Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., y Korbin, J. E. Handbook of Child Well - Being, Theories, Methods and Policies in Global Perspective (V. 2)

Asher Ben-Arieh
Ferran Casas
Ivar Frønes
Jill E. Korbin
Editors
Handbook of
Child Well-Being
Theories, Methods and
Policies in Global Perspective
1 3Reference
Handbook of Child Well-Being
Asher Ben-Arieh • Ferran Casas
Ivar Frønes • Jill E. Korbin
Editors
Handbook of
Child Well-Being
Theories, Methods and
Policies in Global Perspective
With 138 Figures and 85 Tables

Editors
Asher Ben-Arieh Ivar Frønes
Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Department of Sociology and
Social Welfare Human Geography
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem University of Oslo
Jerusalem, Israel Oslo, Norway
Ferran Casas The Norwegian Center for Child

Research Institute of Quality of Life Behavioural Development
University of Girona University of Oslo
Girona, Spain Oslo, Norway
Jill E. Korbin
Department of Anthropology
Schubert Center for Child Studies
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, USA
ISBN 978-90-481-9062-1 ISBN 978-90-481-9063-8 (eBook)

ISBN 978-90-481-9064-5 (print and electronic bundle)
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013942189
# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

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Acknowledgments
We express our gratitude to all who have made this project into a reality. As Asher
drew us together, asking what we were doing for the next several years of our lives,
we worked to bring together the multiple perspectives involved in child well-being.
We thank the more than 200 authors and coauthors who contributed more than
110 state-of-the-art chapters to the Handbook. Our colleagues’ chapters reflect not
only their expertise but also their commitment to child well-being. The chapters
reflect international and transdisciplinary perspectives.
We thank the International Society for Child Indicators that has been an intellectual
home for this project and supported our editorial board meetings. We also thank
our home institutions for offering us encouragement and support in time and resources.
We thank our editors at Springer, Myriam Poort and Esther Otten, who believed
in this project from its inception and have contributed enormously to its successful
completion, and to Miranda Dijksman for her outstanding organizational and
editorial skills in all aspects of the Handbook.
We thank Daphna Gross-Manos, our editorial assistant. This work would not
have been possible without her tireless, dedicated, and expert work. She is a scholar
in her own right and also authored a chapter in the Handbook.
Finally, all of us owe a debt of gratitude to the countless children and families
around the world who participated in the research presented in this book.
Last, but not least, we express our gratitude to our families who supported us
while we traveled for editorial board meetings and read through the mounds of
chapters that crossed our desks. We dedicate this Handbook to them, to our spouses
and partners, to our children, and our grandchildren.
v
About the Editors
Professor Asher Ben-Arieh
Asher Ben-Arieh is a professor of social work at the Hebrew University of

Jerusalem and the director of the Haruv Institute in Jerusalem. He served for
20 years as the associate director of Israel’s National Council for the Child. He
has been a visiting fellow at Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of
Chicago and the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life in Clemson University.
Since 1990 and until 2011, he has been the founding editor-in-chief of the annual
The State of the Child in Israel. Professor Ben-Arieh is one of the leading interna-
tional experts on social indicators, particularly, as they relate to child well-being.
He initiated and coordinated the International Project Measuring and Monitoring
Children Well-Being, was among the founding members of the International Soci-
ety for Children Indicators (ISCI), and elected to be its first co-chair. Asher has
published extensively on social policy, child welfare, and indicators of children
well-being. Professor Ben-Arieh is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Child
Indicators Research (CIR) and the book series Child Well Being: Indicators and
Research. Ben-Arieh was born in Jerusalem; he is married and has three children.
vii
viii About the Editors
Professor Ferran Casas
Ferran Casas is a senior professor of social psychology in the Faculty of Education

and Psychology at the University of Girona (Spain). He leads ERIDIQV research
team (Research Team of Children’s Rights and their Quality of Life), at the
Research Institute on Quality of Life, University of Girona. His main topics of
research are children’s and adolescents’ well-being and quality of life, children’s
rights, adolescents and audiovisual media, and adolescents-parents relationships.
For the last 10 years, he has been involved in 10 international research projects, 3 of
them supported by the European Commission – the most recent one being the
YIPPEE project (Young People from a Public care background: pathways to
Education in Europe). He has been a visiting fellow at the Universidad Federal de
Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre (Brazil). At present, Professor Casas partici-
pates in new international projects and developing systems of subjective indicators
of children’s and adolescents’ well-being, mainly for the International Survey of
Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB, Children’s Worlds). He is a member of the
Boards of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) and of the Interna-
tional Society for Quality of Life Studies (ISQOLS). From 1990 to 1993, he was the
director of the Centro de Estudios del Menor, depending of the Spanish Ministry of
Social Affairs, in Madrid (Spain). From 1992 to 1996, Professor Casas was the
chair of the Experts Committee on Childhood Policies of the Council of Europe
(Strasbourg, France). He was the first president of the Advisory Board of
Childwatch International (Oslo, Norway), until 1996, and continued as a member
of that Board until 2005. Casas also was the first director of the Research Institute
on Quality of Life of the University of Girona (Spain), and, for 18 years, he has been
the director of the journal Intervención Psicosocial. Professor Casas has authored
and coauthored 15 books, more than 40 book chapters, and over 100 papers in
scientific journals, in 9 different languages, most of them related to well-being
and QOL.
About the Editors ix
Professor Ivar Frønes
Ivar Frønes is a professor of sociology at the University of Oslo, Norway, and

senior researcher at the Norwegian Center for Child Behavioural Development. His
work and international experience cover a variety of areas, with an emphasis on life
course analysis; children, youth, and family sociology; well-being and social
exclusion. Professor Frønes is a member of the Board of the International Society
for Child Indicators. He is the founder of the journal Childhood, and among the
group that initiated Childwatch International. His numerous publications cover
a variations of perspectives on childhood, as illustrated by publications such as
“Among Peers” (1995), “Status Zero Youth in the Welfare Society” (2007), “On
theories of dialogue, self and society: Redefining socialization and the acquisition
of meaning in light of the inter-subjective matrix” (2007), “Theorizing indicators –
On indicators, signs and trends” (2007), “Childhood: Leisure, Culture and Peers”
(2009), and (with Ragnhild Brusdal) “The purchase of moral positions: an essay on
the markets of concerned parenting” (2013). In Scandinavia, he has published
books on digital divides, modern childhood, marginalization and risk, cultural
trends, and a variety of subjects related to childhood, youth, and life course
development. At present, he is working on projects on life course, childhood, and
marginalization.
x About the Editors
Professor Jill E. Korbin
Jill E. Korbin, Ph.D. (1978 U.C.L.A.), is associate dean, professor of anthropol-

ogy, director of the Schubert Center for Child Studies, and codirector of the
Childhood Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western
Reserve University. Her awards include the Margaret Mead Award (1986) from the
American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology;
a Congressional Science Fellowship (1985–1986 in the Office of Senator Bill
Bradley) through the American Association for the Advancement of Science and
the Society for Research in Child Development; the Wittke Award for Excellence
in Undergraduate Teaching at Case Western Reserve University (1992); and
a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award (2005). Korbin has published on child mal-
treatment in relationship to culture and context, and edited the first volume on
culture and child maltreatment, Child Abuse and Neglect: Cross-Cultural Perspec-
tives (1981, University of California Press). Korbin and Richard Krugman, M.D.,
are currently coediting a book series, Child Maltreatment: Contemporary Issues in
Research and Policy, published by Springer. Korbin’s research interests include
culture and human development; cultural, medical, and psychological anthropol-
ogy; neighborhood, community, and contextual influences on children and families;
child maltreatment; and child and adolescent well-being.
Advisory Board
Jonathan Bradshaw University of York, York, UK

Vinod Chandra Lucknow University, Lucknow, India
Jaap E. Doek Vrije Universiteit, Lisse, Netherlands
Howard Dubowitz University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA
Jeanne Fagnani The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), Paris, France
James Garbarino Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, USA
Scott Huebner University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA
Bong Joo Lee Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Yehualashet Mekonen The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF), Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia
Bernhard Nauck Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany
Jorge Castella Sarriera Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS),
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Fiona Stanley The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
Cecilia Von Feilitzen Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden
Thomas S. Weisner University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Rita Žukauskienė Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania
xi
Contents
Volume 1
1 Multifaceted Concept of Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Asher Ben-Arieh, Ferran Casas, Ivar Frønes, and Jill E. Korbin
Section I Multiple Perspectives on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

2 History of Children’s Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Bengt Sandin
3 Culture, Context, and Child Well-Being ................... 87
Thomas S. Weisner
4 Children, Gender, and Issues of Well-Being ................ 105
Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen and Barrie Thorne
5 Childhood and Intergenerationality: Toward an
Intergenerational Perspective on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Leena Alanen
Section II Multiple Approaches to Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . 161

6 Child Well-Being: A Philosophical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Alexander Bagattini
7 Child Well-Being: Children’s Rights Perspective ............ 187
Jaap E. Doek
8 Neuroscience and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Adeline Jabès and Charles A. Nelson
9 Educational Science and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Sabine Andresen
10 Geographies of Children’s Well-Being: in, of, and for Place . . . . 279
John H. McKendrick
xiii
xiv Contents
11 Child Healthcare and Child Well-Being: From the Past to

the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Christopher Greeley and Howard Dubowitz
12 Public Health Aspects of Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Sally Brinkman and Fiona Stanley
13 Well-Being of Children: A Criminologic Perspective ......... 351
Mimi Ajzenstadt
14 Economics of Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Gabriella Conti and James J. Heckman
15 Social Work and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Sheila B. Kamerman and Shirley Gatenio-Gabel
16 Children’s Well-Being and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Jo Moran-Ellis, Anna Bandt, and Heinz S€
unker
17 Mediated Well-Being from the Perspective of Media and
Communication Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Divina Frau-Meigs
18 Child Well-Being: Anthropological Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
Edward G. J. Stevenson and Carol M. Worthman
19 Social Psychology and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
Ferran Casas, Mònica González, and Dolors Navarro
20 Psychology of Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Arne Holte, Margaret M. Barry, Mona Bekkhus,
Anne Inger Helmen Borge, Lucy Bowes, Ferran Casas,
Oddgeir Friborg, Bjørn Grinde, Bruce Headey, Thomas Jozefiak,
Ratib Lekhal, Nic Marks, Ruud Muffels, Ragnhild Bang Nes,
Espen Røysamb, Jens C. Thimm, Svenn Torgersen,
Gisela Trommsdorff, Ruut Veenhoven, Joar Vittersø,
Trine Waaktaar, Gert G. Wagner, Catharina Elisabeth
Arfwedson Wang, Bente Wold, and Henrik Daae Zachrisson
Volume 2
Section III Theoretical Approaches to Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . 633

21 Understanding the Well-Being of Children and Adolescents
Through Homeostatic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
Robert A. Cummins
22 Sociology: Societal Structure, Development of Childhood, and
the Well-Being of Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663
Jens Qvortrup
Contents xv
23 Children’s Well-Being and Interpretive Reproduction . . . . . . . . 709

William A. Corsaro
24 Capability Approach as a Framework for Research on
Children’s Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739
Susann Fegter and Martina Richter
25 Socialization and Childhood in Sociological Theorizing . . . . . . . 759

Lourdes Gaitán
Section IV Children’s Activities and Well-Being .............. 795

26 Schooling and Children’s Subjective Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797
E. Scott Huebner, Kimberly J. Hills, Xu Jiang, Rachel F. Long,
Ryan Kelly, and Michael D. Lyons
27 Children’s Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 821
Michael Bourdillon
28 After-School Activities and Leisure Education .............. 863

Jaume Trilla, Ana Ayuste, and Ingrid Agud
29 Play and Well-Being in Children’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 895

Jan Van Gils
30 Sport, Children, and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 911
Yngvar Ommundsen, Knut Løndal, and Sigmund Loland
31 Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being in Early Schooling:

Revisiting the Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 941
Jolyn Blank
32 Civic Engagement and Child and Adolescent Well-Being . . . . . . 957
Daniel Hart, Kyle Matsuba, and Robert Atkins
33 State of the Field: Youth Community Service in the USA . . . . . . 977
Edward Metz
34 Time Use, Inequality, and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999
Sara Raley
Section V Arts, Creativity and Child Well-Being .............. 1033

35 Images of Child Well-Being in the Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1035
Ellen Handler Spitz
36 Role of Art and Creativity in Child Culture
and Socialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1053
Khin Yee Lo and Koji Matsunobu
xvi Contents
37 Imagination, Play, and the Role of Performing Arts in the

Well-Being of Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079
Philip E. Silvey
Section VI Spirituality and Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1099

38 Relation of Spiritual Development to Youth Health
and Well-Being: Evidence from a Global Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1101
Peter C. Scales, Amy K. Syvertsen, Peter L. Benson,
Eugene C. Roehlkepartain, and Arturo Sesma, Jr.
39 Religion and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1137
George W. Holden and Paul Alan Williamson
40 Religion, Spirituality, and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1171
Kurt Bangert
41 Islamic Education and Youth Well-Being in Muslim Countries,
with a Specific Reference to Algeria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1209
Habib Tiliouine
Volume 3
Section VII An Ecological Perspective on Child Well-Being ..... 1227

42 Family and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1229
Cigdem Kagitcibasi
43 Effects of School on the Well-Being of Children
and Adolescents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1251
Francisco Juan Garcı́a Bacete, Ghislaine Marande Perrin,
Barry H. Schneider, and Celine Blanchard
44 Community and Place-Based Understanding of
Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1307
Claudia J. Coulton and James C. Spilsbury
45 Children’s Social Networks and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1335
Deborah Belle and Joyce Benenson
46 Ecological Perspective on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1365
James Garbarino
Section VIII Economy/Material Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1385

47 Poverty and Social Exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1387
Gerry Redmond
Contents xvii
48 Well-Being and Children in a Consumer Society . . . . . . . . . . . . 1427

Ragnhild Brusdal and Ivar Frønes
49 Children’s Material Living Standards in Rich Countries . . . . . . 1445
Gill Main and Kirsten Besemer
50 Child Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1483
Bruce Bradbury
51 Child Labor and Children’s Economic Contributions . . . . . . . . . 1509
Scott Lyon and Furio Camillo Rosati
52 Childhood and Inequalities: Generational Distributive

Justice and Disparities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1523
Helmut Wintersberger
53 Economics of Child Well-Being: Measuring Effects

of Child Welfare Interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1563
Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle, Jr.
Section IX Life Course and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1603

54 Infancy and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1605
Heidi Keller
55 Early Childhood: Dimensions and Contexts of Development

and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1629
Elizabeth Fernandez
56 Developmental Assets and the Promotion of Well-Being in

Middle Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1649
Peter C. Scales
57 Child Well-Being and the Life Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1679

Richard A. Settersten, Jr., Megan M. McClelland, and Alicia Miao
58 Adolescence and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1713

Rita Žukauskienė
59 Monitoring the Health and Well-Being of Developing

Children in Changing Contexts: A Framework for Action . . . . . 1739
Bonnie Leadbeater, Wayne Mitic, and Michael Egilson
60 Transition to Adulthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1763

Janel Benson
xviii Contents
Section X Interpersonal Relations ......................... 1785

61 Allomothers and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1787
Courtney L. Meehan
62 Sibling Relationships and Children’s Social Well-Being . . . . . . . 1817

K. Ripoll-Núñez and Sonia Carrillo
63 The Role of Peers in Children’s Lives and Their Contribution
to Child Well-Being: Theory and Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1843
Daphna Gross-Manos
64 Children’s Social and Emotional Relationships and
Well-Being: From the Perspective of the Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1865
Colette McAuley and Wendy Rose
65 Children as Caregivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1893
Ruth Evans
66 Why Are Relationships Important to Children’s
Well-Being? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1917
Ross A. Thompson
Volume 4
Section XI Media and Communication and Child Well-Being . . . . 1955

67 Analysis of Children’s Television Characters and
Media Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1957
André H. Caron and Jennie M. Hwang
68 News Media and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1979
Cynthia Carter
69 Conflict, Media, and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2013
Dafna Lemish and Maya G€ otz
70 Advertising and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2031
Agnes Nairn
71 Media Literacy and Well-Being of Young People . . . . . . . . . . . . 2057
Manisha Pathak-Shelat
72 Internet and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2093
Veronika Kalmus, Andra Siibak, and Lukas Blinka
73 Children’s Well-Being and Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2135
Florencia Enghel
Contents xix
Section XII Well-Being and the Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2151

74 Conciliating Parents’ Labor and Family Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2153
Anna Escobedo
75 Parenting Styles and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2173
Marı́a José Rodrigo, Sonia Byrne, and Beatriz Rodrı́guez
76 Does Family Matter? The Well-Being of Children Growing
Up in Institutions, Foster Care and Adoption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2197
Christie Schoenmaker, Femmie Juffer, Marinus H. van IJzendoorn,
and Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg
77 Family-Related Factors Influencing Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . 2229
Lluı́s Flaquer
Section XIII Health and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2257

78 Health and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2259
Tim Moore and Frank Oberklaid
79 Infant Rearing in the Context of Contemporary
Neuroscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2281
Penelope Leach
80 Illness and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2319

Noboru Kobayashi, Yoichi Sakakihara, Kengo Nishimaki,
Hideo Mimuro, Junko Shimizu, Akira Matsui, Nobuaki Kobayashi,
and Yuichiro Yamashiro
81 HIV and AIDS and Its Impact on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . 2355

Eddy J. Walakira, Ismael Ddumba-Nyanzi, and
David Kaawa-Mafigiri
82 Cultural Roots of Well-Being and Resilience in Child

Mental Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2379
Mónica Ruiz-Casares, Jaswant Guzder, Cécile Rousseau, and
Laurence J. Kirmayer
83 Body Image and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2409

Kristina Holmqvist Gattario, Ann Frisén, and Eileen Anderson-Fye
Section XIV Well-Being and Children’s Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2437

84 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2439
Laura Lundy
xx Contents
85 Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the

Child and Its Effect on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2463
Yehualashet Mekonen and Melhiku Tiruneh
86 Child Participation, Constituent of Community Well-Being . . . . 2503

Alejandro Cusiianovich Villarán and Marta Martı́nez Muñoz
87 Children’s Perspectives on Nurturance and
Self-Determination Rights: Implications for Development
and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2537
Martin D. Ruck, Michele Peterson-Badali, and Charles C. Helwig
88 “Because It’s the Right (or Wrong) Thing to Do”: When
Children’s Well-Being Is the Wrong Outcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2561
Gary B. Melton
Volume 5
Section XV Risk and Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2575

89 Complex Roots and Branches of Antisocial Behavior . . . . . . . . . 2577
Terje Ogden
90 Plight of Victims of School Bullying: The Opposite
of Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2593
Dan Olweus and Kyrre Breivik
91 Crime Victimization and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2617
Tali Gal
92 Children at Risk: The Case of Latin American Street Youth . . . 2653
Marcela Raffaelli, Normanda Araujo de Morais, and
Silvia H. Koller
93 Maltreated Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2669
Ignacia Arruabarrena
Section XVI Methods, Measures and Indicators .............. 2697

94 Objective or Subjective Well-Being? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2699
Nick Axford, David Jodrell, and Tim Hobbs
95 Methodologies Used in the Construction of Composite
Child Well-Being Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2739
Vicki L. Lamb and Kenneth C. Land
96 Researching Children: Research on, with, and by Children . . . . 2757
Jan Mason and Elizabeth Watson
97 Mapping Domains and Indicators of Children’s Well-Being . . . 2797
Bong Joo Lee
Contents xxi
98 Indices of Child Well-Being and Developmental Contexts . . . . . 2807

Kristin Anderson Moore, David Murphey, Tawana Bandy, and
Elizabeth Lawner
99 Positive and Protective Factors in Adolescent Well-Being . . . . . 2823
Laura H. Lippman, Renee Ryberg, Mary Terzian,
Kristin A. Moore, Jill Humble, and Hugh McIntosh
100 Different Sources of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2867
Robert M. Goerge
101 Mixed Methods in Research on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . 2879
M. Clara Barata and Hirokazu Yoshikawa
102 Ethics of Researching Children’s Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2895

Virginia Morrow and Jo Boyden
Section XVII Interventions and Policies that Promote Child

Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2919
103 Overview: Social Policies and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2921
Jonathan Bradshaw
104 Children in State Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2945

Jorge F. del Valle
105 Child Protection and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2965
Lawrence M. Berger and Kristen Shook Slack
106 Key Elements and Strategies of Effective Early Childhood

Education Programs: Lessons from the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2993
C. Momoko Hayakawa and Arthur J. Reynolds
107 Advancing Child and Adolescent Well-Being Through

Positive Youth Development and Prevention Programs . . . . . . . 3025
Laura Ferrer-Wreder
108 Data-Based Child Advocacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3043
William P. O’Hare
Section XVIII Global Issues in Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3069

109 Reflections on the Well-Being of Child Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3071
David M. Rosen
110 Migration and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3101
Chadi Abdul-Rida and Bernhard Nauck
111 Well-Being of Asylum-Seeking and Refugee Children . . . . . . . . 3143

Charles Watters
xxii Contents
112 Child Well-Being and Ethnic Diversity in Affluent Societies . . . . 3159

Donald J. Hernandez
113 Globalization and Children’s Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3193

Peter N. Stearns
114 International Comparisons of Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3219
Dominic Richardson
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3249
Contributors
Chadi Abdul-Rida Department of Sociology, Chemnitz University of Technol-

ogy, Chemnitz, Germany
Ingrid Agud Department of Theory and History of Education, University
of Barcelona, Mundet, Campus Mundet, Llevant, Barcelona, Spain
Anna Aizer Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
Mimi Ajzenstadt Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law and the Baerwald
School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, Israel
Leena Alanen Department of Education, University of Jyv€askyl€a, Jyv€askyl€a,
Finland
Eileen Anderson-Fye Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve
University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Sabine Andresen Faculty of Educational Science, IDeA Research Center on
Adaptive Education and Indivdual Development on Children at Risk, Goethe-
University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
Ignacia Arruabarrena Department of Social Psychology, University of the
Basque Country UPV/EHU, San Sebastián, Spain
Robert Atkins Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA
Nick Axford The Social Research Unit, Lower Hood Barn, Dartington, UK
Ana Ayuste Department of Theory and History of Education, University of
Barcelona, Mundet, Campus Mundet, Llevant, Barcelona, Spain
Alexander Bagattini Philosophisches Institut, Universit€at D€usseldorf,
D€
usseldorf, Germany
Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden
University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Anna Bandt Center for International Studies in Social Policy and Social Services,
Bergische Universit€at Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
xxiii
xxiv Contributors
Tawana Bandy Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA

Kurt Bangert World Vision Institute for Research and Innovation, Friedrichsdorf,
Germany
M. Clara Barata Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS-IUL,
Lisbon, Portugal
Margaret M. Barry Health Promotion Research Centre, Galway, Ireland
Discipline of Health Promotion, School of Health Sciences, National University of
Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Mona Bekkhus Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Deborah Belle Department of Psychology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Asher Ben-Arieh Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Joyce Benenson Emmanuel College, Boston, MA, USA
Janel Benson Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Colgate University,
Hamilton, NY, USA
Peter L. Benson Minneapolis, MN, USA
Lawrence M. Berger School of Social Work and Institute for Research on
Poverty, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Kirsten Besemer Institute of Housing, Urban and Real Estate Research, Heriot
Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland
Celine Blanchard School of Psychology, Ottawa University, Ontario, Canada
Jolyn Blank Department of Childhood Education & Literacy Studies, University
of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
Lukas Blinka Institute of Journalism and Communication, University of Tartu,
Tartu, Estonia
Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Anne Inger Helmen Borge Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo,
Norway
Michael Bourdillon Department of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe,
Mt Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe
Lucy Bowes Centre for Mental Health, Addiction and Suicide Research, School of
Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Jo Boyden Young Lives Oxford Department of International Development,
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Contributors xxv
Bruce Bradbury Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia
Jonathan Bradshaw Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of
York, Heslington, York, UK
Kyrre Breivik Uni Health, Uni Research, Bergen, Norway
Sally Brinkman Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child
Health Research, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia
Ragnhild Brusdal SIFO (National Institute for Consumer Research), Nydalen,
Oslo, Norway
Sonia Byrne University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain
André H. Caron Département de communication, Université de Montréal,
Montréal, Canada
Sonia Carrillo Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
Cynthia Carter Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies,
Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK
Ferran Casas Faculty of Education and Psychology, Research Institute of Quality
of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain
Gabriella Conti Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago,
Chicago, IL, USA
William A. Corsaro Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington,
IN, USA
Claudia J. Coulton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western
Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Robert A. Cummins School of Psychology, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC,
Australia
Alejandro Cusiianovich Villarán Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos –
Instituto de Formación para Educadores de Jóvenes, Adolescentes y Niños
Trabajadores de América Latina y el Caribe (UNMSM-IFEJANT), Lince, Peru
Ismael Ddumba-Nyanzi Department of Social Work and Social Administration,
Center for the Study of the African Child and Center for Social Science Research on
AIDS, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
Jaap E. Doek Family and Juvenile Law, Vrije Universiteit, Lisse, The
Netherlands
Joseph J. Doyle, Jr. MIT Sloan School of Management E62-515, Cambridge,
MA, USA
xxvi Contributors
Howard Dubowitz Division of Child Protection & Center for Families, University
of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
Michael Egilson Child Health Indicators Project Lead, British Columbia Ministry
of Health, Victoria, BC, Canada
Florencia Enghel Media and Communication Studies, Karlstad University,

Karlstad, Sweden
Anna Escobedo Department of Sociology and Organisational Analysis,

Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Barcelona, Barcelona,
Spain
Ruth Evans Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of

Reading, Reading, UK
Susann Fegter Faculty of Educational Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt am

Main, Germany
Elizabeth Fernandez School of Social Sciences, The University of New South

Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Laura Ferrer-Wreder Department of Psychology, Stockholm University,

Stockholm, Sweden
Lluı́s Flaquer Department of Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,

Bellaterra, Spain
Divina Frau-Meigs Media Sociology and English Department, University

Sorbonne Nouvelle, PRES Sorbonne Paris-Cité, Paris, France
Oddgeir Friborg Departement of Psychology, University of Tromsø, Tromsø,

Norway
Ann Frisén Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg,

Sweden
Ivar Frønes Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo,

Oslo, Norway
The Norwegian Center for Child Behavioural Development, University of Oslo,
Oslo, Norway
Lourdes Gaitán Grupo de Sociologı́a de la Infancia y la Adolescencia, Las Matas,

Madrid, Spain
Tali Gal School of Criminology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
James Garbarino Psychology Department, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago,

IL, USA
Contributors xxvii
Francisco Juan Garcı́a Bacete Departamento de Psicologia Evolutiva,

Educativa, Social i Metodologia, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas,
Universitat Jaume I, Castellon, Spain
Shirley Gatenio-Gabel Graduate School of Social Service, Fordham University,

New York, NY, USA
Robert M. Goerge Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Mònica González Faculty of Education and Psychology, Research Institute on

Quality of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain
Christopher Greeley Department of Pediatrics, Center for Clinical Research and

Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston,
Houston, TX, USA
Bjørn Grinde Division of Mental Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health,

Oslo, Norway
Daphna Gross-Manos Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Maya G€ otz International Center Institute for Youth and Educational Television
(IZI), Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, Munich, Germany
Jaswant Guzder Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill Univer-

sity, Montreal, QC, Canada
Culture & Mental Health Research Unit, Institute of Community & Family
Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Canada
Daniel Hart Institute for Effective Education, Rutgers University, Camden,

NJ, USA
C. Momoko Hayakawa University of Minnesota, Institute of Child Development,

Minneapolis, MN, USA
Bruce Headey Melbourne Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne,

Australia
James J. Heckman Department of Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago,

IL, USA
University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
American Bar Foundation, Chicago, IL, USA
Charles C. Helwig University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Donald J. Hernandez Department of Sociology, Hunter College and the Graduate

Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
xxviii Contributors
Kimberly J. Hills Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina,

Columbia, SC, USA
Tim Hobbs The Social Research Unit, Lower Hood Barn, Dartington, UK
George W. Holden Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University,
Dallas, TX, USA
Kristina Holmqvist Gattario Department of Psychology, University of
Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Arne Holte Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway
E. Scott Huebner Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC, USA
Jill Humble Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
Jennie M. Hwang Département de communication, Université de Montréal,
Montréal, Canada
Marinus H. van IJzendoorn Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden
University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Adeline Jabès Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Develop-
mental Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston,
MA, USA
Xu Jiang Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia,
SC, USA
David Jodrell The Social Research Unit, Lower Hood Barn, Dartington, UK
Thomas Jozefiak Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, St. Olav’s
Hospital–Trondheim University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway
Femmie Juffer Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University, Leiden,
The Netherlands
David Kaawa-Mafigiri Department of Social Work and Social Administration,
Center for the Study of the African Child and Center for Social Science Research on
AIDS, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
Cigdem Kagitcibasi Koc University, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey
Veronika Kalmus Institute of Journalism and Communication, University of
Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
Sheila B. Kamerman Columbia University School of Social Work, New York,
NY, USA
Heidi Keller Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Osnabr€uck, Osnabrueck,
Germany
Contributors xxix
Ryan Kelly Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia,

