for the language...

New Zealand perspectives on early childhood education: Nāku te rourou nāu te rourou ka ora ai te iwi

Abstract This special issue focuses on histories, pedagogies, policies, philosophies and alternative perspectives in early childhood education. Te Whāriki is heralded as the first bicultural curriculum not only in New Zealand, but in the world. Its importance is reflected in national and international research and early childhood discourses. Despite this, there is simultaneous critique of neoliberal policy, globalised practices and public and private investment in early childhood education in this region. Some lessons from New Zealand, of curriculum building, policy implementation, philosophies and sociologies of children and childhood are explored by New Zealand scholars, and focus on these broad New Zealand perspectives of ECE, to address the diverse interests of an international audience.

My tongue on your theory: the bittersweet reminder of every-thing unnameable

ABSTRACTAcross research in UK Higher Education, the most immanent demands for quality have taken the shape of the Research Assessment Exercise and the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The theorist, Martin, is cautious of the relationship academics have engendered with the process of the REF, asking are we actually creating a Frankenstein monster, becoming complicit in generating quality thresholds and standards that will become our own tormentors? I am taken by the idea of the monster when pursuing alternative discourses of childhood in educational research – fear of its potential to torment seduces me with the promise of dis-order, de-formity, chaos and mutation. The aim of this paper is to resist a fixed, knowable form of ‘quality’ (in) research, moving between the idea of ‘monster’ and the formlessness of ‘monstrosity’ to oppose the epistemological, ontological and ethical paradigms of reason.

Is She a Pawn, Prodigy or Person with a Message? Public Responses to a Child’s Political Speech

The 2012 appearance on YouTube of a speech about banking reform prompted mainstream news coverage and hundreds of online comments, dwelling less on the content of the speech than on the speaker, Victoria Grant, a twelve year-old girl. A qualitative content analysis of over 600 comments revealed disagreement about children’s capacities as participants in political and economic discussions. Commenters’ mixed beliefs were linked to dominant, frequently contradictory, discourses of childhood. Victoria Grant was positioned as embedded in educational processes, as competent but often exceptional, as incompetent, and as innocent and therefore vulnerable. These conflicting yet emotionally charged narratives of childhood illustrate the concept’s rhetorical elasticity and flexibility. Despite advances in the cause of children’s social participation in recent years, most of these adult-centered narratives undermine the idea of children as legitimate contributors to economic analysis and political debate.

Neoliberal Fun and Happiness in Early Childhood Education

This paper considers neoliberalism, not only as a set of economic principles, but as a form of governance with political and social consequences. It argues for considering neoliberalism as that which produces subjects, ways of behaving, and organization of social and economic life. It then relates such consideration to the analysis of early childhood discourses on fun and happiness and how these discourses might sustain possibilities for the creation of neoliberal subjects.

Where are the early years of school in contemporary early childhood education reforms? An historical perspective

Although international definitions of early childhood repeatedly refer to a birth-8 age span, there are complex, institutional divides within this age range. This paper explores the divide between pre-compulsory and compulsory early childhood institutions. In countries such as Finland this divide is not such an issue because children do not begin formal schooling until age seven or eight. However, in Australia these 8 years include both pre-compulsory programs (often birth-5) and compulsory schooling. We argue that in situations where the early years of compulsory school are included in a country’s definitions of early childhood, they often occupy a tenuous place in research, policy and practice. Drawing from the history of early childhood education in South Australia, we explore the place that the early years of school have occupied in early childhood discourse, policy and practice and then consider some contemporary state-based and national reforms. Our hope is that by considering the South Australian past, the paper may provide a space from which to advocate for policies and structures that uphold specialist expertise and leadership in the early years of schooling.

“Burning Hides What It Burns”: Retrospective Narration and the Protoqueer Asian American Child in Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh

This article explores the growth and maturation of the protoqueer Asian American child as depicted in Alexander Chee’s debut novel Edinburgh (2001). The novel crucially intervenes in and expands existing discourses of childhood, offering up the possibility of alternative inheritances and mythical progenitors. Further still, the process of retrospective storytelling enacts a recovery process that situates the queer Asian American adult alongside a collective community threatened with erasure. In this sense, narrative perspective acts to reconceive social formation through a comparatively configured and asymmetrically presented chronicle of survivorships.

