Virginia Morrow

Ethical dilemmas in research with children and young people about their social environments

There has been a very welcome recent growth in research directly with and by children and young people, with a wide range of reporting childrens own views and experiences. Research ethics has also recently been receiving a great deal of attention, and there are debates about the extent to which research with children differs from research with other groups. This paper draws on the authors experiences of empirical sociological research with 12–15-year-olds conducted in a deprived town in SE England in the late 1990s that explored children and young peoples social networks and neighbourhoods, and the implications for their health and well-being (social capital). The paper focuses on some ethical dilemmas raised during the research, and concludes with a discussion of broader issues related to dissemination and the policy implications of research

What is wrong with children's well-being in the UK? Questions of meaning and measurement

This paper discusses problems with existing attempts to measure childrens well-being using secondary datasets, taking as an example the UNICEF Innocenti report entitled Child poverty in perspective: an overview of child well-being in rich countries (UNICEF 2007). The report placed the UKs children at the bottom of the league table of rich nations on their average score across six dimensions, including emotional well-being and ‘happiness’. The reports authors point to a number of problems with the available data and their uses of them. We seek to engage in a critical debate about the value of the report. We argue that it exemplifies a deficit model approach to the study of childrens lives, as it appears to seek to demonstrate negative aspects of childrens experiences. Its findings are frequently cited as scientific ‘fact’ in press reports about children and young people. In this paper, we discuss some problems with definitions of ‘well-being’, how well-being is measured, and how childrens (human) rights are invoked. We also discuss the potential of research that takes a more positive approach to researching childrens health, well-being and everyday lives.

What’s in a number? Unsettling the boundaries of age

One of the articles in this issue (McNamee and Seymour) is a review of papers in the three leading journals relating to the social study of childhood, that is, Children’s Geographies, Children and Society, and Childhood. The authors have systematically analysed 320 papers that were published between 1993 and 2010. They find that the majority of papers focus on children aged 10 to 12 years old, and they rightly ask, have we thus inadvertently created a sociology of this age group? Initially, I was quite surprised at this finding. When we meet biennially as editors of Childhood, we analyse coverage of papers in the journal, but mostly this focuses on places and topics, but not age ranges. We inevitably turn to discussions of the fact that our journal is all too often dominated by papers from western, affluent countries, and we work hard to try to encourage papers from the rest of the world and particularly from researchers from majority world countries. As we have reflected in editorials, this is not a straightforward task (see also Canagarajah, 2002). We often (perhaps vaguely) note that Childhood does not tend to publish many papers on young children (though of course specialist early childhood journals exist). McNamee and Seymour have done a very useful service here, and there are certainly questions about whether or not we have enough papers at the ‘other’ end of childhood, that is, youth? One of our long-standing former editors, Barrie Thorne, has also discussed this (Thorne, 2008, 2009). This led me to a further question, which is to ask, what is in a number, anyway? A quick glance at the aims and scope of Childhood reveals that we do not specify a particular age range, nor does Children and Society in their aims and scope. Children’s Geographies specifies papers relating to children and young people under the age of 25. This seems reasonable – there is no need to be too specific, after all, childhood is a phase in the life cycle, to be someone’s child defines a relationship, variously conceptualised in differing parts of the world. The category ‘age’ within social sciences can mean various things – not simply chronological age (which is the dominant understanding in western societies), but also functional age and relational age (more on this below). Yet ‘out there’ in the policy world, and most of the rest of academe, numbers count. In many ways, numbers are the only way that governments can manage people bureaucratically, by categorising them according to age, starting with date of birth. For statisticians and demographers, accurate recording of age is crucial to their work. So too for developmental psychologists – if they follow Piaget, they will be versed in ideas about ages and stages of development for children, and the age at which children can be expected to be able to do certain things. This understandable fixation with numerical age then leads to 484199 CHD20210.1177/0907568213484199ChildhoodEditorial 2013

