Ethical Practices of the Family Child

Abstract

Following the introduction of the influential ‘doing’ family perspective, an active understanding of parents has taken centre stage in sociological thinking on how families are constructed. However, this has not extended to children, and their roles as co-constructors of families have not received the same amount of attention. This article examines the practices children use to construct themselves as child of someone in relation to a parent. By locating children’s practices within the ‘doing’ family perspective, the article identifies three levels of childhood in families – being child, doing child and reflecting child. The article shows how the three levels must be understood in relation to discourses on what it means to be a ‘good’ child of someone, as these moral questions influence what children come to do. The article draws on interviews with 39 children (aged 5–17 years) from two studies that explored children’s family relationships in challenging family circumstances.

Interlocked: The ethics of care and the ethics of justice in children's discourses on the parent–child relationship in Chile

“…Our work has a special interest in studies that stress the powerful concern in children's ethics for the welfare and care of others, including parents and other family members, friends, neighbours and pets (Frankel, 2017;Henze-Pedersen, 2022;Maftei & Holman, 2020;Martin et al, 2021;Siedlikowski et al, 2022;Tammi et al, 2020). This concern is expressed in a context of reciprocity and contingency, in which the children do not figure merely as passive receivers but as daily agents of care, thus going far beyond notions of them as 'caring children' or 'young carers', descriptions intended for somewhat exceptional circumstances (Henderson, 2012;Vergara et al, 2020a;Wihstutz, 2011).…”

“…At the same time, we can see that the results we have obtained that refer to children's emphasis on reciprocal care between parents and children are consistent with the findings of childhood studies in various sociocultural settings. This field has shown that children's ethics refer in particular to the welfare and care of others, especially of parents and other family members (Frankel, 2017;Henze-Pedersen, 2022;Martin et al, 2021;Siedlikowski et al, 2022). This field has also enabled a relational understanding of child agency, developed originally by authors like Mayall (2002), Brannen and Heptinstall (2003) and Brannen et al (2000).…”