Past,present and futures of childhood studies: A conversation with former editors of Childhood

DAN COOK: Thank you for being able to participate in this Special Anniversary Conversation of Childhood. As former Editors of Childhood, you have a rather unique perspective on the journal and on the field of childhood studies generally that we can explore.

To start things off, can you describe your sense of the ‘state of the field’ when you first assumed your role as Editor? Did you bring a driving concern that you sought to have the journal address, or a particular problem or area of study you thought required the attention that was being overlooked at the time?

IVAR FRØNES (Editor, 1993–1999): Being the first editor, and the sole editor for the first year of Childhood, my experience is a bit different from the later editors. The journal has its roots in the emerging field of childhood research in the late 1980s; more precisely, it grew out of a dialogue between researchers agreeing on the need for an interdisciplinary journal on childhood studies. Many experienced a lack of interests in childhood research from the disciplines of social sciences and their journals, as well as a narrow understanding of children and their development. The journal would – we hoped – provide greater intellectual coherence to the field, and engage authors in wider public and academic conversation. In a meeting before the launching of the journal, the first editorial board emphasised that the journal should be global, both in the variety of cultural perspectives as well as in factual publication, not ‘international’ in the sense culturally and numerically dominated by the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as being open to a variety of research methods and perspectives.

Childhood was the result of discourses among groups of researchers, with different perspectives, theories and backgrounds, moving into a new field and what we experienced as new frontiers. The idea was to challenge the fragmentation of disciplines as well as of professional practices, through a journal that could provide an interdisciplinary and holistic perspective and, not at least, include the perspectives of children.

IRENE RIZZINI (Editor, 1996–2002): I joined the group of editors of Childhood in the early 1990s, invited by Sharon Stephens, who was at the time a visiting scholar at Norwegian Centre for Child Research (NOSEB) in Trondheim, Norway. That was before the transition of the journal to SAGE, so it was the very first years of the journal’s existence.

Coming from Brazil and having had the opportunity to interact with researchers and various child-related professionals from countries in the Southern Hemisphere, I understood my contribution to ‘the field’ was to bring perspectives from the so called ‘Global South’. Not that I believe that anyone can do that given the enormous diversity even within one specific country. However, I accepted it because I thought I could contribute in some ways that related to my sense of the ‘state of the field’ at the time. It was for the same reason that I got deeply involved in the Childwatch International Research Network: the effort to bring the issue of children’s rights closer to the academic world, supporting research centres from many countries and engaging scholars to include young people in the human rights agenda. By understanding the challenges that scholars from the South often face to publish and disseminate their research, I thought I could support them as an editor. For me that means being more open to multiple approaches and methodologies, some of which are very innovative and creative but do not find space in regular journals because they do not fit the norms. Then, too, researchers from the South face real limitations and barriers to publish their work internationally due to the fact that the language of communication in the researchers’ own countries is not English! Finally, I was (and am today) convinced that while it is fine to have researchers from wealthy countries engage in research in African, Latin American and Asian poverty-stricken countries, that work needs to be done in a much more respectful and shared way. I felt comfortable in this role of acting as a bridge between two worlds that have a lot to share but find it difficult to find the spaces to do so.

JENS QVORTRUP (Editor, 1998–2007): What was my sense of the ‘state of the field’ in 1998 as I joined the editorial staff of Childhood? As far as I am concerned, the large project ‘Childhood as a Social Phenomenon’ (CSP) was finalised and laid behind us with a feeling that something important had been achieved, ideas consolidated and worth the while to build on. Yet, although the step was not conclusively taken from using the humble notion of ‘the new sociology of childhood’ to the more self-assured ‘social studies of childhood’, an increasing quantity of research activities had been set in motion, using largely the same research language. Much time and energy was used to define – theoretically and methodologically – the new field, displayed, for instance, by a preoccupation of how to understand childhood in sociological terms. Indeed, also other disciplines made claims to being insightful contributors, such as anthropology and geography. The progress noted gave us a feeling of having established a kind of community. It was demonstrated, for instance, by initiating other indispensable requirements to establish a field in terms of organisational enterprises and projects such as associations allowing scholars to gather and exchange new views, knowledge and insight (International Sociological Association, American Sociological Association, Soziologie der Kindheit, etc.). To this form of necessary activity also belongs the establishment of platforms for disseminating results of theory and methods of research such as journals. Prominent among them was Childhood, which was launched in 1993 by Ivar Frønes, who at the same time was a member of the above-mentioned CSP.

