Children and playgrounds in Mediterranean cities

This paper presents the first results of a case study on the ways in which playgrounds are constructed and experienced in children's daily lives in two medium sized Mediterranean Catalan cities. The research is based on qualitative methodology through participant observation and interviews with institutional actors. Our research suggests that playgrounds are organised around age as the central category; nevertheless, gender is important in the use and activities developed as children get older. Specific aspects from Mediterranean and medium-sized cities are raised such as a positive perception and an intense use of public space by both adults and children. Specific childhood policies in city planning and a stronger gender awareness among institutional actors would improve the social role of playgrounds as participatory, socialising and inclusive spaces.     

Childhood in the shadow of war: filled with work and play

This study was focused on war-time childhood. The target period covers the war years 1939–1945 and the years of post-war reconstruction. The research was based on memories of 13 participants who lived in the countryside in northern Finland during the Second World War. The purpose of the study was to find out what children's everyday life was like during the war. According to the results, children did play regardless of the war situation. Children also participated in household work actively. By highlighting children's experiences and perspectives, this study provided important information about children's survival during war time. The study also helps understanding the effects of wars from children's point of view.     

Values and assumptions underpinning policy for children and young people in England

This paper provides an account of current ideas about English childhood that seem to underpin policies ‘for’ children. New Labour values the future adulthood of children more than their childhoods, and stresses children's responsibilities over their rights. Generally, child protection and provision for children has higher status than children's participation. Children are excluded from participation in social life. Traditional psychological formulations remain powerful in their stress on childhood as a preparatory stage of life, where children are socialised into conformity with the norms of social life. However, the last 15 years have seen greater respect for children's own views and experiences, for their rights and for the idea that childhood is socially constructed. But the idea that children are contributors to society is still rarely recognised and they continue to suffer from low social status accordingly.     

'To Go Back up the Side Hill': Memories,Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood

This paper offers theoretical reflections on how adult researchers access, process and represent the 'worlds' of children and childhood. Recognising previous claims and warnings issued by geographers, it is argued that researchers can and should take advantage of the fact that all adult researchers have once been children, meaning that there are always fragments of connection allowing 'us' at least some intimation of children's geographies as experiencede and imagined from within . Gaston Bachelard's (1969a) 'poetics of reverie' is partially built upon just such a sense of connection, laying out the basis for a phenomenology of childhood wherein adults seek an imaginative revisiting of the reveries--the absent-minded daydreaming--of 'bored' and 'idle' children. This paper provides a critical exegesis of Bachelard's work in this respect, emphasising the importance to his thinking of geography, landscape and environment as both elements within and embodied spurs to childhood reverie. Questions about the admixture of adult imagination and memory in the recovery of childhood reverie are considered, and conclusions are reached about what can usefully be taken from Bachelard's 'poetics of childhood', notably in terms of a methodology of 'not doing too much' as an adult researcher in this field. Claims are also made about needing to take more seriously than hitherto the mundane reveries of childhood, those contained in children's own undirected jottings, drawings and play, as a possible source for future inquiries into children's geographies.     

Good sitting,looking and listening: the regulation of young children's emotions in the classroom

Increasing attention has been given in schools in recent years to emotions as part of children's development and as core to their learning. Yet limited attention has been paid to emotions in childhood research. Based on findings from an ethnographic study within a Scottish school with children aged 6–7 years, this article explores the construction and negotiation of emotions as a part of children's classroom experience. Children's bodies and emotions are highly controlled in the classroom but despite this control, children actively construct emotions in their everyday lives.     

How matter comes to matter in children's nature play: posthumanist approaches and children's geographies

In the present paper, a posthumanist approach is used to analyse children's play activities in natural environments. The aim is to analyse intra-actions between children, the material environment and discourses, with a focus on the material and embodied aspects of these intra-actions. Forty-two children between six and eight years and from two Swedish schools participated in the study. Video observations of play activities have been the most important data source. For the analysis of how matter ‘acts’, play with sensorimotor content has been distinguished from play with symbolic content. In sensorimotor play, matter seems to ‘talk’ more directly to children's hands and bodies. In play activities with symbolic content, matter works both directly and through discourses, when objects are given symbolic meaning. In both kinds of play, discursive practices in the peer groups are influential.     

Encouraging play in the natural environment: a child-focused case study of Forest School

There is concern that children are becoming disengaged from the natural environment and are not being afforded the opportunities to play in such environments. To examine children's perceptions, knowledge and experiences of play in the natural environment, 17 children from one school participated in small focus groups before and after a 12-week Forest School that took place within a school woodland area. Using two qualitative approaches, we found that Forest School had a positive influence on children's natural play and their knowledge of the natural world around them.     

