I am delighted to have read Disabled Childhoods: Monitoring Differences and Emerging Identities by McLaughlin, Coleman-Fountain, and Clavering. Not least of all because it makes a significant contribution to the limited amount of texts which explore issues that impact upon disabled childhoods. The authors engage with conflicting and consolatory theoretical perspectives from disability studies, youth studies, childhood studies, branches of geography and sociology, in particular medical sociology. This book now sits on my bookshelf alongside Curran and Runswick-Cole’s 2013 Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies: Critical Approaches in a Global Context. Together these have motivated me to write an undergraduate module about Disabled Childhoods and I suggest that collectively they have paved the way for a new, exciting and long overdue discipline in ‘Disabled Childhood Studies’.
There are seven chapters to Disabled Childhoods plus a very helpful introduction, which is almost a chapter in its own right. Here the reader is left very clear about the disability politics which shape the work of the authors and their qualification to make this contribution to the field. The reader is then introduced to the four distinct parts to the book: ‘theoretical and methodological practices’, ‘monitoring institutions’, ‘relational identity’ and ‘practice and implications’. What I absolutely love about this book is the sense that McLaughlin et al. are writing around the voices of disabled children – young people are absolutely at the centre of it in every way. As a reader I was confident the work is evidence based; it is soaked in inclusive research and outstanding data.
In part one the authors acknowledge that, in much the same way as criticisms have been levied at sociology for ignoring disability, Childhood Studies has also failed to recognise the experience of disabled children. Despite the important contribution Childhood Studies has made to improving debates about, for example, children’s rights and agency, the failure of this major discipline to include disabled children has arguably contributed to their oppression and marginalisation. McLaughlin et al. explore ‘entanglements’ which shape disabled childhoods by foregrounding the experiences of disabled children and young people. They do this whilst acknowledging the usual bureaucratic systems which cause dilemmas for reflexive, inclusive researchers, who wish to work in ways that enable participation through non-paternalistic methodologies.
Discussion about inclusive research is largely located in chapter two, where the writers open their methodological tool kit and share their experiences of researching with disabled children and young people, their families and carers. I really enjoyed this chapter from start to finish and wanted more as I was led through specific projects with children and young people into a discussion about problematic issues which challenge and often prevent research with children and young people. The writers call for flexible approaches to working with children and young people to ensure projects are able to appreciate their capacity as both research participants and social agents. This chapter in particular was deeply reflexive on the part of the researchers, which makes it essential reading for anyone considering research with children or young people. It forces questions about the validity of work claiming to be about children and young people which fails to engage them as active and respected participants. They make a clear, strong case that ethically sound approaches to constructing knowledge about the lives of children and young people must be achieved through participatory channels of research which position children and young people as capable social agents who can not only contribute to research but, to ensure their protection, should also be engaged in the process. They affirm the idea that the role of the adult researcher is as an ‘atypical adult’ who is there not to impart knowledge to children and young people but to learn from them and the worlds they inhabit.
In part two the writers acknowledge and challenge notions of ‘normal’ within the context of institutions. In the broadest sense they look at structural, cultural, social and professional discourses including family, society, education and medicine. Here I found much to help me teach disability studies, in particular models of disability, as the two chapters in this section of the book provide examples to enable sense-making around psycho/emotional disablism and in particular ideas around ‘independence’. Such discussions are explored with regard to transitions to adulthood and examine the complicated and often complex relationships between young people and their families. McLaughlin et al. look towards socio-cultural and institutional discourses to understand the ‘relational dynamics around interactions’, which shape disabled children and young people’s identities.
The two chapters in part three provide essential discussion around the ‘body’ and embodiment in the context of disabled children and young people. However, there are clear messages which translate to similar discussions regarding adults, and in this regard I feel McLaughlin et al. make a significant contribution to the subject of embodiment as a whole.
Not surprisingly, given that this is a book about Disabled Childhoods, children’s agency is foregrounded to acknowledge the role they play in shaping their own body politics in and outside the family. Whilst the two chapters in this section deal with different things, I got a strong message from both that ultimately they are about ‘othering’, citizenship and the multiple layers of influence that disabled children and young people contend with as they enact their embodied experiences across differing social spaces and context. For anyone with an interest in disability studies or critical disability studies this text provides insightful data from research projects exemplifying practices and demonstrating emerging disabled identities. Here this book made me consider disability body politics and identity more than ever before. I began to look towards Disability Arts, where the body is so brilliantly celebrated, for representation of disabled children and young people. Perhaps for the first time I was encouraged to really think about young disabled bodies and their forming identity within the context of the institution of what McLaughlin (Citation2012) has previously argued is a disabled family.
The writers apply sound theoretical tools to analyse family narratives, many of which are deeply insightful and lead seamlessly into the final part of the book and a chapter titled ‘Embodied and Relational Citizenship’. Here citizenship is explored. This chapter offers disability studies a valuable piece on citizenship by dealing with citizenship in an inclusive way. Since its publication this chapter has featured across many of the assignments from my students who wish to challenge the narrowness of Marshall’s (Citation1950) well-cited text Citizenship & Social Class. In my view the chapter not only makes a contemporary contribution, but also grapples with the messiness of citizenship across oppressed groups in the life course.
In case you have not already gathered, I strongly recommend Disabled Childhoods for many reasons. The most important one to me is that the book is soaked in rich well-conducted research data. This book will remain a core text in a great number of the modules I teach.
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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© 2017 Dawn Benson
https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2017.1372945
References
- Marshall, T. H. 1950. Citizenship & Social Class: And other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- McLaughlin, J. 2012. “Understanding disabled families: replacing tales of burden with ties of interdependency.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone, and C. Thomas, 402–413. Oxon: Routledge.