CHILDREN, HEALTH AND RISK

1

• CHILDREN, HEALTH AND RISK
• SIMON J. WILLIAMS
• In this session we will examine
• The development of a sociology of children and
  childhood in recent years
  
• The social construction of childhood
• The negotiation of childrens health at home and
  at school
  
• Issues of risk and the social construction of
  identity in childrens lives
  

2

• The sociology of children and childhood is a
  relatively recent development challenging former
  adult-centric concerns
  
• Important historical landmark text Aries (1962)
  book Centuries of Childhood
  
• Childhood, Aries shows, emerged in the European
  context as a distinct concept/stage of life from
  the mid C18th onwards, the birth of
  childhoodPrior to this, children, beyond
  immediate infancy, were considered mini-adults
  who shared in the division of labour
• Current emphasis on the social construction of
  childhoods many, multiple, childhoods as
  socially, culturally and historically relative,
  variable, contested, contingent destabilising of
  universalising notions

3

• Aged/staged models of the naturally developing
  child, who progresses through fixed stages of
  development e.g. Piagetian developmental
  psychology challenged/problematised.
• Notion of children as passive, docile, dependent
  socialisation projects, challenged within the
  sociology of childhood
  
• Emphasis on children as active constructors and
  negotiators of their lives across the
  public/private divide
  
• Recent attempts to re-embody childhood through
  attention to their own lived experiences of their
  bodies/identities
  
• Emphasis on research with or for rather than
  simply on children more active, participatory,
  child-centred methods and methodologies
  

4

• The contemporary demise/disappearance of
  childhood a depressing picture?
  
• Recent debates of the disappearance of
  childhood (e.g Postman, N. (1983) The
  Disappearance of Childhood)
  
• Breakdown of boundaries between children and
  adults
  
• Technology such as TV/Internet seen as prime
  drivers of these processes, making a wide range
  of info available to children
  
• Plus pressures at school changes in
  parent-child relations (more open, democratic),
  destabilisation of family life children as
  consumers
• These changes viewed as negative (-) by some and
  positive () by others a lamentable loss of
  childhood vs the valorisation of a new electronic
  generation as bearers of progress, vanguards of
  new digital society, reversal of generational
  hierarchies etc
• Both positions, however, exaggerate (the role of
  technology) and fail to acknowledge the diversity
  of childhoods (see, e.g. Prout, A. (2005) The
  Future of Childhood).

5

• The contemporary demise/disappearance of
  childhood a depressing picture (cont)?
  
• Recent Unicef report Child Poverty in
  Perspective An Overview of Child Well Being in
  Rich Countries (http//www.unicef.org.uk/press/pd
  f/rc7_eng.pdf) also paints a fairly bleak picture
  of childrens well being in the UK
• Compares child well being across six dimension
  in 21 industrialised countries material well
  being, health and safety, education, peer and
  family realtionships, behaviour and risks, and
  young peoples own subjective sense of their own
  well being
• The UK ranks bottom in ranks in the bottom third
  of countries for five of the six dimenions
  reviewed. While the UK ranks higher in the
  education well being dimension, the UK lags
  behind in terms of relative poverty and
  deprivation, quality of childrens relationships
  with their parents and peers, child health and
  safety, behaviour and risk-taking, and subjective
  well being.

6

• Bringing the sociology of childhood and the
  sociology of health together
  
• At least two ways of doing so
• Foucauldian perspectives, draw attention to the
  social construction of childrens bodies within
  medicine. E.g. Armstrong (1983) in his book
  Political Anatomy of the Body highlights the
  emergence of paediatrics as a disciplinary
  attempt to classify, codify, measure, monitor,
  map, survey childhood bodies and to distinguish
  between the normal and the pathological
  child. Started off with diseases of childhood and
  then shifted to child health and development in
  general
• More embodied approaches (e.g. Mayall 1998.
  1996)
  

7

• Bringing the sociology of childhood and the
  sociology of health and illness together (cont)
  
• Mayall (1998, 1996) highlights three key issues
  here
  
• Attention to health and illness facilitates
  understanding of childrens social positioning as
  a minority group
  
• Children need to be understood as embodied
  health care actors and agents
  
• A need to rethink the division of labour and
  inter-generational relationships within it
  children as workers/contributors to the social
  order

8

• Children as a minority group
• Key explanatory issue intersection between
  generation and gender.
  
• The fact that children are set apart as
  belonging to a different generation to adults,
  contributes to their minority group status
  
• Location in triangle comprising children,
  parents and the stateinflected through gender
  relations
  
• Children also hold dual status as people now
  and in the future a case of being and becoming

9

• Children as embodied health care actors and
  agents
  
• Tensions/differential value placed on bodies and
  emotions at home and at school
  
• At home, children learn to take charge of their
  bodies as health care actors
  
• At school, children are treated as socialisation
  projects disciplining of bodies in favour of
  their minds
  
• School environment not necessarily conducive to
  health physical conditions, spatial layout,
  exposure to risks, unhealthy choices (cf. Mayall
  et al. 1996 CHIPS study Children and Health in
  Primary Schools).

10

• Children and the division of labour
• Need to rethink the contribution of children,
  women and men to the social order and the
  interrelationship of their contributions
  
• Children make an important contribution to the
  social order at home and at school, including
  health care, health maintenance and health
  promotion work

11

• Research examples
• Oakley et als (1995) study of children and
  young peoples knowledge and beliefs about health
  and cancer prevention
  
• Use of a variety of child-centred methods,
  including Write and Draw techniques with the
  younger children (9-10 year olds)
  
• Findings
• Children and young people possess considerable
  knowledge about cancer, especially about lung
  cancer and smoking, and show considerable
  awareness of predominant health education
  messages.
• Despite this knowledge, many young people (more
  than half) do not consider their health to be
  good and do not lead healthy lifestyles the
  circumstances in which many children and young
  people live are not experienced as health
  promoting

12

• Oakley et al. (1995) study cont
• Health is less of a priority to teenagers than
  being able to get jobs
  
• Children living in the inner city perceive
  environmental factors as important influences on
  health
  
• Television and the media were the most important
  sources of information, particularly soaps
  
• Collecting data from children using drawings is
  a valuable research tool.

13

• Greens (1995) study of how children talk about
  accidents
  
• Shows how children claim responsibility for
  managing their own accident roles, constructing
  themselves as mature risk assessors
  
• Gender differences girls greater emphasis on
  responsibility for others boys emphasis on
  stories of courageous risk taking and physically
  competent identities accidents taken and bravely
  borne

14

• Kirk and Tinnings (1994) study of physical
  education
  
• Shows bodies and identities are put on
  display/put at risk in PE lessons a site where
  physical competence is instantiated in the most
  immediate, visible, visceral fashion
• Many girls and boys, as a consequence,
  experience degrees of embarrassment,
  estrangement, disembodiment as a consequence of
  PE lessons
• PE, from this perspective, is a problematic site
  for health promotion, as it places bodies and
  identities at riskImportant lessons to be learnt

15

• Conclusions
• Sociology of childhood is a relatively recent
  development a challenge to former adult-centric
  concerns
  
• The social construction of childhood a
  dominant perspectiveEmphasis on childhoods as
  relative, variableplus related debates about the
  disappearance of childhood in contemporary
  Western society
• Children far from mere socialisation projects
  active constructors and negotiators of their
  lives/embodied health care actors and agents
  across the public/private divide important
  contribution to the social order and the health
  care division of labour
• Children possess considerable knowledge about
  health and illness
  
• The negotiation of risk and identity is
  particularly important in childrens lives,
  particularly when looking at issues such as
  accidents and health promotion.