SC, USA
Laurence J. Kirmayer Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill
University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Culture & Mental Health Research Unit, Institute of Community & Family
Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Canada
Nobuaki Kobayashi The Supporting Network for Chronic Sick Children of Japan,
Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Noboru Kobayashi Child Research Net c/o Benesse Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
Silvia H. Koller Department of Psychology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande
do Sul, Nonoai, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
Jill E. Korbin Department of Anthropology, Schubert Center for Child Studies,
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Vicki L. Lamb Department of Sociology, North Carolina Central University,
Durham, NC, USA
Kenneth C. Land Department of Sociology and Center for Population Health and
Aging, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Elizabeth Lawner Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
Penelope Leach Institute for the Study of Children, Families & Social Issues,
Birkbeck. University of London, Lewes, East Sussex, UK
Bonnie Leadbeater Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria,
BC, Canada
Bong Joo Lee Department of Social Welfare, College of Social Sciences, Seoul
National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Ratib Lekhal Division of Mental Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health,
Oslo, Norway
Dafna Lemish College of Mass Communication & Media Arts, Southern Illinois
University, Carbondale, IL, USA
Laura H. Lippman Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
Knut Løndal Oslo and Akershus University College, Oslo, Norway
Khin Yee Lo Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Sigmund Loland The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Ullevål Stadion,
Oslo, Norway
Rachel F. Long Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC, USA
xxx Contributors
Laura Lundy Centre for Children’s Rights, Queen’s University School of

Education, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Scott Lyon UCW program, Rome, Italy
Michael D. Lyons Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC, USA
Gill Main Department of Social Policy and Social Work, The University of York,
York, North Yorkshire, UK
Ghislaine Marande Perrin Departamento de Psicologia Evolutiva, Educativa,
Social i Metodologia, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, Universitat
Jaume I, Castellon, Spain
Nic Marks Centre of Well-being, New Economics Foundation, London, UK
Marta Martı́nez Muñoz Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Jan Mason School of Social Sciences & Psychology, University of Western
Sydney, Penrith South DC, NSW, Australia
Kyle Matsuba Kwantlen University, Richmond, Canada
Akira Matsui National Center for Child Health and Development, Okura,
Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan
Koji Matsunobu School of Music, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD,
Australia
Colette McAuley School of Social and International Studies, University of
Bradford, Bradford, England, UK
Megan M. McClelland Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families,
Oregon State University College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Corvallis,
OR, USA
Hugh McIntosh Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
John H. McKendrick School of Law and Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian
University, Glasgow, UK
Courtney L. Meehan Department of Anthropology, Washington State University,
Pullman, WA, USA
Yehualashet Mekonen The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF), Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia
Gary B. Melton The Kempe Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine,
Aurora, Colorado, USA
Edward Metz US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences,
Washington, DC, USA
Contributors xxxi
Alicia Miao Human Development and Family Sciences, Oregon State University
College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Corvallis, OR, USA
Hideo Mimuro Tokyo Metropolitan Komei Special Needs Education School for
the Physically Challenged, Tokyo, Japan
Wayne Mitic Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC,
Canada
Kristin Anderson Moore Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
Tim Moore Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Childrens Research
Institute, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
Araujo Normanda de Morais Programa de Pós Graduação em Psicologia,
Universidade de Fortaleza, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
Jo Moran-Ellis Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford,
Surrey, UK
Virginia Morrow Young Lives Oxford Department of International Develop-
ment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Ruud Muffels School of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Reflect, Tilburg
University, Tilburg, Netherlands
David Murphey Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
Agnes Nairn UPR Marches et Innovation, EM-Lyon Business School, Ecully,
France
Bernhard Nauck Department of Sociology, Chemnitz University of Technology,
Chemnitz, Germany
Dolors Navarro Faculty of Education and Psychology, Research Institute on
Quality of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain
Charles A. Nelson Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of
Developmental Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical
School, Boston, MA, USA
Ragnhild Bang Nes Division of Mental Health, Norwegian Institute of Public
Health, Oslo, Norway
Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, Oslo,
Norway
Kengo Nishimaki National Institute of Special Needs Education, Nobi, Yokosuk,
Kanagawa, Japan
Frank Oberklaid Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Childrens
Research Institute, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Parkville, VIC,
Australia
xxxii Contributors
Terje Ogden Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development, Unirand,

University of Oslo, Majorstuen, Oslo, Norway
William P. O’Hare O’Hare Data and Demographic Services, LLC, Ellicott City,
MD, USA
Dan Olweus Uni Health, Uni Research and University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Yngvar Ommundsen The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Ullevål Stadion,
Oslo, Norway
Manisha Pathak-Shelat School of Journalism and Mass Communication,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Michele Peterson-Badali University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Jens Qvortrup Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Marcela Raffaelli Department of Human & Community Development, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
Sara Raley Department of Sociology, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD, USA
Gerry Redmond School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University,
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Arthur J. Reynolds University of Minnesota, Institute of Child Development,
Dominic Richardson Social Policy Division, Department of Employment,
Labour and Social Affairs (DELSA), Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development, Paris, France
Martina Richter Institute of Social Work, Education and Sports Science, Univer-
sity of Vechta, Vechta, Germany
Karen Ripoll-Núñez Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
Beatriz Rodrı́guez University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain
Marı́a José Rodrigo University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain
Eugene C. Roehlkepartain Search Institute, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Furio Camillo Rosati Faculty of Economics, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”,
Rome, Italy
Wendy Rose School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
David M. Rosen Department of Social Sciences and History, Fairleigh Dickinson
University, Madison, NJ, USA
Contributors xxxiii
Cécile Rousseau Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill Univer-

sity, Montreal, QC, Canada
Espen Røysamb Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Martin D. Ruck The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York,
NY, USA
Mónica Ruiz-Casares Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill
University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Centre for Research on Children and Families, McGill University, Montreal,
Canada
Renee Ryberg Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
Yoichi Sakakihara Graduate School of Humanities and Science, Ochanomizu
University, Tokyo, Japan
Bengt Sandin Department of Thematic Studies/Child Studies, University of
Link€
oping, Link€
oping, Sweden
Peter C. Scales Search Institute, Manchester, MO, USA
Barry H. Schneider School of Psychology, Ottawa University, Ontario, Canada
Christie Schoenmaker Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University,
Leiden, The Netherlands
Arturo Sesma, Jr. St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN, USA
Richard A. Settersten, Jr. Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families,
Oregon State University College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Corvallis,
OR, USA
Junko Shimizu Tokyo Metropolitan Komei Special Needs Education School for
the Physically Challenged, Tokyo, Japan
Andra Siibak Institute of Journalism and Communication, University of Tartu,
Tartu, Estonia
Philip E. Silvey Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, Rochester,
NY, USA
Kristen Shook Slack School of Social Work and Institute for Research on
Poverty, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA
James C. Spilsbury Center for Clinical Investigation, Case School of Medicine,
Cleveland, OH, USA
Ellen Handler Spitz Honors College and the Department of Visual Arts, Univer-
sity of Maryland (UMBC), Baltimore, MD, USA
xxxiv Contributors
Fiona Stanley Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child
Health Research, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia
Peter N. Stearns George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
Edward G. J. Stevenson Department of Anthropology, University College
London, London, UK
Heinz S€ unker Center for International Studies in Social Policy and Social
Services, Bergische Universit€at Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
Amy K. Syvertsen Search Institute, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Mary Terzian Child Trends, Bethesda, MD, USA
Jens C. Thimm Departement of Psychology, University of Tromsø, Tromsø,
Norway
Ross A. Thompson Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis,
CA, USA
Barrie Thorne Departments of Sociology and of Gender and Women’s Studies,
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Habib Tiliouine Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Laboratory
of Educational Processes & Social Context (Labo-PECS), University of Oran,
Oran, Algeria
Melhiku Tiruneh The African Child Information Hub, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Svenn Torgersen Centre for Child and Adolescence Mental Health, Eastern and
Southern Norway, Oslo, Norway
Jaume Trilla Department of Theory and History of Education, University of
Barcelona, Mundet, Campus Mundet, Llevant, Barcelona, Spain
Gisela Trommsdorff Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz,
Konstanz, Germany
Jorge F. del Valle Child and Family Research Group, Faculty of Psychology,
University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain
Jan Van Gils International Council for Children’s Play, Mechelen, Belgium
Ruut Veenhoven Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization,
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands
North–West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa
Joar Vittersø Departement of Psychology, University of Tromsø, Tromsø,
Norway
Trine Waaktaar Centre for Child and Adolescence Mental Health, Eastern and
Southern Norway, Oslo, Norway
Contributors xxxv
Gert G. Wagner DIW (German Institute for Economic Research), Berlin,

Germany
Eddy J. Walakira Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Center
for the Study of the African Child and Center for Social Science Research on AIDS,
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
Catharina Elisabeth Arfwedson Wang Departement of Psychology, University
of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway
Elizabeth Watson School of Social Sciences & Psychology, University of
Western Sydney, Penrith South DC, NSW, Australia
Charles Watters Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers, The State University
of New Jersey, Camden, NJ, USA
Thomas S. Weisner Departments of Psychiatry (Semel Institute, Center for
Culture & Health) & Anthropology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Paul Alan Williamson Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist Univer-
sity, Dallas, TX, USA
Helmut Wintersberger Vienna, Austria
Bente Wold Department of Health Promotion and Development, University of
Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Carol M. Worthman Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology, Department
of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Yuichiro Yamashiro Probiotics Research Laboratory, Juntendo University
Graduate School of Medicine, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Hirokazu Yoshikawa Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge,
MA, USA
Henrik Daae Zachrisson Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development,
Oslo, Norway
Rita Žukauskienė Department of Psychology, Mykolas Romeris University,
Vilnius, Lithuania
Section III
Theoretical Approaches to Child Well-Being
Understanding the Well-Being of Children
and Adolescents Through Homeostatic 21
Theory
Robert A. Cummins
21.1 Introduction
There is an enormous literature on the well-being of children and adolescents

(hereafter “children”). While the notion of well-being is important at any age, it
has special interest in respect of young people because ill-being has such potential
to interfere with their normal life trajectory. As is well documented, a significant
proportion of youth in Western countries suffer some form of mental health
problem. In Australia, for example, Sawyer et al. (2000) estimate that about 14 %
of adolescents aged 13–17 years could be classified as having mental health issues
as determined by the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach 1991). This is an
instrument for assessing behavioral and emotional problems and competencies.
However, it is heavily weighted to the measurement of ill-being, through accessing
such constructs as anxiety and aggression. Similar results have been reported for
American youth (e.g., Keyes 2006). The authors of these and similar reports refer to
their results in terms of “well-being.”
The representation of “well-being” as the antonym of “ill-being” is common-
place in the literature. It follows the tradition in physical medicine of regarding the
patient as “well” as long as they are not “ill.” It is found in reviews of instruments
measuring psychopathology (e.g., Smith and Brun 2006), in meta-analyses of
“well-being” (e.g., Fischer and Boer 2011), and in numerous regular papers in
both medicine and psychology. Unfortunately, the antonym does not apply within
psychology, and this important misunderstanding has caused much confusion.
One avenue to understanding why “well-being” and “ill-being” are not func-
tional opposites comes from studying subjective well-being (SWB). It is now
evident that SWB is a basic property of human experience, with increasingly
R.A. Cummins
School of Psychology, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au
A. Ben-Arieh et al. (eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being, 635

DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_152, # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
636 R.A. Cummins
defined scales of measurement, norms, and theoretical models to describe and

predict its interaction with ill-being. One such model describes the control of
SWB in terms of homeostasis.
21.2 Subjective Well-Being Homeostasis
The theory of subjective well-being homeostasis (Cummins 1995, 2010) proposes

that, in a manner analogous to the homeostatic maintenance of body temperature,
subjective well-being (SWB) is actively controlled and maintained by automatic
neurological and psychological processes (see also Cummins and Nistico 2002).
The purpose of SWB homeostasis is to maintain a normally positive sense of well-
being that is generalized and rather abstract. It can be measured by the classic
question “How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?” Given the extraordinary
generality of this question, the response that people give is not based on a cognitive
evaluation of their life. Rather, it reflects the deep, stable, positive mood that is the
essence of SWB. It is this general and abstract sense of positive mood which
homeostasis seeks to defend. As a consequence of homeostatic maintenance,
subjective well-being has some interesting characteristics.
21.2.1 SWB Is Normally Stable and Positive
The stability of SWB at the level of population sample mean scores is remarkable.
The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index has been used to monitor the SWB of the
Australian population since 2001 using the Personal Wellbeing Index (International
Wellbeing Group 2006). A total of 26 surveys were conducted from 2001 to 2011,
each involving a new sample of 2,000 people (Cummins et al. 2010). All results are
standardized to a 0–100 scale, and using the 26 survey mean scores as data, the
average of these surveys is 75 points and the standard deviation is 0.8 points.
To explain this positive stability in SWB, it is proposed that each person has a set
point for their SWB that constitutes a genetically determined, individual difference.
While the strength of genetic determination is uncertain, longitudinal studies on twins
have led to estimates that the stable component of SWB has a heritability of some
40 % (Lykken and Tellegen 1996; Roysamb et al. 2003). While there is a high level
of agreement in the literature that such set points exist, Casas et al. (2008) failed to
find clear evidence for the heritability of set points between children and their parents
even though SWB comparisons seemed to indicate a detectable influence of a shared
environment. More studies are required to clarify the degree of heritability.
We also propose, on the basis of empirical deduction (Cummins 2010), that the
set points of individual people lie within the range of 60–90 points, with a mean of
75. Calculations also seem to indicate that, within this range, the normal variation
around each set point is about 6 percentage points on either side of its mean.
Homeostatic processes seek to maintain SWB within this set-point range for each
person.
21 Understanding the Well-Being of Children and Adolescents 637
The assumed normal distribution of set points within large samples, together
with the set-point ranges, explains why no population group chosen on the basis of
demographic criteria has a reliable SWB higher than about 81–82 points (Cummins
et al. 2007b). That is, if all members of a demographically advantaged sample, such
as people who are very wealthy, are operating at the top of their respective set-point
ranges, then the sample SWB should be about 75 + 6 ¼ 81 points.
21.2.2 How Is SWB Managed?
So what kind of a system might be responsible for keeping SWB stable and
positive? There is a substantial literature in which researchers describe the models
they imagine responsible for quality of life. One of the earliest was proposed by Liu
(1975), who created a composite model comprising nine “component indicators”
and a formula for their combination. The components are all objective. While he
does include “psychological inputs” into his formula, he regards this “subjective
component [as] qualitative in nature, [specific to] the individual and is not now
measurable” (p. 12).
In the year following, two other models were published, each of which assumed
the reliable measurement of SWB. The “Lewinian” life space model (Campbell
et al. 1976) and the “two-dimensional conceptual model” (Andrews and Withey
1976) were both concerned with the composition of quality of life into its objective
and subjective components, but did not incorporate any of the psychometric
characteristics described above. It took more than a decade for subsequent
researchers to build models based on psychometric data.
The first of these pioneers were two Australian researchers, Headey and Wearing
(1989). Using data from a panel study, they observed that people appeared to have
an ‘equilibrium level’ for their SWB. That is, in the absence of significant life
events, people tended to maintain a relatively steady level of SWB and that if an
event caused SWB to change then, over time, it tended to regain its previous level.
They called this their “dynamic equilibrium model” and considered the manage-
ment of SWB to be vested in a genetically inbuilt psychological system, based in
stable personality characteristics, which had the primary purpose of maintaining
self-esteem. They characterized this positive sense of SWB as a “sense of relative
superiority” because it had the consequence of making people feel that their
subjective life experience is better than average for the population.
Four years later, Tesser (1988) and Beach and Tesser (2000) proposed their self-
evaluation maintenance model. This also concerns the maintenance of positive
feelings about the self, with the motivation provided by a preference for positive
affective states and goal achievement. A balancing negative force was perceived as
the need for accuracy, consistency, and control. However, the overall balance is
weighted toward positivity due to the greater need to maintain positive feelings
about the self than for accurate perceptions of self-performance. This model is
limited to social interaction as the source of positive and negative feedback and
does not build on the crucial insight provided by SWB stability.
638 R.A. Cummins
The next researchers to use this insight were Stones and Kozma (1991) who
proposed their “magical model of happiness.” Like Headey and Wearing, they
depicted SWB as a self-correcting process that maintains stability around set points
that differ between individuals. They also regard SWB stability as a function of
a dispositional system (Kozma et al. 2000, now referred to this as the “propensity
model”). Importantly, they advanced understanding by noting that the stability in
SWB could not be entirely explained through personality variables alone and that
the best predictor of future SWB was the level of past SWB.
Other authors (Hanestad and Albrektsen 1992; Nieboer 1997; Ormel 1983;
Ormel and Schaufeli 1991) have also developed models based around the
assumption that SWB is neurologically maintained in a state of dynamic equilib-
rium. However, none of these incorporate the psychometric characteristics of SWB
described in the previous section and the nature of the relationship between
SWB and other demographic and psychological variables. The model that attempts
such a synthesis is SWB homeostasis.
21.2.3 SWB Is Homeostatically Protected
While SWB is normally held positive with remarkable tenacity, it is not immutable.
A sufficiently adverse level of challenge can defeat the homeostatic system, and
when this occurs, the level of subjective well-being falls below its homeostatic
range and this is likely to signal depression (Cummins 2010). However, under
normal levels of challenge, homeostatic processes maintain SWB within its set-
point range for each person through three levels of defense we call “buffers.”
The first line of defense is behavior. People are generally adept at avoiding
strong challenges through established life routines that make daily experiences
predictable and manageable. However, strong and unexpected events will inevita-
bly occur from time to time. Such events will shift SWB out of its normal range, as
attention shifts to the emotion generated by the event. Such deviations from the set-
point range will usually last for a brief period of time, until adaptation occurs.
Adaptation to unusual positive challenges is very predictable and well understood
(Helson 1964). Adaptation to negative challenges is less certain but is assisted by
the buffering capacity of the two “external buffers” as relationship intimacy and
money.
Of these two external buffers, the most powerful is a relationship that involves
mutual sharing of intimacies and support (Cummins et al. 2007a). Almost univer-
sally, the research literature attests to the power of good relationships to moderate
the influence of potential stressors on SWB (for reviews see Henderson 1977;
Sarason et al. 1990).
Money is also a powerful external buffer, but there are misconceptions as to
what money can and cannot do in relation to SWB. It cannot, for example, shift the
set point to create a perpetually happier person. Set points for SWB are genetically
determined (Lykken and Tellegen 1996; Røysamb et al. 2002; Stubbe et al. 2005),
so in this sense, money cannot buy happiness. No matter how rich someone is, their
average level of SWB cannot be sustained higher than a level that lies toward the
top of their set-point range. People adapt readily to luxurious living standards, so
genetics trumps wealth after a certain level of income has been achieved.
The true power of wealth is to protect well-being through its use as a highly
flexible resource (Cummins 2000) that allows people to defend themselves against
the negative potential inherent within their environment. Wealthy people pay others
to perform tasks they do not wish to do themselves. Poor people, who lack such
resources, must fend for themselves to a much greater extent. Poor people, there-
fore, have a level of SWB that is far more at the mercy of their environment. One
consequence is that their mean SWB is lower than average.
While the external buffers assist with homeostatic management of SWB, they
are not always successful. If these defenses fail, then the experience of SWB moves
outside the set-point range, and when this occurs, it is proposed that the internal
buffers are activated.
The internal buffers comprise protective cognitive devices designed to minimize
the impact of personal failure on positive feelings about the self. Such devices have
been variously described as downward social comparisons (Wills 1981), secondary
control (Rothbaum et al. 1982), benefit reminding (Affleck and Tennen 1996), and
positive reappraisal (Folkman and Moskowitz 2002).
A detailed discussion of these internal buffers in relation to SWB is provided by
Cummins and Nistico (2002) and Cummins, Gullone, and Lau (2002). Internal
buffers protect SWB by altering the way we see ourselves in relation to homeostatic
challenge, such that the negative potential in the challenge is deflected away from
the core view of self. The ways of thinking that can achieve this are highly varied.
For example, one can find meaning in the event (“God is testing me”), fail to take
responsibility for the failure (“it was not my fault”), or regard the failure (dropping
a fragile object) as unimportant (“I did not need that old vase anyway”).
In summary, the combined external and internal buffers ensure that subjective
well-being is robustly defended. There is, therefore, considerable stability in the
SWB of populations, and as has been stated, the mean for Western societies like
Australia is consistently at about 75 points on a 0–100 scale. But what is the
composition of subjective well-being?
21.2.4 Homeostasis Is Defending HPMood
Most contemporary theorists regard the composition of SWB, obtained through

a verbal or written response, to involve both affective and cognitive components.
This was first recognized by Campbell et al. (1976) who suggested that this
amalgam should be measured through questions of “satisfaction.” This form of
question has since become standard for SWB measurement. However, relatively
little research has examined the relative contribution of affect and cognition.
Whether, as claimed by Diener, Napa-Scollon, and Lucas (2004), SWB represents
a dominantly cognitive evaluation is moot. Indeed, to the contrary, more recent
research (Blore et al. 2011; Davern et al. 2007; Tomyn and Cummins 2011a)
640 R.A. Cummins
weighs the balance strongly in favor of affect, in the form of a deep and stable
positive mood state we refer to as homeostatically protected mood (HP Mood:
Cummins 2010).
The first indication that HPMood, not cognition, dominates the structure of SWB
came from Davern et al. (2007). These authors used structural equation modeling to
explore the relative strength of core variables to account for the variance in SWB.
These variables were HPMood (measured by six affects including contented,
happy, and alert), cognition (measured according to multiple discrepancies theory;
MDT, Michalos 1985), and all five factors of personality (NEO Personality Inven-
tory; Costa and McCrae 1992). Three separate models confirmed that the relation-
ship between SWB and HPMood was far stronger than that between SWB and
either personality or cognition. Moreover, their best-fitting model accounted for
90 % of the variance in SWB.
This pioneering research indicated that HPMood is the driving force behind
SWB, not personality as is generally reported in the literature (e.g., DeNeve and
Cooper 1998; Emmons and Diener 1985; Headey and Wearing 1989, 1992; Vitterso
2001; Vitterso and Nilsen 2002). Moreover, a major implication of their findings is
that HPMood may be causing the relationship between personality and SWB. That
is, since HPMood accounts for most of the shared variance between personality and
SWB, individual differences in set-point levels of HPMood may be causing per-
sonality and SWB to correlate.
A follow-up study by Blore et al. (2011) supports the findings of Davern et al.
(2007). They used data from 387 individuals who responded to the 5th longitudinal
survey of the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (see http://acqol.deakin.edu.au/
index_wellbeing/index.htm) and confirmed, again using structural equation modeling,
that HPMood accounted for 66 % of the variance in SWB. Following Davern et al.,
these authors also concluded that personality is not an important determinant of SWB.
After accounting for the variance supplied by HPMood, extroversion had
a nonsignificant relationship with SWB, while neuroticism remained weakly related.
Thus, their findings strongly support SWB as a construct mainly comprising HPMood.
In sum, we propose that HPMood comprises a blend of hedonic (pleasant) and
arousal values (activation). It is measured by asking how people generally feel on
the three affects of contented, happy, and alert. We propose that each person has
genetically generated level of HPMood which provides them with a unique level of
felt positivity. This level constitutes an individual difference between people and
represents their “set point” which, in turn, is the level of SWB which homeostasis
seeks to defend.
21.2.5 Normal Ranges
A major implication of homeostasis is that it should be possible to create normal

ranges for the variables that are heavily saturated with HPMood. The most saturated
of these variables is SWB, as argued above. Thus, two kinds of normal range for
SWB can be generated, one for individuals and one for normative groups.
Using the Personal Wellbeing Index for adults (International Wellbeing Group
2006), the current estimation of the SWB normative range for group mean scores,
using the 26 survey mean scores from the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index as data
(Cummins et al. 2011), is from 73.71 to 76.71 points and with an SD of 0.75 points.
When the scores from individuals are used as data, with a sample size of 52,011
respondents, the SD is much larger at 12.42 points. This makes the normal range for
individuals 50.16–99.84, which rather neatly covers the positive half of the 0–100 point
range. So, importantly, no individual adult score should fall below 50 points. If a score
does fall below this level, it is indicative of psychopathology, especially depression.
The 3.0 point normal range for group mean scores has been achieved through the
use of constant methodology and a stable Australian society. When the criteria for
data collection are relaxed, the range naturally expands. Cummins (1995, 1998)
determined that the normal SWB range for survey mean scores in Western nations
is 70–80 points, while the range for a broader set of countries was determined as
60–80 points. This applied equally for single item scales (“satisfaction with life as
a whole”) and multi-domain scales.
Interestingly, the normal range for the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener
et al. 1985) is about 5–10 points lower than the above estimates, caused by the
extreme nature of the item wording and the consequential avoidance of the
extreme upper end of the response scale. Numerous studies have shown that the
normal range for this scale is about 65–75 points. For example, survey data
collected by our team in 2004 from a general Australian population sample of
557 respondents produced a mean of 69.4 points. Other results from comparable
cultural groups have been reported by Renn et al. (2009) (Austrian medical
students – 72.0 points); Koo and Oishi (2009) (European American college
students – 67.3); Proctor et al. (2011) (English undergraduate students – 66.1);
and Christopher and Gilbert (2010) (US college students – 62.7 points).
In summary, normal ranges can be established for SWB scales. These are very
important devices because they infer that results lying outside these ranges are
likely to be abnormal.
21.3 The Interface Between Well-Being and Ill-Being
21.3.1 Homeostasis and Resilience
Homeostatic systems can be inherently robust or they can be fragile. To some

extent, this dimension is a product of each person’s constitution, and to some extent,
it is dependent on the defensive resources available to them. In terms of constitu-
tion, this attribute has been studied for many years, commonly under the rubric of
“resilience.” A resilient person is someone who functions normally even in the face
of considerable environmental hardship and challenge. The term applied to children
denotes that they have developed normally despite adverse living conditions.
What allows some people to function in such a robust manner has been much
debated, but it may be simply a function of their HPMood set point. Someone with
642 R.A. Cummins
Dominant Source of SWB Control
Set Homeostasis
Challenging
Defensive range
80
Set
point a
range
70 b
Strong homeostatic defense c
Upper
Threshold Lower
SWB Lower
Threshold
Threshold
50
No Very strong
challenge challenge
Strength of challenging agent
Fig. 21.1 The relationship between negative experience and SWB
a high set point has the advantage that their normal level of SWB is far away from
the “danger zone” of 50 points that signals an increased probability of depression
(see later). Moreover, their high HPMood will enhance extraversion more than
neuroticism, ensuring a socially oriented personality that is likely to garner the
involvement of other people in the person’s life. Thus, their social capital is likely
to be high. In addition, their high set point will deliver a robust sense of self-esteem,
control, and optimism, all of which will ensure a strong buffering system (Cummins
and Nistico 2002).
What, then, is the statistical relationship between the level of objective
resources in people’s lives and their SWB? Almost universally, researchers
assume the relationship to be linear. Necessarily, however, if homeostasis
theory is correct, the linearity assumption is wrong. All homeostatic systems
operate around a threshold. The purpose of such systems is to create relative
stability in whatever variable is being defended. In the current context, the
positive sense of self provided by the HPMood set point is being defended
against challenges created by either internal process (e.g., anxiety) or external
circumstances (e.g., poverty). Thus, it is predicted that the strength of any source
of environmental challenge will relate to SWB in accordance with homeostatic
principles, as shown in Fig. 21.1.
In the absence of major challenges and in the presence of personally enhancing
resources, SWB will lie at the top of its set-point range. This averages about 80–82
points in population samples. In an extensive search for groups with high SWB
conducted through our analyses of the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index data, no
demographically defined group has a mean score that reliably lies above this range
(Cummins et al. 2007a).
As the presence of a challenging agent becomes increasingly evident to aware-
ness, the SWB for each person will move down through its set-point range until it
approximates the bottom of the range. This downward progression will plateau as
homeostatic processes are progressively activated to prevent further decrease. At
about 70 points, on average, these homeostatic processes are fully activated. That is,
even though awareness of the challenge is increasing, homeostasis is “holding the
line” and preventing further change in the level of SWB.
At some higher strength of challenge, however, the capacity of the homeostatic
system is exceeded. At this point, the threshold for homeostatic maintenance is
breached, and control of SWB shifts from the homeostatic system to the challenging
agent. This causes a change in the correlation between SWB and the challenging
agent, from a very weak relationship during effective homeostasis to strong
interdependence as the threshold gives way. A description of this change is provided
in Cummins (2010). As the challenging agent causes well-being to fall, this creates
a progressive increase in the probability of depression. The pathological state of
depression is normally associated with the loss of the positive sense of self (American
Psychiatric Association 2000).
This model predicts a new understanding of the relationship between SWB and
challenging agents. Consider, for example, the situation of rising anxiety. As the
level of anxiety rises, homeostasis attempts to negate the negative relationship with
SWB, as it attempts to keep SWB within its set-point range. Thus, quite marked
increases in anxiety may be accompanied by very little change in SWB.
A demonstration of this using adult data comes from the 6th report of the
Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (Cummins et al. 2003). This survey was
conducted in April 2003, a time of high tension in Australia. Just 6 months before
this survey, a favorite Australian tourist destination in Bali, Indonesia, had suffered
a deadly terrorist attack. On October 12, 2002, bombs detonated in the tourist
district of Kuta killed 202 people, 88 of whom were Australians. It was Australia’s
first introduction to terrorism so close to home.
The data for the 6th survey were collected shortly after the Bali attack. More-
over, at that same time, the war with Iraq was looming, and the seemingly automatic
involvement of Australian troops was a topic of national concern. Indeed, there was
a gap of just 1 week between the end of data collection and the actual invasion. So
during this survey period, the combined Bali aftermath and the looming war were
a strong source of anxiety for many people.
We asked the 2000 respondents “What about the general situation concerning
Iraq? Does this make you feel anxious?” If they answered “yes,” we asked “How
strong would you rate your anxiety [from 0 to 10] about the situation in Iraq?”
A total of 71.7 % respondents said they felt anxious, and almost 25 % of these
people rated their anxiety as 9 or 10. The relationship between the strength of
anxiety and SWB measured through the Personal Wellbeing Index is shown in
Table A10.1 of that report.
644 R.A. Cummins
What these results indicate is no systematic relationship between levels of