Children's responses to risk in agricultural work in Andhra Pradesh, India

This paper discusses protection of children from hazards in agricultural work. International and national policies aim to protect children by eliminating all child labour. Previous literature on hazardous child labour tends to focus on single industries or crops, overlooking the variety of activities that children undertake in subsistence farming. We analyse survey and qualitative data from children, and present rates of work, injuries experienced, how children deal with risks, and perceived benefits of work. The most effective form of prevention may be to build on existing knowledge and experience, working with communities to develop strategies to make work safer. Ripostes des enfants face aux risques du travail agricole en Andhra Pradesh, en Inde Cet article traite de la protection des enfants face aux aléas du travail agricole. Les politiques internationales et nationales visent à protéger les enfants en éliminant tout le travail des enfants. Les documents publiés précédemment sur le travail dangereux des enfants tendent à se concentrer sur les industries ou les cultures, sans prêter attention à la variété dactivités que les enfants entreprennent dans lagriculture de subsistance. Nous analysons des données qualitatives et issues denquêtes fournies par des enfants, ainsi que les taux actuels de travail, les blessures subies, la manière dont les enfants gèrent les risques et les avantages perçus du travail. La forme la plus efficace de prévention pourrait consister à renforcer les connaissances et les expériences existantes, en travaillant avec les communautés pour élaborer des stratégies afin daméliorer la sécurité au travail. As respostas das crianças ao risco no trabalho agrícola em Andhra Pradesh, Índia Este artigo discute a questão da proteção de crianças dos perigos no trabalho agrícola. Políticas internacionais e nacionais visam proteger as crianças eliminando todo trabalho infantil. A literatura anterior sobre trabalho infantil perigoso tende a focalizar indústrias ou lavouras específicas, desconsiderando a variedade de atividades que as crianças realizam na produção agrícola de subsistência. Analisamos pesquisas e dados qualitativos de crianças e apresentamos informações sobre taxas de trabalho, ferimentos ocorridos, sobre como as crianças lidam com os riscos e os benefícios percebidos do trabalho. A forma mais efetiva de prevenção pode ser a de basear-se em conhecimento e experiência acumulados, trabalhando com comunidades para desenvolver estratégias para tornar o trabalho mais seguro. Las reacciones de la niñez ante el riesgo del trabajo agrícola en Andhra Pradesh, India Este ensayo analiza la protección de la niñez ante los peligros del trabajo agrícola. Las políticas a nivel nacional e internacional tienen como objetivo proteger a la niñez mediante la eliminación del trabajo infantil. Anteriormente, los estudios sobre el trabajo infantil peligroso se enfocaban en las industrias o los cultivos específicos, sin tomar en cuenta las múltiples actividades que los niños y niñas realizan en la agricultura de subsistencia. El ensayo analiza la información cualitativa y las encuestas realizadas a niños y niñas, examinando las actuales tasas de empleo, las lesiones más comunes, cómo la niñez reacciona ante el riesgo y los beneficios que ésta atribuye al trabajo. Para prevenir de una forma más eficaz, el método a utilizar tendría que construirse a partir de la experiencia y los conocimientos ya existentes, mediante el trabajo con las comunidades para crear estrategias que aseguren resultados.

Editorial At the crossroads

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Editorial: Changing times at Childhood: finding a conceptual home?

gather in the Hotel desGrands Hommes opposite the Pantheon in Paris, and we met in January 2008.(I should emphasize that this is our only reward for acting as editors, apartfrom the satisfaction of doing our jobs.) This charming hotel claims to bewhere the Surrealist movement was founded, and is where Andre Breton andPhilippe Soupault developed a way of writing called

Politics and economics in global questions about childhood and youth . . . the trouble with numbers

Are we failing in our combined research endeavours to get at the core questions facing children and young people today? What can we expect to do, and how? Recent global events seem to suggest that we should be paying increasing attention to questions of politics and economics and how they affect children and young people, but how are we ever to shift the dominant paradigms of childhood and youth in political economy terms? Are our combined endeavours in the study of children likely to have an effect? Writing an editorial can be tricky, knowing that it will be read in six months’ time. At the time of sitting down to write, August 2011, parts of London, and other cities in England, experienced four days of ‘rioting’ and ‘looting’. There were unprecedented levels of violence against property, mostly involving looting of consumer goods. Much of it involved young people and children. Some of the violence was unquestioningly sickening to see (and see it we did, because it was relayed via TV and internet screens, from CCTV footage and mobile phone filming – and this was beamed around the world). Some of the violence was directed at people. Tragically, three young men were killed when a car was driven directly at them, as they attempted to defend their small business, in a predominantly Muslim part of Birmingham. Then, just as quickly as it started, it stopped. The father of one of the victims, in his dignified plea for peace to be restored, was probably (partly) responsible for the cessation of violence. And all over the country, community residents of all ages, young as well as old, joined together to clean up and to reclaim their streets. What was novel about the looting? There have been sporadic (actually rather rare) outbreaks of street disorder and looting over the course of the 20th century involving young people, often at times of high unemployment and stress in the economy. What was novel, was the use of new media – both the rioters and the police were able to put various new technologies to use via social networks – the looters putting out messages, the police tapping into them to track them. New media was also involved in informing us about what happened. A vast amount of real and virtual print (newspapers, internet, Twitter, blogs) has been expended in trying to understand and explain, with claims and counterclaims made about criminality, children, youth, consumption, inequality, poverty, violence, morality and ethics. For about 10 days (for the news moves on very quickly), the TV and radio blared with journalists, politicians and commentators discussing what has gone wrong, claiming that society is ‘sick’ or ‘broken’. Those on the political right 428902 CHD19110.1177/0907568211428902EditorialChildhood 2011

Changes in Rural Children’s Use of Time: Evidence from Ethiopia and Andhra Pradesh

In recent decades, children’s time has become a global commodity, fought over by a range of national and international policymakers (Stephens 1995). Ambitious global social policies construct particular visions of childhood and, in doing so, shape how children spend their time. The Millennium Development Goals, the Education For All Dakar Goals, World Bank advocacy for early childhood education, and International Labour Organization campaigns to eliminate child labour, all combine to generate policies that shape children’s lives, changing the way they, their families, and their communities perceive childhood and the appropriate use of children’s time. The content of children’s activities is linked to social values and power relationships within households, institutions, and communities (Morrow and Boyden 2010). In contexts of poverty and other adversities, economic pressures structure children’s time to a considerable degree (and these differ according to children’s gender and whether they live in urban or rural areas). However, the pace of change in developing countries is unprecedented, with somewhat uneven consequences for poverty reduction.

