Peer-reviewed article
Recognising the Embedded Child: Children’s Participation, Child Protection Inequities and Cultural Capital in Child Protection
Emily Keddell ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This article is a theoretical discussion of children's right to take part in child protection decisions. It uses two lenses, child welfare inequalities and cultural capital, to ask how class and culture shape the way participation works in practice. The author argues that child protection professionals often treat children as a 'universal child' and give little attention to children's social backgrounds. This can disadvantage children whose ways of expressing themselves differ from professional expectations. The author suggests that giving more authority to affected communities may support participation better.
Key points
- Participation in child protection decisions is supported by moral imperatives and international conventions, but its implementation is fragmented.
- Liberal, neoliberal and 'child focussed' policy frameworks tend to detach children from their social backgrounds and promote a 'universal child'.
- How children's views are elicited, what they say and how it is interpreted depend on professional assumptions that give little attention to class, ethnicity and structural oppression.
- Attachment theory, the 'adultification' of children of colour, the diminishing of Indigenous concepts of childhood and 'concerted cultivation' parenting norms reinforce this process.
- Children may not meet professional expectations of verbal expression, independence and entitlement because of cultural and class socialisation and the history of oppressive child protection systems; devolving authority to communities may better enable participation.
Limitations
The abstract describes a conceptual argument and reports no empirical data, so it cannot show how often these problems occur or whether the proposed community-based approach works. It does not name specific countries, although the references to Indigenous children and children of colour suggest particular contexts.
Abstract
Children’s right to participation in child protection decision-making is supported by moral imperatives and international conventions. The fragmented implementation of this right reflects an already-conflicted discursive terrain that attempts to incorporate both children’s agency and their need for protection. This article uses two key theoretical lenses to further examine this terrain: child welfare inequalities and cultural capital. These theories draw attention to how social inequities and cultural capital relating to culture and class affect how participation plays out. An unintended consequence of constructing children within a traditional liberal account of rights, within neoliberal and ‘child focussed’ policy paradigms, is the reduction of an acknowledgment of the culturally contested nature of an individualistic construction of children, excising children from their social backgrounds and promoting the notion of a ‘universal child’. With a particular focus on class, culture and professional paradigms, I argue that the ways children’s views are elicited, the content of those views and how they are interpreted, become subject to a set of professional assumptions that tend to take little cognisance of the social backround of children, including norms relating to class, ethinicity and the oppressive structural relations relating to those two factors. This process is shored up with concepts such as attachment theory, the ‘adultification’ of children of colour, the diminishing of Indigenous concepts of children and childhood, and the pre-eminence of the ‘concerted cultivation’ middle class parenting style. The child’s cultural worldview and manner of expressing it may clash with professional cultures that emphasise an ability for verbal expression, independence, and entitlement when negotiating preferences with representatives of powerful social institutions such as child protection systems. Many children may not comply with this expectation due to both cultural and class socialisation processes, and the histories of the oppressive functions of child protection systems. The unspoken power of child protection organisations that must engage in constant translation of children’s cultural capital to ensure participation, may instead better serve children’s participation aims by devolving authority to affected communities. Communities reflecting children’s own, may be better able to offer recognition to children and enable their participation more effectively.