anxiety and SWB. Over the range of anxiety strength 3–10, the mean levels of
SWB vary from 73.6 to 75.2, a range of just 1.6 percentage points, and all values lie
within the normal range for group mean scores which is 73.7–76.7 points
(Cummins, et al. 2011).
There are several important principles demonstrated by these results as follows:
1. Levels of anxiety cannot be used as measures of pathology. Whether a specific
level of anxiety causes pathology will depend on several other factors.
2. One important factor is the reason for the anxiety. In the current example, the
anxiety is being expressed in relation to distal matters, either terrorism or war,
neither of which is actually occurring in Australia and so are not part of the
personal life space for most people. If the anxiety was in relation to stuttering in
social interaction, then its influence on SWB would be stronger, but the same
principles of uncertainty in relation to pathology would apply.
3. A second factor is the strength of the homeostatic system to resist change. This
may involve the set point, with higher set points indicating more resilience, and
also the strength of the external and internal buffers to resist change.
21.3.2 Chronic Challenges and Homeostatic Fragility
While the above results demonstrate the lack of linearity between distal anxiety and
SWB, it is also true that any level of chronic challenge to the homeostatic system will
weaken its ability to defend HPMood. The influence of multiple challenges is cumu-
lative, so the chronic daily difficulties caused by, for example, physical disability will
reduce the potential of the homeostatic system to counteract other sources of threat.
Certainly, such challenges are offset by the availability of the individual’s external and
internal resources. If these resources are sufficient to neutralize the additional demands
caused by the disability, the homeostatic system will manage SWB and the person will
experience normal levels of well-being. If the demands exceed the resources, homeo-
stasis will fail, and SWB will lie below the normative range.
In estimating the levels of chronic challenge, often measured as stress, it is
common for researchers to simply add the sources in a linear fashion. This, however,
likely underestimates their combined influence. The presence of one source of
chronic challenge may create an enhanced probability of others. For example,
many people with a disability have a lower income than is age normative, some
have reduced control of the income they do receive, and many will experience more
difficulty than is normal in developing friendships or intimate relationships. These
factors, together with the negative challenge imposed by their disability in negoti-
ating the routines of life, represent a double jeopardy. They have a higher probability
of low external resources and a higher probability of encountering difficulties with
daily living. As a result, their management of SWB will be more tenuous because
their homeostatic systems will be under constant pressure. While this does not imply
widespread homeostatic failure, it does imply that people with a disability likely
have reduced capacity to deal with unexpected negative experiences.
21.3.3 Mental Health and Well-Being
As described in the introduction to this chapter, mental health is a very poor

descriptive term for two reasons. First, it implies that psychological health is simply
the absence of psychopathology (mental ill-health). So it encourages the assump-
tion that the absence of stress, depression, etc., implies that someone is “mentally
healthy.” While this conception has strong validity within the realm of physical
medicine, it is simply wrong when applied to subjective well-being. The prior
descriptions of SWB homeostasis make it clear that it is perfectly normal, and no
doubt necessary, to live with certain levels of “psychopathology” (e.g., stress) and
for this to be non-pathological as long as homeostasis is ascendant. One true
measure of psychopathology is homeostatic failure and the loss of a sense of
positive well-being.
21.4 Subjective Well-Being and Children
The importance of studying subjective well-being in children, in conjunction with

the traditional study of psychopathology, is in harmony with preventive approaches
to promoting mental health (Spence 1996). Primary prevention aims to reduce the
incidence of psychopathology by intervention prior to the onset of disorders. As
such, it requires knowledge of the factors which predict entry into dysfunctional
pathways (risk factors) as well as those that support the normal homeostatic
maintenance of well-being (resilience factors). Such knowledge is particularly
important when the risk factors are not easily amenable to change, such as family
breakup, poverty, and early childhood temperament. Moreover, understanding the
normal (subjective well-being) is essential to informing the abnormal and vice
versa (Cicchetti and Cohen 1995). Hence, the investigation of SWB homeostasis is
not only important in its own right, it is also fundamental to understanding the
development and treatment of pathology in children.
Many psychological disorders, particularly the more common anxiety disorders,
emerge in late childhood or early adolescence (Dadds et al. 1997). Moreover, unless
treated, they tend to remain stable throughout adolescence and are associated with
a range of psychosocial impairments and significant distress (Milne et al. 1995).
Not surprisingly, therefore, the preadolescent and adolescent years have received
substantial research attention in relation to psychopathology, but far less in relation
to subjective well-being.
In this context, SWB is important because of its nonlinear relationship with
challenging agents (see Sect. 21.2) and its predictive power in relation to depres-
sion. Moreover, understanding the empirical nature of these relationships is facil-
itated by understanding the processes of homeostasis. But do the same discovered
properties of SWB homeostasis apply to children? The following sections will
examine this issue even while acknowledging a crucial caveat, which is limitations
imposed by the process of maturation. The internal homeostatic buffers are all
highly involving of cognition, and therefore, there are going to be age limitations to
646 R.A. Cummins
the extent that they become available to children. In particular, secondary control
(Rothbaum, et al. 1982) only gradually becomes available to children as they age
from early school age to adolescence (Altshuler and Ruble 1989; Band 1990;
Marriage and Cummins 2004). Thus, it would be expected that homeostatic control
would not reach full strength until adolescence, at least.
A similar maturational issue is raised by the measurement of SWB itself. The
questions used for this purpose are quite abstract (see PWI) and so clearly not
understandable to young children thinking in concrete terms. One possible way to
counter this is to make the measurement scale questions more concrete, with
a simpler response format.
21.4.1 Measuring SWB in Children
A precursor to the Personal Wellbeing Index was the Comprehensive Quality of

Life Scale (ComQol: Cummins 1997b). In 1999, Gullone and Cummins collected
data using this adult scale from a sample of 264 school-based adolescents aged
between 12 and 18 years. They found that the scale yielded SWB data that lay
within the normative range for adults. Moreover, test-retest reliability and internal
consistency were adequate and, in support of convergent validity, fear and anxiety
were generally found associated with lower levels of SWB. The authors concluded
that the psychometric properties of the ComQol are adequate to measure the SWB
of adolescents.
However, in 2002, the ComQol was substantially revised to improve various
aspects of its functioning (http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/acqol/instruments/)
and the Personal Wellbeing Index – Adult was created in its place. The PWI –
School Children (PWI-SC: Cummins and Lau 2005) has been specifically
constructed as a child version of the adult scale. Changes to the scale involve
simplified wording and a reduced number of response points.
In terms of its psychometric properties, the PWI-SC factors as intended (Tomyn
and Cummins 2011b). However, results on the domain contributions to GLS for
adolescents are mixed. Using the PWI for adults and a pooled sample of 1,952
Spanish and 940 Romanian adolescents, Casas et al. (2009a) found that all 7
domains contributed unique variance to the prediction of GLS. However, Austra-
lian data, based on the PWI-SC, only partly confirmed this result. Using a smaller
sample (N ¼ 351), Tomyn and Cummins (2011b) found that the domain of relation-
ships failed to make a unique contribution to GLS. This is a curious result given that
the well-being of adolescents is no less dependent than adults on the availability of
supportive relationships. It is possible that this may reflect inadequate statistical
power due to small sample size.
A further major difference from adult PWI results concerns the domain of safety.
In adults, this domain fails to make a unique contribution in Australia and is only
retained because it does so in other countries (International Wellbeing Group 2006).
However, for the adolescents in the Tomyn and Cummins (2011b) study, the
domain of safety contributed a significant 2 % unique variance. These results
may indicate that the relative contributions of the domains to GLS are not equiv-
alent for adults and adolescents.
Despite these cautions, the PWI-SC appears to yield data that are comparable to
those from the adult scale. Due to maturational limitations, however, it is not
recommended for children under the age of 12 years. How, then, to measure SWB in
younger children is a problem that some researchers solve through proxy responding.
21.4.2 Proxy Responding
Proxy responding, or providing answers for another person, seems intuitively

sensible in circumstances where the child cannot validly respond for themselves
due to immaturity. In such situations, proxy responses are commonly sought from
one of the child’s parents. While such parental responses may well be reliable when
the topic of the information is objective (e.g., “Does Trixy get out of the house
much with her friends?”), both reliability and validity plummet when the informa-
tion being sought is subjective. This has been systematically documented in relation
to children and adolescents, where two reviews have concluded that proxies cannot
be reliably substituted for self-reports either in relation to behavioral/emotional
problems (Achenbach et al. 1987) or the feelings experienced by children with
disabilities (Yuker 1988).
Results presented within the Achenbach et al. (1987) review are instructive. The
studies they accessed were restricted to the behavioral/emotional problems of
children and adolescents. The proxy responses had been provided by parents
(N ¼ 11 studies), teachers (N ¼ 17), mental health workers (N ¼ 6), and peers
(N ¼ 20). The mean correlations (Pearson’s r), within each of these groups between
proxy and self-reports, were .25, .20, .27, and .26, respectively. Very similar results
are reported by Cummins (2002) in a review of eight studies reporting subjective
proxy data for children/adolescents (mean r ¼ .24). Using Cohen’s (1977) criteria
for effect sizes, correlations from .10 to .29 represent small degrees of association.
This implies that such proxy data could not validly be used as a substitute for self-
reports.
The review by Cummins (2002) is more wide-ranging. It examines data covering
many different situations where proxy responses have been used because
a judgment has been made by the assessors that reliable subjective data are unable
to be provided by the person themselves. Across all of these situations, no evidence
was found supporting this as a valid technique and several reasons were advanced.
These include the obvious fact that the proxy has no direct access to the required
information and so must rely on indirect cues and personal knowledge about the
target person, all of which are inherently unreliable for such a purpose. Further,
systematic personal biases in relation to making subjective evaluative estimates for
other people make it virtually impossible for proxies to make disinterested judg-
ments. For these and other reasons discussed in this review, it is concluded that the
process of proxy responding in relation to SWB is inherently flawed and should not
be used.
648 R.A. Cummins
21.4.3 The Normal Range of SWB for Children
When children provide their own SWB data, the most basic issue of comparability
with adult data is the normal range. If, as proposed, this range is primarily
determined through the distribution of HPMood set points, then the distribution
should not differ between adults and adolescents because the determination of each
set point is proposed to be under genetic control. So, if the normal range for children
and adolescents was found to be substantially different from that of adults, then
there are two possibilities. One is that the two age groups are responding to the
items in fundamentally different ways. The other is the identification of some
agency which is exerting an age-related, systematic influence on SWB.
It is unlikely that such an agency would cause the chronic SWB of adolescents to
rise above the adult range, since adaptation so predictably reduces the response to
abnormally positive experiences (Helson 1964). However, a challenging agent
could certainly maintain the SWB of children below the adult range, as long as
the agent was strongly felt and persistent.
From the perspective of homeostasis theory, the presence of a persistent, chal-
lenging agent would be apparent from an examination of the sample variance. Take
first the situation of a positive challenge in the form of an effective intervention of
some kind. If such an agent is applied to a group of children who are already
experiencing normal-range SWB, then while the agent may enhance group resil-
ience, it will not cause a major shift in SWB. This is because rapid adaptation will
return SWB to its normal range. If, on the other hand, such a positive agent is
applied to a disadvantaged sample of children, who have a maintained level of
SWB that is below normal range, then the agent may have a dramatic effect to
increase SWB back into its normal range. If this occurred, then raising the mean
SWB would be associated with a reduced within-sample variance, as the tail of the
distribution was brought into the normal range.
The presence of a negative challenging agent will exert the opposite effect. At
low levels of challenge, homeostasis will hold the line and no dramatic shift in
SWB will be observed. However, if the level of challenge exceeds homeostatic
capacity for some children, their SWB will fall and the within-sample variance will
expand, reflecting a higher proportion of the sample experiencing homeostatic
defeat.
How, then, do the sample variances between children and adults compare? In
Australia (see Sect. 21.2.5), the normal range for sample mean scores for adults has
been determined as from 73.71 to 76.71 points. Confirmation that this range
approximates that for children comes from young children, aged 5–10 years,
assessed using a scale developed for people who have an intellectual disability
(Com-Qol-15; Cummins 1997a). Marriage and Cummins (2004) reported SWB
values of 74.98 and 78.95 points, for younger and older children, respectively. For
samples of children aged 12–18 years, similar results have been found from Spain
(Casas et al. 2008: mean 14.1 years; 79.1 points) and Australia (Tomyn and
Cummins 2011a, b; 15.7 and 16.7 years; 74.7 and 73.6 points, respectively).
These are reasonable approximations to the adult range.
21.4.4 The Composition of SWB for Children
While the mean SWB scores seem comparable, this does not indicate validity.
A major issue for the validity of the PWI-SC is whether the domains form
a coherent scale and whether they are sufficient to reasonably represent the con-
struct of SWB in children. After all, the scale was designed for adult views of the
construct, and these may well not parallel the views of children.
In terms of factorial composition, it is apparent that the PWI factors as intended
when used with adolescents (Casas et al. 2011b; Casas et al. 2007a) as does also the
PWI-SC (Tomyn and Cummins 2011b). However, the equivalence of some of the
domains is questionable.
The domain of “productivity” is problematic in this regard. The adult version of
the scale is intended for the dimension of adult experience which may comprise
paid work, family care, volunteer activities, engaging hobbies, or any other activity
the adult feels is consistent with their views of being productive. Children, how-
ever, are generally bereft of these activities, with their lives outside the home
dominated by the institution called “school,” which provides them with a quite
different experience. Attending school, and even the process of learning new
information, may not be viewed by children as a “productive” activity (see
Tomyn and Cummins 2011b). Rather, it may be categorized, for example, as
a social activity and so viewed by children quite differently.
When students engage with peers and teachers in a meaningful way, they are
likely to elicit feedback, either positive or negative, in return. Ongoing interactions
then tend to reinforce specific expectations and behaviors, which lay the founda-
tions for each individual’s unique school experience, which forms part of their
subjective life quality. Tomyn and Cummins (2011b) tested this proposition by
including “school satisfaction” as an additional domain in the PWI-SC. And, sure
enough, it contributed an additional 1.0 % unique variance to the prediction of GLS
beyond the existing seven domains. It thereby qualified to be considered as an
additional domain for the scale.
As verification that the children were regarding this new domain as a high-level
conceptual structure, it was also shown that a four-item scale, to measure the
deconstructed form of school satisfaction, could be constructed along the same
lines as for the PWI. Satisfaction with the items “teachers,” “behavior,” “abilities,”
and “safety” accounted for 52 % of the variance in school satisfaction.
21.4.5 The Role of HPMood for Children
Within adult samples, the structure of SWB is dominated by HPMood, as has been
shown. So, if the role of HPMood is as primitive and universal as has been
suggested, it should have a similar relationship to SWB, personality, and other
variables, as has been found for adults.
In a study aiming to partially replicate Davern et al. (2007) with a sample of
Australian adolescents, Tomyn and Cummins (2011a) found the adjectives happy
650 R.A. Cummins
(pleasant), content (pleasant), and alert (activated), when combined to create

HPMood, explained 57 % of the variance in SWB. This proportion of variance
accounted for is roughly consistent with findings using adult data (Blore et al.
2011 – 68 %; Davern et al. 2007 – 56 %) in the presence of multiple other variables.
Tomyn and Cummins (2011a) also tested again the three structural equation
models in which HPMood, personality, or multiple discrepancies were each
allowed to drive the combined relationship with SWB. Consistent with Davern
et al. (2007) and Blore et al. (2011), the affectively driven model was the best fitting
accounting for 80 % of the variance. Moreover, their model-fit statistics indicated
a particularly poor fit for the personality-driven model. This challenges a large body
of research, cited earlier, which states that personality drives SWB. Rather, these
results indicate that most of the shared variance between personality and SWB
comes from HPMood. A similar conclusion is made in respect of MDT. Taken
together, these results confirm HPMood as the major component of SWB and
suggest that, just as with adults, the relationship between personality and SWB
and between MDT and SWB, in data from adolescents, is mainly due to the
variance contributed by HPMood.
21.4.6 Correlates of SWB in Children
Another form of validity (AER, American Educational Research Association,

American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in
Education 1999) is the way in which the SWB, as measured by the PWI-SC,
correlates with other variables. If the yielded SWB operates in the same way within
adults and children, then the relationships between SWB and other variables should
be similar. And, indeed, this appears to be the case. Adolescents’ life satisfaction
has been reported to correlate positively with internal locus of control, self-esteem,
and extraversion and negatively with anxiety, neuroticism, depressive symptom-
atology, and stress (Dew and Huebner 1994; Heaven 1989; Hong et al. 1993;
Huebner 1991; Leung and Leung 1992). Similarly, SWB has been found to be
inversely related to loneliness, social anxiety, and shyness, while being positively
related to self-esteem, social acceptance, attachment, self-efficacy, psychological
maturity, low impulsivity, and physical attractiveness (Hawkins et al. 1992;
Marriage and Cummins 2004; Neto 1993).
In terms of the operation of the homeostatic system itself, the three putative
buffers of self-esteem, perceived control, and optimism are all highly correlated
with one another in adults (Sanna 1996; Scheier and Carver 1985; Shepperd et al.
1996), leading to the proposition that, in addition to buffering SWB, they also
buffer one another. The child data also show similar relationships. For example,
locus of control and self-esteem have been found significantly correlated in a child/
adolescent sample (Casas et al., 2007b; Enger et al. 1994), as does primary control.
However, secondary control (Rothbaum, et al. 1982) has a changing relationship
with child SWB as the control construct matures through early childhood (Marriage
and Cummins 2004).
In conclusion, it can reasonably be deduced that the relationships between SWB

and other variables, determined through the use of child data, are similar to those
found in adults. Moreover, given the caveat of maturational effects for secondary
control, the three buffers appear to be similarly functionally linked for both age
groups.
21.4.7 The Sensitivity of SWB Measurement in Children
A final form of measurement equivalence between the two age groups is the
sensitivity of SWB to various influences. Due to homeostatic control, demographic
factors generally have only a weak influence on adult SWB (Cummins, et al. 2011).
Similarly, studies with adolescents have typically also found only a weak associ-
ation between SWB and demographic variables (Burke and Weir 1978; Huebner
1991; Man 1991).
Despite this weak overall trend, adult levels of SWB are predictable
influenced by various demographic factors to the extent that statistically reliable
differences can be detected. The comparability sensitivity of child data will now
be examined.
21.4.7.1 Gender
The presence and direction of a gender difference in adults is highly variable. It
seems to differ between countries, and even within a stable Western country as
Australia, it varies considerably. Over the 26 surveys of the Australian Unity
Wellbeing Index (Cummins, et al. 2011), 15 surveys (58 %) have shown significantly
higher SWB for females, 1 (4 %) has shown higher SWB for males, and 10 (38 %)
have shown no gender difference. Thus, while the presence of an adult gender
difference is unreliable, when it does occur, it favors higher well-being in females.
In a sample of young Australian children (5–10 years), Marriage and Cummins
(2004) found no gender differences in SWB. In samples of older Australian
adolescents (Tomyn and Cummins 2011b), SWB was higher among females
(76.09 points) than males (71.09). These trends are in accordance with the pattern
of adult data.
21.4.7.2 Age
The well-being of adults, where data are collected through population surveys,
commonly shows a statistically reliable sensitivity to age. When it is found, the
relationship is U-shaped; such well-being is highest in early adulthood, drops in
middle age, and then rises after the age of about 55 years. The cause of this change
is the lower well-being of some middle-age people who find their resources
insufficient to deal with the combined demands of children, a mortgage, and
work. When the partner resources are sufficient to meet these demands, this
middle-age decrease does not occur (see Fig. 5.11 in Cummins et al. 2011). That
is, the middle-age decrease in SWB is mainly confined to people living without
a partner.
652 R.A. Cummins
Such systematic age differences in relationship support will not normally be

present for children. However, many adolescents will experience different forms of
systematic age-related challenges, which increase in intensity as they move through
the adolescent period. Adolescence is commonly experienced as stressful due to the
biosocial changes associated with puberty, changes in schools as students move
between primary and secondary education, concerns about belonging and
conforming to peer pressure, and familial relationships that are often undergoing
transformations (Steinberg 1993). They also face greater schoolwork pressures in
their final years of secondary school or face the uncertainty of employment and
starting a career. It is therefore reasonable to expect that homeostatic maintenance
will be increasingly challenged through the adolescent period, and this is confirmed
by abundant evidence.
One of the most important markers of psychopathology is depressed mood, and
this is commonly found in later adolescence (e.g., Greenberger and Chen 1996).
Indeed, it occurs more often in adolescence than at any other time of life (Steinberg
1993), contributed by hormonal changes with the onset of puberty (Susan et al.
1991). The incidence of general mental health problems also rises during the
adolescent period (Keyes 2006). So it is hardly surprising to find that these findings
are paralleled by decreasing SWB through adolescence. It has been reported that
child well-being decreases between 12 and 18 years in both Spain (Casas et al.
2007b; Casas et al. 2009c) and other Latin-speaking countries (Casas et al. 2011a),
in Romania (Casas et al. 2009a), and also in Australia (Petito and Cummins 2000;
Tomyn and Cummins 2011b).
The implications of decreasing well-being through adolescence are shown
through the relationship between mental health, satisfaction at school, and subjec-
tive well-being (e.g., Baker 1999; Huebner et al. 1999; Jin and Moon 2006). Quite
clearly, difficulties with mental health are associated with difficulties in scholastic
achievement and social development.
21.4.7.3 Disability
A further challenge to homeostatic control is evident in children who have
a disability. However, children display remarkable resilience under most such
circumstances, and this is most particularly so if the disability is congenital.
Because the presence of the disability is the only life experience such children
have known, their level of adaptation to the limitations imposed by their circum-
stance is strong. This resilience is strongest if the financial and emotional resources
are sufficient to support the child in those aspects of their life made challenging by
the condition itself.
Most obvious in this regard are children who have a congenital physical disabil-
ity. The child’s physical needs in relation to their disability are obvious and can be
met by prostheses of one kind or another. Moreover, in such circumstances, most
children will learn how to integrate and socialize with other children, so their
measured SWB will be normal. However, there are other forms of congenital
disability which have high potential to disrupt normal experience and for which
prostheses may not be available. An example is language impairment.
One of the most demanding and necessary skills for children to learn is effective
communication with people outside their family (Mulcahy et al. 2008). Such
interactions are necessary as a means for children to get to know one another
through the subtly of inferred meaning and mutual sharing of values. Obviously,
this process is disrupted when a child has expressive language impairment. They
may experience chronic frustration when others react negatively to the nature of
their speech (Klompas and Ross 2004) and thereby attend more to the manner of
their speaking than the message it is intended to carry (O’Keefe 1996). Such severe
difficulties may impose a level of challenge that defeats homeostatic control.
Depending on the severity of the disability and the character of the person, this
has the potential to exert a negative influence on life quality throughout the life
cycle. Children tend to avoid perceived deviance in others. So it is no surprise to
find that children who exhibit behavioral deviance are likely to experience exclu-
sion, even victimization. This problem has been well documented in relation to both
young children (Baldwin 1958; Heiman and Margalit 1998; Williams and Asher
1992) and adolescents (Brown and Timmons 1994; Hornby and Kidd 2001; van
Riper 1971). Interpersonal rejection then predisposes these children to the devel-
opment of personality disorders (Iverach et al. 2009) and psychopathology (for
reviews see Deater-Deckard 2001; Hawker and Boulton 2002). If these difficulties
persist, then the social anxiety may cause children to underperform at school (Peters
and Guitar 1991).
In adulthood, fluency disorders, for example, may harm employment opportu-
nities (Klein and Hood 2004) as well as continuing to create relational difficulties
(Ross 2001). Moreover, severe childhood language difficulties are associated with
adult differences in objective life quality. Arkkila et al. (2008) followed up Finnish
children who had received a hospital diagnosis of specific language impairment.
They had normal nonverbal intelligence but below-normal verbal intelligence at the
time of diagnosis. At the age of 34 years, compared with the general population,
they were more likely to live with their parents and to have a pension. While only
a few reported having literacy problems, over 40 % had difficulty in finding words
and remembering instructions. Thus, remnants of their early language impairment
persisted.
In summary, while most forms of congenital disability allow adaptation with
appropriate support, some forms of disability that strongly impact social relation-
ships are more difficult to manage. Thus, children have specific areas of vulnera-
bility as they mature, and the profile of the PWI domains can assist to identify such
areas in situations where SWB is being threatened.
21.4.8 Life Domains
Within the general population, there are subgroups of adults and children who
exhibit particular vulnerabilities. While poverty and family violence exert
a common negative influence on people no matter what their age, some domains,
such as safety, gain special relevance for both adults and children. Under such
654 R.A. Cummins
conditions, the selective depression of some domains can be diagnostic of the

dominant form of the challenge to homeostasis. One of these is the domain
“achieving in life.”
There are several subgroups of adults who suffer low satisfaction with this life
area. People who are unemployed are an obvious example. But children may exhibit
a special vulnerability due to their common experience of attending school. Rather
disturbingly, Tomyn and Cummins (2011b) found that the PWI domain of “achiev-
ing in life” was below the adult range. Low satisfaction with this domain may
indicate that the school curriculum is failing to meet these children’s developmental
needs.
A second domain of interest in this regard is spirituality/religion. This domain
was only introduced into the adult scale in the 4th edition of the manual (2006), and
its inclusion has been problematic in that about 45 % of respondents in Australia say
they do not have this dimension in their life (Cummins, et al. 2011). Moreover,
while, for believers, spirituality/religion fulfills the requirements for a PWI domain,
it is very weakly connected to the other domains, indicating it may be representing
a different construct.
Casas et al. (2009a) find similar results both in Spain and Romania and also
evidence of changing emphasis between spirituality and religion during adoles-
cence (Casas et al. 2009b). These authors recommend that the two constructs be
separately measured and investigated rather than being combined into a single
domain. While this suggestion requires earnest consideration, it also adds yet
another domain to the scale.
In summary, studying the pattern of domain satisfaction levels can be quite
diagnostic in terms of identifying the major sources of challenge for children. It
may also be wise, at this stage of scale development, to omit the spirituality/religion
domain for children.
21.5 The Relevance of Homeostasis for Parents
The final topic to be addressed in this chapter is parental well-being. Pretty

obviously, the well-being of most children is highly dependent on the well-being
of their parents and, indeed, of the whole family. The theory of SWB homeostasis
gives insights into this crucial topic.
As has been described, two of the major external resources available to parents
are household income and partner support. In Fig. 21.2, taken from Cummins et al.
(2011), adult SWB is mapped against various levels of both resources. It is evident
that the best household composition for adult SWB is living only with a partner.
Even the lowest household income allows couples, on average, to maintain normal-
range SWB. Moreover, due to the genetically imposed ceiling, their SWB rises only
marginally with increasing financial resources, changing only 3.7 percentage points
over the entire income range.
The situation is more volatile when children are added to the household.
Children drain parental resources, and this compromises the SWB of adults living
82 81.5
81
80 79.2 79.9
78.6
79 77.8
Strength of satisfaction (PWI)
77.8 78.8
78 78.9
77 76.2 78.1 76.7
76 74.6 76.8 Normative
75 75.6 75.8 Range
74 74.6
73 73.7
72 72.7
71 71.8
70
69 69.8
68
67 67.7 Partner only
66
65 Partner & children
64
63 63.5 Sole parent
62
<$15 $15-$30 $31-$60 $61-$100 $101-$150 $151-$250 $251-$500
Household Income ($'000)
Fig. 21.2 Income x household composition: Personal Wellbeing Index (combined surveys)
with them when the gross annual income of the household is less than AU$31,000.
For sole parents, the situation is even more extreme, and it is well known that single
mothers are more prone to depression than mothers with a partner (Cairney et al.
2003). At the lowest income, the mean of 64.1 points for single parents indicates in
no uncertain terms that additional resources are required. Moreover, while partners
plus children enter the normal range at $31,000–$60,000, sole parents require
$61,000–$90,000. This is because the sole parents are missing the partner support
resource and require more income support to compensate.
21.6 Summary
The overall conclusion from this chapter is that the construct of SWB appears to be
reliable, sensitive, and valid for children. It can be measured using the Personal
Wellbeing Index – School Children, the normal range appears similar to that for
adults, the validity of the scale appears as strong as the adult version, and the
composition of SWB is dominated by HPMood, just as it is for adults. The caveat to
all of this is that children must have the cognitive maturity to provide their self-
report data. While the age at which they gain such competence is variable, a rough
guide seems to be 12 years. In summary, the measurement of SWB for children over
12 years is recommended as an index which informs about whether they are
experiencing normal circumstances for development. When such data are
interpreted using the theory of SWB homeostasis, they provide crucial understand-
ing of the balances between challenges and supports during this formative period of
their lives.
Acknowledgment I thank Ann-Marie James for her assistance in the preparation of this chapter.
656 R.A. Cummins
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Sociology: Societal Structure, Development
of Childhood, and the Well-Being of 22
Children
Jens Qvortrup
22.1 The Near Absence of Social Studies of Childhood
Until a few decades ago, sociology failed to indicate any interest in childhood. By
and large, the individual child as studied by developmental psychology had been
the sole object of research for more than a century, and since way back in history,
the child has been the center of attention and concern among ordinary people.
Before the occurrence of massive scientific interest in the child around the turn
to the twentieth century (see most recently Turmel 2008), the focus on and
responsiveness to offspring was largely a matter of the survival of the family, the
locality, and/or the community. Contrary to what is currently the case, there was an
outspoken awareness in each and every economic unit (a family, a farm, a village)
that without the reproduction of new generations, without successors to produce
food (in short, without children), the prevailing economic unit would be in danger
of withering away. In a sense, therefore, this interest did not center upon the child as
such; it had in mind, rather, a future workforce outside or inside the house shaped
by the characteristic traditional division of labor between women and men. This is
not to say that the child was merely of instrumental interest: indeed, as historians
have demonstrated, parents and in particular mothers have always cared for their
children (see discussions with various emphases in, for instance, Ariès (1962),
Pollock (1983), Shorter (1975), Stone (1975), and deMause (1974)).
This mundane interest was not aimed at achieving scientific insight into the child,
let alone into childhood; a pure scientific interest appeared much later, without,
though, abandoning a forward-looking interest. In fact, pedagogical science (or art,
perhaps) displays such an interest as its main rationale. The distance from a pedagogy
understood as the art of upbringing to a scientific interest in the broader phenomenon
J. Qvortrup
Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
Trondheim, Norway
e-mail: Jens.Qvortrup@svt.ntnu.no

