Children & Society最新文献

Over the past 15 years, the UK government has implemented significant welfare reforms. This paper reports a rapid review of qualitative data about the impact of the benefit cap and two-child limit on children and young people's health and wellbeing. Four peer-reviewed journal articles and 21 grey literature sources were included. The review, the first synthesis of qualitative evidence, demonstrates that the policies reduce children and young people's access to key resources for health and wellbeing; they create stress, anxiety, shame, exclusion and relational tensions, and intensify existing inequalities. The current socioeconomic context exacerbates the negative impacts of the policies.

In recent decades, youth activism has experienced a global resurgence, playing a pivotal role in advocating for social and political change across diverse national and international contexts. Drawing on empirical data from a study of high school students in diverse Washington, DC public schools, this paper offers a unique perspective on youth engagement with activism. Findings include insights from students not identified as traditional activists, deepening the understanding of youth perspectives beyond established activist circles. We used thematic analysis of 20 group discussions (GDs), each consisting of three to six high school students (ages 14–18; 72 participants total). Participants were recruited from public high schools across the city, with the goal of including youth from diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Based on thematic analysis of transcripts, the findings show that D.C youth engage with activism in complex ways, navigating local experiences and global concerns, adapting global narratives to local contexts, distinguishing between perceived ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of activism, and expressing critical concerns about the commercialization of movements. While literature widely addresses youth disengagement from politics and civic action, our findings demonstrate the ways in which youth possess insightful understandings of activism and exhibit significant engagement within social and digital spheres. This research uniquely illuminates how high school youth in Washington, DC interpret and engage with activism, accounting for the interplay of their everyday experiences, global trends, and local contexts of place, race, and generation. These findings provide essential groundwork for nuanced international youth research. They highlight how direct exposure to global issues embeds into and shapes youths' perspectives on civic engagement, and informs culturally responsive approaches for educators and policymakers seeking to cultivate meaningful youth participation.

This study was part of a larger research project, which investigated post-separation violence, father-child relationships and children's participation in child custody and child protection proceedings. It was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and it was approved by the University of Ottawa's Research Ethics Board. This article presents findings from a secondary data analysis. The data were initially gathered through two independent studies conducted in Quebec. The final sample for this study included 23 custody evaluation reports, which had been produced in the context of family court proceedings, in cases where there had been domestic violence. A feminist critical discourse analysis was conducted using NVivo. Overall, the research findings reveal that children's voices have been marginalised in the family evaluation process, as the evaluators gave little or no consideration to the children's wishes and feelings in their reports. In some cases, children's wishes and feelings have been dismissed and seen as irrational, particularly when the evaluators have concluded that they had been influenced by their mothers' alienating behaviours. The research findings also show that family evaluators tend to interpret what children's needs are with little or no consideration to their perspectives, wishes and feelings. These research findings raise important questions regarding custody evaluators' understanding of children's experiences in the context of domestic violence, and the place that is given to their voices in this process. The findings will be discussed in relation to children's rights and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This research explores participative approaches for amplifying the voices of justice-involved youth, a marginalised group in criminological research. Using the SPIDER framework, this rapid evidence review examines engagement methods, such as photovoice and lyric writing. The findings show these techniques empower youth and promote self-expression but are constrained by the dominance of risk-focused approaches that prioritise adult-led decision-making. This raises critical questions about the compatibility of participatory methods with justice systems focused on risk management. The study highlights the need for more inclusive approaches that navigate systemic constraints while embedding meaningful youth participation in justice reform.

This article focuses on the process of building trust in the first stages of research with children. Based on three research examples conducted in Finland, we analyse the ways of building trust and illustrate how trust or distrust can emerge in research with children. Our findings indicate that building trust plays a key role in enabling children's role as active participants in the studies. However, all parties of the studies, such as gatekeepers and children, define and build trust from their own starting points and based on their own needs. Thus, the process of building trust cannot always be controlled by the researcher.

Research has highlighted that adolescent young carers (AYCs) are in a vulnerable position due to their caring responsibilities being combined with the challenges of adolescence. However, caring among adolescents does not have to be a solely negative experience and positive experiences of caring can co-exist. Identifying those factors that contribute to AYCs' positive or negative caring experiences is important if AYCs are to be offered appropriate support. This cross-sectional survey study examined factors associated with AYCs' positive and negative caring experiences. Pupils aged 15–17 years from schools in 11 Swedish municipalities completed a questionnaire addressing demographic characteristics, care activities and the reported influence of being an AYC on school results, received support, and perceived health, while caring experiences were measured by the Positive and Negative Outcomes of Caring (PANOC-YC20) instrument. Of 3015 participants, 702 (23%) were identified as AYCs. The PANOC-YC20 positive and negative caring experiences subscales were significantly associated with each other (r = 0.16), with the mean score on the positive subscale (M = 10.36) significantly higher than that of the negative subscale (M = 5.18). In a multinomial logistic regression model, AYCs providing higher levels of emotional care and sibling care had both stronger positive and negative caring experiences, with a relatively greater effect on negative experiences. AYCs who had better perceived health had stronger positive experiences, while poorer perceived health was associated with more negative experiences. Finally, AYCs who felt their school results were negatively affected by their caring role had an increased likelihood of experiencing caring negatively. It is important for relevant authorities and professionals to consider that AYCs can experience caring both positively and negatively when developing or providing support, as these experiences will likely be reflected in both their need of support, and in the forms of support that will be most effective for them.