Moving goals – Towards an age of measurement, in times of Great Derangement? Implications for childhood (and other categories …)

At a recent lecture, the renowned novelist, Amitav Ghosh, lamented what he calls ‘the Great Derangement’. The title of his talk was The Earth as Literary Critic: Climate Change and the Limits of Imagination, and he called for understanding ‘non-human agency’ – seeing the earth (and others categories of non-human but living things) as agents, and he made the point that climate change is likely to be the most powerful catalyst for transformation in the future. He described how his homeland of Bangladesh is at risk from rising sea levels, yet the population of Bangladesh contributes little to global emissions. But as economies in the global south expand in pursuit of modernity, and where modernity equals consumption, the destruction of environments needs attention and the earth can be seen to have agency as it reacts and responds. Ghosh talked about the power of economics and ideas from what he calls the ‘Anglosphere’, and laid the blame squarely on market capitalism: ‘People have always traded and as such, it is a wonderful mechanism of human communication. But if you separate trade from any sense of morality and responsibility, you get a completely deranged system’. This was a pessimistic vision indeed. This year, 2015, sees the end of the period of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), launched in 2000 – a time that feels to me many years ago, when there was a spirit of optimism about the future and a strong idea that the world can and should be a better place. Looked at objectively, the MDGs have had some significant successes – extreme poverty rates have reduced by half, access to improved drinking water has increased to 89%, efforts to combat malaria and tuberculosis (TB) have been having an effect. In relation to children, child mortality has almost halved, chronic malnutrition has declined, primary school enrolment has increased with 90% of children in developing regions attending school and gender disparities in primary school enrolment almost eliminated (United Nations [UN], 2014a). Much work remains to be done, however, and these broad trends mask not only vast differences between people and places but also the possibility for fluctuation or even decline (in some places, for example, access to clean drinking water has fallen). The MDGs were targeted at the world’s poorest places, and focussed on poverty. The post-2015 development agenda has made a huge shift in focus, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), being agreed in series of meetings during 2015, are universal – they apply ‘all countries, and all groups’ (not just the ‘global South’). The most recent document setting out the SDGs is The road to dignity by 2030: ending poverty, transforming all lives and protecting the planet (UN, 2014b). Sounding not unlike Amitav Ghosh, the report seems to recognise the Great Derangement: 594737 CHD0010.1177/0907568215594737ChildhoodEditorial research-article2015

Judith Ennew A personal tribute

It was with enormous sadness that I learned that Judith Ennew died on 4 October 2013. Judith was one of the few members of the editorial board of Childhood who was with us from the very start, having attended the first founding meeting in Norway in May 1992, with Editor Ivar Frønes and the newly appointed board members (there were 14 of them at the time). The first issue of Childhood was published in 1993. Judith also acted as Guest Editor for two special issues (1996, with Mark Connolly, and 2002, with me). We often turned to her for advice and support, and she refereed countless papers and encouraged numerous authors to submit their work to us. Her death thus marks the culmination of 21 years of collaboration, but the spirit of what Judith contributed to the study of children will live on. Writing this editorial gives me an opportunity to reflect on Judith’s work, and the contribution she made to the scientific study of children and childhood globally. Judith originally trained as a primary school teacher and had come to Cambridge to study for a BEd at Lucy Cavendish College in 1972, then took the Certificate in Social Anthropology that then led to her PhD in social anthropology, based on an ethnography of the impact of the oil industry on the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, awarded in 1978. With Paul Hirst and Keith Tribe, she wrote a seminal paper about peasant modes of production and the division of labour, and this may well have led her into research with children as economic actors who play an important part in household production and consumption (Beazley et al., 2014). The year 1979 was the International Year of the Child, and from then onwards, Judith’s energies were focused on aspects of children’s rights, and developing sound methods for studying children. She worked with AntiSlavery International and undertook research in Jamaica (1981), followed by research in Peru with children who live and work on the streets (1985). Judith always started with a clear and deliberate focus on the socio-economic situation of children and insisted that their everyday lives could only be understood in context. In the subsequent years, she constantly combined research and activism, working mostly in the Global south and occasionally in the United Kingdom (she authored the England and Wales Country report for the Childhood as a Social Phenomenon project coordinated by Jens Qvortrup). Judith constantly confronted the lack of good quality, systematic information about children’s lives and daily experiences, and the dominance of ‘victimhood’ approaches 523370 CHD0010.1177/0907568214523370ChildhoodEditorial research-article2014