664 J. Qvortrup
of socialization is short, and it is probably correct to say that no child-related feature

has caught the interest of sociologists so much as socialization has. In this sense,
sociology – with a particular view to saving or strengthening the social order – has
been as forward-looking as pedagogy and not least developmental psychology
(generally seen as the ruling science of the child), with its claim to administer
a so far unrivaled scientific rigor in dealing with the child and its development.
What thus appears to unite the various more or less scientific approaches to
coming to terms with the child or with childhood is their forward-looking aspect or
anticipatory perspective, which has left the periodic stage of childhood as
a preparatory stage without pretentions, demands, or claims in its own right. The
omission until recently of sociology and other related disciplines which claim to
cover a broader context left a gap that was partly filled by political and cultural
interests of Marxist or social democratic provenance, such as Ellen Key (1900),
Otto R€ uhle (1911, 1925), Otto Felix Kanitz (1925), and Walter Benjamin (1929),
who provided a much needed contextualization of children’s life worlds (for a very
useful overview, see Andresen 2006). No doubt they were preoccupied
with “socialist upbringing,” but they also took an engaged interest in poor and
proletarian children’s lives in the here and now. They shared a moral commitment
with child savers in many countries, and yet there were worlds between their
outlooks (see in particular Platt 2009, Introduction to second edition).
After a mind-boggling delay, in the 1980s or perhaps even in the late 1970s, the
gap was eventually addressed by a number of scholars under the banner of “the new
sociology of childhood.” As suggested and demonstrated by, for instance, available
handbooks or encyclopedias, they were not supported by a strong social scientific
legacy. At the time – in the 1980s – the easiest accessible encyclopedia on these topics
was the still relatively recent edition of the International Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences, which had appeared a decade before (Sills 1968–1979). There was, alas, not
much help that a searching mind could obtain from this eighteen-volume work. There
were no entries for “child,” “children,” or “childhood” pure and simple, merely
entries for “child development” and “child psychiatry.” The latter simply said, “see
under psychiatry,” while the former was slightly richer in words, while saying, “see
developmental psychology; intellectual development; moral development; sensory
and motor development; and the biographies of Gesell; Hall; Montessori” (Sills 1968,
vol. II, p. 390). These few words were not helpful, to say the least, and given that they
were taken from a social science encyclopedia, the result was shameful: the idea that
childhood could be perceived sociologically, let alone in structural terms, was simply
not available. Nothing told us, however, that we could expect anything better.
The seminal article by Anne-Marie Ambert is a testimony to that; she wrote in
1986 about the “near absence” of children in North American sociology and found
that they hardly had any place there. Despite the geographically restrictive title, she
helpfully included a number of European classical sociologists, represented by
works translated into English (Comte, Marx, Pareto, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel),
besides giants from the USA such as Mead, Parsons, and Merton. In addition, she
chose seventeen sociology textbooks published between 1971 and 1983 and eight
sociological journals – six general and two special ones (Journal of Marriage and
22 Sociology 665
Family and Sociology of Education, it is going without saying that sociological

journals on childhood did not (yet) exist). She looked for textbooks on the sociology
of childhood and finally expressed an interest in knowing whether any courses on
childhood were being offered at sociology departments in the USA and Canada.
Fearing to underreport representations of children and childhood, she was generous
in her demarcations, for instance, by including “pages discussing socialization and
other concepts that used children as a vehicle rather than focused on children
themselves” (Ambert 1986, p. 14).
The results of Ambert’s analysis explain why the representation of children and
childhood in the Encyclopaedia from the 1970s was so meager: there was hardly
anything to report on. By and large, childhood has been ignored by the classics,
marginalized by textbook authors, and overlooked by general sociological journals.
Even worse, the two special journals in which one might have expected to find
something completely disregarded children. In the Journal of Marriage and the
Family, only 3.6% of the articles had anything to say about children; in Sociology
of Education, the percentage was 6.6. One wonders what such journals were
writing about.
Among the classics, however, there was one issue which unduly – as “the new
paradigm” would argue – raised the representation of children, namely, the issue of
socialization. Thus, Durkheim and Parsons increased their “interest” in children;
the question is, however, whether this was a “focus on children themselves” or
rather a discussion which “used children as a vehicle,” as Ambert noted. This
remark was very much in line with the criticism leveled by “the new childhood
paradigm,” and both Durkheim and Parsons were extremely traditional in their view
on children. Parsons has been rightly criticized (see Jenks 1982; James et al. 1998),
and Durkheim deserved the same assessment1.
The representation of children and childhood in Sills’ edited encyclopedia was the
low point. The sequel edition from the beginning of this century (Smelser and Baltes
2001) – let me just mention it here in passing, even though it was not available in the
1980s as a reference work to scrutinize – had many more entries (easily retrievable
due to our electronic equipment), but by and large, the editors had not discovered
“the new paradigm” or “social studies of childhood” and remained basically psy-
chological and forward-looking. The forerunner, however, from the early 1930s
(Seligman 1930–1933) was very different, partly because it left considerable space
for the entry “Child” – 57 double column pages – and partly because, perhaps
typically for the time, the issue was dealt with in what we might call social policy
terms (for a similar situation in Germany, see Mierendorff 2010, p. 240, footnote).
The entry covered twelve themes, which, in addition to child psychology (written by
Gesell), were the following: child welfare, child hygiene, child mortality, child
guidance, child marriage, dependent children, neglected children, delinquent chil-
dren, institutions for the care of children, child labor, and child welfare legislation. It
is true that this encyclopedia also included some forward-looking perspectives (child
psychology, child guidance), but first of all, it was marked by a concern for children’s
welfare in surroundings of economic depression, austerity, and unemployment2. Not
much suggests, however, that this early encyclopedia was known or inspected by
666 J. Qvortrup
representatives of the new paradigm of childhood, and its contribution to theorizing

childhood was slim. From a social policy point of view, it might still have
a considerable historical interest, not least for scholars and practitioners concerned
with children’s well-being.
22.2 The Emergence of Social Studies of Childhood
The 1980s, more or less, is arguably the foundational decade as far as the “child-
hood paradigm in sociology” or “social studies of childhood” were concerned,
a view reiterated by the interesting fact that similar ideas to the same effect cropped
up in different parts of the world (see Hardman, [1973] 2001; Hengst 1981; Jenks
1982; Corsaro 1985; Qvortrup 1985; Thorne 1987; see also Preuss-Lausitz et al.
1983). What were these ideas, which we suggest are loosely similar while at the
same time differing from conventional child research?
1. The socialization critique. Prevalent and significant was criticism of the
forward-looking, anticipatory perspective, which, it was largely felt, was that
held by psychologists and sociologists alike. It may indeed be argued that the
anyway small number of critical psychologists (Dreitzel 1973; Richards 1974;
Woodhead 1990 and 2009) were more numerous than the sociologists who took
up the new positions. Yet, individual courses toward maturity – a child’s devel-
opment into an adult – were arguably a defining characteristic of the develop-
mental psychologists’ metier. This marks a difference from sociologists, the
majority of whom did not take an interest in childhood at all, while those who did
typically chose their forward-looking perspective in terms of a socialization
model.
The critique of anticipation amounted in more positive terms to talking about
children in their own right or about childhood in its own right. There is no
necessity, it was argued, in invoking the futurity of children (i.e., their future
being as adults) for us to study them. In one of the first programmatic articles to
go beyond a psychological orientation, the anthropologist Charlotte Hardman
suggested that childhood be accepted as “a self-regulating, autonomous world
which does not necessarily reflect early development of adult culture” (Hardman
[1973] 2001, p. 504). This is not supposed to mean that children or childhood can
stand alone without reference to other categories. On the contrary, as we shall
see later, we need a comparative perspective in structural terms, that is,
a generational perspective, which requires an analysis of generational segments
that in principle are of the same order and significance. Socialization and
individual development are not only forward-looking, they are looking forward
to something that is putatively more important and competent. “Socialization”
and “development” are, in sociologist Barrie Thorne’s words, “ahistorical,
individualist, and teleological” (Thorne 1985, p. 696). Childhood is reduced to
a preparatory stage, deprived of any value in itself.
2. Agency and voice for children. Part and parcel of the critique of the socialization
approach was criticism that children’s capabilities were being overlooked. It was
22 Sociology 667
typically pointed out by representatives of the new paradigm that children in

conventional research were either not seen as sufficiently capable or competent
to contribute or were prevented from taking part in “serious” activities. This was
in accordance with, it was often held, typical psychological schemes of “ages
and stages” according to which children will eventually acquire skills that enable
them to be partners. As a consequence, children were basically seen as vulner-
able persons in need of protection on their journey toward adulthood. This
discussion was an important one which had both historical and contemporary
references under the heading of protection and participation. Are children here
first of all to be protected or do we – adults – allow them also to be participants?
We find this issue very clearly in discussions on the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which includes significant articles
about children’s right to protection but perhaps much more significantly – and
new – also granted them participatory rights.3
Nobody would agree that children are literally passive and silent. However,
this is exactly a claim which one can make metaphorically. Children are not
allowed entry into the serious social fabric; they are given voice – including in
the UNCRC – but merely in matters concerning themselves very personally;
they are minors in both the legal and sociological meanings (on childhood as
a minority category, see below).
3. Structural constraints and opportunities. At the same time as children are
recognized as agents with a voice, some scholars of social studies of childhood
have insisted on perceiving childhood from a structural perspective. Children are
born not only with certain endowments – biologically, psychologically, and
intellectually – they are also born into a structural context which to a large
extent determines limits to their actions and voice. I am happy to underline the
words “to a large extent” in order to leave space for children’s own impact and
imprint on their broader or narrower contexts – be it family, school, locality, or
society. Sociologist William Corsaro (2009, and ▶ Chap. 23, “Children’s Well-
Being and Interpretive Reproduction,” this volume) has usefully coined the
phrase “interpretive reproduction” to suggest children’s contributing potential
or indeed the fact that they are contributing. The structural approach is here to
remind us that children, exactly like adults – as creative and practicing human
beings – do contribute to changing the world, but again exactly like adults, they
don’t do it “as they please” or “under self-selected circumstances,” to paraphrase
a famous quotation that did not talk of children but of “men,” that is, people in
general.4 Structures may therefore constitute constraints that limit one’s chang-
ing capabilities, but they also offer opportunities that are helpful in facilitating
and implementing aims and hopes.
Since the 1980s, the twin perspectives of agency and structure have
been with us as complementary perspectives, although the agency perspective
has attracted much more interest than that of structure. In this chapter, the
structural view is presented by one of its adherents and users, but it is important
to stress that the border between them is not always sharp. As I shall show
below, one way of giving voice to children is to let “them” talk through statistics
668 J. Qvortrup
and other social accounts; in other words, a way which does not literally listen to
children as such but which nevertheless mediates insights about their
life worlds.
4. The study of normal childhood. It can hardly be contested that an overwhelming
concern about children and childhood has been to prevent deviation from the
“normality” of childhood, however defined. This has historically been the case in
efforts to rescue children from the temptations of the street and to protect society
from dangerous children. This was, for instance, a task the “child savers” gave
themselves. Lately and less normatively, many professionals have been preoc-
cupied with children who for other reasons could not be part of “normality,”
whether mentally or physically disabled, having reduced opportunities due to
poverty, family problems or parental alcoholism, immigrant children, or chil-
dren faced with problems which have hampered their development in other ways
or simply their daily lives as children. Problems of this kind are still attracting
much attention in both research and policy – and rightly so.
It was, however, felt that an exclusive focus on problems pertaining to
children and their surroundings, however justified, would run the risk of
neglecting what one may call the “normality of childhood.” In a sense, the
normality of childhood is implicitly recognized, because any discussion of
deviations from normality presupposes an understanding or an awareness of
what is normal. Our failure, whether as researchers or politicians, to focus
seriously on normal childhood has been one way of muting childhood. What is
the position of childhood compared to those of adulthood or old age? Is the
collectivity of children properly accounted for when resources are distributed
between generations? (See further below in Sect. 22.6, “Relations and
Relationships.”)
5. The use of ordinary methods in the study of childhood. One way of emphasizing
the normality of childhood is that as far as possible the whole available arsenal of
methods should be used. Obviously, in some cases special approaches had to be
chosen and particular ethical considerations adopted, not least if small children
were to be studied. In particular, as far as structural approaches were concerned,
it was hard to see good arguments for not using the whole range of methods.
As experience has shown in recent decades, it has proved possible to use not
only observation, photography, interrogation, and other ethnographic methods,
but also more macro-type documentation, aggregate analysis (e.g., statistical
evidence), interpretation (e.g., text analysis), and historical analyses, not to
speak of theoretical approaches in all their variety.
22.3 Theses of Childhood
Out of the work done in the initial decades, efforts were made to formulate theses about
children and childhood. Space does not allow me to quote all of them, so I shall extract
just a few salient ones (see Prout and James 1990, pp. 8–9; Qvortrup 1993, pp. 11–18;
Mayall 1996, pp. 58–59; Zeiher 1996, p. 37 and 41–42; Honig et al. 1996, p. 21).
22 Sociology 669
Common to all authors and their variants of theses was a more or less clear
division between “agency” and “structure.” As far as agency is concerned, for
instance, it was said that:
“Children are active in construction and determination of their own lives – and of
others and societies” (Prout and James),
“Children are themselves co-constructors of childhood and society” (Qvortrup),
“Children are studied as actors – not merely as dependents. . .” (Zeiher),
“Children are contributors to societal resources and production – not merely object
and recipients” (Mayall).
Honig, Leu, and Nissen talked in their chart about agency-related research and
situations of activity from the perspective of children.
As to the structural perspective, it was said that:
“Childhood is understood as a social construction” (Prout and James),
“Childhood is a particular and distinct form of any society’s social structure . . . an
integral part of society and its division of labour” (Qvortrup),
“Childhood is determined in societally organized relation between generations – as
an integral part of society” (Zeiher),
“Childhood is a component of the structures of society – not a preparatory stage”
(Mayall),
In their chart, Honig, Leu, and Nissen talk about “social status and cultural
pattern in historical change of generational relations.”5
There were doubtless sufficient variations in formulations and emphases to
generate discussions among the authors of these theses, but as these excerpts
show, there was also a considerable and remarkable agreement between their views.
22.4 A Structural Approach
The purpose of this chapter is to give a clearer understanding of childhood in

structural terms.6 Using a structural approach is in itself not an easy task. Although
a defining characteristic of the sociological discipline, attempts to theorize struc-
turally are often not welcome, as they seem to run against the hegemonic ethos of
our individualistic societies. As sociologist Herbert Gans has put it in his study of
big US news media,7 “There are no stories or magazine sections . . . about what
sociologists call the Social Structure . . . nor about more easily grasped complexes
such as the Class Hierarchy or the Power Structure” (Gans 1978, quoted by Gross
1980, p. 54).
As prominent examples of structural approaches, we may quote Galtung’s
structural theories of aggression, integration, violence, and imperialism from
1964 to 1971 (see, for instance, Galtung 1969, on violence). They are not directly
suppressed and are not infrequently quoted, and yet they are marginalized; they do
not belong to sociological canons and are typically not part of the ordinary arsenal
of textbook readings. The reason for sidelining structural approaches has most
likely to do with their alleged political contents or connotations, while forcefully
670 J. Qvortrup
maintaining that violence, aggression, imperialism, and integration are profoundly

rooted in the dominant political economic structure of any prevailing system, rather
than in individual actions.
Structural theories are also controversial because they are often considered
difficult to apply or insufficient as explanations of current socioeconomic condi-
tions. It is much easier to appreciate violence as a result of individual shortcomings
than to perceive it as the outcome of capitalism as a system. It is more straightfor-
ward and opportune to see poverty as individuals’ failure to thrive and achieve in an
individualistically formed economy than to see it as a result of market forces that
cannot be blamed or held responsible, being hidden, invisible, and without inten-
tionality. Leaving matters to the market is profoundly structural in its consequences
and in need of explanation at this level.
If structural theories are difficult, challenging, and eschewed in general terms,
this is much more the case when applied to children or childhood. When did we last
see, for instance, a structural theory of violence, or any other theory of that order,
applied to children and childhood? When talking about children and violence, what
first comes to mind is most likely parents slapping their kids rather than, for
instance, austerity measures instigated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
with the support of the dominant capitalist economies.
Closest to theories of that order may be the concepts of structural inconsider-
ateness and structural indifference toward children and childhood – not proposed
by some alleged left-wing scholar but surprisingly by the value-conservative
German sociologist and social policy scholar Franz-Xaver Kaufmann. In several
publications, Kaufmann has talked about a structural lack of consideration
(strukturelle R€ ucksichtslosigkeit8) which comes about as a result of a widening
structural indifference (strukturelle Gleichg€ ultigkeit) (see especially Kaufmann
1990, pp. 136ff; see also Kaufmann 1996, pp. 15ff; Kaufmann 2005, pp. 152ff).
His critical use of structural perspectives targets society in general and specifically
not parents (especially since Kaufmann includes the family among the victims of
indifference and inconsiderateness). Kaufmann seems, though, to prefer to use the
vaguer term “adults” for “society”: it cannot be sensibly reasoned that individual
adults have become more hostile toward children than before (cf. Zelizer 1985;
deMause 1974), but rather that the modern social fabric has made it much more
difficult to have and be children. In other words, the modern economy and infra-
structure have not been built up with children or childhood in mind; planning has not
considered childhood; it has practically been indifferent to childhood and its children.
Kaufmann’s observations are at first sight at odds with those of many other
observers,9 for instance, Viviana Zelizer (1985), whose strong thesis – well
documented in her seminal book Pricing the Priceless Child – was that children
have experienced increasing sentimentalization and sacralization as society has
modernized itself. She uses many cases to make plausible the thesis that
a historical change in attitudes toward children took place in the wake of industri-
alization. From the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, adults’ attitudes
had become much more positive, though this new positive attitude does not appear
to have shifted direction since then (see Zelizer 2005).
22 Sociology 671
Are Zelizer’s and Kaufmann’s views reconcilable? Although they may appear
paradoxical, I suggest, they are far from contradictory. The suggestion that parents
and indeed adults have adopted more affectionate attitudes toward children does
not contradict the alternative suggestion that society has become more indifferent
and less considerate and responsive to childhood. However, an appreciation of this
paradox requires that we make analytical distinctions between the family and
societal levels because the meaning of connections between generations differs
depending on the level of analysis – whether we talk about them at the family level
or the societal level. The significance of choosing one or the other level is in turn
dependent on the prevailing economy. While the latter in its variability remains our
focused contextual framework for analysis, childhood will be our unit of observa-
tion throughout. This important point will be resumed later (see especially the
section about “relationships and relations”) (Sect. 22.6).
22.5 Childhood as a Social Form, a Segment

of the Generational Order
In this section, I shall present what I see as the most important features of childhood
in sociological terms. With reference to Fig. 22.1, these features are envisaged as
structural levels, which in negative terms are not individual levels that otherwise
characterize psychological perspectives. I shall not say much about developmental
psychology but merely point out how, at significant points, it distinguishes itself
from a sociological approach, namely, in terms of a focus, alien to sociology, on the
individual child with a view to its development and its transition to becoming an
adult. The arrows in Fig. 22.1 represent disciplines with an individual perspective.
I shall ignore the special case of the downward-pointing arrow apart from indicating
that it may represent a psychiatric (or psychoanalytic) view in the sense that an
adult’s personal problems are thought to be diagnosed by acquiring knowledge
Childhood Adulthood Old age
2010s
1990s
1970s
1950s
Fig. 22.1 Model of

generational relations 1930s
672 J. Qvortrup
about this person’s childhood through the psychiatrist. What it has in common with
the downward-pointing arrow is its emphasis on the early stages of life as a key to
coming to terms with adulthood.
22.5.1 The Diagonal Dimension: Individual Level
The upward-pointing arrow represents the typical case of a child’s development as

seen by a developmental psychologist, ordinary people, parents, and the children
themselves (see Frønes 2005). A child is born in the 1990s and will develop its
dispositions so as to become an adult in command of sensory, motoric, moral,
intellectual, and sexual abilities and skills. It will enlarge its competencies and
capabilities, which are supposed to flourish fully only in adulthood. The perspective
is looking forward to or anticipating this particular child’s adulthood; measures of
upbringing and socialization are oriented toward adulthood. The focus is on the
child’s integration into society, as one typically formulates it, thereby suggesting
that the child is not yet an integrated member of society. As allegedly not fully
developed, the child is perceived and treated as a not-yet-person – legally and in
daily practice. The child is vulnerable and in need of protection; it is dependent and
has claims on its parents, not as a deserving person, but because it is the offspring of
its parents (cf. Garbarino 1986).
The childhood we are talking about is understood as a transition to adulthood and
thus as a period of a person’s life, the other periods of which are youth, adulthood,
old age, and perhaps additionally broken down to include also early, middle, and late
adulthood and early and late old age. They hardly have names, all of them, but at this
stage of our speculations, this tripartite division suffices. A person’s life is a period in
itself, as are the parts of it: childhood, adulthood, and old age. As a period, it is
something which has a beginning and an end.10
This perspective is useful in many respects and serves us well in our daily-life
settings of the family, school, leisure time, etc. It is a life-phase perspective which is
relevant for the individual person’s trajectory (distinguishable from a life-course
perspective; see below). It may at best be seen as complementary to a structural
perspective, which, however, is one which most people are hardly aware of,
consciously or unconsciously.
22.5.2 Structural Levels
A structural perspective, the main preoccupation of this chapter, is on most

counts radically different from an individual’s life-phase perspective. A structural
perspective on childhood is a profoundly relational and comparative perspective –
either historically (the vertical dimension in Fig. 22.1) or cross-sectionally
(the horizontal dimension). Talking about a structural perspective on childhood
presupposes an appreciation of structure in generational terms. As I shall discuss
22 Sociology 673
later, efforts to come to terms with it in relation to class or gender are unhelpful.
As structural forms, childhood, adulthood, and old age assume generational forms
and must therefore relate to each other as such (see Alanen 2009, and ▶ Chap. 5,
“Childhood and Intergenerationality: Toward an Intergenerational Perspective on
Child Well-Being,” this volume). They are, in other words, not class forms, gender
forms, or ethnic forms.
As mentioned above, life phases – among them the periodic phase called
childhood – are defined in terms of developmental dispositions: sensory, motoric,
morally, intellectually, and sexually. Generational forms are defined in completely
different ways. They are not defined with reference to personal dispositions but to
its parameters at a given historical juncture in a given society or other larger or
smaller political or cultural unit. The parameters to be considered include eco-
nomic, political, social, cultural, legal, religious, technological, and others, not
forgetting mode of socialization.11 They do not pertain to the person but rather to
larger categories like generation or as the case may be: class, gender, or ethnicity
(see Alanen, ▶ Chap. 5, “Childhood and Intergenerationality: Toward an
Intergenerational Perspective on Child Well-Being,” this volume). Characteristic
of these parameters is also that in principle they are to be found in all societies,
irrespective of economic stage.12 Although the level of technologies in prehistor-
ical eras was rather primitive, I think one would have to go very far back in
history to be able to claim a complete absence of technology. Childhood through-
out history has, therefore, in principle a technological dimension, which can be
compared, including between coexisting generational forms.
22.5.2.1 The Vertical Dimension: The Historical Development

of Childhood
However, if we stay with Fig. 22.1’s vertical dimension, it is obviously highly
meaningful to think in terms of the parameters mentioned for all “generations” over
the last century. This makes it possible to compare them over time in terms of both
continuity and change. This is true for childhood as well as for adulthood and old age.
What was childhood in the 1920s, for instance? We are obviously not talking
about one specific person’s childhood. We could have done that if we had known
his or her dispositions, indeed, we could have done it if we had known the
parameters of his or her periodic childhood. What I have in mind here is rather
the crucial question of what childhood was like at a given historical juncture, in
France or Sweden, for instance, in the early twentieth century. Taking into consid-
eration two countries already suggests two implicit comparisons: a historical one
comparing contemporary childhood at the beginning of the twenty-first century
with that of the early twentieth century and a cross-cultural one comparing child-
hood in two nations at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In each of these junctures, childhood is defined by a particular set of parameters
as they interact with each other. In both countries, childhood was characterized by
a certain level of economic, technological, and social development of a particular
cultural and religious situation, etc. We may likewise claim that adulthood and old
age are formed by the same parameters (on the differences between generational
674 J. Qvortrup
units, see below). We thus perceive childhood as a generational space, as

a particular socioeconomic, cultural, and technological architecture impacting and
leaving imprints on all children living in France and Sweden at this time in history.
Of course there were differences between children or “childhoods” in both coun-
tries, and of course there were differences between French and Swedish childhood
in early twentieth century. However, if we compare childhood at this time with
childhood in the early twenty-first century, we are surely justified in suggesting that
the changes over this century and thus the differences between these two junctures
were much greater than the differences between French and Swedish childhoods at
any of the two historical eras. We are therefore allowed to say that, although
childhood changes and even if childhood differs over time and place as
a structural form, it does not come to an end. We must have this message clear
for us, because this is where the conclusion differs most in relation to childhood as
a life phase or as a period in a person’s life. While the latter disappears, childhood
as a structural form never terminates.13
If we disregard various diagnoses about childhood – its disappearance (Postman
1982), its erosion (Suransky 1982), and its liquidation (Hengst [1981] 1987), not to
speak of its absence from mediaeval adults’ awareness (Ariès 1962) – it has always
been with us as a structural form. Childhood has, in other words, permanence as
a unit within a generational order. It varies, it changes, but it never disappears as the
space or architecture awaiting any newborn child; there will always be one or
another kind of context or framework available for children to grow up within, its
qualities untold. This context or framework is not the periodic life phase cast in terms
of individual dispositions, but the permanent but changing childhood defined in
terms of prevailing parameters. It is permanent because it never ceases to exist; it
changes because its defining and interacting parameters assume ever new values and,
in interacting, adopt new configurations. To put it differently from the point of view
of research, childhood is our unit of observation, and society is our level of analysis.
In other words, at the same time as it is stated that childhood has permanence, it
must be reiterated that childhood is changing. In principle, it does not change
because its parameters differ in number. It changes rather because the values of
the parameters change and because the relative significance of the parameters
cannot and will not remain the same. It seems obvious that the importance of the
technological parameter has increased during the twentieth century; it could change
if the politics of childhood gains primacy relative to that of economics (e.g.,
the market) or vice versa. As suggested above, culturally a more caring attitude
to children has been noted, while economically and politically a structural indif-
ference has been observed.
I have been talking about the vertical dimension in Fig. 22.1 and argued that
childhood has permanence and that it is changing, while suggesting that it is
a completely different thing to talk about the development of childhood than
about the development of the child. The discourses around the two are different,
although in a sense the discourse about the development of childhood has hardly
come out in the open (see though, historians Ariès and deMause).
22 Sociology 675
As mentioned above, we talk about the child in anticipatory terms: about the
child becoming an adult and about the child’s transition to adulthood. However, it
does not make sense to talk about the development of childhood into adulthood and
further into old age; as a permanent category, childhood cannot transmute
into anything other than childhood, it merely – as childhood – undergoes alter-
ations. While we frequently and meaningfully discuss the socialization of the
child or talk about how children grow up, it is not possible to talk about
the socialization of childhood or about childhood growing up. It is nevertheless
full of meaning to imagine, observe, study, and talk about the change and continuity
of childhood.
The generational units remain related to each other but with changing members
on board – some enter and some leave in a continuous flow. Within a generational
span – typically from zero to 18 years (the age of majority) – the social space of
childhood renews its members completely. This renewal is unavoidable, and there
is consequently within one generational span a total mobility from the status of
childhood to the status of adulthood. Even though all children have become adults,
this dramatic replacement of members does not in itself and in the short run
transform childhood as a social form.
While one colloquially uses the in my view unhappy phrase that children grow up to
become integrated into society, one cannot use a similar expression as far as childhood
is concerned. Childhood as a structural form is not integrated into society because, by
definition, it is an integral unit of society and more specifically a unit of the genera-
tional order (see Alanen 1994, and ▶ Chap. 5, “Childhood and Intergenerationality:
Toward an Intergenerational Perspective on Child Well-Being,” this volume).
22.5.2.2 The Horizontal Dimension: Comparing Generational Units

