Suchergebnisse

The Convention on the rights of the Child focuses global attention on those children living in adverse situations crystallising a global commitment to protecting children. Nevertheless, beyond these commitments to children, researchers have questioned whether the rights agenda captures the diversity of children's lives globally. Does the Convention connect with the lifeworlds of children playing formative roles? Drawing on critical research on children's rights, I address this question through analysing the roles that children play in military conflict. I explore a human rights framework, which highlights the agency of child soldiers focusing on their material, social and political capacities.

The state is often viewed as part of the impersonal public sphere in opposition to the private family as a locus of warmth and intimacy. In recent years this modernist dichotomy has been challenged by theoretical and institutional trends which have altered the relationship between state and family. This article explores changes to both elements of the dichotomy that challenge this relationship: a more fragmented family structure and more individualised and networked support for children. It will also examine two new elements that further disrupt any clear mapping between state/family and public/private dichotomies: the third-party role of the child in family/state affairs, and children's application of virtual technology that locates the private within new cultural and social spaces. The article concludes by examining the rise of the 'individual child' hitherto hidden within the family/state dichotomy and the implications this has for intergenerational relations at personal and institutional levels.

While children and young people's participation is a well‐established research field, much less has been written about the roles that adults play in supporting this participation. This article examines the involvement of adults within participatory forums in English schools and local authorities. Drawing on empirical data from research on children's participation in pupil and civic councils, the article discusses the complex and sometimes contradictory pressures on adults in their advisory roles with young participants. The article goes on to explore these roles within a broader conceptual framework that counterposes children's 'places' with children's 'spaces'.

This article explores the theoretical, empirical and policy driven links between the idea of parental responsibility and the practice of boundary setting within the home. Two forms of boundary setting are initially described: first, parents' attempts to draw boundaries between themselves and 'external' sources of child support such as the school and the social services; second, parents' attempts to assert a clear hierarchical difference between themselves and their children. The article starts by assessing the extent to which boundaries are strengthened by recent education reform; and goes on to argue that a series of political and cultural demands on parents limit the success of any consistent boundary maintenance strategies adopted by parents. It finishes by reviewing the gendered nature of boundary setting within the home.

Interview data from a sample of parents with adolescent children are used to assess arguments that centre on the fears parents have about their child rearing practices. The focus in some recent accounts of parenting has been on how these fears indicate the moral and psychological state of parenthood rather than the problems parents think their children have negotiating an increasingly insecure outside world. By focusing on the latter, this paper relocates these fears externally as parents try to control their children's whereabouts. Control, rather than being defined negatively as a way of compensating for a lack of moral influence, is taken as an important means by which parents supervise their children's moral and physical wellbeing.