There has been a very welcome recent growth in research directly with and by children and young people, with a wide range of reporting children’s own views and experiences. Research ethics has also recently been receiving a great deal of attention, and there are debates about the extent to which research with children differs from research with other groups. This paper draws on the author’s experiences of empirical sociological research with 12-15 year olds conducted in a deprived town in SE England in the late 1990s that explored children and young people’s social networks and neighbourhoods, and the implications for their health and well-being (social capital). The paper focuses on some ethical dilemmas raised during the research, and concludes with a discussion of broader issues related to dissemination and the policy implications of research

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14733280701791918

Ethical dilemmas in research with children and young people about their social environments

This article explores children's participation in research, from the perspectives of researchers who have conducted research with children. Researchers' reports, gained using an email interviewing method, suggest that children's participation rights are particularly compromised when the potential child participants are considered vulnerable and the topic of the research is regarded as sensitive. Such perceptions result in stringent gatekeeping procedures that prevent some children from participating in research. This article concludes that children should be viewed, not as vulnerable passive victims, but as social actors who can play a part in the decision to participate in research. Such a view would result in more careful attention to communicating effectively with children about research, and ensuring that they may have a more central role in decision-making about participation.

Children's Participation Rights in Research:

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that ad...

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

In a broader research project about students’ perceptions of their rights in New Zealand high schools, the first author conducted an interview with a group of students that was noticeably different from her interviews with groups of students at three other high schools. This article was prompted in the first instance by a sense of this ‘noticeably different’ interview being a ‘failure’ because of the limited spoken text elicited. In this article we demonstrate what we can learn from data regarding embodiment, the interview setting, silence, laughter and, in the process, we attempt to practise ‘uncomfortable reflexivities’ advocated by Pillow (2003). We argue that an apparently ‘failed’ interview has a great deal to teach us about the theory and practice of qualitative research and the tenuous nature of the production of knowledge. We finish by identifying how our experience of this ‘failed’ interview informs our current research.

A counter-narrative of a ‘failed’ interview:

In the UK, the discourse of innocence currently prevails as a major way of understanding children. This article argues that the strength of this discourse lies in its prevalence, its resistance to challenges and the ways in which it connects ideas of innocence and vulnerability. The moral quality of the discourse of innocence works in conjunction with the sacred status of the child, to produce childhood as a moral rhetoric. Children and childhood function to explain and legitimize any practice or opinion as right while removing the necessity to provide reasons: children are the reason. The article also considers how issues around childhood and morality are implicated in the generation of social concern with risks affecting children.

The Moral Rhetoric of Childhood

Traditionally in our society, as in most if not all others, children are viewed
as the property of their parents, who are invested with rights seen as
necessary to carry out their duties However, during the course of this
century we have begun to witness a fundamental change in attitudes towards
parent/ child relationships First has been a growing recognition that parents’
rights over their children are not inviolable, and that the state has a right to
intervene to protect children’s interests Our legislation marks those changes
Until the divorce law reforms in the 1970s, decisions about children were
based on the guilt or otherwise of the parent: the guilty partner lost custody
regardless of the impact on the child Now, however, the welfare of the child
must be the paramount consideration in decisions taken by the court under
the Children Act 1989 We have also seen the growing recognition that
parents are capable of harming and abusing their children This knowledge
is now so commonplace it is difficult to comprehend the shock of the Maria
Colwell case when it first hit the headlines, shattering comfortable
assumptions about the nature of family life It is now clearly accepted that
children have a right to be protected from such harm and that the state has
a responsibility to intervene to provide that protection The other major
change has been the recognition that parents do not have sole responsibility
for their children The state is now acknowledged to have a key role to play
in supporting parents The introduction of universal child benefits and fulltime education from the age of 5, free health care and, in particular, the
provision for children of regular developmental health checks, the school
health service, dental and optical care, all attest to a level of concern current
in our society for the general well-being and protection of our children
Whether that level of concern goes far enough is a matter for political debate
which I will not pursue here But the central point is that we do have a broad
consensus that neither the rights nor the responsibilities of parenthood are
total or absolute although there are fundamental differences of opinion
about where the lines should be drawn

Gerison Lansdown

Papers

Children’s Rights