The horizontal dimension of Fig. 22.1 is a cross-sectional dimension. As already
suggested, it allows us to compare different generational units or forms, whether we
stick to the three used in Fig. 22.1 or we add others to them – youth, for instance, as
perhaps the most obvious omission. The definition of the generational forms in
terms of outcome of the interplay between parameters is unaltered, but we must
evidently ask if this outcome has the same influence on different generational units.
As mentioned above, they are at any given time and place exposed to more or less
similar impacts from most parameters, but impacts and effects will presumably be
received differently by the units and their members, whether children, adults, or
elderly. The reasons for this are to be found not only in external factors, for
instance, adults’ status involving stronger and more crucial rights, entitlement to
work and earning money, their privilege in exerting political rights, their being in
command of technological equipment as a result of their role in the larger social
fabric, their education and experience, etc. It is also due to the fact that it is
explicitly one of adults’ prerogatives to execute power over children (and to
some extent over the elderly) both inside and outside the family – to select, channel,
and interpret whichever symbolic and material objects are to children’s advantage
or disadvantage. For this reason, the parameter “socialization mode” is in principle
676 J. Qvortrup
different from the others: it is only the members of the generational unit of
childhood who are massively and systematically subjected to this parameter,
which therefore contributes to making childhood different from other generational
forms and to constituting it as a minority category (see below).
In our discussions about relations and relationships, we shall deepen our analysis
of the horizontal dimension. The comparison may be between persons belonging to
different generational units, but it may also be between collectivities and the units
themselves – between childhood and adulthood and/or old age or any other
combination.14
The horizontal dimension is not necessarily reduced to the current
cross-sectional level: combined with the vertical dimension, it offers in principle
historical answers to questions about changing intergenerational relations. At any
time and place, we will be describing and disclosing a certain relation between the
generations. There is always such a thing as an intergenerational relation; it has
permanence. At the same time, we can establish that it necessarily changes over
time. Evidence of relations between generations and how they manifest themselves
is an empirical question; the idea that access to status, power, and other privileges is
unequally distributed over generations is hardly extraordinary nor is it an astound-
ing proposition that their forms may change over time. An excellent example is
Margaret Mead’s famous exposé of changing generational relations in her booklet
Culture and Commitment (Mead 1970).
22.5.2.3 The Diagonal Dimension: The Collective Level

In my interpretation of Fig. 22.1 so far, the diagonal directions represent individual
development in a forward-looking approach (or exceptionally a backward-looking
one), always with the child as the key to understanding adult life, future or present.
There is, however, one diagonal, forward-looking approach which includes more
than the individual, namely, a cohort, or perhaps better a collectivity (interestingly,
there is hardly a chance in this approach to look backward in a way that parallels the
so-called psychiatric perspective; see above). The best example of this approach is
Glen Elder’s seminal research on Children of the Great Depression (Elder [1974]
1999). It has been Elder’s ambitious project to make a connection between
structure and personality through collaboration between history and developmental
psychology.15 His research has been stimulating, as in Children of the Great
Depression, he set out to follow a large group of children born in Oakland in
1920–1921 who grew up in the depression in the 1930s. The children were exposed
to similar large-scale influences. From a sociological point of view, Elder’s life-
course perspective represents a great leap forward compared with the life-phase (the
individual developmental) perspective, which it complements with a broad socio-
logical dimension. Yet, it is still forward-looking, though at a collective level using
macro variables as hypothetical causal ones. The variables are not individual
dispositions as used by developmental psychologists, but they are external,
environmental parameters such as those mentioned above: economy, politics,
etc. During the depression of the 1930s, the economic slump was deep in terms of
unemployment and poverty.
22 Sociology 677
Even if Elder did not succeed in coming to a satisfying answer concerning the
links between structure and personality, his questions were highly relevant
and significant and did contribute to reasoning about the production of different
collectivities as a result of different large-scale circumstances.
22.6 Relations and Relationships
The issue of connections between generations needs to be dealt with at two levels –
at the micro level (family, locality) and the macro level (society). Both levels are
interesting and relevant; they are applicable in different contexts and for different
purposes; yet there are also crucial parallels and correspondences. At the micro
level, we wish in general to denote the bonds between persons who are closely
related as regards family links, friendship, work affiliation, and other primary
affinity. In generational terms at this level, we are thinking of relationships between
members of two or more generational units: children and parents, children and
grandparents (or great grandparents), parents and grandparents, and, more and more
attenuated as the case may be, aunts and uncles. Of course, within families we can
also talk about relationships between members of the same generation such as
siblings and cousins (see Hood-Williams 1990).
Intergenerational links at this level, as described in research, may be friendly or
full of tensions; this is also the case in belles-lettres, with the father-son relationship
being the most prominent one.16 In developmental psychology, the typical rela-
tionship described is interestingly not the father-son but the mother-child dyad, and
while the father-son relationship more often than not is confrontational, the mother-
child dyad is symbiotic.
In structural (macro) terms, we are primarily interested in connections between
generational units; our interests in links between persons are shown only to the
extent that they more or less coincide with structural connections, as it is the case in
preindustrial society. How do we come to terms with them? The German language
has a distinction between “Beziehungen” at the personal level and “Verh€altnisse”
at the structural level. It talks, for instance, about “Mutter-Kind-Beziehung”
(mother-child relationship) but about “Klassenverh€altnis” (class relation). As
far as I can tell, the English language does not have a similar, rather clear-cut
distinction, but I suggest that “relationship” be used for the primary or personal
level and “relation” for the structural level.17 Most important is that we are enabled
to make an analytical distinction between the two levels, as we are used to doing in
analyses of social class and gender. In the former case, we may talk about a personal
relationship between two workers who are colleagues in a particular factory; it
is even conceivable to talk about a personal relationship between a worker and
his capitalist employer. At the structural level, however, we shall be talking
about relations between the working class and the capitalist class, that is, relations
between structural units. In the latter case, namely, gender, we shall be
talking about love between a woman and a man in terms of relationships, whereas
if we are dealing with women and men as gender units, we shall use the term
678 J. Qvortrup
“relation.” Interestingly, one would typically think of “love” at the micro level,18
but opposition at the macro level: men and women seek each other for lifelong
partnership, which does not prevent a contradictory, almost antagonistic relation
between the categories “men” and “women” or “manhood” and “womanhood.”
It is instructive to make these analogies to foster and further our understanding of
structural relations between generational units. Even if it makes sense to talk about
a development of a (personal) relationship between a worker and his or her
employer, it can never be one that transcends the lifetime of the persons involved.
A lasting relationship between a woman and a man is not only possible but luckily
still typical in terms of partnership in marriage. Again, it can last only until the
death of the partners. These relationships are extremely important for the persons
involved, and the fact that they are, at the end of the day, temporary or periodic does
not reduce their significance; it only shows the limits of their applicability.
The notion of relations does not, therefore, replace relationships or the necessity
of dealing with them but represents an extension of our understanding of the links
between social phenomena. The coexistence of relationships and relations is an
example of Wright Mills’ famous distinction between “the personal troubles of
milieu” and “the public issues of social structure” – a distinction which he held to be
“perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination
works” and “an essential tool of the sociological imagination and a feature of all
classic work in social science” (Mills 1961, p. 8). While personal troubles befall an
individual or occur within the range of her or his immediate relationships with
others, says Mills, public issues have to do with matters that transcend these local
environments of the individual. If, at a societal level, workers and capitalists or men
and women recurrently experience typical and common problems, they assume the
form of a relation in terms of a public issue – a class relation and a gender relation.
While personal troubles must be dealt with in a private context, public issues in
terms of large-scale cooperation or conflict between structural units must be
addressed at the structural level.
The latter is a well-known fact of economic and political life in terms of class
struggles –historical phenomena that have been with us for centuries independently
of individual workers and capitalists. It is also a well-known phenomenon in terms
of “gender wars,” although less institutionalized, only surfacing in recent decades
as a powerful and recognized public issue.
How are we now to perceive generational relations as a public issue? How are
we to acknowledge that the links between generations that each of us finds as
personal relationships within the scope of the intimate milieu of home and locality
have sufficient in common that we can also appreciate it as a “public issue of social
structure” in Mills’ words? It is important to underline that neither relationships nor
relations need to be negative: Mills’ “personal trouble” unfortunately has such
a negative connotation, which the neutral “public issue” does not have. We all
have personal relationships with members of other generations – their qualities
untold – and it is this commonality that allows us to talk in generalized terms about
(objective) relations between generations and to make it a public issue, while
acknowledging that a subjective relationship may well be absent. Indeed, children
22 Sociology 679
are hardly aware of a structural hostility or indifference between generations

(cf. class “in itself” and “for itself,” below).
Structural relations between generations are, unlike relationships, without
a beginning and an end. They are independent of particular persons and persist as
a permanent feature. The quality of generational relations is not to any noteworthy
degree impacted by the inflow of new or outflow of old members, unless we are
witnessing large demographic upheavals, such as those that have turned the numer-
ical relations between young and old upside down. The generational units remain in
principle as such, and the flow of members through the segments does not prevent
one from recognizing the current members at a particular time as forming
a collectivity. The flow of members cannot help leaving its imprint on the segments,
but the inevitable changes of the segments will, I suggest, be rather a result of
structural forces and of the interaction with other generational segments, that is, of
intergenerational relations.
We have to admit, as alluded to above, that our appreciation of intergenerational
relations is still wanting and far from constituting a tradition, and experiences made
available by social studies of childhood have not improved this state of the art to
a notable extent. They remain stuck at the individual level and “personal troubles of
milieu.” To the degree that structural perspectives are invoked, it is class, gender,
and ethnicity that are mustered to the effect that nothing is told about generational
relationships, let alone relations. Unfortunately, this tendency has been aggravated
during the period of postmodernism and post-structuralism, with a concomitant
appetite on diversification and a concurrent aversion to generalizations. The
approach to questions of well-being will, I suggest, gain from consulting
a structural perspective, which, as far as childhood is concerned, is and must be
a generational one (see Alanen, ▶ Chap. 5, “Childhood and Intergenerationality:
Toward an Intergenerational Perspective on Child Well-Being,” this volume).
Occasionally, one happens to find a generational perspective in writings by
structural sociologists with hardly any idea of “social studies of childhood.” Arthur
Stinchcombe (1986) is such a rare case. Nevertheless, he not only uses children and
childhood as examples to illustrate what he calls pervasive categories but immedi-
ately and almost instinctively catches the point about children’s status as a counter-
position to that of adults. In other words, he adopts a structural approach. Let me
therefore briefly present his reasoning.
First of all, he asserts that “all societies distinguish between children and
adults” (p. 148), and that “in every society there are some categories into
which people can be classified that pervade their whole lives: child-adult;
male–female; citizen-alien; black-white; crazy-sane” (p. 145). “On the one
hand,” Stinchcombe contends, “these categories seem to be features of institu-
tions,” and then he mentions quite a number of examples of the child’s member-
ship of different institutions such as the school and the family, the political
system, and the legal system. As he observes, “we do find a certain amount of
variation between these institutions in exactly who is a child” (p. 146, my
italics) – in terms of their legal majority, for instance. On the other hand, he
states, somehow this [variation] misses the essence of the status of being a child.
680 J. Qvortrup
After all, being a child in the civil courts (i.e. not being able to be held liable for
contracts), is very closely related to being a child in the family (being subject to
the head of the household’s decisions about money) and in the labor market (not
being employable) and the school (being prepared for the labor market). The
status of a child is pervasive among institutional areas, and “hangs together” in
a meaningful sense. That is, is dominated in each institutional area by the notion
that this is a person who needs to be taken care of, who cannot make his or
her own decisions. Though the details (e.g., the age of majority) vary among
institutions, the child-adult contrast has roughly the same significance in all of
them. It is a “structural” distinction, in the sense that it gives structure to a wide
variety of superficially different situations. (p. 146, my italics).
It is interesting to observe that Stinchcombe is not dissolving the notion of
childhood or children by splitting these categories into a number of subcategories
like gender, ethnicity, and class. He is doing exactly the opposite; he is observing
variation and creates out of this variation what he calls pervasive categories, that is,
categories that reappear in a meaningful sense in quite a number of contexts – and
as far as childhood is concerned, all having to do with a relationship to older
generations. He observes that we are too easily led astray by situations which at
face value are at variance but which share a common substance, namely, a subser-
vient position vis-à-vis adults. “[E]ven in the face of personal variation . . . perva-
sive classification . . . decisively shapes the opportunities, rights, and obligations to
which a person is exposed . . . it shapes people’s dominant conception of their
identities, of their continuities of their own lives” (p. 155). “The line between
minors and adults in the society as a whole decisively shapes families (adults
always run them), schools (teachers and parents run them . . .), factories (minors
are excluded), automobile and real estate markets (minors cannot get credit . . .),
and so on” (loc.cit).
Stinchcombe does not use the concept of generation, but again and again he
makes the distinction between children and adults: “Children go to school – adults
not” (p. 145); “children have privileges and obligations distinct from adults”
(pp. 145–146). He makes this distinction because children and adults are pervasive
and corresponding categories exactly as women and men are pervasive and
corresponding categories, the existence of which requires the other. It is for this
reason that I suggest that even studies of children which do not show any signs of
being interested in generation nevertheless must presuppose other generational
segments.
If you try to circumvent this task of definition, as is possible, then you will
logically be conducting gender, class, or ethnic research and not generational
research. There is nothing wrong in that, but it does not contribute to accumulating
insight into the structural position of childhood (see Wintersberger, ▶ Chap. 52,
“Childhood and Inequalities: Generational Distributive Justice and Disparities,”
this volume).
Giving a priority to diversity, I argue, means turning one’s back on recognizing
childhood as a structural segment or, in Stinchcombe’s terms, a pervasive category.
It is a denial of acknowledging its common structural features, which are
22 Sociology 681
profoundly generational. I am not warning against dealing with plural childhoods as

such but only against doing so unless one has come to terms with what childhood is
in generational terms (see Qvortrup 2010).
An instructive example of the necessity to focus directly on children is found in
public statistics. Since its very beginning, the sociology of childhood has made
efforts to give children a voice in public statistics or to make children count,
literally as well as metaphorically. One significant observation made by early
practitioners of the sociology of childhood was that all too often children were
hidden in statistical categories that did not pertain to children themselves. Typically
was for instance a mix-up of family statistics with statistics on children. There is,
however, a huge difference between the categories “families with children” and
“children in child families.” Many years ago, we traveled with this example,
demonstrating that, while there might well be close to 50% of all child families
that included merely one child, in fact, only around 20% of all children had no
siblings (see much more about this in Sgritta and Saporiti 1989; Qvortrup 1990;
Jensen and Saporiti 1992). The confusion about choosing the correct unit of count
or observation may have serious consequences for the chosen policies: if true, the
myth of the grossly exaggerated proportion of single children in families that
politicians and journalists untutored in statistics wanted to spread would be suffi-
cient cause for alarm. This does not mean that family statistics are useless; on the
contrary, they are indispensable for arriving at a correct picture of families;
similarly, counting children is absolutely necessary for knowing about children.
If we want to know about poverty among children, it does not help us much – or
merely as a bad proxy – to know about poverty in child families. We must come to
know about poverty among children, and its gravity is appreciated only if it is
compared with its corresponding generational unit – adults, young people, or the
elderly (see Wintersberger, ▶ Chap. 52, “Childhood and Inequalities: Generational
Distributive Justice and Disparities,” this volume). The proper comparative cate-
gory to families with children is families without children – a very interesting
comparison, by the way, with implications for the position of children in society.
The lesson that experiences with statistics on children teaches us – in continu-
ation of our discussion of diversity – is the necessity to focus directly on children
before we make any effort to split up other categories like families, gender, and
ethnicity. In his seminal address to the American Population Association, Preston
preempted criticism that he was generalizing too much about poverty among
children in the USA by saying:
With regard to race, let me just say that the main theme here is the changing
status of American children, a group that includes all races. I see no particular
reason for separating out the races any more than for carrying through a distinction
between Northerners and Southerners or other commonly used identifiers (Preston
1984: 451).
This is exactly the point: Preston insists on a consistent focus on children
because the theme is children. Nothing prevents a further breakdown of children
according to race, class, gender etc., but one has to observe carefully the adequate
order of analysis.
682 J. Qvortrup
22.7 A Growing Awareness of Childhood, Family, and Economy
The development of childhood is induced by changes in the conditions of production

and concomitant changes in our awareness of related phenomena. The changing
connections between generations are particularly important to register in an account
of children’s changing position. Intergenerational connections in preindustrial com-
munities took the form of primary contacts above all because everybody lived close
to each other in a small locality or community, even though they were actually
included in both the reproductive and the productive spheres. The reason for this was
obvious: the economy was a household economy, or to use a different terminology,
their oikos was of the household type. Since this was the case, it also, in abstract
terms, assumed the nature of structural relations in that there was a coincidence
between the structural level and the family level: in a household oikos, the agents
embodied connections between generations. This coincidence disappeared in the
modern economy, when reproduction and production were severed.
I find the Greek term for household/economy useful for comparative reasons. As
a supra-concept, oikos can be used as a generic, generalized concept for any
economic type – for households based on community or Gemeinschaft cooperation
in a locality in preindustrial society (hereafter, for the sake of brevity: the old oikos),
as well as for what we might call a societal household (a national economy: hereafter
the new oikos). In principle, all necessary economic processes take place in any
oikos: production, reproduction, consumption, circulation, and division of labor; and
everywhere, one must “economize” in order to maintain sustainability. Thus, while
in principle nothing has changed in terms of vital processes to accomplish, because
all forms are indispensable forms for human survival, dramatic changes have taken
place in the way the various oikos are organized. The oikos concept reminds us that,
while it is always subjected to change, it is continuity that reigns.
In the old oikos, the connections between different functions were transparent;
there was no separation between production and reproduction because those who
produced were the same as those who reproduced, which meant that nobody was
able to be a free rider in the system or evade responsibility for common concerns.
This implied a practical enforcement of a generational covenant. In fact, children
happened to be so deeply involved as both contributors and beneficiaries that Ariès
found it appropriate to characterize this oikos as a time and place where childhood
had not yet been invented:
In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist . . . [the] awareness of the
particular nature of childhood, that particular nature which distinguishes the child
from an adult . . . was lacking (Ariès 1962: 128).
Ariès conveys to us not only the insight that generational differentiation hardly
existed because it barely existed in reality but also that children and their activities
were enmeshed and embedded in the community in which both parents and children
lived and worked side by side. One is therefore justified in proposing that differ-
entiation of work-related roles was low – the nature of what children and adults did
was in any case the same,19 even if the activities were adapted to their bodily
capacities.
22 Sociology 683
When, to follow Ariès, childhood was “invented” – and he points in particular to

schooling as an important marker in this process – the way was paved for a growing
attention to what children did. Historians’ descriptions of children’s work in the
nineteenth century is sufficient for us to realize at least two things: first, what
children actually did – and they did, details aside, manual activities, as they had
always done until this time; and secondly, even if they largely shared particular
kinds of activities with adults, this eventually came to clash with a new awareness
about children. Some, but far from all, were alarmed by what was understood as an
assault on children’s bodies and minds. This reflected a new consciousness about
children, as Ariès and many others have suggested (Zelizer 1985; see above).
Brunner conveys the same message when he says that
Only in the eighteenth century does the word “family” comes to penetrate
the everyday German language and achieves this particular emotionality which
we connect with it. (Brunner 1980: 89; my italics; my translation from the German).
Not only childhood but apparently also the family, according to Brunner, had to
be invented as modernity progressed. With the changing economy – or oikos – the
division of labor and the rate of change also increased. The old oikos was not at the
time an issue but rather seen as a context for a “natural” exchange of use values; it
had not as such reached peoples’ consciousness, and therefore, with industrializa-
tion had to be addressed in a new way. As Levine says:
What to do with the economy has been a problem since we first became aware
that we had one. Our awareness of the economy is, however, a fairly recent
development (Levine 1995: 12; my italics).
The three quotations from Ariès, Brunner, and Levine all point in the same
direction. They all speak of or allude to a lacking awareness of, respectively,
childhood, family, and economy. I do not read this as if it merely took some social
constructionism – or more precisely: mental creativity – to establish childhood,
family, and economy. The fact was rather that incipient modernity – by means of
a growing differentiation due to changing requirements of production – did away
with the thus far dominant oikos. This was a site for relationships in family and
locality, resulting in reproduction as well as production, but it was a productive
activity that people did not realize was an economy, an oikos.
To address Levine’s point, it is tempting to say that the new awareness of the
economy coincided with the severance of reproduction from production which
again invoked the demise of political economy to the advantage of what is now
regarded as a classical liberal economy as pioneered by Alfred Marshall. To follow
Kaufmann, this period also increased the level of indifference to childhood on the
part of corporate society.
Interestingly, furthermore, this interpretation of the economy coincided
with the appearance of a number of child sciences such as pediatrics, devel-
opmental psychology and child psychiatry, which all had their inaugural
assemblies during the last decades of the nineteenth century. It also suited
well the portrayal of the period as one in which the awareness of childhood
peaked, with children being sentimentalized and subjected to increased levels
of protection.
684 J. Qvortrup
In other words, we observe a paradox in the sense that children are more and
more embraced at the family level, while simultaneously being increasingly
disregarded at the level of society – a paradox that accords with Davis’s “increasing
incongruity” thesis (see next). To the extent that this thesis was acceded
by dominant economic and political forces, it suggested a significant change in
childhood. However, one may ask whether it was an interpretation that served
children well – or indeed, whether it was a valid one? Was it true that children were,
so to speak, thrown out of the serious social fabric, or were they simply entering
a changed version of the generational contract?
22.8 Change and Continuity in Generational Relations
As we have seen, the changes in production led to changes in awareness. How can
we make use of the perspectives outlined? In what follows I shall give examples of
both change and continuity in generational relations.
This perspective suggested that childhood is the unit of observation and society
the level of analysis. As a consequence, the position of childhood and the status of
children as a collectivity depend on the historical context. This is true also for
relations between childhood and other generational segments. To demonstrate this,
in this chapter, I shall limit myself to a particularly significant historical caesura,
namely, the transition to industrial society – or to modernity, as some would prefer
to call it – a period which covers, by and large, the last third of the nineteenth and
the first third of the twentieth centuries. Many scholars within history, political
science, and sociology have pointed to this period as a particularly important one.
Sociologist James S. Coleman describes it as a transition from a “primordial
social organisation” (our old oikos) to a “purposively constructed social organisa-
tion” (our new oikos). More specifically, Coleman defines it as a transformation of
the economy from a “set of weakly interdependent households, most of which
produced most of what they consumed,” to an economy “in which most production
took place in factories and most of what was consumed was purchased in the
market.” Major indicators of this transformation are “[t]he movement of people
off the land into cities and the movement of production from households to factories
and other specialized workplaces” (Coleman 1993; see also Coleman 1990).
Kingsley Davis, a congenial colleague of Coleman,20 made an interpretation of
the more or less completed transition. He realized its impact in all modernizing
countries, and in an attempt to explain its implications, especially for the family, he
put forward the thesis.
[T]hat the declining birth rate has resulted from a ripening incongruity between
our reproductive system (the family) and the rest of modern social organization, . . .
the kind of reproductive institution inherited from the past is fundamentally incom-
patible with present-day society and hence can never catch up (Davis 1937, p. 290).
Both Coleman and Davis allude to what a moment ago was referred to as the
severance of reproduction from production. In other words, there was in the old
oikos a congruity between production and reproduction, which disappeared under
22 Sociology 685
the new oikos.21 What, in terms of change and continuity, do Davis’s and
Coleman’s deliberations mean for childhood and for generational relations?
Compared to the old oikos, the number of children decreased during the transi-
tion and has continued to do so right up to this very day. There were good reasons
for this: classical motivations for having children have basically disappeared. They
were, firstly, that children were already regarded as an asset as children, being
contributors in the old oikos; and secondly, that children were seen as the only
(if there was any) guarantee for care and provision when people reached old age.
Nowadays, in the new oikos, children are no longer perceived as an economic
asset but as a cost. Parents do not have children in order to enrich themselves in
monetary terms – on the contrary. Children are in addition claimed to endanger
parents’ occupational opportunities, in particular those of their mothers. One major
change in the discourse is that children have lost the attribute “useful” for the new
oikos. This does not mean that they are regarded as less valuable in all respects, but
their valuation is now gauged in emotional currency, not as contributors to our
material wealth. It was this change Zelizer (1985) played with in the title of her
book Pricing the priceless child. What children had gained in “pricelessness,” they
have by the same token lost in usefulness and status. Indeed, a moral condemnation
of child labor, for instance, by child savers, was part of the sentimentalization that
embraced childhood. The most significant, almost brutal indication of children’s
loss of status is doubtless, the dramatic reduction in their numbers, relatively
speaking. Paradoxically enough, the more we claim to be knowledgeable about
children and their needs, and the more we appear to love them (cf. Zelizer’s
sentimentalization thesis), the less likely we are to have them.
As to the other fertility motivation, parents no longer consider old-age provision
and care a good reason for having children – at least not for having many children.
The marginal utility of an additional child will soon be realized as rapidly decreas-
ing after the first and second children, who nonetheless are appreciated for their
practical and emotional support in old age if they live in the vicinity. But the cash
nexus has been severed. The parallel with childhood is therefore striking: at
the emotional level, relationships remain, but at the rational level, it is relations
that prevail.
It is easy to identify and make an inventory of the changes that have taken place.
There are obvious and considerable differences between the old and the new oikos.
We need, however, to take a closer look at the matter or reflect on alternative
interpretations while considering continuities. Most crucial in intergenerational
terms are the following two questions:
(a) Did children really lose their usefulness?
(b) Did old people have anything to fear regarding care and provision from the
succeeding generation?
The answer to both questions is “no,” at least in principle. An appreciation of
this answer requires a realization that not only have both children’s activities and
the generational contract changed, they have also retained their equivalence of
meaning in the transition from the old to new oikos. As a part of the new oikos,
neither children’s activities nor pensions are part of intergenerational relationships
686 J. Qvortrup
within the family; they have become part of the intergenerational relations within
society writ large. Let us look at these two important areas as far as childhood
studies and generational relations are concerned: children’s activities and the
generational contract. We shall also consider demographic changes from the
same perspective.
Children’s Activities. If we talk about childhood in the old oikos, we inevitably
come to think of children’s obligatory activities in terms of classic child labor
aimed at supporting the family and the locality. These activities took many forms
but almost without exception were accomplished as manual work – in the fields,
in factories, in small manufacture, etc. Quite logically, children’s work was
predominantly manual, because manual work was predominant in preindustrial
society as a whole. There was, in other words, a fit between the prevailing economy
and children’s activities, and it is likely that throughout history there has been such
a fit. In general terms, one might suggest that children’s obligatory activities are
immanent in any prevailing economy; let us call it system-immanent work. This
must consequently be the case also in the new oikos.
It is true that many children work manually after school hours in the new oikos.
Many scholars have interpreted this as a continuation because the work is manual
and have inferred that children’s involvement in work has decreased over time. I do
not think this reasoning is logical because manual work in a knowledge society is
not system-immanent. Manual work in the old oikos has a different meaning than
manual work in the new oikos. There is however another activity that candidates to
the label “system-immanent work” in the new oikos, namely, children’s school-
work. Astonishingly, schoolwork as performed by children themselves is ignored
by most scholars of social studies of childhood, even if they are eager to demon-
strate that children are active persons. Schoolwork is sidelined, despite the fact that
it is the only true system-immanent work: it is a universal obligatory activity,
demanded by both the political community and the new oikos, and it is agreeable
to parents as well as children; it is system-immanent in the sense that its form
as mental work corresponds to the prevailing activity form in a knowledge society
(for further arguments, see Qvortrup 1995).
The necessary compatibility between children’s work and work in general within
any oikos produces a new kind of connection between generations in the historical
move from the old to the new oikos – it changes from relationships between persons
in the old oikos (between children, parents, and grandparents) to relations between
pervasive categories in the new oikos (between minors and adults; pupils and
teachers; childhood and adulthood/old age). In other words, connections between
generations remain, but their nature changes. Children’s obligatory activities
remain system-immanent, but their form changes, as they relate to two different
systems (oikos). Finally, while children’s manual work was useful for the old oikos,
children’s schoolwork is useful, indeed indispensable, for the new oikos. I wonder if
anybody is ready to make conclusions to the opposite effect. The problem is,
however, that, while the material value of manual child work in the old oikos
benefitted the whole family, the material worth of children’s schoolwork is credited
to the accounts of the new oikos, namely, the national and corporate economy
22 Sociology 687
(besides the advantage accruing to children themselves as persons). At the same

