Agency draws our attention to some new ways of thinking about children and youth that impact policy and practice. When we pay attention to young people’s agency, we learn from them—we learn about what issues are important to them. This learning broadens our understanding of childhood, and hopefully benefits children as well.

Thinking about agency is also the inverse of traditional socialisation theory. Socialisation theory assumes that children are passive receivers of society’s messages.

Reproductive justice requires that every individual be able to make their own choices about their reproductive lives and have access to reproductive health services.

Access to services is very important here—there’s no point having access to choice about your body if you don’t have access to services. For example, if you want to have a child but you will never have access to childcare, this impinges on your agency. If you don’t want to have a child but you never have access to birth control or abortion, this also limits your agency.

From a socio-cultural perspective, childhood is a construction

Childhood and children’s lives and treatment change over time; many aspects of childhood are neither constant nor universal

The “child” and “childhood” are understood differently across societies and geographical spaces; history (including art) provides a rich source of knowledge about children and childhoods across time and space

Constructions of childhood are different over time and place

Ableism – discrimination against disabled people through the privileging of non-disabled people. Ableism can be systemic or individual.

Understanding disability differently

Consider thinking of children in anti-eugenic terms

Bodymind Difference – a way of challenging the idea that the body and mind are separate. Disability is an identity that is note solely physical or mental; it is interconnected with one’s entire being and experiences

Inspiration Porn – images that objectify disabled people for the benefit of non-disabled people; purpose is to inspire/motivate, “however bad my life is, it could be worse”; but what if you are that person?

Social Model of Disability – society disables people more than their bodies/minds

Human rights model – works with social model

Medical Model of Disability (dominant perspective) - disability is an individual medical problem that needs to be fixed

Charitable Model of Disability – relying on charity

Settler Common Sense – pathology-centered, deficit-oriented, professional control. Works to erase or remove anyone considered outside of “normal”, indigenous people, disabled people, poor people, etc. [eugenics]

Childhood is attached to some people longer than it is others – disabled people are treated like children when they are fully grown adults, they are infantilized

Consumer Culture – A society in which the accumulation of material possessions is emphasized and valued. People define themselves through purchasing power, which is closely linked to identity.

Kids are an enormous part of our economy

Children represent a lucrative market

Children contribute to the productions of goods

Children are social actors with a relationship to the economy

Material Culture of Childhood – Refers to the physical objects, artifacts, and possessions associated with the experience of being a child in a particular society or historical context.

Advertisers target children specifically – marked increased in more general promotional activities aimed at children

Advertising at school

How are messages conveyed to children in educational settings?

Playbour – Mash-up of “play” and “labour” referring to the idea of performing labour within the context of play or leisure activities. In digital environments, children engage in activities that resemble play while simultaneously contributing to the creation of value or content.

Bedroom Culture

Digital media responds to the closing off public spaces

Digital media often separates children and adults

Online networking turns the bedroom into a social, shared space

Blurs the lines between public and private, play and labour

Bedroom becomes a place for social activities (zoom calls, games, etc.)

The topic of childhood, power, and justice has historical links

Brown. v. Education is a court case that includes the story of Ruby Bridges, and emphasizes the phrase “separate but not equal.”

This includes Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital. To have power, you need different kinds of capital: economic, social, and cultural.

Understanding the ontology of race helps us understand the interactions between childhood and race. (The Doll Test is an example of how this works).

Race is social and political; race is not biological.

Myths about race being biological are rooted in eugenic thinking (and scientific racism). This is proven by the Human Genome Project.

Race is an ever-present social category that governs many elements of young people’s interactions with others, and with their understandings of themselves.

Two key distinctions: children as innocent vs childhood innocence

Childhood innocence is a social construct

Innocence is not applied equally to all children (as our previous lectures demonstrate about RACE)

Notions of innocence can cause children to become increasingly marginalized from activities and concerns of the “adults world,” meaning that they miss out on important aspects of development (i.e. play). This increases their vulnerability.

We notice the tension between innocence and vulnerability in contemporary debates around sexual education. For example, when we deny children access to sexuality education because we believe them to be too innocent or not “ready” to learn, we increase their vulnerability to abuse and misinformation.

Sociospatial - how our environment impacts us

Cultural identity is not fixed

We can understand rights beginning with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Canada, children also experience rights through: the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; The Youth Criminal Justice Act; education rights; child welfare laws; healthcare; family law.

Rights are not always enjoyed when children are interpreted as non-agentic. For example, children can be displaced and excluded when they are ascribed nomadic sensibilities in opposition to sedentarist cultures.

We might improve children’s rights by actively thinking about citizenship.

We might also improve children’s rights by understanding transnationalism as a feature that contributes to nuanced identity and culture.

Metaverse - XR tech is promising for education, but risks childrens development, increases playbour and also has safety concerns

If there is no single story of childhood, how is childhood changing? (AI technology, climate change, etc.

Blaikie (2020) - "Worlding is about attending to individual and collective experiences, disrupting boundaries between different aspects of life, and embracing the affective, material, and spatial qualities of our lives. It is an ongoing, active process that involves storytelling, becoming, and belonging. Danny uses her creative expression as a way to understand and communicate her complex emotions and experiences, including feelings of instability, growth, homelessness, and struggles with identity and belonging. Through her art and poetry, Danny creates a world that reflects her inner thoughts and feelings, allowing her to manipulate how she sees herself and find stability and growth.

Spyrou (2020) - Children as future-makers; children are not just beings but "becomings", we must consider children as agents of change and take them seriously when they are engaging in activism (climate change)

Ransom (2017) - Prince combats the stereotype for what black people are meant to be and inspires young Ransom; examines how one's own childhood/experiences may parallel with another who experiences the same sociocultural experience as you (like black childhood)

Austin, Graffam (2023) - Children's agency is ignored and the concept of childhood innocence is weaponized to discriminate/attack the LGBTQ community

Bickford (2020) - sexual innocence imposed on underage female celebs, but not males. keyword = "puerile" (childishness/silliness), "blue eyed soul" (white people appropriating black music/R&B) delves into the complex interplay between childhood, celebrity, and public media, particularly in the case of Justin Bieber. It explores how the concept of prodigy is used to blur the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, public and private, and how new media platforms like YouTube play a crucial role in framing the relationships between child celebrities and their young fans.