This article explores what it means to listen to children by moving beyond the notion of voice and staying with the absences of children. In this way, we include the possibly lost, forgotten or unapproachable children in child and childhood research. Our methodological starting point is to listen by ‘staying with’ the absences of children’s verbal voices and physical bodies in two photographs. These photographs depict material artefacts connected to children in vulnerable situations: shrouds for wrapping stillborn babies’ bodies, and children’s shoes as an emblem of children living in hiding from domestic violence. The idea is to explore how we can listen to children whose verbal or embodied encounters we cannot or do not wish to display. Our aim is to listen to these absences and discuss how they influence and possibly reshape the practices of listening, as well as notions of the child and childhood.
Based on interviews with Swedish adoptive families, this qualitative article explores children and parents’ motives for a family adoption return trip (to the country of origin of the adopted child).Through a combination of theories about contemporary parenthood and children’s perspectives, the stories of children and parents are explored both together and separately. The article shows that it is primarily the parents, sometimes in consultation with the children, who initiate the trips. The analysis also shows that adoption return trips are associated with opportunities as well as risks for both parents and children. Parents carefully consider when to take a return trip. Is it when the child is young or when she or he is older? The article shows how adoption return trips are constructed through conversations between children and parents. Return trips are informedby a dynamic and contradictory network of general recommendations, fears, expectations, and desires to do what is ”right” for the child in the now and in the future.
This text is an exploration of collaborative thinking and writing through theories, methods, and experiences on the topic of the child, children, and childhood. It is a collaborative written text (with 32 authors) that sprang out of the experimental workshop Child Studies Multiple. The workshop and this text are about daring to stay with mess, “un-closure” , and uncertainty in order to investigate the (e)motions and complexities of being either a child or a researcher. The theoretical and methodological processes presented here offer an opportunity to shake the ground on which individual researchers stand by raising questions about scientific inspiration, theoretical and methodological productivity, and thinking through focusing on process, play, and collaboration. The effect of this is a questioning of the singular academic ‘I’ by exploring and showing what a plural ‘I’ can look like. It is about what the multiplicity of voice can offer research in a highly individualistic time. The article allows the reader to follow and watch the unconventional trial-and-error path of the ongoing-ness of exploring theories and methods together as a research community via methods of drama, palimpsest, and fictionary.
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