time, the child family remains the main unit that defrays the expenses of children’s
upbringing. It should hardly be surprising that parents have historically responded
by reducing the number of children they have.
Generational Contract. Perhaps we should not, in the old oikos, talk about
intergenerational solidarity in terms of a contract but rather of a covenant – an
unwritten and unspoken agreement rather than a formalized one. The covenant
implied that everyone assumed an age-specific role in the community’s division of
labor: children worked and contributed as soon as they could; adults of working age
produced (and reproduced!), and the products were shared with both the children and
the elderly. Nobody suggests that this system was without its frictions and tensions,
but it was transparent: everybody knew her or his role, and attempts to free ride could
not happen with impunity. Even childless persons might jeopardize their own sup-
port in old age if they neglected to play their part in meeting all requirements in the
local community, for instance childrearing. Consciously or not, we are here realizing
true intergenerational relationships within the old oikos.
The new oikos, on the other hand, has a formalized generational contract. The
technicalities may differ from country to country, but in principle, they have
become individualized in the sense that each and everybody with an income is
saving money during their active-working years to be collected in old age. This is
typically a so-called pay-as-you-go technicality: the savings you make in your
active years are used, among other things, as pensions for your parents’ generation,
while your own pension is released from current savings made when you have
retired. These savings are made by the next adult generation to come and not by
your very own children, and that is the point, that is, it is this which changes the
intergenerational nexus from being relationships to becoming relations. Nothing,
however, has changed in the fact that in any oikos – old or new – it is the succeeding
generation that provides for the preceding one.22
Demographic Change. The age composition of a population is in the first place
a dependent variable; it is a result of changes in and the interactions between other
parameters. However, the outcome of these changes and interactions is a dynamic
factor in itself in need of interpretation. Starting out from the historical caesura
mentioned above, the demographic transition was one of the most dramatic events
in terms of a declining mortality followed by a declining fertility, the interaction of
which finally resulted in an almost reversed age composition. To put it crudely and
briefly, during the twentieth century, the proportion of children have more or less
halved, while the proportion of the elderly has tripled or quadrupled. The compo-
sition is somewhat different from country to country, but the trend is unequivocally
the same, with the result that currently the relative proportion of young and old is
approximately the same, but within a few decades, the proportion of elderly will
everywhere in the developed world outnumber that of children.
Although without, necessarily, any purposeful direction, quantities often assume
qualitative consequences. I presume this is the case concerning the changed age
composition. As Preston remarked (1984), one might have assumed that a smaller
proportion of children might have given them a more privileged position as far as
688 J. Qvortrup
the struggle for resources is concerned. The opposite has been the case. Even if
children within a family may claim and actually obtain distributive justice, at the
societal level they risk becoming worse off. One reason is that the declining birth
rate is also producing far more households without children (in Scandinavian
countries, this type increased from circa a quarter to three quarters of all households
in the twentieth century). This reduces the number of households and adults in
general with an obligation and the willingness to invest commitment, time, and costs
in raising children. The risk of a low income and poverty thus increases more for the
young than for other age groups (see Preston; see also Kuznets23). One final reason
may be political in the sense that the elderly are voters. If one adds to the elderly the
number of persons in other childless households, the economic vulnerability of
children is aggravated; they do not themselves have a political constituency, and
there is a dwindling number of adults who seem willing to rally round them.
Against this demographic background, we can formulate some intergenerational
corollaries. While in an old oikos, everybody is obliged to share both duties and
products, in the new oikos, it has become both easy and attractive to be free riders.
Corporate society does not grasp why it should carry any responsibility for the costs
of raising children (even though it does expect to receive a well-educated labor
force), and adults with no or merely a single child are equally uncomprehending as
to their role in this intergenerational exchange (even though they do expect care in
old age from other peoples’ children).
The severance of production and reproduction has only strengthened the
misconception that childhood is not an integrated part of the social structure. Children
have lost their status as contributors to the social fabric in the here and now because
schooling has never been realized as an integral activity in the social division of labor;
by the same token, children’s schoolwork as a precondition for rescuing pension
schemes was obscured. In both cases, the position of children was misrepresented; it
was depersonalized as the connection between generations changed from relation-
ships to relations, and this abstraction went along with its being disguised. They were,
to use another terminology, sentimentalized within the family as the household lost
its position as a dominant oikos. Childhood was exposed to a structural indifference
as the national and corporate economies became dominant.
22.9 Childhood and Politics
As I have said before, the key factor in bringing new social studies of childhood to
the fore was not grounded in a new perception of the social problems of children nor
was it based on a specific wish to rescue children, as it had always been the case, for
instance, for child savers’ movements. The idea was rather an academic one in
terms of grasping childhood as a continuously changing, yet permanent social
category, or in Stinchcombe’s words, a “pervasive” category.
This is not to say that social studies of childhood in my understanding did not
have improvements to childhood on the agenda and thereby improvements to
children’s lives. Such intentions were there – perhaps not very explicitly, and not
22 Sociology 689
in terms of formulating a social policy program. I should probably be a little

cautious here, because there is no doubt that many scholars within what we now
call social studies of childhood understand themselves as being dedicated to
fulfilling a mission on behalf of children, indeed on behalf of the individual child.
While underlining the difference between a forward-looking perspective and
a perspective which is directed toward impacting on the life space of childhood or
childhood as a social form, I will necessarily come to repeat themes already
mentioned above or rather illustrate what has already been said. The question is,
as alluded to already, whether we are, on the one hand, primarily interested in social
policy for the individual child with an eye to his or her well-being later in life
(well becoming, so-called) and perhaps even more the health of the social fabric as
a whole or whether, on the other hand, our main focus will be a politics for
childhood as a pervasive social category, that is, while children are still children.
If the former is preferred, we can have no guarantee that children’s presence is
a main concern – on the contrary, its deliberate goal is to serve “the next genera-
tion” in the sense of children who have become adults. If, however, we retain
a focus on childhood as a space of welfare in its own right, we will necessarily be
directing our interest toward childhood in the here and now, which implies that the
context and framework within which children live will be a target of deliberate
politics, the purposes of which will be to restructure the parameters which form
childhood and to see them adapted to children’s life worlds. Such a politics for
childhood does not primarily look forward to adulthood; it is not a politics for
children’s so-called well becoming, but it is a politics that will enhance current
children’s opportunities to lead a good life while they are still children. The chance
of realizing such a goal is so much the better if and when the framework of
childhood within which children live is deliberately optimized as an opportunity
space. There is, however, no guarantee that such an opportunity space will be made
fully available to children because other and stronger interests may get in its way as
major contenders. In addition, and potentially much more dangerous for realizing
“the best childhood imaginable,” is the simultaneous accomplishment of adult
interests in all their variety, that is, the results of all planned undertakings and
unplanned efforts on the part of adult activity. We can, in other words, not take it for
granted that the interests of adulthood and the interests of childhood coincide,
whereas the resources that generational segments reach out for will be overlapping
and therefore objects of competition.
The issue of childhood and politics as presented here will be divided into
the following parts: (1) children/childhood as a nontargeted object of politics,
(2) children/childhood as a targeted object of politics, (3) children/childhood as
an instrumentalized object of politics, and (4) children as subject in politics.
22.9.1 Children/Childhood as a Nontargeted Object of Politics
One has to be aware of the fact that quite a lot of politics has unintended consequences,
that is, consequences that were neither foreseen nor necessarily wanted. We must, in
690 J. Qvortrup
other words, make a distinction between politics which aims at impacting on children
or childhood, on the one hand, and politics which does not have this aim but
nevertheless may have considerable consequences – for better or worse.
One might argue that, since this kind of politics is not directed toward childhood,
there is no reason for us to consider it. This is, though, an untenable argument – in
fact, I would suggest that much of what happens to childhood, toward forming and
transforming childhood, and much of what influences children and their daily lives
in fact is instigated, invented, or simply takes place without having children and
childhood in mind at all. If this is true, the means either to prevent the negative or
promote the positive in such politics must follow a diagnosis as far as children and
childhood are concerned. Why are so many children poor? Why are children
densely packed in housing more often than other groups? The reason is not likely
to be a conspiracy against children. Rather, in terms of what looks like cognitive
dissonance, it simply happened that way – due to inattentiveness, structural indif-
ference, or whatever.
It is not difficult to find examples of the kind of politics or sociopolitical or
politico-economic events that could be defined in terms of an unintentional influ-
ence on childhood or children’s life worlds: it can be any societal, political, or
economic event or development of a certain magnitude. Elder’s magnum opus,
referred to above, is an obvious example. Let me mention some other examples that
are all too familiar.
During large stretches of at least the second half of the twentieth century, there
was a dramatic increase in women’s participation in the labor market. This devel-
opment was not directed toward meeting children’s needs – many would even say
the contrary, although this is far from certain. Regardless, it was a development that
had a great impact on childhood and on children’s lives, for better or worse. First, it
obviously increased monetary affluence in the family. Secondly, in many countries
it drew with it in its wake the establishment of kindergartens, crèches, after-school
arrangements, and the like, where children are forced to stay during considerable
parts of their childhood. The latter will be an example of a policy consciously
targeting childhood, but the former – women’s entry into the labor market – did not
in the first place include reflections about children or childhood but rather made
such reflections necessary in the second place.
If we look a bit further back in history – to, for instance, the beginning of “the
century of the child,” as it was labeled by Ellen Key (1900) – we will observe quite
a few events that were characteristic of the transition toward a modern, industrial
society, such as industrialization, mechanization, urbanization, secularization, indi-
vidualization, and democratization (see Coleman above). These headings, as it
were, represent transformations in society at large and were answers to demands
about making economic growth continue. If we were to ask where the children are,
the answer would initially be that they were not considered; they were not the target
as such. However, if we nevertheless go on to look for children, we shall soon find
out – as discussed above – that they were impacted dramatically by the trans-
formations that did not have them in mind. This can be seen in another list of
simultaneous events: the abolition of classic child labor, child savers movements,
22 Sociology 691
mass scholarization, fertility reduction, sentimentalization, and new scientific

interest – to mention the more important and conspicuous among the new variables.
The point being made here is that the transformation of childhood was not really
the result of a deliberate politics set out with this explicit purpose in mind.
Nevertheless, one can hardly underestimate the range and significance of the impact
on childhood of macroeconomic, macro-political, and macro-social parameters.
Childhood never became the same again after its passage through the industriali-
zation period.
The first lesson of this is that, whether we like it or not, childhood is inadver-
tently part of society and of societal politics. Any effort to exclude it or to set
it aside simply reflects wishful thinking (see Garbarino 1986; Zelizer 2005;
Hollingshead 1949). Therefore, the second lesson is that one has to be unremittingly
attentive to consequences for childhood of all kinds of politics, including those that
do not have childhood in mind.
In some countries, ministries for childhood have been established. This is where,
one would suspect, childhood politics and policies are made. No doubt about it.
Nevertheless, one might assume that decisions made in ministries of finance,
housing, transport, urban planning, and similar overarching ministries have
a much greater impact on childhood than ministries dedicated to children as such.
22.9.2 Children/Childhood as a Targeted Object of Politics
There obviously are political initiatives that directly target children and childhood.
We may go through a country’s legislation, or we may look through the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and find quite a few pieces of
legislation which actually focus on children, whether in terms of protecting them,
providing for them, or enabling them to participate – the 3 P’s in the CRC
(see below). One could also imagine, by the way, that such initiatives may aim at
protecting adult society. When in some countries, like the USA and UK, curfew
bills are enacted, this is likely to be the case.
Often, however, it is not so easy to determine whether certain initiatives or bills
are targeting children, the family, parents, mothers, or somebody else. Is
a kindergarten, for instance, for children or for parents – or for the state and the
trades? At the end of the day, it may well be that kindergartens will be an advantage
for several parties, even if it is also likely that some will benefit more than others
from them.
One may make two distinctions here: one between childhood and children (or
the child), and one between politics and policies. In principle, this would produce
four cells in a matrix. I shall here restrict myself to two of them: politics of
childhood and policies for the child.
The notion of a politics of childhood does not have the individual child in
mind but rather the legal, spatial, temporal, and institutional arrangements available
for children in a given society. We may talk about childhood as a social phenom-
enon, a social construction, a structural form, or the like.24 Its form or architecture
692 J. Qvortrup
depends on parameters such as economy, technology, culture, adult attitudes, and

the interplay between them. Since these parameters change and continuously
assume new configurations, childhood is never the same, even if it is of the same
nature. You may compare childhood in Sweden in 2007 with childhood in Sweden
in 1907, and you will realize in your mind that you keep talking about childhood but
also that it has changed. It has changed due to the fact that society and its industry
has changed – but also because the state may have intervened to correct unintended
changes (see discussions above).
One might say, metaphorically, that children live within a house of childhood –
which is what it has come to look like as a result of both intended interventions and
unintended consequences. They live there for a certain period only; they then move
out of the house of childhood and first into the house of adolescence and then into
the house of adulthood, which likewise constitutes cultural institutions with
a certain permanency. The notion of politics is an answer to questions of orienta-
tion, of where to go, and it includes ideological questions.
If we thus talk about the politics of childhood, we will have in mind political
decision about what we as a society want with or for childhood, that is, decisions
about the framework of childhood, about the place of childhood in an adult-
dominated society, about children’s rights to vote, and about mainly large-scale
or macro issues dealing with children’s life worlds in general terms. What
childhood looks like depends on historical period or civilization, and a politics of
childhood is about how to design childhood structurally and how consciously
to change the architecture of childhood. We are interested in the situation and
development of childhood as structural segment of society.
Policies for the child, on the other hand, are more responses to practical
problems and will result in piecemeal decisions. Moss and Petrie (2002, p. 100),
for instance, make a plea for what they call the whole child. They are likely to be
speaking for many students of childhood when they advocate as a necessity the
acquisition of as much and as detailed information as possible about the individual
child in order to make a holistic description of the individual child; they are, in
other words, making a plea for personhood rather than category (loc. cit.). Their
approach is sympathetic and agreeable within a social policy context, where one is
forced to determine whether a particular individual, in this case a particular child, is
entitled to receive support from the public purse or the social policy apparatus,
typically at the municipality level. This approach enables us to distinguish between
children with different needs and demands due to the gravity of their personal
position. “We face,” the authors contend, “a myriad of different children, created
from different discourses: the ‘schoolchild’, the ‘child in need’, the ‘looked after
child’, ‘the child of child development’ and so on” (ibid., p. 21).
In their jointly authored book, Petrie is cited from an earlier work for saying that
children hold different social class positions, they differ as to age, gender, ethnicity –
and there are interactions between these . . . an individual disabled child is not an
abstraction whose life is to be purely within the context of disability. Each disabled
child has a complex social identity. A disabled child may be Black or White, male or
female, with parents employed or unemployed. . .. (Petrie in ibid., pp. 22–23)
22 Sociology 693
There are, in other words, innumerable children, and each of them is a whole
child with, as they say, “a personal history and personal relationships” (ibid.,
p. 100). It is possible, I believe, in principle and to some extent also in practice to
take into account “the complex social identity” of each child. It is the task of
a social worker or a clinical psychologist to make a holistic description of any child
who is asking for help or on whose behalf help is asked. Their toolbox for helping
this particular child we may call a social policy for the child, even though no policy
is formulated with only one child in mind. The instruments in this toolbox are not
what a structural sociology of childhood makes use of; it should rather advocate
a politics for childhood, as discussed above. At best, of course, the two must play
well together and reinforce each other’s advantages.
22.9.3 Children/Childhood as an Instrumentalized Object in Politics

(An Outcome Approach)
Children have always assumed a particular role, namely, that of being raw material
for the production of an adult population. This is why we incessantly talk about
them as our future or as the next generation. This way of talking gives us an
inevitable suspicion that childhood is not our main target but merely an instrument
for vicarious purposes. It is an answer to all adults’ question to all children: what are
you going to be when you grow up? Typically, adults are not interested in what
children are while they are children.
Arguably, children’s role as raw material or as a resource is historically the most
enduring and most dominant view of children, but despite the enduring view, the
arguments in its favor may change completely. Thus, for instance, it was once
common knowledge that children should be smacked or spanked, the argument
being that this was necessary for a successful future adult life. “Spare the rod and
spoil the child” is only one among many adages to this effect. As we have become
wiser, we have realized that one should not punish children physically. Interest-
ingly, however, our goal has not changed: we still want to produce a better adult.
The new version, though, has the advantage of establishing a win-win situation:
children are supposed to be happy while developing into ideal adults. A crucial
question in this situation would be: how would we act toward children if the winds
changed once again and new insights proved that the prospects for a successful
adulthood were unambiguously in favor of smacking them?
I am afraid we know the answer. Throughout history, children have been punished –
to be on the safe side! As late as the turn to this century, only seven countries had
laws explicitly prohibiting the physical punishment of children (A League Table of
Child Maltreatment Deaths in Rich Countries 2003, Fig. 13), and if one is to believe
the philosopher George Lakoff (2002), this is an important marker which in the
USA distinguishes “liberals” from “conservatives”: the conservatives prepare for
the next generation by slapping the current one – allegedly in its best interest.
A parallel to the issue of physical punishment is, one might argue, the modern
social investment strategy (see Olk 2007). An outcome policy for dealing with
694 J. Qvortrup
children is as old as one can possibly look back, but it has recently gained broad
popularity and momentum as a result of being supported by renowned scholars such
as the 2000 Nobel laureate in economics James Heckman (2009 and ▶ Chap. 14,
“Economics of Child Well-Being,” this volume), welfare researcher Gøsta
Esping-Andersen, who was hired by the European Commission to formulate
a “child-centered social investment strategy,” and sociologist Anthony Giddens
(1999), who for New Labour in the UK masterminded the so-called Third Way that
included a clear-cut outcome perspective for investing in children, welcomed,
reformulated, and attempted to be implemented by the then prime and finance
ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, with the widespread acclamation of
center-left governments around the turn of the century.
The gist of the outcome perspective is the preponderance of results over process. At
the end of the day, it is the quality of the produced adult – not least in economic terms –
which determines the success of one’s investment strategy. If it can be established that
certain investments are more effective than others in creating a useful labor force, both
public and private agents will consequently place their money accordingly.
Common to these scholars’ and politicians’ ideas are, more or less explicitly,
sympathetic and compassionate attempts to combine investments in children with
positive outcomes. In Esping-Andersen’s words, we are foreseeing a positive-sum
strategy, a win/win situation that favors children both in the here and now and in
a future economy and welfare society:
If poverty harms children’s life chances, and if it also creates negative external-
ities, we see the contours of a positive-sum strategy: minimizing child poverty now
will yield an individual and social dividend in the future. And in the far-off future,
it should diminish the risks of old age poverty (and possibly also the need for
early retirement). (Esping-Andersen 2002: 55, emphasis in original; see also
Esping-Andersen and Sarasa 2002).
It is at first glance difficult to see what is wrong about such a statement; in fact,
this author does not wish to criticize a program that aims to achieve merely positive
ends. As already mentioned, Esping-Andersen’s and the European Union’s strategy
is close to the so-called Third Way and the social investment state in the UK.
However, Giddens’ formulation becomes a little more intriguing when he says
that the guiding principle of the Third Way “is investment in human capital
wherever possible, rather than direct provision of economic maintenance” (emphasis
in original, quoted in Lister 2003: 429). One may in fact suspect from this quote that
Giddens is making the flow of money from the state to the citizen, whether this is
called investment or maintenance, contingent on its profitability. Heckman is rea-
soning similarly when he argues that “[t]he optimal policy is to invest relatively
more in the early lives of the most disadvantaged children.... For later periods, the . . .
optimal policy slightly favors more advantaged children” (Heckman 2009: 20–21
et passim, my emphasis). The interesting point, in other words, is not only the flow of
money or services as such, but also the motive for their allocation.
The crucial question is if and to what extent children have a right to and
a legitimate claim on societal resources, independent of their profitability and
outcome. An approach that claims to be child-friendly and child-oriented,
22 Sociology 695
as Esping-Andersen’s does, (see Esping-Andersen 2009) should recommend

resources being used for children without reservation. Child poverty should be
done away with from a moral standpoint and not be made conditional on anything
else, for instance, on a prosperous economy some decades ahead. As Myles and
Quadagno express it:
If Third Wayism has a soft spot, it is for children: The soft spot comes less from
benign spirits than from hard-headed economic considerations about the longer-term
implications for economic performance of a large number of children growing up
poorly educated or in poor health. Children matter because “human capital” forma-
tion matters. (Myles and Quadagno 2000: 166; see also Lister 2003; Olk 2007).
Now, are there any reasons to believe that the investment strategy or the social
investment state (the Third Way) is running the risk of having to choose between
children’s current well-being and future positive outcomes? Can one imagine that
the public is reluctant to invest in children if no or merely a meager outcome is
foreseen? As noted above, Giddens can be interpreted in this way, and Blair and
Brown have made statements that follow suit (see Qvortrup 2009).
It is easy to agree with Esping-Andersen’s proposal for a win-win situation in
which children’s well-being, while they are still children, is made a precondition for
their futurity as adults. The crucial question is, however, what adult society will
choose if – God forbid! – promising prospects for our future society are contingent
on children being exposed to strenuous lives and rigid pedagogies (i.e., a lose-win
situation)? As for the physical punishment of children (see above), the likelihood of
opting for parents, adults, and adult society under such conditions is, I am afraid,
overwhelming (see Qvortrup 2009; see also Zuckerman 2003).
The similarities in perspectives and approaches between economics and devel-
opmental psychology are striking – both are forward-looking, and the yardstick of
their success seems to be attainment and fulfillment in adult life (see also Davis
1940; Blake 1981). The question is whether this strong alliance,25 backed up by
trendy political strands, serves the interests of childhood as a space of welfare in its
own right and thus a good life for children while they are still children, or whether
these prospects are made dependent on the likelihood of their making positive
contributions to any futurity?
22.9.4 Children as Subject in Politics
There are these days many scholarly considerations and much public debate about
children’s rights and children as citizens. These discussions have much to say in
general and also in more particular terms about children’s status in society and
about what children can legitimately expect as members of society. The UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) contains quite a few articles which
colloquially are often divided into one group of articles dealing with protection,
another with provision, and a third group with participation rights (the so-called 3 P’s).
In terms of children’s subject status, their participation rights are most relevant.
Participation is here primarily understood in terms of rights that bear similarities to
696 J. Qvortrup
human and civil rights in the Human Rights Declaration. Article 12 of the CRC thus
speaks of assuring the child who is capable of forming his or her own view the right
to express those views freely in matters affecting the child: in Article 13, the child is
given freedom of expression; in Article 14, freedom of thought, conscience, or
religion; in Article 15, freedom of association and peaceful assembly; and in Article
16, the right to privacy.
These are all articles giving the child subjectivity, but there are a number of
limitations. Most significant in my view is the limitation in Article 12 which states
that only in matters affecting the child does he or she have a right to express views
freely. This is a severe limitation, but one which is probably symptomatic of the
child as a political subject in our societies.
In discussions not only of children’s rights but also in general terms about
citizenship, researchers and politicians are leaving us in a kind of wilderness by
demonstrating that children have not really been thought about. Thus, Marshall
(1950), the British political scientist who wrote a seminal book after the Second
World War about citizenship, did not find a place for children; the US philosopher
of law John Rawls (1971) was equally perplexed, and the German-British sociol-
ogist Ralf Dahrendorf (2006) directly talked about children as “a vexing problem” –
in other words, an irritating and annoying problem disturbing serious discussions
among adult people about mature persons.
It is in this connection, and highly relevant for my theme of Childhood and
Politics, remarkably that the academic discipline which has shown least interest in
the new strands of childhood studies is political science. If any curiosity about
children is shown at all, it is exclusively concentrated on political socialization, that
is, how children are best brought up to become responsible political persons, which
is supposed to require a certain level of political activity, and in any case sufficient
to fulfill a democratic system’s minimum expectations: to cast one’s vote.
This expression of citizenship – the demonstration of the real sovereign, the
people as a voter – is one which the CRC does not mention at all as an option. One
reason is perhaps that such an expression would transcend what is said about the
child’s own affairs, which is apparently understood in a very narrow sense. The idea
that larger structures might influence the child quite directly seems to be beyond the
purview of the CRC. Another reason is clearly related to this, namely, that the child
is not supposed to have the competence to vote. The child is simply politically
immature.
I do not want to discuss this contention as such; it may be true, but in this case,
three questions have to be asked. First, if competence is the main criterion for
voting, have we then made sure that all politically incompetent persons are
prevented from voting, irrespective of age? Secondly, would society incur any
harm if children were voters? Thirdly, would the child or children experience any
harm, injustice, or unfairness by not having access to the ballot?
Regarding the first question, one might make reference to Hilary Rodham – now
better known as Clinton – who, many years ago as a child lawyer, made the
provocative suggestion that we “reverse the presumption of incompetence and
instead assume all individuals are competent until proven otherwise” (quoted by
22 Sociology 697
Lasch 1992, p. 75). What she was suggesting is thus that one cannot take it for
granted that persons under a given, arbitrary age are politically incompetent. It is
not difficult to find someone under that age who has that competence; also it is fully
possible to find quite a few above that age who are not politically competent. If this
is so, one is faced with a problem of fairness, which is not addressed but merely
glossed over with reference to expediency, while assuming that everybody
under 18 years of age is incompetent. Nobody would contest as a fact the total
impracticality of testing not only children’s competence, but also that of each and
every member of the society. I do not think this is a trivial problem, and much
thinking and writing have been invested in it. However, a democratic problem
cannot be dismissed with reference to inconvenience.
Regarding the second question, it would be hard to suggest fairly that society as
such would be running any risk if children were granted suffrage. My assumption
would be that the distribution of votes would not deviate grossly from a normal
outcome. I will not dismiss the claim that it might be disturbing for conventional
wisdom; it might, on the other hand, be a way of emphasizing responsibility for
communal values.
Regarding the third question, it is much more important to ask whether, given
their disenfranchised status, children have proper political representation? It is
worth recalling that in European countries we are actually talking about some
20–25% of the population (those under 18), in other parts of the world even
more, who cannot claim a political platform in the sense of being directly
represented politically. Now, it could be and often is argued that they have good
representatives in their parents.
Let us look at this argument. The main assumption as far as voting behavior is
concerned is that people vote in accordance with what they assume to be their best
interests. Thus, adults without children, among them the elderly, are supposed to have
their own and not children’s best interests in mind when casting their ballots. One
cannot even be sure that all parents lend support to children’s interests when voting,
but let us in this argument assume that the majority of them do that. If this is so,
children will be represented by most parents currently living with them. We know
that in Scandinavian countries, for instance, there will be children in merely a quarter
of all households; we also know that an ever larger group of persons are over 60 years
of age and that this proportion of the population will increase. We can calculate that,
within a relatively short time, more than half of the electorate will be over 50 years of
age. The concrete forecasts we cannot be certain about, but these demographic
developments do not work in favor of children’s interests.
If we refrain from considering the possibility of letting children vote, there is the
final possibility of furnishing parents with additional ballots – one for each child.
A couple with two children would therefore receive four ballot papers at each
election – whether they should all be given to the mother or to the parent of the
same sex or opposite sex as the child is another matter (see Offe 1993; Hinrichs
2002) The proposal may cause constitutional problems which I would, in case,
leave to political scientists, lawyers, and politicians to deal with – with an eye also
to any perverse effects that may accrue from it.
698 J. Qvortrup
The point is that children are arguably not well represented currently, and given
predicted demographic developments, there are no prospects that this imbalance
will change. We can therefore conclude our deliberations on children as political
subjects by suggesting that our system does not leave channels for children to act as
such and that an increasingly aging population is not likely to establish such
channels.
Children are evidently subjects in many arenas; only, when it comes to the
societal level, they have hardly gained recognition in any of them. Their school-
work might be one prominent candidate, but as discussed above, this work is not an
acknowledged activity in its own right. Another candidate may be their role as
consumers (see Brusdal, ▶ Chap. 48, “Well-Being and Children in a Consumer
Society,” this volume), but although children on this important stage do have an
impact on the market by spending their own or rather their parents’ or grandparents’
money and influencing parents’ choice of consumer products, they remain depen-
dent on adults’ discretion and whim.
A more autonomous activity, perhaps, about which children, compared with
their parents and in particular their grandparents, exert sovereignty is their use of
computer and other technological devices and gadgets. As Mead argued many years
ago (1970), the rapidity of technological changes in this respect may eventually
imply a shift in power relations between generations. A materialization of these
prospects still remains to be seen.
22.10 A Minority Category?
What kind of category is childhood? What kind of group or collectivity are