When asked in the second question if I as a co-editor brought with me a ‘driving concern’ that I wanted the journal to address, I would answer in the following way: As far as I remember the supply of good submissions was often less than the demand, which sometimes made it difficult to reach a satisfactory composition of articles. This is probably a usual scenario for new journals and in case made it difficult to realise what here was mentioned as a driving concern.

At the same time, I cannot say that I and other editors were indifferent to the journal’s direction. Indeed, we all had ideas about what we wanted to see as the development of the new field. Therefore, even if the number of submissions left a good part to be desired, we all had – I believe – a red line which none of us wanted to see crossed over.

While certainly in most cases a colleague’s choice of articles was accepted and/or tolerated, although not necessarily enthusiastically, I do remember at least one case, which caused a heated debate under the euphemistical name of ‘an interesting dialogue’. This had to do with a proposal for a Special Issue put forward by a group of developmental psychologists and which in my view threatened to violate what I thought was a core element of the ‘new sociology of childhood’.

Besides this example and to the best of my remembrance, I do not think during my term that the journal was instrumentalised to favour certain fads and foibles. Rather there was a sense of goodwill in an ecumenical spirit.

However, I do believe we have been carrying one omission until this very day, namely, to being inattentive to the differences between the notions child, children and childhood. To put it briefly: child is about the individual child, childhood is a structural concept, while children represents a collectivity (see Corsaro, 2015: 41ff). A clarification of this distinction may be helpful and reveal differences between disciplines.

OLGA NIEUWENHUYS (Editor, 2005–2013): I have been reading the journal assiduously from the very beginning, recommending it to colleagues and students, quoting from it, occasionally reviewing articles and publishing some of my work in it. The journal was launched in a period in which, after many years of research, I had come to badly miss a specialised journal focusing on the social study of childhood from a global perspective. Childhood being normally understood as that very special period in life believed to be the privilege of the Northern middle-classes, I found the qualification ‘global’ of the journal’s sub-title, particularly promising. In those years, studies of childhood did not only tacitly assume that there is but one proper childhood, they also spent most of their energy discussing what I saw as minor difficulties encountered by a tiny minority of world’s children in the full enjoyment of their privileged position. The rest of the children, if they were the object of study at all, were deemed hopelessly deviating from normality, their problems so severe to request a total reform of their societies. The geographical spread of studies reflected, one could say, the power imbalances in the world, with much attention focused on the centres of power and the rest treated as terra incognita.

Over the years, the editors had been struggling against this academic bias, but had been challenged by two main issues: first, scholarship on children in the Global South was heavily influenced by short-term policy concerns. Reflecting the concerns of their funding agencies, researchers tended to work with such stereotypical categories as ‘child labour’ or ‘aids orphans’ in which the child was a priori assumed to be a passive victim calling for radical remedies to his or her predicaments. Despite profuse references to children’s rights, the developmental jargon these researchers routinely busied, sustained a binary thinking that exaggerated the difference between Northern and Southern childhoods and hampered a truly global approach. Second, even if the editors had long decided that a proper representation would require academic positive action, they had time and again concluded that eligible senior researchers from the South which could be invited to join the editorial team were hard to find. So, when in 2006 Irene decided the step down, the editorial team decided to invite me to act as a proxy for the Global South, entrusting me with an impossible mission of which I was all too aware.

