Benefits and Limitations of Eliciting the Well-Being Views of Two-Four Year Olds Living in a Low-Income Area in England
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Benefits and Limitations of Eliciting the Well-Being Views of Two-Four Year Olds Living in a Low-Income Area in England Martina Street 1 Accepted: 1 September 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper reports findings from a small-scale qualitative study exploring the views of two four year olds about their well-being. While interest in children’s views about their wellbeing has been increasing over the past couple of decades, the views of young children are under-researched, particularly those living in low-income areas. Deficit social constructions of young children and their capacities to ‘express’ (usually understood as ‘verbalise’) ‘reasoned’ (usually understood as ‘cognitive’) views have largely fuelled their exclusion. The study involved 18 young children living in one of England’s most economically disadvantaged areas. Data were generated with children by using the Mosaic Approach, comprising multiple creative methods. The findings suggest that young children conceptualise their well-being in the here-and-now; they enjoy opportunities to be social and to participate in activities and decisions that affect them. However, while it may be beneficial to young children’s sense of well-being to acknowledge their agency, and to treat their views with respect, it may be more beneficial to them to do so by also recognising their ‘mutuality of being’. In this sense, eliciting the views of young children about their wellbeing is not only under-researched, but under-socialised and de-historicised. The paper concludes by proposing an integrative approach to well-being, which neither privileges nor abstracts children from their social and material contexts. Keywords Young children . Subjective well-being . Low-income areas
1 Introduction This paper contributes to the increasing interest in eliciting the views of young children about their well-being. It addresses, in particular, the recommendation to locate young * Martina Street [email protected]
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Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, Room 1.06, Brooks Building, Bonsall Street, Manchester M15 6GX, UK
M. Street
children’s views within their socio-cultural and temporal-spatial contexts (Fattore et al. 2019), especially those children from marginalised communities (Fane et al. 2020:22) by reporting the well-being views of children aged two - four years, who live in economically disadvantaged areas - in this case, in England. In spite of its prevalence in policy narratives (Bache 2019), the term ‘child wellbeing’ is highly problematic. It is ubiquitously considered to be under-theorised (Amerijckx and Humblet 2014) and its use is contested. The term has been described as a “benign umbrella” (Camfield et al. 2009:67), its ambiguity conveniently disguising inequalities (Camfield et al. 2009:97). Others, by contrast, have argued that the term’s use enables analyses of power, thereby potentiating equitable outcomes (Nussbaum 2011:33). Young children’s well-being, in addition, appears to be increasingly conflated with th
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