The aim of this article is to analyse how Swedish mothers, regularly outsourcing cleaning, make use of different discursive resources and negotiate conflicting norms about domestic work when they discuss the role of cleaning in the socialisation of their children. Domestic work is often seen as boring yet character-building, socialising independence, self-esteem, responsibility and work ethic. However, time pressures have led more Swedish families to outsource domestic work, supported by tax deductions for services such as cleaning. Yet, we know little about what this outsourcing means for everyday family life. The study is based on interviews with 12 working mothers, with children aged from 9 months to 15 years, from different parts of Sweden who regularly outsource cleaning. Data was analysed with the critical discursive psychology framework. The analysis shows that mothers value both sons and daughters learning to care for the home, but children's actual participation seemed limited, often restricted to decluttering before the cleaners arrive. Outsourcing cleaning was mainly seen as a strategy to reduce stress, prevent conflicts and maximise family/quality time. Mothers expressed a dilemma between wanting their children to learn domestic skills and outsourcing cleaning to preserve family/quality time. Some stressed the importance of teaching their children to respect the cleaners and their work, while also problematising how cleaning was performed by lower-class, racialised workers. Overall, the study suggests that outsourcing is part of a renegotiation of the socialisation processes in the family, where domestic work is downplayed, while norms of career commitment, paid work, and family/quality time are reinforced, shaping children's orientations towards future citizenship.

This article examines how teenage girls in Sweden interpret and negotiate food- and health-related content on social media, paying particular attention to the intersections between eating practices, health, body ideals and femininity. It takes inspiration from feminist theoretical perspectives and is based on eight group interviews with 18 participants. The study explores how teenage girls interpret and negotiate such content and how they perceive its intended purposes. Although the interviews explicitly focused on food, discussions repeatedly shifted towards body ideals. The participants' discussions highlighted a tension between anti-dieting discourses and the continued valorisation of slim bodies: influencers are expected to verbally distance themselves from thinness ideals, yet their visual representations frequently reinforce them. Messages about ‘healthy eating’ were often interpreted as implicit endorsements of slimness, obscuring distinctions between health promotion and dieting culture. Representations of ‘junk food’ consumption in social media content was valued for counterbalancing restrictive discourses and for signalling authenticity, yet it was also viewed with suspicion when perceived as staged or inauthentic. The kind of content that participants described as most reassuring—content depicting ordinary, everyday eating without an explicit health or aesthetic framing—was rare. Across the interviews, participants demonstrated considerable media literacy, recognising the commercial logics shaping influencers' practices while simultaneously acknowledging that they were affected by the sheer volume of food- and body-related messages in their social media feeds.

The aim was to describe how inclusive research was perceived by participants in a reference group within the Swedish research programme Mental Health and Participation in Habilitation for Children and Adolescents with Disabilities. The experience of the reference group was explored through 10 interviews analysed with thematic analysis. Three themes were identified: (1) Information; (2) Motivation and (3) Participation. Inclusive research requires clear communication, defined roles, structural adaptations and addressing power dynamics. This study emphasises the importance of involving children and individuals with disabilities as well as their primary caregivers in research, ultimately making research more inclusive and representative.

The dominance of technology in the daily lives of modern-day children has raised much concern about the impacts on their wellbeing. However, there are also many advantages and opportunities transpiring. This paper asks whether technology is an aid or an obstacle to a child's wellbeing and school life. Parent and teacher perspectives were collected from a group of seven schools in Northwest England using surveys and interviews, seeking to compare perspectives and better inform the ongoing strategies of schools. The data revealed disconnections between the perspectives of parents/carers and teachers, highlighting the need for increased dialogue and collaboration to occur. Existing approaches of parent respondents tended to be adult-led and directive rather than viewing children as co-creators of establishing their own healthy pathway in the online world. Support and advice from schools could be transformative for families who find implementing technology boundaries to be highly stressful. It is evident that there is a need for significant investment and ongoing research in this area to harness the positive aspects of the ever-changing online world and reduce the impacts on school life.