VIRGINIA (aka GINNY) MORROW (Editor, 2006–2016): I remember the invitation came quite out of the blue, (I had acted as co-editor with Judith Ennew of a Special Issue in celebration of Sharon Stephens’ work published in 2002, and I had refereed many papers for the journal but was not a member of the Editorial Board). For me, it was very timely to accept the invitation, because I had not long started as Programme Leader of the MA Childhood Studies at the Institute of Education (IOE; now MA Sociology of Childhood & Children’s Rights) and IOE has been taken over by the University College of London. This innovative, exciting Master’s programme developed by Liz Brooker, Priscilla Alderson and Berry Mayall – which was from the outset attracted students from all over the world was truly international. However, one of the challenges we faced on the MA programme was where to direct students for high quality research/texts/readings that were relevant to the situations and contexts of children in their countries of origin, because we were very keen that knowledge from each country should be shared among fellow students, so they would learn from each other, we could learn from them too, and they could take their shared learning back to their practice and future research.

My driving concern that I thought required attention was to widen the reach of papers that the journal published beyond the UK/Nordic focus to the rest of the world. My sense of the state of the field at the time was that thinking sociologically about children and childhood was becoming well-established as a field (and the MA programmes that were starting up in various parts of the world were evidence of this impetus) but that there needed to be greater attention to diversity of settings – at the time, the number of serious studies of children and childhood in the majority world was limited. The field felt rather parochial. I also felt that there wasn’t enough of a focus on the social structural factors that shaped and constrained the daily lives of children, nor enough attention to the interdependencies between children and adults, childhood and adulthood, and the interconnections between local, national and global.

DAN COOK: Thank you for your responses. Everyone made note that Childhood originated as an aspiration to speak to or represent different perspectives, be they disciplinary, ‘global’ or otherwise. Irene, Olga and Ginny noted the importance of the Global South in this effort. Do you see a diversity of perspectives – in the journal and in the field at large? How is this diversity manifested – in reference to the South and/or also in reference to other kinds of difference? What kinds of differences or diversities are emerging that will matter to childhood/childhood studies? Do you have any thoughts about the relationship between multidisciplinary and other kinds of diversities in relation to child scholarship?

OLGA NIEUWENHUYS: I think that, as editors, we have found all perspectives worthwhile exploring, except what Donna Haraway termed the ‘God’s eye trick’. This is the perspective of scholars who pretend to look down on the world as if they were not part of it, and treat all forms of situated knowledge, and particularly children’s, as biased and unscientific. Only the ‘trick’ contradicts the journal’s commitment to children’s rights and its aim to stake out a legitimate place for the study of children as social actors. We have therefore welcomed contributions inspired by such diverse theoretical strands as postmodernism, feminism, critical realism, actor-network theory, assemblage theory and postcolonialism, but without any of these prevailing over others. The reason for this eclecticism, I believe, is that child scholars have been overwhelmingly preoccupied with finding a common ground to challenge established disciplines that treat children as passive objects of study or units of analysis. This preoccupation has been successful, but perhaps we have not been attentive enough to the wider impact of children’s rights on scholarship in general and have failed to appreciate that, as we were staking out the field, others were also occupying territory.

What we have seen in the past 15 years or so are emerging new disciplinary boundaries around children’s rights, children’s geographies, children’s literature, children and media, the history of childhood and so on. These boundaries are in my view different in nature from those we have been busy pulling down. They arise within established disciplines, and their proponents should be our allies, as they adopt the same eclectic non-positivist stance and cross-disciplinary engagement. But it is too soon to claim that what looks a bit as a grassroots movement intent on challenging such old disciplinary bastions as developmental psychology, education sciences and pedagogy will gather momentum and lead to a paradigm change. There is a real danger that the result may turn out to be something akin to what happened with gender studies, in which the gender dimension has been widely misinterpreted as ‘adding women and stir’, leaving the old paradigms largely unchanged.

JENS QVORTRUP: Dan’s question is crucial and goes to the core of our efforts for coming to terms with understanding childhood and children’s status. It is at the same time symptomatic for current trends (including contributions to Childhood) that we are asked to respond to questions about how fruitful and prevalent differences and diversity are among childhoods/children rather than similarities and commonalities. I know that I have addressed the question before and it is unavoidable that I come to repeat myself.

