Edges Magazine Issue 25: Children Are People

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 25

April 2001

Edges Magazine has followed with interest in the Children's 5-16 programme. Professor Prout, the Programme Director spoke at our 1999 Conference in Oxford. We share the final part of this research. This is part of the Economic and Social Research Council's Children 5-16 Research Programme, which consists of twenty-two linked research projects looking at different aspects of children's lives in contemporary society. The central theme of the Programme is to look at children as 'social actors' - who make an active contribution to their families and communities and to society.

Children's Perspectives and Experience of Divorce

The interests of children whose parents' marriage has broken down have recently assumed considerable importance as the number of such children has increased. An impressive body of knowledge exists concerning the impact of divorce on children but there is little understanding of how children themselves manage divorce. To redress the balance we listened to 104 children talk about living their parents' recent divorce. These first-hand accounts highlighted that children wanted to be seen , not as passive victims of marital breakdown, but as active participants in the ongoing transition and reconstruction of family life.

Divorce disrupted the sense of continuity children had in their lives. They responded by attempting to control the impact of events and by seeking to return to a 'normal' way of life as soon as possible.
Communication between children and parents was not always effective. Children acknowledged they did not always understand what parents were trying to say, and were aware of their own difficulties in asking for information.
Children's understanding of the legal process was poor and generally derived from misleading television or cinema portrayals. They were told little about the legal process by their parents and were less interested in this than in other aspects of divorce.
Lacking a sophisticated emotional vocabulary, children often used 'time' as a metaphor to describe the nature and quality of their relationship with parents.
Children played many active, often unacknowledged, roles during their parents' divorce. However, they frequently felt excluded from decisions which directly affected them and expressed a wish to be considered and consulted at all stages.
Children often sought to talk to others, especially friends, to secure reassurance, advice or to be listened to. They felt they would have benefited from direct access to the information they wanted and to people who would listen, accept and understand.

Young People and Welfare: Negotiating Pathways

How do young people cope with problems in their lives? Who do they turn to for help and support? This project set out to explore young people's perceptions of their worries and problems, their negotiations, coping strategies and their help-seeking behaviour. Eighty-six young people aged 13-14 (55 living at home and 31 living in residential units) were interview in Scotland.

Recent worries most frequently reported were schoolwork, death or ill health, parental conflict, and falling out with friends, with girls reporting more worries than boys.
The most common response to problems was to tell someone, usually best friends, parents, or siblings or, for those living in residential units, their keyworker.
A third of young people said they would not tell anyone about problems in their lives. Boys were more likely to keep problems to themselves than girls and those in residential care more likely to do so than those living at home.
The characteristics of friendships differed between boys and girls. Amongst girls, friends were an important source of social support.
Young people's access to formal agencies was effected by their limited knowledge of them, their inaccessibility and their image. The young people made suggestions as to how the services could be improved.
Confidentiality and trust were of utmost importance for young people in deciding whether or not to tell someone about a problem. Some would be deterred from telling because of concern that personal information would be spread around.
Friends and siblings were considered to be more empathetic than adults; young people feared that adult reactions might exacerbate the problem, cause embarrassment, or result in young people losing control of the situation.

The impact of risk and parental risk anxiety on the everyday worlds of children

What do children and parents think about risk and safety? Are parents' anxieties about potential risks to children limiting their children's lives or are children growing up faster than ever and therefore facing new risks? Sue Jackson at the University of York and Kathryn Backett-Milburn at the University of Edinburgh interviewed parents and children from 30 families in order to explore parental risk anxiety and children's 'landscapes of risk'.

Strangers, drugs and traffic were identified as the main risks to children by both parents and children. Parents were also concerned about the pressures of consumerism and economic insecurity.
Teenagers were seen as a threat, particularly by children.
Most children under 12 saw home as a 'safe haven' and were content with their parents' strategies to protect them from harm.
Most parents saw the world as a more dangerous place than it had been when they were children.
Children were sometimes confused by the messages of the 'Stranger Danger' education in schools, particularly as it relates to sexuality.
Most parents felt it was important to be open with children about sexuality but did not always think they were the most appropriate people to transmit sexual information.
Parents managed their children's lives by setting a 'bottom line', which expressed parental expectations and represented a set of boundaries limiting certain behaviours.
In setting and negotiating a 'bottom line', both parents and children agreed that age was less an issue than the skills and abilities of the child.
The data does not bear out the idea that we are witnessing 'the end of childhood'. Parents are, however, caught in the contradiction between finding a way to be protective whilst allowing their children some independence.