Abstract The level of life satisfaction perceived during childhood and adolescence is an excellent indicator of healthy psychological emotional development. The main aim of this work is to study the levels of life satisfaction perceived by young people throughout their childhood and adolescence. To this end, an innovative retrospective approach is adopted that shows how the evolution of life satisfaction is perceived at different ages according to gender. The present study is based on a sample of 600 Spanish adolescents (58.1% girls; mean age = 16.64) who report the evolution of their life satisfaction from 6 years to 18, through the Life Satisfaction Chart (LSCh). The Goldberg Anxiety and Depression Scale (GADS) is also administered to record levels of anxiety and depression. The results indicate no gender differences in terms of life satisfaction during childhood. Levels of life satisfaction are significantly higher in childhood than in pre-adolescence and adolescence and a significant decrease in levels appearing towards the age of 11. As for gender, significant differences in life satisfaction appear from the age of 12, with girls being significantly more dissatisfied, more depressed and more anxious than boys. Current levels of anxiety and depression do not appear to interfere with retrospectively reported levels of life satisfaction throughout the developmental years studied, except among the female population, where minimal interference is detected. Life satisfaction retrospectively reported by young people shows a significant decrease after the age of 11 years, with greater emotional and psychological vulnerability after this age, mainly and notably among girls. The present results highlight the importance of psychological/affective care in the pre-adolescent and adolescent stages, especially among the female population.
Maria Aymerich, Ramón Cladellas, Antoni Castelló et al.
To “make kin, not babies” is what Donna Haraway has recently proposed in response to the so-called “Anthropocene”. Building on other critical engagements with Haraway’s proposal, this paper interrogates it from a childist perspective. While striving towards a “pro-child” position on kinship, Haraway only goes so far in explicating this aim. The paper suggests that challenging adultism as well as attention to children's ongoing kinship practices are required.
Spain is one of the European countries most affected of COVID-19, and also the one with the most stringent restrictions for children. This study aims to explore how COVID-19 lockdown affects children by analysing 151 drawings from children in lockdown. Findings were represented in four main categories: (1) Activities; (2) Emotions; (3) Socialization; and (4) Academic. The results indicate the need to manage the lockdown situation taking into account also children's voices and by placing greater emphasis on social and inclusive policies to help alleviate the possible effects of the pandemic and the lockdown on them.
Nahia Idoiaga Mondragón, Amaia Eiguren Munitis, Naiara Berasategi et al.
This study explores how children navigate institutional regulation at an asylum centre and how their political acts of resistance are expressed through their struggle to access play. It shows that the children used tactical awareness to identify the displayed strategies of the institutional regulation, which was conditional for their development of tactical acts, through which they handled that regulation. The children’s political acts of resistance and struggle for play, which were hidden to the institution, demonstrated how they claimed their right to play, although this right was still structurally denied. Consequently, their politics is a politics of impediment.
Recent theorising of children’s agency has focused on relational approaches. Critical realism can provide additional theoretical reinforcement as it demands a focus on relatively enduring patterns of disadvantage and potential powers. Participatory research with children and young people confirms the relevance of Archer’s conception of influence achieved by Selves, Social Actors, and Primary and Corporate Agents. In moments, children within organised collectivities set agendas and shape some circumstances that affect others. When modified by generation-sensitive insights, Archer’s framework may provide understandings of children’s individual and collective agency. These insights might also strengthen critical realist understandings of children and childhood.
The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the need for internet connectivity and technological devices across the population, but especially among school-aged children. For a large proportion of pupils, access to a connected computer nowadays makes the difference between being able to keep up with their educational development and falling badly behind. This paper provides a detailed account of the digitally deprived children in Europe, according to the latest available wave of the European Union - Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). We find that 5.4% of school-aged children in Europe are digitally deprived and that differences are large across countries. Children that cohabit with low-educated parents, in poverty or in severe material deprivation are those most affected.
The article provides the first estimates of prevalence and trends in child poverty amongst young carers aged 5–19 in the UK using specialized income data from the Family Resources Survey / the Households Below Average Income Survey. Looking across four key indicators, we find that child poverty rates were higher amongst young carers than other children based on 3 years pooled data for 2013/14–2015/16. The differences in the prevalence of child poverty amongst young carers and other children are statistically significant in relation to two indicators (anchored low income before housing costs, and a combined measure of low income and material deprivation). Young carers also appear to have fared worse than other children in terms of trends in child poverty outcomes over the period that coincided with the financial crisis, economic downturn and onset of austerity. Amongst young carers, there was a statistically significant increase in relative low income after housing costs of nine percentage points (from 24 to 33%) between 2005/07 and 2013/15. This compares with a two percentage point decline amongst other children. Multivariate findings confirm that trends in child poverty outcomes amongst young carers were highly differentiated from those of other children and that the association between child poverty and young caring status strengthened over the period under observation. Multivariate analysis further suggests that the increases in child poverty rates amongst young carers were not driven by purely “compositional” factors relating to demographic characteristics of the households in which young carers live and that labour market factors are particularly important in explaining the trends that are observed. Overall, the findings from the study raise concerns that young carers were disproportionately impacted by the patterns of stagnating real income and declining income from employment that characterized the period following the financial crisis, economic downturn and onset of austerity, whilst underlining the importance of housing costs as a factor in child poverty amongst young carers, and raising important questions regarding the ongoing effectiveness of social protection for this group.
This paper introduces arts-based participatory research combining decolonising and empathic transformative environmental pedagogies, in the context of climate mobilities education in Finland and Greece. It offers methodological contributions to existing research with emphasis on multimodal arts methods and the role of emotions. We introduce the dimension of empathic unsettlement as a vital element of the transformative unlearning-learning cycle, and child-centred play space as an ethical setting for these challenging educational processes. Our focus on climate mobilities brings together experienced and imagined climate-changed realities, the colonial history of climate change, and its current effects on places and people around the world.
Abstract Despite previous research on adolescence points to an association between social competence and well-being, limited knowledge is available. Most studies have documented a one-way pattern of influence, although reciprocity has also been suggested. However, they mainly use a cross-sectional design, do not focus on psychological well-being, and do not use integrative and multidimensional constructs. From a eudaimonic approach to well-being and situation-specific to social competence, this study aimed to: (1) explore the factorial structure of the dimensions assessed; (2) analyse the longitudinal relationship between psychological well being and social competence during adolescence; and (3) examine psychological well-being and social competence levels and their stability over time. The sample consisted of 662 adolescents aged between 14 and 16 years old (Time 1 Mage = 14.63; SD = 0.64; 51% girls). Structural equation analysis confirmed the existence of second-order factors, showing evidence of a positive and bidirectional relationship between psychological well-being and social competence. Results also revealed medium–high levels in both constructs, which remained stable over time. These findings highlight the importance of promoting both psychological well-being and social competence to achieve successful, healthy development.
Mercedes Gómez-López, Carmen Viejo, Eva M. Romera et al.
The article reports on a study that explores children’s epistemologies of the environment. We drew on Nxumalo’s (2016) concept of ‘refiguring presences’ as a conceptual and methodological orientation. Such an orientation develops an expansive understanding of voice, encourages researchers to resist absences and erasures, and braids together activities of attending, remembering, disrupting, and imagining. Based on a study in a diverse multilingual primary school in the North West of England, we explore children’s relationships with the natural environment with a focus on treescapes. We use an anti-colonial lens and propose a mode of listening to voices in ways that recognise the emergence and entanglements of data, distributed stories, knowledge systems and concepts in ways that challenge neat theorisations about children’s relationship with the environment.