Nobody can and will deny the occurrence of differences between childhoods/children due to enormous diversity of background, but largely this is a triviality. To recognise differences between childhoods/children in terms of class, gender, ethnicity and so on may add to our understanding of these categories but rather deprives childhood/children of a conceptual home and of conceptual autonomy. Perhaps it takes a structural sociologist like Arthur Stinchcombe – inadvertently, perhaps, because unknowledgeable about sociology of childhood, let alone of our journal – to come up with answers that avoid holistic approaches to personhood to the advantage of category.

Stinchcombe (1986) is looking for pervasive categories that do not deny variation but rather pervade the whole lives of people like male–female, citizen–alien, Black–White and in particular child–adult, a distinction found in all societies. The child–adult contrast is a structural distinction, in the sense that it gives structure to a wide variety of superficially different situations. This structural distinction between childhood, adulthood and old age is a generational distinction and my thesis is that without a generational perspective we do not need social studies of childhood. This is the only perspective that allows generational segments to be compared with each other, and we should promote studies that underline what children have in common. The use of a comparative method presupposes our awareness of commonalities (rather than differences) between children, which in turn makes it possible to distinguish childhood from other generational segments. Alanen (2012) is convincingly making the same argument in terms of what she calls a relational sociology of childhood, where the units in the relationship are generational segments.

Stinchcombe is not dissolving the notion of childhood and children by splitting these categories into a number of subcategories like gender, class and ethnicity; he is rather observing variation and out of this variation or diversity he creates what he calls pervasive categories, that is, categories that reappear in a meaningful sense in quite a number of different contexts – all having to do with generational relations.

Olga is advocating multi-disciplinarity – but how do we implement this as a programme for the advancement of childhood studies? Does it mean to juxtapose each disciplinary approach ad libitum, or as I would prefer – to accept each of these approaches provided it adds to understanding childhood in an intergenerational or relational perspective?

GINNY MORROW: Childhood is grounded in what might be termed ‘new social studies of childhood’/sociology of childhood/anthropology of childhood, and most of the papers fall into this category. Broadly speaking, some childhood research has been published in mainstream journals, such as The Sociological Review, Sociology, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, but in my view, there needs to be much greater integration so that childhood studies doesn’t box itself into a corner and only speak to others within the box. I feel that gradually, childhood studies is being taken more seriously by other disciplines. This has been most marked with the cross-over with social geography in the very strong field of children’s geographies, and law, with the International Journal of Children’s Rights, edited by Professor Michael Freeman. Over the past 40 years, Michael Freeman has influenced the way the law in England (at least) thinks about children and young people – which is why it is possible to publish chapters with titles like: ‘Why Judges Need to Know and Understand Childhood Studies’ (Henaghan, 2012).

But the risk for Childhood is that it preaches to the converted. Engagement with the full range of social science disciplines is still missing. Would it be possible to envisage a series of papers entitled ‘Why economists/ statisticians/educationists need to know and understand childhood studies’? The Sustainable Development Goals include measurement and monitoring – but the way things are measured and monetised is not necessarily sensitive to children’s realities. Sally Engle Merry and Summer Wood (2015), in a seminal paper, address this in relation to children’s rights in Tanzania. There are also, gradually, signs of change within developmental psychology. A recent commentary by Kofi Marfo (2016) highlights some of the risks of applying Western constructs and categories on to childhoods in other places – these kinds of approaches are fruitful ways forward, and widen the relevance of Childhood for global debates.

IRENE RIZZINI: The brief reflections below are based on my interactions with colleagues from Southern and Northern countries in the past few years.

First, one can identify a growing interdisciplinary exchange of research themes focusing on the broad area of children’s rights. The commonality of interest stems from a common interest in and commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. With all its limitations, the Convention has become a well-recognized historical mark and an international reference. Researchers from many countries use the Convention as a baseline for investigating children’s issues and organise their writing around the issue of rights and the deprivation or violation of rights. This common thread means that scholars from the South and the North can comment on each other’s work much more effectively because of this commonality.

Another commonality which permits research interaction is the growing ease with which North and South scholarly production employ a variety of disciplines. Greater opportunities for interaction among scholars, with a growing awareness of the diversity of childhoods, as mentioned by my colleagues in this roundtable, have made this exchange richer than in the past. I believe that journals such as Childhood have contributed to this process.