children? A pervasive feature of our society is, as Stinchcombe contended (see
above), that children assume a subservient position vis-à-vis adults. What is the
nature of this subservience? We shall not call it an exploitative relation as we do
about class relations. Could we call it patriarchy with a concept that otherwise
seems reserved for gender relations? Or could we use the notion of discrimination
in a way otherwise used about repressed ethnic groups?
I would suggest minority group as a proper notion; given that there are many
groups that may qualify as a minority group, I would add that the nature of
children’s subservience is paternalistic. In Louis Wirth’s classical definition,
a minority group is any group of people who because of their physical or cultural
characteristics are singled out from others in the society in which they live for
differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects
of collective discrimination. The existence of a minority in the society implies the
existence of a corresponding dominant group with higher social status and greater
privileges. Minority status carries with it the exclusion from full participation in the
life of society (Wirth 1945: 347).
Wirth did not have children or childhood in mind when he formulated his
definition, but the latter is nonetheless sufficiently broad to include quite a few
discriminated or marginalized groups. First of all, it must be made clear that the
22 Sociology 699
word “minority” does not refer to any quantitative attribute. Even if, for instance,
black people in South Africa under apartheid were in the majority, they were
a minority group in this sense. As far as children as a collectivity are concerned,
they are indeed singled out because of their physical, perhaps even their cultural,
characteristics. It is obvious also, as has been a major argument in this chapter, that
they face a corresponding dominant group – adults or adulthood as a category –
with higher social status and greater privileges. Finally, it cannot be denied that
children are excluded from full participation in the life of society (cf. discussions
about children’s rights and citizenship).
As has been done above, it is helpful to distinguish between a family and
a societal level when talking about adults or adulthood as the corresponding
dominant group. This dominant group may on the one hand consist of parents
vis-à-vis their own children or of adults as a collectivity, that is, all adults in society
vis-à-vis the whole group of minors. In between these two, we find quite a few
corresponding groups in various institutions, for instance, teachers vis-à-vis pupils.
Efforts to come to terms with characterizing children have been attempted. Hood-
Williams dealt with the relationship between parents and children at the family level.
His conclusion was that over time nothing had in principle changed in power
relationships between parents and their children. He chose the notion of
a persistent age patriarchy, where domination is identical to the “authoritarian
power of command” (with reference to Max Weber – see Hood-Williams 1990: 158).
Oldman, on the other hand, uses a class perspective at a societal level. He
suggests that we might consider adults and children as constituting classes, in the
sense of being social categories which exist principally by their economic opposi-
tion to each other, and in the ability of the dominant class (adults) to exploit
economically the activities of the subordinate class (children). (Oldman 1994: 44,
italic in original).
There is an undeniable consequence in Oldman’s analysis when his controversial
use of class is followed by the notion of exploitation, indeed economic exploitation.
His point is that children’s work, for instance, schoolwork, is a precondition for
what he calls child work, that is, adult work exploiting children’s work.
Boulding also uses classes when she categorizes children as objects of class
action, which in her wording refers to legal action taken with regard to any category
of person, such as women, children, the elderly or specific ethnic or racial minor-
ities, on the basis of membership in that category rather than on the basis of the
individual situation or need. (Boulding 1979: 97).
I would rather see this legal action toward a category as one element of
a definition of a minority. However, there is at least one element from Wirth’s
definition which must cause problems as far as children are concerned. When he
suggests that, as a consequence of being differentially and unequally treated,
members of a minority group should “regard themselves as objects of collective
discrimination,” we will probably have to admit that this is the exception rather than
the rule – in any case, it will be difficult to see children as a collectivity organizing
themselves as a minority group against adults. Although we do find examples of
protests on the part of children (see, e.g., Humphries 1995), most children will
700 J. Qvortrup
rather, I suggest, see their position as destiny or better act in accordance with a so-
called slave mentality, that is, an internalized acceptance of their lot.
This lack of appreciation of their own discrimination26 does not mean denying
that discrimination actually does or could take place, exactly as an “in itself”
class relation may exist irrespective of a “for-itself” understanding of an exploited
working class. A consciousness about their minority status is likely to be the much
less visible among children the more sentimentalized their being is at the family level
and the more profound their protected status is. It is exactly this overwhelming
protection which may cause us to talk about paternalism as this minority group’s
most salient feature, rather than age patriarchy, as Hood-Williams would have it (see
above). Marginalization may be protective but also at the same time – or alterna-
tively – paternalistic. As I have suggested elsewhere:
Paternalism is the kind of power, which is exerted benevolently; in this case,
there is no reason to believe in anything than good intentions on the side of single
adults, in particular parents, teachers etc.; actually, paternalistic arguments gener-
ally hold that those marginalized on paternalistic grounds are finally the beneficia-
ries of their exclusion, while the benefactors are burdened with responsibility and
power. (Qvortrup 1994: 21–2).27
The structural form we call childhood is, in other words, a minority category
subjected to paternalism exerted by its corresponding dominance category
“adulthood.”28
22.11 Conclusion
In the modern world, there has been a secular trend toward the sentimentalization of
children; there has also been much discussion about children’s increasing role as
participants in the so-called negotiation family. Nevertheless, I believe that Hood-
Williams has a point in claiming that “children remain dependent subjects even if
attempts may be made to mask that dependency’ – indeed, how could it be
otherwise, ‘given that the structural relations between parents and children are
unchanged” (Hood-Williams 1990: 164).
At the societal level, children’s benevolent protection is endorsed by parents
and politicians alike as a condition for the survival and vitality of the everlasting
“project childhood” (see Sgritta 2009). Without accomplishing this project suc-
cessfully, any society’s hopes and prospects for its future are jeopardized. As
suggested above, if one were forced to choose between prioritizing the interests of
childhood or those of adult society, the latter will necessarily triumph. Despite
affectionate and concerned intentions on the part of well-intentioned adults,
structural indifference (Kaufmann 2005, pp. 152ff) prevails, while structurally
conditioned advantages for children are only maintained as long as they also favor
the social fabric and the social order.
Economic and political developments happen to a large extent behind our backs
without giving children and childhood sufficient consideration. Even when politics
and policies deliberately target children and childhood, the much more dominant
22 Sociology 701
influence on children’s lives comes, I suggest, from nontargeted and

instrumentalized actions. It remains important to target children directly, but we
should perhaps be much more attentive to all the influence on children which we did
not plan and which so far we have remained uninformed about.
The idea of children as political subjects is, now as before, a fairy tale.
Notes
1. His views on child and childhood are very conventional; they are represented, for instance, in
an article on “childhood” (“Enfance”) in a pedagogical dictionary, written together with an
educationalist more interested in psychology than sociology. They wrote: “In everything the
child is characterised by the very instability of his nature, which is the law of growth. The
educationalist is presented not with a person wholly formed – not a complete work or
a finished product – but with a becoming, an incipient being, a person in the process of
formation” (Buisson and Durkheim 1979, p. 150; orig. 1911, p. 552; italics in original).
Interestingly, the notion of becoming is used here (translated from the French “devenir”). In
a sense thus, Durkheim and Buisson (or perhaps rather their translator) were the first ones to
use this notion. It must, though, be added that it was used without any critical edge and without
any ideas of the child as a “being.” On the contrary, if not used, as in the article quoted here –
tantamount to weakness and imperfection – it happens, even worse, to be compared to
despotism: “A despot is like a child: he has the child’s weaknesses because he is not master
of himself” Durkheim (2002).
2. For students interested in the history of childhood, this early edition is though very useful also
for its references to sources prior to 1930.
3. As to the timing of the onset of social studies of childhood, it is interesting to note the temporal
overlapping with the appearance of the UNCRC. The negotiations commenced in 1979 at
the initiative of the Polish government and were concluded in 1989 when the convention was
adopted at the United Nations.
4. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under
self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted
from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the
living” (Marx 1963, from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). Or in the words of
UK sociologist Abrams (1982, p. 227): “. . . society must be understood as a process
constructed historically by individuals who are constructed historically by society.”
5. Quotations from Honig, Leu and Nissen, and Zeiher are translated from the German by the
author.
6. For an agency approach in this volume, see also Corsaro 2011.
7. CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time.
8. This could be translated also as inconsiderateness, thoughtlessness, inattentiveness, and even
recklessness.
9. Ariès would probably have approved of Kaufmann; interestingly, Ariès was also
a conservative, indeed, according to himself, a reactionary! See Ariès 1990.
10. Yet, the periods or phases are not dealt with similarly. We do not talk about adulthood as
a transitional period or a preparatory phase to old age or about old age as the outcome of
adulthood, even though we may anticipate it in the sense of making plans for it. The reason for
the differential appreciation of life phases is clearly enough the dominance of the work line
over any existential valuation. Adulthood may be seen, as Davis (1940) sees it, as the most
important life phase socially. The question is what implications for the other life phases can be
discerned. Interesting and ironic is furthermore that, despite this assessment of adulthood, we
often in our discourse talk about childhood as the most important life phase, though this
702 J. Qvortrup
assessment seems to be finally determined by what is called “child outcome” – that is, success
one way or the other in adulthood!
11. While a structural approach to childhood is less interested in the socialization of the individual
child, it logically takes a great interest in socialization as a parameter, that is, the phenomenon
at a meta-level.
12. Interestingly, at the societal level too, we may talk about a developmental stage, even though it
can be seen as controversial, for example, in terms of phylogenesis and ontogenesis. Despite
the temptation, I shall not take up this discussion here.
13. Or only in fiction: P. G. James writes in her novel The Children of Men (1992) about the
devastating effect when suddenly no children are born to a society over a period of more than
two decades.
14. We see during the current financial crisis that young people in particular are exposed as
demonstrated by the comparatively high youth unemployment rates. In this chapter, youth is
not specifically taken on board in the analysis, but otherwise the current situation would
provoke a conflict between youth and adulthood as generational units or collectivities. It
would not necessarily establish a conflict between youngsters and adults as individuals: in fact
quite a few adults will side with young people in their struggle against youth unemployment.
15. The two disciplines do not seem to be “equal partners.” Elder acknowledges a fundamental
asymmetry between historians and psychologists. The relevant research agenda established on
the basis of the collaboration is “largely a historian’s enterprise,” while “the developmentalists
can assist in providing a vocabulary for the research agenda” (Elder et al. 1993, pp. 248–49).
On cooperation between social scientists and psychologists, (see also Devereux 1970, p. 28).
16. Leaving aside Oedipus, the perhaps most prominent of them all – Turgenev’s novel Fathers
and Sons – does, though in a figurative sense, contain significant references to the political
scene in tsarist Russia. There is, besides, an overflowing number of autobiographical books in
which relationships to parents and other adults are portrayed; see, for instance, the Swedish
author Jan Myrdal and the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard.
17. In fact, even in German the distinction is not completely unambiguous; thus a love relation-
ship is described as “ein Liebesverh€altnis” where one would have expected “eine
Liebesbeziehung,” if consistency had prevailed.
18. The grand exception must be the dramatic increases in divorce rates since mid-twentieth
century.
19. These similarities were true for both girls and adult women on the one hand and boys and adult
men on the other, whereas a gender difference was distinct and has remained so until our days,
though it is perhaps waning now.
20. The age difference between them was not as large as it appears: Davis (1908–1997); Coleman
(1926–1995).
21. I prefer the oikos terminology to those of Coleman and Davis because they merely point to the
differences between before and now but eschew the similarities.
22. Cf. Mackenroth’s dictum: “. . . all social expenditure must always be covered from the
national economy of the current period” (quoted by Kr€ usselberg 1987; Mackenroth 1952: 41).
23. “If families or households are grouped by their size, as measured by number of persons, the
common finding is that the larger families or households show a larger income per unit. But if
the family or household income is divided by the number of members, per person income is
larger in the smaller families and smaller in the larger units . . . Larger families or households
usually contain a higher proportion of children and a smaller proportion of adults than the
smaller families and households. It follows that children are more concentrated than adults in
larger families and households and, consequently, in families or households with lower per
person income” (Kuznets 1989, p. 370). This is, comments Wintersberger (1994, p. 238), “the
econometric mechanism which condemns children to relative economic deprivation in mod-
ern society.”
24. In her excellent book, Johanna Mierendorff (2010) talks about “das Muster moderner
Kindheit” (pattern of modern childhood).
22 Sociology 703
25. See, for instance, the title of one of Heckman’s articles: “Investing in our young people:
lessons from economics and psychology” (Heckman 2009).
26. Although one of the first expressions a grandchild of mine learned from her older siblings was
“it is unjust!”
27. This definition accords perfectly with the position of Blackstone, who, more than 200 years
ago, held that children are “within the empire of the father,” and therefore their privileges
come from their incapacity. “Infants have various disabilities; but their very disabilities are
privileges” (Blackstone 1979: 441, 452).
28. A different understanding of minority group is found in James, Jenks, and Prout (1998,
pp. 206ff.). Whereas, in this chapter, “minority” is seen as one way of characterizing
childhood as a structural form (what they call the social structural child), the minority child
in their interpretation is one who is waiting (in vain, apparently) to obtain consciousness or
a for-itself status.
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Children’s Well-Being and Interpretive
Reproduction 23
William A. Corsaro
23.1 Introduction
Most theoretical discussion and empirical research on the well-being of children

and youth focus on the policies of national and local governments at a macro level
and the responsibilities and actions of individual adults (parents, teachers, and other
caretakers) at the micro level. The notion of interpretive reproduction extends this
focus on adults and how their actions and interactions at the macro and micro level
affect the well-being of children to a concentration on children themselves and
especially their agency in their collective actions with adults and each other (James
2009; Corsaro 2011).
Based on a series of comparative ethnographies of children’s peer interactions
and cultures over the last 35 years, I have developed and refined the notion of
interpretive reproduction (Corsaro 1992; 2011). The term interpretive captures the
innovative and creative aspects of children’s participation in society. Children
create and participate in their own peer cultures by creatively appropriating infor-
mation from the adult world to address their own peer concerns. The term repro-
duction captures the idea that children are not simply internalizing society and
culture but are actively contributing to cultural production and change. The term
also implies that children are, by their very participation in society, constrained by
the existing social structure and by processes of social reproduction. That is,
children and their childhoods are affected by the societies and cultures of which
they are members.
W.A. Corsaro
Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
e-mail: corsaro@indiana.edu

710 W.A. Corsaro
23.2 Well-Being, Interpretive Reproduction, and Children’s

Peer Cultures
In this chapter, I will not take for granted the importance of how societies and adults
influence the lives of children and youth, but as I noted previously, I will focus on
the agency of children, most especially in their creation of and participation in their
peer cultures. I define peer culture as a stable set of activities or routines, artifacts,
values, and concerns that children produce and share in interaction with peers
(Corsaro and Eder 1990; Corsaro 2003, 2009, 2011).
In this chapter, I examine how children actively contribute to their own well-
being as they create and share their peer cultures and simultaneously contribute to
the adult world. I do this by reviewing theory and research on peer cultures of
preschool children and preadolescents. There are, of course, many important studies
of adolescent peer cultures that are directly in line with the notion of interpretive
reproduction. I refer readers to important work and reviews of work on adolescent
peer cultures (Willis 1990; Kinney 1993; Eder 1995; Lesko 2001; Eder and Nenga
2003; Milner 2006; Ito et al. 2010).
23.3 Peer Culture and Well-Being of Preschool Children
In my work, I have identified a wide range of features of the peer cultures of young
children. These features are related to two central themes of the peer cultures of
both children and youth: (1) Children and youth make persistent attempts to gain
control of their lives and (2) they always strive to share that control with each other.
I have referred to these themes as control and communal sharing (Corsaro 2011).
These themes are also directly related to a variety of routines in which children and
youth create and share strong emotional bonds with each other that contribute
positively to their well-being.
23.3.1 The Emergence of Peer Culture Among Toddlers
In modern Western societies and in many non-Western societies as well, young

children spend much of their time in the preschool years in childcare institutions,
preschools, and under the care of older siblings and peers. There has been a good bit
of debate regarding the negative effects of childcare on the emotional and social
development of preschool children (particularly infant and toddlers) especially in
the United States. This debate is ironic in that the United States has far less
progressive family leave, childcare, and early childhood education compared to
other Western societies. Thus, especially the children of working class and poor
families must often enter childcare in the first months of life given there is no paid
family leave program in the United States. The United States has, however,
provided a great deal of funding for research on the negative effects of childcare
and early education for preschool children. These negative effects are tied to the
23 Children’s Well-Being and Interpretive Reproduction 711
belief that young children who spend a great deal of time in childcare from a young
age will fail to establish secure attachments with parents, especially their mothers.
Some studies based on what is known as the “strange situation experiment” found
that children who attended infant childcare on a regular basis displaced less secure
attachments than those who did not (Belskey and Rovine 1988). However, these
results were challenged given the nature of the “strange situation experiment” and
the validity of its measures.
In the strange situation experiment, an infant is brought by her mother to
a playroom setting in a laboratory. The mother plays with her child with some
toys for a short period and then leaves her alone with a female researcher. The
infant’s responses to her mother’s brief absence and then her return are seen as
indicators of the child’s attachment to her mother. The attached child is expected
to show anxiety during her mother’s absence and relief upon her return. In fact, in
the original use of this method, reunion behavior best predicted secure attach-
ment in that the children who either ignored, avoided, or resisted their mothers
upon reunion had problems with emotional security later in life (Ainsworth et al.
1978). But such behavior in children who attended childcare or preschool regu-
larly would be quite normal in ignoring their mother’s return and continue
playing with toys given their experience of many separations and reunions
(Clarke-Stewart 1989). Yet research on the possible negative effects of childcare
and early education on children’s emotional development continues with only
modestly significant or mixed findings that such effects may occur (National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research
Network 2003). There has been little if any research of this type in most
European countries where many toddlers and almost all 3- to 5-year-olds regu-
larly attend preschools.
In many countries in Europe as well as Japan, China, and Brazil, children spend
a great deal of time in preschool in the toddler period (18 months to 3 years) as well
as from three to five (see Gandini and Edwards 2001 for a discussion of infant/
toddler care in Italy). Recent research on infants and toddlers in such settings shows
that they create and participate in peer cultures in line with the themes and of
control and communal sharing even in these early years. Some of the most inter-
esting research has been carried out in Brazil, Norway, and Italy.
The research in Brazil, guided by a cultural and ethological approach and the
fine-grained analysis video data, has demonstrated that toddlers and babies are
capable of shared interactions and play routines. Many of the studies found that
babies in the first year of life engaged in play routines that went far beyond simple
parallel play. The studies documented that by the end of the 1st year of life, infants
demonstrated both empathy and shared pretend play behaviors (see Rossetti-
Ferreira et al. 2010).
In her research in Norwegian preschools, Løkken (2000) identified a “toddling
style” – play based on expressive intentional bodily actions the toddlers immedi-
ately understand without having to reflect on or talk about it. She provides examples
of making music together (a “glee concert”) and a bathroom society where the
toddlers banged plastic cups, boats, and their hands on a bench in the bathroom.
712 W.A. Corsaro
These playful actions, vocalizations, and smiles produce a vivid sense of commu-
nity, emotional well-being, and control of their space and activities in the preschool.
In Italy, my colleague Luisa Molinari and I documented several routines among
toddlers in a preschool program for 18-month- to 3-year-olds. One example, “The
Little Chairs” routine, captures well the themes of control and communal sharing
discussed earlier. Here, the children flipped over the small chairs they sat in for
meeting times in a way that one can stand rather than sit in them. The children then
lined up the chairs from one end of a playroom to another and walked on them
transforming the meeting time room into a type of physical playground. The
children worked together to build different types of patterns of winding paths and
cautioned each other to be careful in their play. The teachers impressed by the
toddlers’ creativity and care in their play allowed the activity to occur on a regular
basis. We found that the older children often admonished the younger ones for
moving a chair from the line or pushing another child walking in front of them.
Further, the older children experimented with the design over time making the
structure more difficult to walk on (see Corsaro & Molinari 1990; Corsaro 2011).
An important feature of toddler play routines is their simple and primarily
nonverbal participant structure, which consists of a series of orchestrated actions.
As a result, a large number of children with a fairly wide range of communicative,
cognitive, and motor skills can participate. The structure incorporates the option of
recycling the main elements of the routines. Such recycling allows young children
to embellish and extend certain features of the routines over time.
Play routines among toddlers in their peer cultures again capture the emotional
importance of “doing things together” for children’s well-being. Adults often
overlook this importance because they tend to view (especially younger) children’s
activities from a “utility point of view,” which focuses on learning and social and
cognitive development (Strandell 1994). Young children do not know the world
from this point of view. “For them,” noted Strandell, “the course of events of which
they are part has an immediate impact on their existence as children here in space
and now in time” (1994, p. 8). Thus, adults seldom appreciate the emotional
satisfaction and well-being children get from producing and participating in what
seems to most adults to be simple repetitive play.
23.3.2 Sociodramatic Role and Fantasy Play in Preschool

Peer Culture
A similar pattern can be seen in the joy of sociodramatic role-play among 2- to 5-

year-olds which most adults and researchers see as important for learning but
primarily as imitation of adult models. Kids do not, however, simply imitate adult
models in their role-play; rather, they continually elaborate and embellish adult
models to address their own concerns. Children begin role-play as young as age 2,
and most role-play is about the expression of status and power. In role-play
scenarios, children often create discipline scripts in which those in subordinate
roles such as babies, young children, and even pets purposely misbehave so as to be
disciplined by those with more status such as parents or owners. Thus, children
often feel more powerful and in control in their role-play (see Corsaro 2003, 2011).
Given the ubiquity of role-play across historical times and across cultures, it can be
argued this it is a universal aspect of children’s play and peer cultures. The historian
Barbara Hanawalt (1993) reported that children of medieval London engaged in a wide
variety of types of role-play including religious ceremonies and marriages. Lester
Alston (1992) and David Wiggins (1985) in their analysis of interviews with former
slaves found that slave children in the pre-Civil War South of the United States
engaged in a variety of types of role-play that included religious ceremonies such as
baptisms and most especially slave auctions, which helped children deal with strong
emotions about being separated from their families in the slave communities.
There are many examples of children’s role-play reported in anthropological
studies of children throughout the world. Often, such play in developing societies is
combined with children’s work for their families and often closely models adult
work roles. However, again children are creative in using available materials like
pieces of glass, battery tops, tin cans, and old shoes in designing their play in
contrast to the toys designed to encourage role-play among children from devel-
oped societies (see Katz 2004).
Overall, role-play is important for children’s well-being in supporting emotional
satisfaction in sharing play and feeling more in control of their lives. Role-play also
contributes to children’s creativity and social skills and enables children to develop
predispositions to their futures as adults and a variety of aspects of the adult world
both fulfilling and joyful and also serious and sorrowful including even death
(Formanek-Brunell 1992; Corsaro 1993, 2003, 2011; L€ofdahl 2005).
Young children also confront confusions, fears, and conflicts important to their
well-being in fantasy play of different types. Numerous studies document the com-
plexity and wide variety of children’s fantasy play throughout the world. Children’s
fantasy play is emotion laden and helps children cope with a variety of concerns and
fears such as being lost, facing dangers of various sorts, and death (Corsaro 1985,
2003, 2011; Edwards 2000; Fromberg and Bergen 2006; Goldman 2000; G€onc€u and
Gaskins 2006). Sawyer (1997, 2002) captured the poetic nature of American chil-
dren’s fantasy play in their peer culture in what he called “collaborative emergence.”
By collaborative emergence, Sawyer meant that young children’s improvised play is
unpredictable and contingent on the ongoing turn-by-turn production of play narra-
tive. For example, one child “proposes a new development for the play, and other
children respond by modifying or embellishing the proposal” (Sawyer 2002, p. 304).
Again, we see how the communal and creative productions of children in their peer
cultures contribute to feelings of control, accomplishment, and emotional well-being.
Johannesen (2004; also see Corsaro and Johannesen 2007) in her study of
Norwegian children’s play with LEGOs extended Sawyer’s work by entering into
the practice of fantasy play in terms of the practice itself. She did this by considering
the play frame reality as voiced by the LEGO characters as a real world with real
experiences. Given that her work took place over a long period of time, Johannesen
demonstrated that the LEGO characters remain intact even when they, as embodied
in play artifacts, are stacked away from 1 day or week to the next. Over time, the
714 W.A. Corsaro
children’s play reality persists and becomes increasingly varied and complex as the
characters, as orchestrated by the children, plan, carry out, and experience recurring
episodes of danger-rescue and other emotionally laden themes. These recurrent
experiences materialize in the enduring relational identities, artifacts, and participants
in the play. Again, we see the value of taking children’s play seriously and how
children themselves in line with interpretive reproduction contribute continually to
their ongoing membership in the peer and adult culture.
In her work on “doing reality with play” based on observations of Finnish
preschool children, Strandell (1997) made a similar point, noting that play in the
peer culture should not be seen only as a means of reaching adult competence or in
line with the topic at hand (adult notions of well-being). Rather, she argued that play
is a resource kids use in their everyday life activities in the peer culture. Interestingly,
these and other studies of fantasy play illuminate language and improvisational skills
produced and shared among young children that surpass those of the majority of older
children and adults. Thus, fantasy play and its contributions to children’s well- being
are best interpreted and appreciated in the life and the moments of childhood.
23.3.3 Protecting Interactive Space and Approach-Avoidance Play
This insight brings us to other forms of play routines in young children’s peer
culture that are often misinterpreted by adults as harmful or threatening to
children’s well-being when they may often be just the opposite. First, there is
much concern about peer rejection among young children. It is clearly a problem
if a young child is continually rejected by others and has constant problems in
joining in the play routines of peer culture in preschools and other settings. This
problem is even more worthy of concern if it persists into elementary school, and it
has been addressed in the work of Paley (1992) and others (Asher and Coie 1990;
Ramsey 1991). However, adults, including teachers and researchers, often see
rejection and exclusion in the play of preschool where I see the “protection of
interactive space” (Corsaro 1979, 2003, 2011). Protection of interactive space is the
tendency on the part of preschool children to protect their ongoing play from the
intrusion of others. In my research in preschools, I found this tendency is directly
related to the fragility of peer interaction, the multiple possibilities of disruption in
most preschool settings, and children’s desire to maintain control over shared
activities. In short, what may look like negative active and refusing to share play
activities with others on the surface is often just the opposite. It is not that children
are refusing to share, rather than want to keep sharing the play activities they are
already sharing in contexts where disruptions are ubiquitous.
It is for this reason that direct access attempts like “What ya doin?” “Can
I play?” or the frequently heard “You have to share!” are so often rejected. These
types of entry bids actually signal that one does not understand what kind of sharing
is going on and are candidates to mess things up if they enter the play. Catherine
Garvey (1984) nicely captured why these strategies don’t often work in the three
“don’ts” in her guidelines for successful play entry:
Don’t ask questions for information (if you can’t tell what’s going on, you shouldn’t be
bothering those who do); don’t mention yourself or state your feelings about the group or its
activity (they’re not interested at the moment); don’t disagree or criticize the proceedings
(you have not right to do so, since you’re and outsider). (p. 64)
The ‘do’s” in Garvey’s guidelines all revolve around showing that you can play
without causing problems: Watch what’s going on, figure out the play theme, enter
the area, and plug into the action by producing a variant of the play theme. These
strategies are just the ones I identified children using successfully in my research.
Most children who found their entry bids resisted learned to watch at a distance to
figure out what was going on (sometimes, even circling around the area so as not to
cause attention), to subtly enter the play area, and often nonverbally, to produce an
action in line with the play theme. Once accepted, it was also wise to note: “We’re
friends, right?” (Corsaro 1979, 2003, 2011).
Other play routines among preschool and elementary school children that are
often misinterpreted by adults involve running, chasing, and what is often called
“rough and tumble play.” Rough and tumble play “is defined as fun, social-
interactive behavior that includes running, climbing, pouncing, chasing and fleeing,
wrestling, kicking, open-handed slapping, falling and other forms of physical and
verbal play fighting” (Tannock 2010, p. 148; also see Blurton-Jones 1976;
Pellegrini and Smith 1998; Freeman and Brown 2004;). Play routines of this type
begin in the preschool years and peak in primary school and then begins to decline
in early adolescence (Pellegrini and Smith 1998; Tannock 2010). It is often seen as
aggressive play or even bullying and is discouraged by teachers, parents, and other
adults. However, as Tannock (2010) points out in a review of rough and tumble
play, it has many positive aspects involving physical exercise and emotional
expression and intimacy especially among boys.
In my research of the 5-year-old American and Italian children, I identified
a spontaneous play routine I called “approach-avoidance.” Approach-avoidance is
primarily a nonverbal play routine in which children (boys and girls) identify,
approach, and then avoid a threatening agent or monster. The best way to get
a feel for approach-avoidance play is to examine an enactment of the routine.
Like many routines in peer culture, approach-avoidance is hard to appreciate
outside its natural context. Therefore, I present below an example I captured in
field notes from a study of a preschool in Berkeley, California, in the mid-1970s:
The Apple Girl
I am sitting in the sandpile of the outside yard of the school with Glen, Leah, Denny, and
Martin. Rita walks by us and she is wearing a dress with an apple print. Suddenly Glen
yells: “Hey, there’s the apple girl!” Denny then shouts: “Watch out, she will get us.” Rita
hears this but does not look toward us and walks away slowly. Leah than says, “Let’s go get
her.” The four children get up and move toward Rita and I remain in the sandpile. They
move slowly up behind Rita and laugh and act like they are afraid. Rita now slows done and
pretends not to notice them. But then as they get very close to her Rita spins around and
holds up her hands as if they were claws. “Watch out, she will scratch us,” says Martin.
Now the four children run with Rita pursuing them around the yard until they get back to the
sandpile and join me laughing and saying that was scary. Rita stops outside the sandpile and
waves her clawed hands saying “Grr! Grr!” She then turns and walks away from the other
716 W.A. Corsaro
children. As she moves away the four children jump up to approach her again and they
repeat the routine. In fact, it is repeated three more times with lots of laughing and
screeching by the four threatened children and lots of growling by Rita.
This example is typical of the approach-avoidance play that occurred spon-