Geographies of environmental learning: an exploration of children's use of school grounds

There has been limited recent geographic research on children's use of school grounds. This study explores the impact of school grounds on the play behaviours of children in primary schools. It examines the way in which some features of school grounds stimulate more of the type of play that is likely to produce environmental learning. The paper reports on research findings from two primary schools in Canberra, Australia. At each school, multiple research techniques were employed, including behaviour mapping of children's play, interviews with children, and analysis of children's drawings of their school grounds. Children's play in one school displayed high levels of interaction with the natural environment. The paper provides insights on the potential of school grounds as sites for environmental learning.     

Home and away: constructing family and childhood in the context of working parenthood

Little is known about children's views and experiences of their parents’ work?life reconciliation and how these are negotiated in everyday family practices. This article examines families' experiences of work?life reconciliation from both children's and parents' perspectives, drawing on a qualitative longitudinal study with 14 families in Scotland. Such experiences have implications for the spatial and temporal construction of family and childhood in the UK, where working parenthood is increasingly the norm.     

Examining elements of children's place attachment

ABSTRACT

The quality of children's attachments to people has claimed considerable scrutiny in research and practice. Children's attachment to place, however, has received less attention despite its relevance to childhood experiences. This paper explores childhood place attachment and applies Chawla's theory as a guiding framework. This theory delineates places by three forms of fulfillment: security and belonging, social affiliation, and creative expression and exploration. Research from within schools and hospitals cites evidence of children's varied interpretations and their responses to adult domination that drive creativity. Acknowledging the significance of place attachments can inform research, policy and professional practice.     

It all used to be better? Different generations on continuity and change in urban children's daily use of space

There is much speculation about children's changing space–time behaviour, yet little is actually known about it. The study reported on here, which was based on oral histories, statistical and archive research, and observations in Amsterdam, compared children's use of space during the 1950s and early 1960s with that of today. The public space of the street used to be a child space, but in two of the three streets studied it has been transformed into an adult space. Conversely, private home space—traditionally the domain of adults—has become a child space. Over time, children's geographies have become more diverse. In addition to the traditional childhood of outdoor children, we distinguish indoor children and children of the backseat generation. These two new types are characterized by a decrease in playing outdoors and an increase in adult supervision. Although this may be regarded as a loss, new children's activities have emerged, outdoors as well as indoors. Contemporary cities can be exciting places for children, but it is clear that inequality by class has become more manifest. Both new geographical childhoods have resulted in a decrease in children's agency, which may have a negative impact on segregation patterns.     

An intergenerational qualitative study of the good parenting ideal and active free play during middle childhood

ABSTRACT

This study addressed the question: How and why has the good parenting ideal changed in relation to active free play (AFP) during middle childhood? Twenty-eight middle class and predominantly white adults (14 grandparent-parent dyads) completed individual semi-structured interviews. Data were subjected to a thematic analysis. Two themes (changing expectations for parental involvement in children's lives and increasing expectations to involve children in structured activities) depicted how the good parenting ideal has changed. A further two themes (news media influence on perceptions of safety and concerns about being judged on social media) explained some of the reasons why the good parenting ideal has changed. Perceived needs for parental involvement, supervision, and organized activities appear to contradict the notion of active free play. It may be useful to develop initiatives that are consistent with the good parenting ideal, and to examine parents’ use of traditional and social media in future AFP research.     

Playful spaces? a social geography of children's play in Livingston,Scotland

It is often assumed that ‘play’ is an unproblematic category of children's activity, but consideration should be given to whether it is really an adult construction full of questionable assumptions about enjoyable activities free of stress for the children concerned. This paper offers some empirical materials to begin such a deconstruction of ‘play’ through an inquiry into the social geography of children's play in a Scottish new town. By retrieving what children think about their own play, what it entails and the spaces, places, social encounters and social variations central to it, it is possible to sketch out a social geography of children's play that, if not entirely unexpected, does suggest the ‘nature’ of play to be less certain than might commonly be supposed.     

Constructions of rural childhood: challenging dominant perspectives

This article reviews research on the lives and experiences of children and young people living in rural Minority world environments. The literature reviewed has focused on constructions of rurality in relation to children's experiences, most notably the rural idyll. Alternative constructions of rural childhood, characterised by dullness, horror and deprivation, are also apparent, and associated with insufficient rural activities, resources and transport, marginalisation and social exclusion. The more recent inclusion of children's perspectives on rural living provides a deeper understanding of rural childhood and challenges the dominant perspectives.     

Mother Knows Best? Intergenerational Notions of Fashion and Identity

This paper presents research into intergenerational notions of fashion and identity. It uses examples drawn from the case study interviews with mother–daughter family groups and the participatory method of draw and write with the daughters to illustrate the influences on young girls' fashion choices in the key spaces of childhood: the home, school and community. The findings reveal that young girls both identify and disidentify with fashions and identities available to them. Their mothers play a key role in allowing and restricting certain outfits in certain spaces, with particular distinction being drawn between public and private space. This paper contributes to children's geographies by focusing on intergenerational relationships between mothers and their daughters in relation to theories of identity formation. In doing so this paper highlights how both intergenerational relationships and the girls' identities are mediated through fashion, consumption, peers and the home, school and community spaces.     