I wonder about an important fact about the character of childhood studies in the South and the degree to which it is mirrored in the North. Given the desperate condition of many children in the South, not only scholars but also their academic institutions regard the injection of research deep into political forums as part of the responsibility of scholars. This is not just dissemination, it is taking the research into the forums where policy and practice decisions are made. These activities are bound to take time away from just the pursuit of research, but this active involvement in forums and debates is seen as legitimate and important activities for scholars. Is this kind of involvement also common in the North, and is it seen as legitimate and not reducing the status of the active scholar?

Another question I have is why references in international journals are dominated by the work of Northern scholars? We all know that editors dominate publication decisions and that journals have strong points of view about what constitutes legitimate research. Some of these views contribute to better, more reliable research. But is there a way in which dominant paradigms unnecessarily crowd out not just scholars but also information and ideas from the South?

IVAR FRØNES: Childhood originated in an aspiration to represent different perspectives, related not only to various disciplines and perspectives both also to different childhoods. Childhoods vary enormously around the world, as illustrated by that many children are in the position of being mothers. Childhoods vary within countries; some life paths are filled with trepidation. Social inequality is increasingly recognised as a basic societal challenge, and as rooted in unequal childhoods. I agree with Jens that childhood studies need a conceptual framework encompassing all varieties of childhoods. This has to be related to societal forms in Marxian sense; the means and mode of production produce the ‘knowledge societies’ framing modern childhoods and modern inequality. From my perspective, the concept and perspective of children’s well-being, which can be related to the diverse social and cultural framing of childhood, represents a possible core concept in studies on childhood and children.

In this perspective, the purpose of analysing childhood is to identify the structures and mechanisms shaping children’s life and well-being; this requires elaborated theorising as well as elaborated empirical analysis. In the perspective of well-being, as depicted by Amartya Sen, children’s rights refer to children’s life here and now, and to their right to optimal developmental opportunities. This implies that educational environments, as stated by Article 29, ‘should develop each child’s personality, talents and abilities to the fullest’. This involves a fair access to opportunity structures, freedom to participate in the opportunity structures provided and the development of capacities and resources to utilise the opportunities. As illustrated by the buzzword ‘dropout’; many young people are lacking economic, social or cultural resources to utilise their opportunities, producing untapped potentials and lack of well-being. Children’s well-being are produced by an interplay of factors within a variety of economic, social and cultural frames, ranging from societal formation to the micro level of community and families, influencing foetal development as well as social well-being. The understanding of this interplay requires multi-disciplinarity.

The perspective of children themselves and subjective well-being is essential not only because it informs research about what children think is important to their own well-being, but also because it underlines the diversity of childhoods and their equally diverse interpretive frames. The complexity and diversity makes the perspective of child’s best interests equally complex, and opens for groups abusing the concept to justify their own interests. Research on children has to be communicated within a complex political landscape, underlining the need for theoretically elaborated and valid empirically rooted analysis, which is the task for a journal like Childhood. Childhood studies, focusing the least powerful of social groups, also need to be formulated as a public social science, in the Michael Burawoy sense. Not only to inform the public about children and childhood, but also to encourage debates that can enrich the political, institutional and conceptual discourses on childhood. Chilhood’s possible position in the political discourse is – as far as I can see – a basic future challenge.

DAN COOK: There appears to be wide and robust views on the question of differences and diversities in childhood studies, as should be expected from a panel composed of scholars such as yourselves.

Jens posed a question directly to Olga’s insistence on multi-disciplinarity asking, in a sense, if multi-disciplinarity in itself is useful or non-useful if such a perspective contributes to ‘understanding childhood in an intergenerational or relational perspective’. As well, Ivar suggests that childhood studies require multi-disciplinarity in order to understand children’s well-being. Both Irene and Olga emphasise the importance of the identities and backgrounds of the scholars who undertake childhood research and writing, that is, in particular, whether and how Global South perspectives and approaches are being represented and thus are participating in a larger conversation in Childhood and in the field generally. Another concern, voiced by Ginny, centres on the public and political status of childhood scholarship – that is, making one’s research relevant beyond the pages of academic journals and avoiding ‘talking to ourselves’.

