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Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2020

Vita Yakovlyeva

Although the relation between individual and collective memory has been long established, analysis of individual memories is hardly existent within the social sciences outside of…

Abstract

Although the relation between individual and collective memory has been long established, analysis of individual memories is hardly existent within the social sciences outside of psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. Working to overcome this gap, the author argues that children’s lives are heavily influenced by the structures of collective memory they are born into, available to children through the complex system of inter- and intragenerational relationships from very early on.

Drawing on the concepts of generation (Karl Mannheim), generagency (Madelaine Leonard), and collective memory (Maurice Halbwachs), the author establishes that the practise of intergeneratonal exchange of memories within the family provides a way to influence and overcome the limiting of children’s agency by social stratification determined by age.

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Bringing Children Back into the Family: Relationality, Connectedness and Home
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-197-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2020

Julie Seymour

It could be argued that the sign of ‘maturity’ of an academic paradigm is when it moves to some kind of integration with existing theories or re-engages with elements which may…

Abstract

It could be argued that the sign of ‘maturity’ of an academic paradigm is when it moves to some kind of integration with existing theories or re-engages with elements which may initially have been perceived as ‘dangerous’ or antithetical to the original demarcation of the area. As with the re-integration of feminism and reproduction, and disability and embodiment, so perhaps also for the social study of childhood and family research. The necessary political emphasis on the agency and voice of the child in the emerging social study of childhood research may well have been overstating the case (Seymour & McNamee, 2012) and ignoring significant structural and generational impediments in children’s relationships and interactions particularly in domestic spaces. To redress this, as occurred with feminist and disability studies, a contemporary standpoint is required which merges an emancipatory agentic approach to the subject of study with conceptual developments from the previously separated substantive area. This chapter will outline the development of the return of children ‘back into the families’ which has occurred in the last decade. It will show how approaches using family practices, personal lives, family display and generagency can be combined with privileging children’s perspectives and voices at home.

Details

Bringing Children Back into the Family: Relationality, Connectedness and Home
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-197-6

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2020

Abstract

Details

Bringing Children Back into the Family: Relationality, Connectedness and Home
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-197-6

Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2020

Deirdre Horgan, Shirley Martin and Catherine Forde

This chapter draws on data from a qualitative study examining the extent to which children and young people age 7 to 17 are able to participate and influence matters affecting…

Abstract

This chapter draws on data from a qualitative study examining the extent to which children and young people age 7 to 17 are able to participate and influence matters affecting them in their home, school, and community. It was commissioned by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in Ireland to inform the National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-Making, 2015–2020. Utilising Lundy’s (2007) conceptualisation of Article 12 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and Leonard’s (2016) concept of generagency, this chapter will examine children and young people’s everyday lives and relationships within the home and family in the context of agency and structure.

In the study, home was experienced by children generally as the setting most facilitative of their voice and participation in their everyday lives reflecting research findings that children are more likely to have their initiative and ideas encouraged in the family than in school or their wider communities (Mayall, 1994). Key areas of decision-making included everyday consumption activities such as food, clothes, and pocket money as well as temporal activities including bed-time, leisure, and friends. This concurs with Bjerke (2011) that consumption of various forms is a major field of children’s participation. Positive experiences of participation reported by children and young people involved facilitation by adults whom they respected and with whom they had some rapport. This locates children as relational beings, embedded in multiple overlapping intergenerational processes and highlights the interdependency between children’s participation and their environment (Leonard, 2016; Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2010).

Details

Bringing Children Back into the Family: Relationality, Connectedness and Home
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-197-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2020

Sam Frankel and Sally McNamee

Abstract

Details

Bringing Children Back into the Family: Relationality, Connectedness and Home
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-197-6

Book part
Publication date: 25 October 2019

Caroline Cresswell

The chapter explores an overlooked theme across the literature: capturing the experience of childhood family disruption and transitional flux between foster family homes and the…

Abstract

The chapter explores an overlooked theme across the literature: capturing the experience of childhood family disruption and transitional flux between foster family homes and the independent sensemaking into the present of young care-experienced parents. The chapter draws upon research that constructed 20 biographical life story accounts of a diverse sample of foster care-experienced young people. The chapter aims to reflect upon the findings garnered from six of these accounts through extracting the narratives of a selection of participants who were to become or had become parents. This chapter makes sociological connections between past family disruption, demarcating present families of choice, and reconciliation of the past through experiencing parenting into the future within constructed ‘family displays’ (Finch, 2007). The chapter illustrates this phenomenon through narrative accounts offering a family history of parents who have experienced a variance of transitions between family units and who were negotiating, or had negotiated, their post-care independence through the role of becoming a parent themselves. The chapter highlights the symbolic value of parenting to the lives of young people who have experienced care in recalibrating their past familial experiences, as demonstrated through their family displays. Through the family displays of care-experienced parents, the importance of the relational context to youth transition ultimately reveals itself, as does the development of relational agency, and ultimately the role of parenting in developing a young person’s independent ‘post-care’ identity.

Details

Families in Motion: Ebbing and Flowing through Space and Time
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-416-3

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