Defying Comprehension: Resistance to Uniform Appearance in Depicting the Poor, 1770s to 1830s

Abstract

Applied to contemporary Western clothing as part of the new cultural turn in textile history, anthropology provides unique insights into the relationship between commerce and culture; into the symbolic and social processes that influence the market; and into the ways capitalism functions as a cultural system, not just as a purely economic one. This paper takes an anthropological approach to children's clothing and the changing consumer culture of childhood in Britain in the mid-twentieth century, seen through a particular company (Pasolds Ltd.), their Ladybird symbol and its associated popular culture, and an iconic garment, the Ladybird dressing gown. It provides a case study in a field and period dominated to date by studies of American children's garments and material culture and focuses on the production, advertising and indirect marketing of children's clothing through public culture, from the producer's point of view, a perspective hitherto generally overlooked in work on children's clothes and consumer culture in the mid-twentieth century.     

Walking with preschool‐aged children to explore their local wellbeing affordances

An increasingly well‐developed body of research uses neighbourhood walks to better understand primary school children's experiences of local environments, yet virtually nothing is known about preschool‐aged children's connections to their neighbourhoods. A reason for this omission is the commonly held view that preschool children lack competency to reflect on lived environments beyond playgrounds, kindergartens, and other confined settings that dominate early childhood. However, preliterate children walk around, use, and create intimate relationships with local environments as shown by 10 children aged 3–5 years from Dunedin in New Zealand during go‐along interviews. We asked each to walk us around their locale, explaining and pointing out favourite and less beloved places and activities. In this article, we advance two arguments: first that preschoolers are knowledgeable meaning makers of place; second that walking with them is a key step to understanding their life worlds and provides a way for preliterate and preverbal children to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of their spatial worlds, including as research participants. We challenge the idea that children of this age lack large‐scale spatial competency and understanding. Walking with them generated an in‐depth appreciation of their experiences of environments and revealed deep connections they had with their locales at varied scales. The work enables us to offer novel insights into spatial competency, sociospatial complexities, and the multiple dimensions of young children's wellbeing affordances in urban environments. Such insights are highly relevant for geographers, planners, and others who shape children's urban environments.     

Changing children's geographies

This keynote explores the changing nature of children's geographies as an academic project. It proceeds in four parts. Part 1 considers the shift away from research on children's spatial cognition which envisaged the child in largely biological terms, and contemplates contemporary efforts to rework the nature/culture dualism. Part 2 traces the incorporation of new social studies of childhood into geography, emphasising the importance of children's voices, their positioning within axes of power, and the need for quantitative and qualitative methods. Part 3 explores how feminist research led to interest in parents, educators and other actors/institutions which shape, and are shaped by, children's lives. Part 4 ponders what children's geographies might add to, and learn from, broader interdisciplinary debates, and the benefits and pitfalls of research impact. The conclusion argues that a well-informed appreciation of sub-disciplinary history provides a strong vantage point from which to engage with new ways of thinking.     

Children's out-of-home leisure activities: changes during the last decade in Norway

ABSTRACT

This study, based on two nationally representative samples of children aged 6–12 years and their parents from 2005 and 2013–2014, explores changes in children's play, through changes in participation in three different out-of-home leisure activities during the last decade in Norway as well as the interactions between these activities. The study finds that there has been an increase in the share of children who participate in organized leisure activities; that they start to participate at a younger age; and that the intensity of participation in organized leisure activities has increased. During the same period, there has been a decrease both in the extent of unsupervised play outdoors and in the degree to which children visit friends’ houses. A key empirical finding is that there is a strong positive association between participation in organized leisure activities and, respectively, the extent of unsupervised outdoor play and visits to friends.     

Shaping childhood risk in post‐conflict rural Northern Ireland

The realities of the ethno‐sectarian conflict have dominated the analysis of social problems within the context of Northern Ireland (NI). As a result of this, issues such as non‐conflict related childhood risk have received less attention than in the remainder of the UK. However, with the rapidly changing agenda of the Peace Process there is now the momentum to take a broader approach to examining Northern Irish society. This paper examines children's own experiences of growing up in rural NI and explores their own and adults' perceptions of the risks that they encounter and the resulting constraints placed on children's activity outside the home. It is evident that the legacy and reproduction of ethno‐sectarian conflict still influences notions of fear and mistrust of ‘an ethno‐sectarian other’. However, as shown within this paper these fears run in parallel with other fears that are constructed around concerns over ‘everyday’ risks that are evident in the range of outdoor play practices reported by the children involved in the study.