With an eye towards the readers of this journal and this conversation, many of whom may be excited about prospects of childhood studies as an approach and perspective, please consider the following prompts:

Can these different perspectives and conceptions live in one place, in one ‘field’? Has multi-disciplinarity ‘worked’? How can the integrity of ‘childhood studies’ as mode of inquiry and practice be maintained and supported? Or, is the case that there are many kinds of childhood studies, depending on one’s political and theoretical disposition, and that any effort to make one field out many dilutes the entire endeavour?

OLGA NIEUWENHUYS: I think that in her answer to question 2, Irene provides important clues to the topic you raise in your last question, Dan, about whether different perspectives and conceptions can live together, in one field. Her answer reads as a polite critique of Northern childhood scholarship failing to mirror Southern scholars’ engagement with the desperate conditions of children in their countries. Northern scholars often continue to assume that that they hold the key to the future of childhood studies, and that Southern scholars must only try to ‘catch up’. This attitude is, I believe, the deeper reason why their scholarship risks becoming a rather sterile, inward-looking exercise, incapable of expanding into a true global field of study. This expansion crucially depends on looking, to use Robert Young’s expression, at the other side of the mirror: what if Southern scholars are not behind, but ahead? What if their daily struggle to give voice to children’s suffering (for Upendra Baxi (1998, 2008) the historic mission of human rights) they critically contribute to the paradigm shift that the field of childhood studies requires? The reason is that the Northern ‘model’ of childhood is so extravagant and dependent upon cheap products and labour from the South, that it cannot evidently expand globally without undermining its very existence. Unhindered by such a historical heritage, Southern scholars are already busy reinventing their societies on the ruins of the old divided world in which some children enjoy their childhood while most others suffer in the dark.

The international forum Public Policies with Working Children and Adolescent: Protagonist Perspectives and Experiences from the Global South in La Paz (Bolivia), 16–18 October 2017 is an example of how and why this happens. The forum took place ahead of the International Labour Organization (ILO) IV Global Conference on the Sustained Eradication of Child Labour, held in Buenos Aires, 14–16 November 2017 and reveals the contours of what the paradigm change in childhood studies means: the militaristic, top-down ILO expert language that speaks of children as problems to be eradicated and uses ‘global’ as aphorism for Northern dominance, makes room for the soft values of a gentler idiom in which working children are protagonists with experiences to be shared and on which public policies should build. Interestingly, while the ILO did not admit either working children or childhood researchers into the premises, the organisers of the La Paz forum invited, besides a good representation of working children and researchers from the Global South, Northern contributors to the journal, including two former editors (Ginny and me) and one of the acting editors, Karl Hanson. North–South differences may after all not be as sharp as often thought and the field more united than we generally believe. Provided of course we never tire of looking at the two sides of the mirror.

IRENE RIZZINI: Thank you all and thank you Olga for such powerful statement. I confess I am a bit tired of being in a place where I am seen as ‘the voice from the South’ and where I speak on behalf of the ‘South’. I often feel that people hear it but not necessarily get it. When referring to differences and diversity, we are also talking about differences on a huge scale. Just to give you a concrete example: There are 60 million young people under 24 in Brazil. In Latin America, there are over about 600 million people; over a third under 15. We present indicators that try to depict the high percentage of young people exposed to or victims of violence including homicide. And it sounds unreal. How can that be? In the picture I attach below, you can see Rio as a city divided, two neighbourhoods side by side one of which, Sao Conrado, has a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita similar to Belgium, and the other Rocinha with that measure like India’s. As I write here, one thousand heavily armed policemen and soldiers in Rocinha trying to deal with a vicious, murderous gang dispute. Depending on what ‘side’ of the neighbourhood a child is born, he or she will have a completely different life trajectory. The very discourse of children’s rights does not apply the same way to children in the two sides of the city. (Rio is obviously not the only city where such brutal disparities occur). There are desperate conditions of children in any part of the world – but when so many of them are doomed to unfairly start their lives in horrible conditions, so many of our words and theoretical discussions seem much less important.