Being and Becoming Cosmopolitan in Early Childhood Curriculum: ‘Roots’, ‘Wings’ and Cosmopolitan Citizenship

This article focuses on the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship as comprised of ‘roots' (belonging and local) and ‘wings' (becoming and global) to critically investigate how the concepts of local, global, belonging and becoming are held in tension in educational discourse in New Zealand and Australia. The complexities of thinking cosmopolitanism in early childhood discourse are explored through the following questions as a guide in the discussion: what is the historical relationship between concepts of ‘roots' and ‘wings' and cosmopolitanism in educational thought? Why might it be relevant to investigate how cosmopolitanism as a concept has shaped core aspects of the early childhood curriculum in New Zealand and Australia? How can the past help us to imagine possible futures as citizens of this planet? A key argument is that cosmopolitanism in educational policy has a tendency to diffuse foci on difficult issues around difference, which makes it a seductive discourse that ultimately supports global educational trends towards ‘learning societies’. It is argued that critical engagement with cosmopolitanism may generate new perspectives on how we may live together in a rapidly changing, diverse world.

Middle-class childhood and parenting culture in high-rise Hong Kong: on scheduled lives, the school trap and a new urban idyll

This exploratory study seeks to understand childhood in Hong Kong in relation to the high-rise living environment and dominant parenting culture among middle-class professionals. The empirical results suggest that it is parenting culture rather than the built environment that creates children's busy, scheduled lives, high levels of adult supervision and limited outdoor play. Building on a strong portfolio is considered to be both necessary to enter the popular British educational system and to counterbalance a curriculum that is supposed to offer less structured learning compared to the local Cantonese schools. It is argued that this paradoxical situation must be understood in the context of parents' personal childhood histories and the highly competitive global labour market in Hong Kong. The paper ends with a reflection on new discourses of childhood that creates cities and its many consumption spaces as urban idylls for raising children.

Assemblage

This article draws on diverse theoretical concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari to bring their ideas into the field of early childhood education and critical childhood studies, especially. We begin with discussion of how concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari open possibilities for rethinking childhood and childhood studies. We situate the popular document Developmentally Appropriate Practices at the center of this discussion as an exemplar of popular childhood discourse and the closures inherent in that reasoning. Next, we discuss and define our understanding of Deluezean and Guattarian concepts. Finally, we provide examples of employing these concepts as tools to make visible closures and openings in discursive formations of childhoods (or teachers, parents, caregivers). Our examples include childhood on an individual interpersonal level with our ‘professional’ observation of a grandchild and on a broad policy level with a discussion of the testing movement in the United States.

Travelling near and far: Placing children's mobile emotions

Dominant discourses of childhood and mobility lead to the social, spatial and temporal placing of children. Children are considered to transgress mobile space in a way that requires curtailment and restriction but is nevertheless considered a ‘right of passage’. In both playing out and challenging these discourses children exhibit an array of emotions that are contingent on mobile space. Mobility may be fleeting in both time and space, part of the everyday corporeal mobility of children, or it may be less so, a mobility that is experienced less frequently, is less everyday, and more immediately transformative. This article explores children's emotional experiences of travel, both nearer and further, drawing from the ‘mobilities turn’ in social science and conceptualizations of childhood that illustrate how children are situated in relation to adult-centred hierarchies of power, and children's contestation of these power differentials. It draws from two different aspects of children and young people's mobilities: an ethnographic study of everyday mobilities with children travelling relatively short distances on a daily basis, using self-directed video and film-elicitation interviews; and a project that explored children's mobile experiences of long distance travelling and particularly notions of belonging. Drawing from the intersections of these studies demonstrates how the emotional connection with space and place constructs childhoods and challenges notions of childhood, risk and spatial emotionalities.

Constructing the Sick Child: The Cultural Politics of Children's Hospitals

Drawing on an ESRC funded study of children's experiences of hospital space this article explores the cultural politics of contemporary English childhood. Using the words and commentaries provided by both children and young people, the article argues that although, as patients, children and young people share the same hospital spaces, their experiences of them are quite different. Through mundane material and symbolic practices, a number of experiential continuities are created for the youngest children between life in hospital and life at home, continuities that work to downplay their identities as children who are sick. For young people, however, these practices are more problematic since the discourses of childhood that are recreated have little resonance with young people's own experiences and sense of self and identity. Thus this article provides evidence of the need for a more nuanced understanding of not only young people's needs in relation to hospital services, but also of the significance of understanding the ways in which particular constructions of ‘the child’ and ‘childhood’ are threaded through public discourses and come to be realized in institutional settings.

