Listening by ‘Staying With’ the Absent Child

Abstract

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.

Listening to children and young people in Sweden: Practices, possibilities, and tensions

“…Although the notion of children’s voices has been a central concern for child studies (see, for example, Orrmalm et al 2022; Spyrou 2011), the voices of children with disabilities have been conspicuously absent from research. Reasons for this include assumptions about the ability of children with disabilities to participate in research as well as the perception that other people can better represent the points of view of children with disabilities (Underwood et al, 2015: 220–221).…”

“…Reasons for this include assumptions about the ability of children with disabilities to participate in research as well as the perception that other people can better represent the points of view of children with disabilities (Underwood et al, 2015: 220–221). Furthermore, understanding “listening to children” as hearing children’s voices, where “voice” typically alludes to “a relatively straightforward mental, verbal and rational property of the individual” (Komulainen, 2007: 13), produces certain norms and standards about participation that exclude children who fall outside the norm of a “verbally expressive child” (Orrmalm et al, 2022: 71). So how can we listen to children whose voices cannot—or will not—be expressed in these ways?…”

“…The listener is thus considered as something more than a receiver and listening is a way to relate to the other’s otherness . This means that listening cannot fully overcome misunderstandings and fissures, and points to listening beyond speech, toward an embodied language as well as to the silences and voids (see also Spyrou, 2016; and Orrmalm, Annerbäck and Sparrman, 2022). Regarding listening to children when done by adults, we draw from Clark’s (2017) definition of listening as an active process, where encounters with children in research situations are processes for “co-creating meanings,” in opposition to “extracting truths.” However, we also problematize the idea that listening to children is essentially good.…”