In this space of dialogue, we have mentioned differences in academic perspectives and often lack of opportunities for scholars from various countries to even publish their work. Scholars from the South are often seen as less advanced and sophisticated academically. Their different understanding of the importance of theory is one sign of this. Some may disagree but for us, without being Marxists, Marx’s dictum that the point is not to describe the world but to change is an important signpost.

What does this notion mean for the questions we are debating here about childhood studies and childhood scholarship? One question I have is about what motivates us to engage in child research and childhood studies and what are the consequences of those motivations. Are those of us who are more directly exposed to the harsh conditions many children live in more inclined to focus on and value certain themes, choose different ways of engaging the communities we study, and feel a different responsibility for getting whatever we learn in the public debate and public action? Is applied research, policy and strategy development and engagement something that makes more sense for those from the South? Why should this be the case? Are our universities more encouraging of such view points and less terrified by the word advocacy? And the question we in the South sometimes ask is whether our work is less valued because of this orientation.

GINNY MORROW: To follow on from Olga and Irene, I am not surprised that Irene is tired of being seen as ‘the voice from the South’. As Olga notes, North–South differences are not as sharp as often thought, and Irene points out that brutal disparities existing in any part of the world. The Sustainable Development Goals and even the International Monetary Fund recognise that inequality is the fundamental problem for the 21st century. Surely, it is time to move away from binary/dichotomous thinking in relation to geographies of childhood.

Dan has asked us to consider whether differing perspectives and conceptions (global North/Global South) can exist in one ‘field’? In my view, they can and should – but there are some risks to multi-disciplinarity. At the risk of repeating myself, childhood studies could make much greater effort to learn from and speak to other disciplines in a conciliatory manner. Childhood studies is well-established now – as we are celebrating here – the challenge is to engage creatively and fruitfully with researchers globally, as well as multilateral organisations, and policy makers. As an established field, we should have the confidence to do this constructively and positively. We are well-placed to observe how one particular model of childhood has been exported globally, and how powerful ideas are reflected back by actors at all levels – (including children themselves, who take on some of the expectations and norms expressed in this ideal model). There is a risk that we turn in on ourselves and each other, and become irrelevant to other disciplines (and not only quite boring, but also off-putting to younger, more energetic and enthusiastic colleagues trying to make their way in childhood research).

Childhood studies is not the only field grappling with questions of dominant theorising, as Connell notes in relation to gender: ‘theoretical frameworks developed in the metropole become embedded in the intellectual work of the periphery, not by the exercise of direct control, but by the way the whole economy of knowledge is organised’ (Connell, 2014: 524).

Irene wonders whether researchers in the Global South feel a greater responsibility for ensuring their research is applied in policy, strategy development and engagement, and whether this in turn effectively leads to such applied work being under-valued. This is a sad reflection. It has been the case, certainly in sociology, that highly theoretical work is reified. But this may be changing. Perhaps there is potential for the much-maligned ‘impact agenda’ – forcing researchers to demonstrate the contribution their research has made to social change – to lead to a much greater valuation of applied research, wherever it takes place. Let’s see what happens in the pages of Childhood in the next 25 years.

IVAR FRØNES: The purpose of childhood studies is the understanding of aspects of children’s lives in the various intersectionalities of regions, class, gender and cultures. Which scientific frameworks or perspectives that are useful have to be understood in the context of this purpose? Childhood was termed a global journal to underline the need for empirically rooted contributions from diverse parts of the globe, as well as for a diversity of perspectives.

Longitudinal studies show that in children’s lives and development the present and the future merge, in the sense that the children’s tomorrow grow in the shadows of today. But the perspective of childhood as a social category is important, as the basis for the recognition of children’s rights and entitlements. For childhood studies, it is necessary to understand childhood both as the social and cultural structures framing children’s lives, as the lives and well-being of various groups of children and as children’s subjective perspectives and experiences.

