Negotiating master narratives: The practice of 'counterstorying' in children's personal narratives about family‐related adversities

In: Child & family social work, Band 27, Heft 4, S. 616-625

Abstract

AbstractOnly limited attention has been drawn to children's narrative practice of negotiating cultural ideas about who they are and what they can do. This paper focuses on children living in families where adults have psychosocial problems and analyses how they negotiate different family‐related and/or societal master narratives about their identity and agency. Twenty‐two children, 6–17 years old, have been interviewed about themselves and their lives. The findings suggest three master narratives as central in children's telling: the story of the child as problem bearer, the story of the child as inheritor of psychosocial problems and the story of the child as an unknowledgeable object. The analysis shows that children negotiate these master narratives by positioning and repositioning themselves and others in, and through, their telling. The core contribution of the study is the notion that children's problem descriptions contain important information about both material and discursive aspects of the problematic situation. Through listening to children's stories, social work practitioners and researchers can deepen their understanding of how the individual child relates to, and negotiates, wider cultural ideas about identity and agency. This knowledge is relevant in the pursuit of matching support with the child's needs and perspective.