Children and young people's relationships, relational processes and social change: reading across worlds

Abstract

We begin by defining relationships and relational processes, before presenting children's personal relationships, and the relational processes making them personal, as of particular significance in shaping selves and social worlds. This sets the scene for the relevance of children and young people's personal relationships compared across Majority and Minority Worlds to debates about global social change. This includes claims characterising change in terms of ‘individualisation’, ‘democratisation’ and ‘commercialisation’. The authors’ work on children's adult–child relationship in public places and on children and young people's experiences of parent precipitated family household change in a Minority World context is briefly compared to insights from studies of Majority World street children and of children and young people with migrant parents in the Majority World.

Keywords:

• relationships
• children
• globalization
• family
• transnational
• individualization
• democracy
• commercialisation

Acknowledgements

Particular thanks to the children who participated in our research projects and to the voluntary organisations involved in Cool with Change. Thanks to the anonymous referees and to Berry Mayall for insightful comments.

Sue Milne's research was supported by an ESRC studentship (PTA-030-2004-00795) and the Cool with Change project was supported by a lottery research grant funding now called the Big Lottery.

Notes

Poor working-class children were integrated into many aspects of family and household work being regarded as at the service of adults, particularly their parents (e.g., Nasaw 1985, Jamieson 1987, Davin 1996). In this sense, Magazine and Sanchez (2007) are over-simplifying when they speak of the ‘European tradition’ of children's dependence, since this presumes a long history of a form of ‘normal childhood’ that was not widespread till the second half of the twentieth century.

The term ‘to ken’ is Scots for ‘to know’, like the German verb kennen.

The early death of a parent also continues to be a major risk to a child's personal and familial relationships in much of the Majority World.

The Cool with Change project investigated the experiences and views of 10–14 year olds of family change. Surveys were conducted in one city in school with pupils from diverse ethnic backgrounds and varied socio-economic circumstances. This identified pupils who had experienced family change, most commonly a father leaving the family household following the divorce or separation of parents. In depth interviews explored young people's experiences and views of family change. 361 pupils were surveyed and in depth interviews conducted with 55 pupils. All names used in quotations are pseudonyms.

UK commentaries include Crow (2002), Smart and Shipman (2004), Brannen and Nilsen (2005), Duncan and Smith (2006), Smart (2007) and Charles et al. (2008).