‘Difficult citizenship’: The precarious relationships between childhood, sexuality and access to knowledge

In this discussion children’s difficult citizenship is examined within the contentious context of children being considered sexual citizens. The relationship of childhood to sexuality is fraught with difficulties, controversies, and complexities; it is one openly and officially based on exclusion, with children constituted as requiring protection from sexuality, considered an ‘adults’ only’ domain, dangerous to children. Hegemonic discourses of childhood and innocence are examined in the ways in which they have been utilized to strictly regulate children’s access to knowledge of sexuality and to deny their relevance and access to sexual citizenship. Utilizing a Foucaultian theoretical framework, it is argued that the regulation of children’s access to knowledge of sexuality is primarily linked to the ways in which childhood and innocence are utilized as a means through which the ‘good’ heteronormative adult citizenship subject is constituted and governed. Children’s education is foundational in the development of the heteronormative good future citizen and sexual citizen subject. Through institutions such as schooling, adults have heavily regulated children’s education and access to information, strictly defining what knowledge children should and should not be privy to. A focus is given to Australian primary schooling and pre-school education. Moral panic is regularly mobilized to reinforce this regulation when the boundaries of what is perceived to be ‘appropriate’ knowledge for children are transgressed. It is argued that this regulation has critical implications for children’s early education, their increased vulnerabilities, and for their health and well-being, not just in their childhood but throughout their lives.

Deconstructing neoliberal childhood: Towards a feminist antipsychological approach

This article analyses child development as text to highlight newly emerging contemporary tropes of northern, normalized childhoods in relation to gender, racialization and familial organization. A recent UK marketing campaign for the washing powder Persil is analysed for the ways it mobilizes discourses of childhood and child rights. This indicates some key consolidations, especially around the configuration of gendered and racialized representations as ushered in through recent modes of psychologization and feminization. Discussion focuses on how text such as this deconstructs the opposition between popular cultural and expert (developmental psychological) knowledges to mediate their mutual elaboration and legitimation. The article ends by reflecting on the consequences of the focus on psychologization and feminization in relation to possible alliances and antagonisms of inter- and cross-disciplinary approaches to childhood, and their contributions to challenging wider development discourses.

Childrearing and the Shaping of Children's Emotional Experiences and Expressions in Two Argentinian Communities

This article analyzes the role of children's social environment in shaping children's emotional expressions. It is based on the findings of an ongoing research study interrogating childrearing practices in two rural populations representing two contrasting ecological contexts in Argentina: Mbya Guarani indigenous communities located in the northeast rainforest (Misiones Province) and creole communities from Molinos (Salta Province), in the highlands and semiarid areas of Argentinean northwest. The focus of this article is on the ways in which adults interpret and respond to children's crying as one manifestation of emotional behavior. This article attempts a comparative analysis of representations, attitudes and behaviors regarding children's crying. It is stressed how discourses of childhood validate some expressions of emotion and restrict and pathologize others. On one hand, parents from both populations not only differ in their tolerance of children's crying but also differ in their evaluation of the difficulties of rearing ‘weeping’ children. On the other hand, in both populations excessive senseless crying represents a risk for children's health as it is considered a symptom of several illnesses. Based on these considerations, at the end of this article each population's ethnotheories of children's appropriate emotional behavior is analyzed, and the implications of these ethnotheories for emotion socialization.

Resistant Rituals: Self-Mutilation and the Female Adolescent Body in Fairy Tales and Young Adult Fiction

In spite of its history as an unintelligible activity in Western society, self-mutilation entered the discourse of childhood as a significant motif of feminine experience the moment children appropriated the fairy tale. Since then, it has functioned as a complex motif in literature, offering scholars an opportunity to identify the different ways troubling or disturbing subjects are treated based on the target audiences of texts. Taking "Cinderella" and "The Little Mermaid" as representative, this paper argues that self-mutilation functions as an act of self-mutilation functions as an act of self-sacrifice to romantic hetero-normative narratives. Meanwhile, cutting in the Canadian young adult novels As She Grows by Lesley Ann Cowan () and Cheryl Rainfield's Scars () is represented ambivalently, exposing both the potential for violence and for agency in self-mutilative acts. In their refusal of pathologization, representations of self-mutilation in YA fiction offer readers a ritualistic occasion for their own empathic resistance to the hegemonic incorporation of symbolic demands, encouraging the development of creative strategies for self-expression within dysfunctional societies.