Book Reviews
Children, Welfare and the State
Barry Goldson, Michael Lavalette and Jim McKechnie (eds)
ISBN: 0-7619723-3-1 2002 211 pages London: Sage
Elspeth McInnes
School of Education, University of South Australia, Magill Campus, Adelaide, SA
The edited collection Children, Welfare and the State resurrects the significance of class analysis in the post-Marxist period of contemporary Britain. Taking the subject of children and their social and political relationship with the state, the book poses questions around the social construction of childhood and the ways in which class organises and structures children's social identity and opportunities.
Chapters 2 to 4 of the book examine the ways in which researchers conceptualise and research children. Michael Lavalette and Stephen Cunningham trace the development of the theorisation of childhood from Aries and the 'discovery' of childhood, through to what is termed the 'New Sociology of Childhood'. They outline four central elements of this approach. First, the reassertion of the claim that 'childhood' is a social construct; second that children create their own child-centred world of meaning; third, that children are a politically marginal group with limited access to the means of asserting political, social and economic rights; and fourth, that children are an identifiable social group with a common set of needs and rights. Lavalette and Cunningham conclude by challenging the universality of constructs of childhood, noting that class-specific elements continue to divide and shape the lives of Britain's children.
Sandy Hobbs argues the case for psychology to remain a key discipline informing contemporary understandings of children's lives. Hobbs notes that whilst psychology has been dismissed by many enthusiasts of the New Sociology of Childhood, psychological research and practice has nevertheless yielded important insights into understanding particular children's needs, citing the example of working with an autistic child. Hobbs argues that reductionist views of psychology tend to ignore the real contribution it has made to contemporary insights into children's behaviour and development.
Jim McKechnie's chapter argues that those researching childhood should use methodologies which enable children's views and perspectives to be expressed and heard. This proposition forms part of the New Sociology of Childhood framework and indicates an increasing trend towards qualitative methodologies which pay attention to the meaning children give to their experiences rather than simply quantifying adult-defined events. McKechnie draws on the approaches of Bronfenbrenner and Vygotsky as examples of methodological approaches which take account of the child's world as well as the child, and argues for multiple research approaches which draw on the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Chapters 5-12 move from the large abstract issues of the earlier chapters to the specificities of particular state activities with respect to children. The issues explored include poverty, education, work, foster care, juvenile justice, child protection, sex education and children as activists. The authors examine the differences between children with respect to these various state activities and show how class locates and organises the ways in which children and families are constructed and 'managed' by state instrumentalities.
In Chapter Five Tony Novak analyses the state's responses to socio-economic divisions between children. Across the key indicators of housing, health, education and access to employment, children living in low-income households experienced significant losses in the 1980s and 1990s relative to the wealthier end of the income spectrum. Novak argues that the neo-liberal agenda of 'New Labour' in the UK has done little to address the class inequalities which underpin much of the persistent disadvantage experienced by children living in low-income families.
Henry Maitles reviews the position of low-income children in a marketised education system where 'success' is reduced to scores on literacy and numeracy tests and schools compete to attract students and funds. The New Labour approach to education has resonance with other neo-liberal regimes in valorising privatisation and competition as the keys to education excellence for all. The stated concern for 'social exclusion' does not in practice translate to addressing the fundamental underlying poverty which affects children's chances to be able to attend and do well in their schooling.
In Chapter Seven, Niamh Stack and McKechnie examine the relationship between children and the world of work. Increasingly children are combining work and study in order to sustain their education in low income households. They highlight the ways in which childhood has been discursively constructed as being free of work even as children's work is simultaneously constructed as being of less value, and therefore attracts reduced rates of pay and regulation of conditions.
Chris Jones writes of poor children and the 'Threatening State' with its coercive powers to act on 'problem' children. Whilst some discourses about children construct them as vulnerable and in need of care, coercive discourses simultaneously identify 'problem' children and families in need of surveillance, restriction, regulation, control and coercion. Across state practices of education, health, welfare and criminal justice, being poor, working class, black, young and male provides a prejudiced experience of blame and coercion. State practices toward children and social services is characterised as moving along a continuum from low-level neglect to extreme physical and sexual torture. Jones criticises the devaluing of human need in favour of economic outcomes as an underlying problem in state responses which see children simply in terms of their production use-value and capacity.
In his chapter on children and the criminal justice system, Barry Goldson argues that working class children are, and always have been, the 'fodder' of a justice system which routinely creates injustice in its selective targeting of particular children. Similarly Brian Corby's chapter on child abuse and the child protection system highlights the class dimensions of family surveillance and state intervention and its focus on individual pathology ahead of recognition of the social impacts of poverty and violence against women and children. Child-saving becomes a form of child abuse in punishing families for social circumstances which they do not control.
Chapter 11 explores state approaches to sex education as a form of regulation of the working class providing moral frameworks and injunctions defining the appropriate social conditions for relationships, sexual intercourse and reproduction. Deena Haydon and Phil Scraton argue that sex education proscribes 'deviant sexualities' in favour of a defined norm of heterosexual relations in the context of male desire and female passivity and sex within marriage.
In Chapter 12 Cunningham and Lavalette examine children's identities as agents and activists in the context of school strikes in Britain. The history of children's collective action to secure improved conditions highlights the power of shared class-specific struggle in building a consciousness of action for change. They argue that children's rights can also be understood within a construct of children as agents of change in their own interests.
The volume concludes in Chapter 13 with a summary review of themes and issues by McKechnie, who identifies that the sociological concepts of 'agency' and 'structure' continue to provide useful analytical frameworks to understand children and childhood. Children's voices and perspectives and actions are essential to developing our understanding of contemporary childhoods. Equally, the structuring power of class, gender and race in the organisation of inequality applies as much to children as to any other social grouping. Critical analysis of children's relationship to the state, as a dominant structuring institution of society, remains a significant and continuing project to the well-being of children.
In conclusion, Children, Welfare and the State provides a useful critical analysis of the state's relationship to children in 20th Century Britain. The significance of class as a structural feature of British society is emphasised across the range of state practices with respect to children. The book provides critiques of political themes common to other economic rationalist neo-liberal regimes, such as competition and privatisation and notes that poor children are structurally problematised, excluded and blamed for their exclusion. It should prove a useful reader for students and researchers in sociology, social policy and human services.
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