Politicians and economists agree that the challenge of the future is the growing social inequality. It is increasingly acknowledged that modern social exclusion is rooted in groups of children not being integrated in educational systems and subsequently not in work, and planet wide millions of children in primary school age are excluded from schooling. As told by series of studies, some children have lost before reaching the starting line. The challenge of future inequalities can only be met through child policies for social inclusion. Making research relevant beyond the pages of academic journals, that is, for policies, requires knowledge from a diversity of disciplines. The economists have provided new knowledge on childhood and the dynamics of life course, studies on biosocial interaction underlines that the possible deleterious effects of child poverty range from lack of social opportunities to brain development, demographical studies show that the composition of the population is important to children. Anthropological studies illustrate cultural and social variety, sociological studies show social class as cultural and economic resources, cross linguistics studies bring in new perspectives on language development and so on. While academic journals (and most academic careers) are based on a narrow focus and address a specific audience, the diversity of perspectives is necessary for the understanding of childhood as a whole, and for political action and the development of policies.

Children’s subjective experiences provide insight into the varieties of childhood; children have common rights but they do not have a common voice. Neither have scientist, representing divergent political and theoretical dispositions as well as divergent perspectives and research questions. Whether child research is one ‘field’ or not is for me not important. The integrity of childhood studies – as for all others scientific endeavours – is based on the quality of methodology and theorising, as well as on the maintaining of the integrity of scientific knowledge.

JENS QVORTRUP: In the history of the journal, Childhood, and in the comments presented in this roundtable as well, one recurrent reference is to the importance of not overlooking the conditions of Third World-children and their well-being. I cannot remember any editorial meeting that has not reminded us about encouraging authors to submitting articles from or about the ‘global south’, the ‘majority world’ or the poverty-stricken periphery – preferably written by scholars who are citizens belonging to this part of the world. It is up to debate if and why the share of such articles in Childhood is meagre, but no one can blame Childhood’s editors for taking a negative stand to this significant issue. In our current conversation, it is coming up with increasing vigour and energy – in particular, in Olga’s assertion and Irene and Ginny backing it up.

I do not have space enough to deal with the question at any length. However, I suggest a distinction between policy and research: From a policy point of view, there are all good reasons to focus on the poor and needy; from a research point of view, however, we have a duty to study childhood as such and the collectivity of children in their own right. I would argue that it has been a disregard or forgetfulness not to subject childhood and children from the Global South to theoretical scrutiny. My simple point is – with reference to Irene’s example from Rio: whether poor or rich, they are all children.

I am at this place reminded of Robert Coles (1967: 322) – the well-known US psychiatrist – commenting on a White and a Black child playing together: ‘in a sense white and Negro children have more in common with each other than with their parents’. In this quote, children assume an overarching value at the cost of race, which would only split children up rather than looking at what is common. Actually, Irene, I think this is in line with your point about the cyclic redundancy check, which has become a baseline for investigating children’s issues. ‘This common thread’, you say, ‘means that scholars from the South and the North can comment on each other’s work much more effectively because of this commonality’.

It is in no way an irrelevant or trivial issue and I believe that it should be one of the requirements to Childhood that it seeks an encompassing coverage – geographically and ideologically. However, being successful in meeting this wish or requirement is not, in my view, the main issue for our discussions. The main issue is to come to terms with certain methodological demands that should apply in any context. It is to employ childhood studies as a particular approach and perspective and in this context a generational perspective is indispensable (cf. Dan’s third question).

Exactly as there is always a relevant gender perspective and a relevant class perspective, there is always a relevant generational perspective for the simple reason that we have decided to study children and childhood. There are always children and adults around and therefore always generational segments to compare, irrespective of time and place. Finally, Ivar’s plea for identifying the structures and mechanisms that shape children’s life and well-being assumes particular relevance.

Let me finally express my mild disagreement with you, Ginny, when you say that childhood studies is well-established. I think we have made huge progress and enabled to place ourselves on the research map. At the same time, there is still much work to be done.

DAN COOK: Thank you all for your honest and forthright views. In ensuing, subsequent conversations throughout this anniversary year, we will encounter how others confront and take up these questions of perspective, politics, diversity and discipline.