taneously in the American and Italian preschools I studied. The routine is
composed of three phases: identification, approach, and avoidance. In this
example, the identification phase begins when Glen sees Rita and referring to
her dress calls her the apple girl. Denny then suggests that Rita is in some way
dangerous, and she will come after the children in the sandpile. In this way, Rita
is thrust into the role of a threatening agent. Rita hears this identification and
walks away slowly. Leah then suggests that the other children in the sandpile go
after or approach Rita as the apple girl. As the children approach Rita, they
pretend they are afraid, and Rita purposely does not reply until the children are
very close to her. She then spins around and embraces the role of a threatening
agent as she holds up her hands as if she has claws. The other children now flee
and try to avoid Rita who runs after them until they reach the sandpile which
becomes a home base.
Several things are important here. It is clear that the three children are in this
together. The approach is communally orchestrated, moving from Glen’s identifi-
cation and Leah’s proposal that they approach Rita to the slow advance toward Rita
(“The Apple Girl”) and to the feigned fear in reaction to Rita’s embodiment of the
role of threatening agent. A building tension occurs in the approach phase, which
the children create and share.
The children’s fleeing initiates the avoidance phase. This phase can proceed only
with the threatening agent’s active participation. Rita with her outstretched hands as
claws pursues the other children back to the sandpile. She does not, however, move
into the sandpile, signaling the limits to her power as a threatening agent. The
sandpile thus becomes a home base for the threatened children. Rita then walks
away. The threatening agent power is now diminished and the first cycle of the
routine is complete (see Corsaro 1985, 2011 for other examples of approach-
avoidance).
Before pursuing further discussion of the importance of approach-avoidance in
the peer culture of young children, let’s look at a more formalized version of the
routine Italian preschoolers refer to as la Strega (the witch):
La Strega
Cristina, Luisa, and Rosa (all about four years old) are playing in the outside yard of the
preschool. Rosa points to Cristina and says, “She is the witch.” Luisa then asks Cristina,
“Will you be the witch?” and Cristina agrees. Cristina now closes her eyes and Luisa and
Rosa move closer and closer towards her, almost touching her. As they approach, Cristina
repeats: “Colore! Colore! Colore!” (“Color! Color! Color!”). Luisa and Rosa move closer
with each repetition and then Cristina shouts: “Viola!” (“Violet!”). Luisa and Rosa run off
screeching, and Cristina, with her arms and hands outstretched in a threatening manner,
chases after them. Luisa and Rosa now run in different directions, and Cristina chases after
Rosa. Just as la Strega is about to catch her, Rosa touches a violet object (a toy on the
ground that serves as home base). Cristina now turns to look for Luisa and sees that she also
has found a violet object (the dress of another child). Cristina now again closes her eyes and
repeats: “Colore! Colore! Colore!” The other two girls begin a second approach and the
routine is repeated, this time with “gray” as the announced color. Rosa and Luisa again find
the correctly colored objects before Cristina can capture them. At this point, Cristina
suggests that Rosa be the witch and she agrees. The routine is repeated three more times
with the colors yellow, green, and blue. Each time the witch chases but does not capture the
fleeing children.
The la Strega routine highlights some additional implications of approach-

avoidance play for children’s peer culture. First, it allows for the personification
of the feared (but fascinating) figure la Strega in the person of a fellow playmate.
The fact that la Strega is now embodied in the actions of a living person is tempered
by the fact that the animator is, after all, just Cristina (another child). The feared
figure is now part of immediate reality, but this personification is both created and
controlled by the children in their joint production of the routine.
A second thing to note is that the participant structure of the routine leads to both
a buildup and a release of tension and excitement. In the approach phase, the witch
relinquishes power by closing her eyes as the children draw near to her. The tension
builds, however, as the witch repeats the word “colore,” because she decides what
the color will be and when it will be announced. This announcement signals the
beginning of the witch’s attempt to capture the children and the avoidance phase of
the routine. Although the fleeing children may seem to be afraid in the avoidance
phase, the fear is clearly feigned because objects of any color can easily be found
and touched. Thus, the witch seldom actually captures a fleeing child. In fact,
threatened children often prolong the avoidance phase by overlooking many poten-
tial objects of the appropriate color before selecting one.
We see in the American and Italian examples that the threatened children have
a great deal of control. They initiate and recycle the routine through their approach,
and they have a reliable means of escape (home base) in the avoidance phase. These
cross-cultural data nicely demonstrate how children cope with real fears by incor-
porating them into peer routines that they produce and control. In fact, approach-
avoidance play, like dramatic role-play, may be a universal feature of children’s
peer culture (see Schwartzman 1978; Barlow 1985; Corsaro 2003, 2011; for review
and discussion of other cross-cultural examples of approach-avoidance play).
Although approach-avoidance, rough and tumble play, and other run and chase
play may seem aggressive and negative to many adults, they must be evaluated
from children’s points of view within their peer culture. These types of play
especially given their physical elements, sharing of emotions, and confronting of
possible fears embodied in threatening agents clearly contribute to the social and
emotional well-being of young children.
23.4 Well-Being of Preadolescent Children
As discussed in the previous section, preschoolers enjoy simply being and doing
things together. However, generating shared meaning and coordinating play are
often challenging tasks for preschoolers. Thus, they spend a lot of time creating and
718 W.A. Corsaro
protecting shared play routines that provide them with a sense of excitement,
emotional security, and well-being.
Things are different for preadolescents. They easily generate and sustain peer
activities, but they now often collectively produce a set of stratified groups, and
issues of acceptance, popularity, and group solidarity become very important. I will
explore the importance and complexity of this increasing differentiation in peer
relations and culture for well-being by examining friendship processes, verbal
routines, games, and heterosexual relations; the nature and structure of differenti-
ated groups; and patterns of differentiation in terms of gender and status. I will also
briefly address the role of electronic media in preadolescent peer cultures and its
effects on children’s well-being. I should note that my review is primarily restricted
to Western societies. Preadolescents in non-Western societies spend much of their
lives in mixed-age groups caring for, playing, and often working with younger
siblings and other younger children in their local communities (see Roopnarine
et al. 1994; Katz 2004; Nsamenang 2006, 2010).
23.4.1 Friendship Processes
In preadolescence, children engage in games and other types of play that involve
planning and reflective evaluation. It is for this reason that Chin and Phillips (2003)
argued that in the study of preadolescents’ play, we need to identify the intensity of
children’s involvement in their activities and not just identify their various activ-
ities. Preadolescents, argue Chin and Phillips, don’t just play; they are collectively
involved in their activities, from being absorbed in watching television soap operas
to the extent of knowing their complex plot structures, to being engaged in complex
sociodramatic play, and to exploring novel interactive settings with peers and
adults. Chin and Phillips studied preadolescents in home and neighborhood settings
in the summer months. These settings challenge children’s imaginative and
interactive skills because they are often not as structured as those in schools or
after-school programs. Chin and Phillips present vivid examples of the play of two
girls who see themselves as best friends. The girls (Jane and April) often pretended
that they were sisters and that the scooters they liked to ride were horses. They
talked to the researchers about a play scenario when they pursue husbands on their
horses (scooters) but make sure the play does not violate the rules of the church they
attend:
Jane said, “yesterday we were playing that she [April] was dating the sheriff and I was
dating the sheriff’s brother.” . . .They started discussing dating the sheriff and whether or
not they should play the game today. They decided to and then debated how old they should
pretend to be [they had already chosen to be 13 and 17 for their previous game]. Jane said,
“Well you can’t, if you’re 13—you can’t date one person until you’re 18. It’s against church
standards.” April sighed but nodded and they decided to be 18 and 19. (Chin and Phillips
2003, p. 165)
This example captures many of the complex social and emotional aspects of play
among best friends and how it relates to their presents and futures. In creating and
sharing the complex role-play, the girls share the fun of the play, its connections to
things they value and share, and how its improvised plot direction causes some
challenges to their religious experiences. The intensity of such shared play over
time clearly marks how children contribute to their own well-being and concerns in
best friend relationships.
Other researchers have explored the intensity of best friend relationships
among preadolescents in school, after-school programs, and neighborhood set-
tings. Rizzo (1989) found that developing best friends was a key aspect of peer
culture among the first graders he studied. In Rizzo’s study, the most enduring
friendships were the result of “local circumstances of play” and peer relations.
The first graders became involved in types of play they enjoyed, and like the
preschoolers I discussed earlier, they verbally marked and agreed they were
friends. Unlike younger children, however, they maintained these patterns of
shared play over time and marked their relationships as special – by considering
themselves to be best friends.
Rizzo found that best friends often tried to protect their friendships from the
possible intrusions of others while at the same time, trying to expand their friend-
ship groups by forming clubs. These two processes often came into conflict in
a variety of ways. First, even though best friends wanted to expand their groups
beyond their two-person dyads, they were very sensitive to the possible disruption
of the still fragile, dyadic best-friend relationships. As a result, they often displayed
insecurity and jealousy when their best friends played with others without them,
and they quarreled with their best friends about the general nature of the play with
others. Rizzo and others see these disputes and conflicts as serving many positive
functions related to well-being.
23.4.2 Conflict in Preadolescent Peer Relations
Research on peer conflict among elementary school children shows how disputes
are a basic means for constructing social order, testing and maintaining friendships,
and developing and displaying social identity (see Davies 1982; Katriel 1985;
Maynard 1985; Goodwin 1990, 1998; Thompson et al. 2001).
Goodwin’s (1990) work is especially interesting for capturing how the complex-
ity of conflict in preadolescents’ peer relations and how it varies by race and social
class. For example, she found that African-American children she studied orga-
nized their talk to build and highlight opposition. Boys engaged in arguments and
ritual insults as a way of dramatizing their play and to construct and display
character. Conflict and disputes seldom reached clear resolution, as disagreements
between individual children often expanded into group debates. Conflict was
enjoyed, even relished, and the children actually cooperated to embellish and
extend rounds of arguments and insults. Furthermore, the children never
complained to adults about peer teasing and insults, rarely excluded peers from
play, and did not produce rigid status hierarchies.
720 W.A. Corsaro
Goodwin’s findings among African-American girls were in some ways similar to

that of the boys she studied but also differed in some important ways. Unlike boys,
in their direct competitive disputes, girls frequently engaged in gossip disputes
during which absent parties were evaluated. The airing of such grievances
frequently culminated into he-said-she-said confrontations. This type of confronta-
tion was defined by Goodwin as a type of gossip routine that is brought about when
one party to a dispute gossips about the other in his or her absence. The confron-
tation comes about when the absent party challenges his or her antagonist at a later
time. Consider the following example: “In the midst of play, Annette confronts
Benita saying: ‘And Arthur said that you said that I was showing off just because
I had that blouse on” (Goodwin 1990, p. 195).
Annette is speaking to Benita in the present about what Arthur told her in the
recent past about what Benita said about Annette in the more remote past. This
complex temporal structure is crucial in he-said-she-said exchanges because the
accusation locates the statement made by the defendant about the speaker as having
been made in the speaker’s absence. Such talking behind one’s back is considered
a serious offense in the peer culture. However, importantly, the dramatic interaction
within the group regarding such he-said-she-said exchanges also often solidifies the
group of girls. As Goodwin argues in such confrontations, the girls order a field of
events, negotiate identities, and construct social order. Here, again we see the
importance of collective peer activities in line with interpretive reproduction in
children’s production and participation in peer culture. We also see the importance
of studying children’s peer culture and well-being across racial and ethnic groups.
Although such disputes may often be interpreted as aggressive and combative by
White middle-class adults, Goodwin shows the disputes and gossip routines are just
the opposite when studied in context and from the children’s point of view. As we
will see later, studies of disputes, teasing, and aggression among White preadoles-
cents in stratified peer groups are often clearly meant to be aggressive and often
involve bullying and intimidation. However, before turning to such work involving
gender and status differentiation in studies of peer relations among adolescents,
I first want to consider verbal routines, games, and cooperative play in same sex and
cross-sex peer interaction.
23.4.3 Verbal Routines, Games, and Heterosexual Relations Among

Preadolescents
Preadolescents often engage in play routines that involve communal sharing. With
increased language and cognitive skills compared to preschoolers, preadolescents
have more control over when and how such routines might occur. Thus, in addition
to more loosely structured play routines, preadolescents often participate in formal
games both spontaneously and in organized settings. Children of this age also talk
about their play and games in a reflective way, and they can appreciate the subtle
and symbolic aspects of play routines both during and after their production.
Finally, preadolescents often address concerns about appearance, self-presentation,
and heterosexual relations within play routines and games. In this sense, they use
the pretend frame of play and games as a secure base for addressing sensitive and
potentially embarrassing concerns, desires, and ambiguities.
Preadolescent children often mark allegiance to friendship bonds through par-
ticipation in sharing routines. The very nature of participation in such routines often
impels preadolescents to think about their relationship to one another, their devel-
oping self-concepts and identities, and their place as individuals in the peer group
and larger society.
Consider the Israeli sharing routine xibùdim, documented by Tamar Katriel
(1987). The routine usually occurred on the way home from school and had
a definite participant structure: (a) the opening or announcement of an intention
to buy a treat by a particular child; (b) the acknowledgement by accompanying
friends, usually involving the exclamation Bexibùdim! Bexibùdim! produced in
a melodious chant; (c) the purchase of the treat by the proposer; (d) the offering
and sharing of the treat, with each friend taking a small bite; and (e) the optional
recycling of a second round of sharing. The routine involves delicate negotiation in
that, as Katriel has noted, the bite size has to be regulated so that everybody gets
a share and about half the treat is left for the owner. Typically, the owner asks for
pity before the bite that will leave her or him with half the treat. A key element of
the routine is the concept of individual’s respect for others in her or his own group
of friends; xibùdim is derived from the verb lexabed, whose literal meaning is “to
respect.” In an interview, an 11-year-old girl explained her insistence on getting
a bite of her friend’s treat in this way: “It’s not that I will die if I don’t get a bite of
the popsicle, that I will die a day earlier or something, but it is simply. . .respect, as
the word says” (Katriel 1987, p. 307).
This statement, along with the main features of the routine, supports Katriel’s
insightful interpretation of the routine as a “symbolic sacrifice in which one’s self-
interest and primordial greed are controlled and subordinated to an idea of sociality
shaped by particular cultural values, such as equality and generalized reciprocity”
(p. 318). Finally, on a more concrete level, sharing routines such as xibùdim are fun.
Their production “serves to reassert the very existence of children’s peer group
culture” as a “celebration of childhood” (p. 318).
Routines of this type are especially interesting in regard to children’s own
collective contribution to their well-being because they simultaneously assert
individual rights and creativity and collective solidarity. Many other activities in
preadolescents’ peer cultures possess this characteristic, especially those related to
verbal games and humor. For example, preadolescents produce and embellish
a wide range of children’s lore – games, jokes, chants, rhymes, riddles, songs,
and other verbal routines that are created and transmitted by children over time and
across societies (see Corsaro 2011 for a discussion of humor and jokes). Such lore
has been well documented by child folklorists (Opie and Opie 1959, 1969;
McDowell 1979; Tucker 2008).
These activities are rich with laughter, which serves as a communicative marker.
It both signals that the activity at hand is not serious and “also signifies support;
others with you” (Frønes 1995, p. 223).
722 W.A. Corsaro
Preadolescent children play a variety of games in a wide range of informal and

formal settings. Although a great deal of work has documented such games and how
children’s participation influences their individual cognitive, emotional, and social
development, studies of children actually playing games are rare. Such studies are
important because they capture how children’s intensive involvement in playing,
sharing feelings and emotions, embellishing, and using games to explore their
identities and relationships contributes to their well-being.
One example is Fine’s (1987) study of Little League baseball teams. Fine
found that during a Little League season, the boys do much more than learn and
practice baseball skills. Interwoven within the culture of baseball is a local peer
culture in which the boys develop a strong sense of male bonding and address
concerns about identity and their perceptions and relations with girls. The boys
also use the activities of baseball practice and games as backdrops for produc-
ing, sharing, and acquiring the language, jokes, and lore of preadolescent
cultures.
Perhaps some of the best work on children’s games as situated activities is that of
Goodwin (1985, 1990, 1998, 2006) and Evaldsson (1993, 2003). By situated
activities, these researchers mean games that are produced in real settings with
real children who often have long interactional histories. Earlier, I discussed the
importance of studying preschoolers play over long periods of time and in the
course of its production for appreciating its complexity and understanding its
meaning from the children’s point of view. Studying games as situated activity
captures these same elements. Research that is based on verbal reports of children’s
participation in games or that relies on analysis of the form and structure of games
abstracted from the adult performances misses this situated aspect. It does tell us
about how children spend their time and about the developmental implications of
playing games with various physical, cognitive, language, and emotional demands.
But to really capture the rich social world of children’s lives and peer cultures,
researchers need to enter their play and be willing to get their pants dirty and shoes
muddy.
This is just what Goodwin and Evaldsson have done. Goodwin (1985, 1998,
2006) has studied the play and games of African-American, Latino, and White
middle-class preadolescents in the United States for many years. She has
observed, audiovisually recorded, and analyzed children participating in a wide
range of games including jump rope and hopscotch in their neighborhoods,
playgrounds, and schools. Let’s first consider her comparative studies of hop-
scotch. Hopscotch is a game played mainly by girls around the world. On the
surface, it seems to be a simple turn-taking game which demands a fair amount of
physical coordination. One child jumps at a time through a grid of squares usually
numbered from one to nine. The main goal is to be the first player to advance
a token (rock or beanbag) from the lowest to the highest square and back again. To
initiate the game, a player tosses her token from below square one into a square
and, while standing on one leg, jumps from one end of the grid and back again on
one foot, avoiding squares where other tokens have been tossed. Where there are
two unoccupied squares next to each other, the jumper’s feet should land in the
two adjacent squares. If a player falls, steps on a line, or steps outside the correct
square, she loses her turn.
When playing hopscotch, the African-American and Latina girls that Goodwin
studied, the nonjumpers intensely scrutinized the body movements of jumpers and
quickly called out infractions and enforced the rules. Consider the following
example:
Lucinda takes her turn, jumping twice in square two and possibly putting her foot on the
line of square one. Joy sees the violation and yells, “You out.” Lucinda shakes her head no,
“No, I’m not!” You hit the line,” counters Joy. Now Crystal comes over in support of Joy
and says, “Yes, you did. You hit the line. You hit the line,” as she point to the line. Lucinda
leans toward Crystal. “I ain’t hit no line!” “Yes, you did,” shouts Alisha, who has now come
over to the group. Crystal supports Alisha, smiling and shaking her head as she point to the
spot of the violation, “You did. You s—.““No, I didn’t,” interrupts Lucinda. “Yes, you did,”
counters Alisha again. “Didn’t she go like this?” Crystal asks the others. And then looking
at Lucinda she says, “You did like this,” as she steps on the line in and imitation of
Lucinda’s jump. “You did like that.” Joy now walks up to the grid and rubs her foot across
the line, “Yeah, you hit that line.” Then she taps the line twice with her foot and says,
“Right, there, honey!” Finally, another nonjumper, Vanessa, comes over and says to
Lucinda, “You out now!” (Adapted from Goodwin 1998, pp. 35–36)
In this example, the girls negotiate and enforce the rules with a great deal of
teasing and dramatic flair. In fact, Goodwin found that in many cases the stylized
disputes over misses or what were often labeled “attempts to cheat” became more
important than the actual play of hopscotch. Rather than simply following the rules
or ignoring them, the girls work and play with them, often purposely highlighting
opposition (Goodwin 1998, p. 38).
Things were very different in the hopscotch play of the middle-class White girls
Goodwin studied. Instead of closely observing and evaluating the play, the children paid
less attention to infractions and mitigated their responses to them. Consider this example:
Linsey, Liz, Kendrick, and Cathleen are playing. Linsey throws her stone and hits a line.
She then begins jumping. “Oh! Good job, Linsey! You got it all the way on the 7,” says Liz.
Kendrick clearly sees that Linsey has hit the line with her foot. She shakes her head,
“that’s—I think that’s sort of on the line though.” “Uh,” says Liz to Linsey, “your foot’s in
the wrong spot.” “Sorry,” says Kendrick, “that was a good try.” Later Linsey is jumping
again and she makes it through several squares. “You did it!” shouts Cathleen. “Yes!” says
Linsey. She then hits a line as she nears the end of her turn. “Whoa,” says Cathleen softly.
Kendrick then laughing a bit says encouragingly, “You accidently jumped on that. But
that’s okay.” (Adapted from Goodwin 1998, p. 37)
From a White middle-class perspective, it would seem that the girls in the second
example are nice and supportive of each other’s well-being and that the African-
American girls in the first example are overly competitive and even mean. In fact,
some feminist scholars see the mitigated nature of children’s speech as demon-
strated by the White middle-class girls as positive, arguing that it demonstrates
concern for affiliation and promotes relational solidarity (Gilligan 1982; Barnes and
Vangelisti 1995). However, solidarity and well-being are not always easily defined
and depend on the shared values of particular racial and ethnic groups as well as
social and cultural context. Goodwin notes that group solidarity can be achieved in
724 W.A. Corsaro
a variety of ways. Furthermore, she turns the White middle-class feminist perspec-
tive somewhat on its head by arguing that “lack of accountability for one’s action”
in the mitigated language style can be seen as limiting. She maintains that inter-
personal conflict is often the heart of social life. In fact, conflicts seldom disrupted
play in her data; rather, they added spice and flair. In this view, conflict and
cooperation are not opposites but overlapping processes that are embedded in the
larger ethos of playfulness. Disputes, teasing, and conflict can add a creative tension
that increases its enjoyment (Goodwin 1998; also see Corsaro 1994).
Goodwin’s work raises important issues for well-being in line with interpretive
reproduction. It shows the importance of the innovative nature of children’s peer
cultures and that the nature of play and games in peer culture is a reflection to some
degree of variation in cultural values and interpersonal styles. We see that
well-being among children in their everyday lives is best considered and evaluated
from a multicultural perspective grounded in long-term observations of children’s
activities in their everyday lives and peer cultures.
Now let’s turn to the work of Evaldsson on preadolescent games which proceeds
from the same methodological approach of Goodwin but in Swedish after-school
programs. Evaldsson (1993) studied two different programs for 6- to 10-year-old
children over an 8-month period. She found that the children repeated games day
after day. The children in the panda center preferred to play and trade marbles,
while the children at the bumblebee center often engaged in jump rope. Marbles is
a highly complex game. Piaget (1932) analyzed in some depth the game’s contri-
butions to children’s negotiation strategies and their moral development.
Evaldsson, on the other hand, focused on how children relied on repeated perfor-
mances of the game to create a locally shared peer culture and to display and
evaluate selves and identities in that culture.
Marbles involves skills in playing the game – that is, aiming and shooting
marbles at a hole or at another player’s marbles, quickly anticipating the flow of
play, and shouting various restrictions regarding shooting. Evaluating the value of
marbles from a competition and trading standpoint is also important. Although the
children in the study played marbles in dyads, there was always an audience of
nonplayers who observed and often participated in arranging matches, evaluating
the play, and negotiating marble trading. Evaldsson found that boys primarily
played the games, with girls more actively involved in evaluating the play and
trading.
The games and trades had natural histories in that they occurred over the school
term, and during this period of time, the children came to assess each other in terms
of these various skills. In her documentation of the history of marble play as
a complex series of situated activities, Evaldsson found that the children’s selves
were intimately related to status, which was linked to the possession and negotiated
value of marbles as things. In other words, as the children increased and decreased
their status in relation to their possession of the valued objects, they used talk to
negotiate the value of the objects (Evaldsson 1993, p. 133). The whole process was
made even more complex by shifting alliances of children in judgments and
negotiations during both the playing and trading of marbles. Thus, we see the
children’s developing notions of identity or self as embedded in the collectively

produced peer culture.
Jump rope, like marbles, is rule governed, and participants are expected to have
a particular orientation to one another during play (Goodwin 1985; Evaldsson
1993). Although there is a good bit of variation, the general pattern in jump rope
is for two children to hold opposite ends of a rope, and turn it for a third child who
jumps when the rope hits the ground. The child who jumps is normally entitled to
continue until she misses. After a miss, the jumper exchanges places with one of the
turners, who now has the opportunity to jump. Legitimate misses are the fault of the
jumper and not the turner. Therefore, misses are sometimes negotiated to assign
fault, and these negotiations can become very complex. Jump rope is competitive
because successful jumpers earn high status and often obtain the valued position of
“first jumper” in initial rounds of play. However, a most interesting fact of jump
rope is that children must cooperate to compete. There is a built-in motivation to
turn the rope fairly for jumpers because if one turns too fast or not in synchrony with
the beat, there is a chance that, when the jumper next becomes a turner, she or he
will do the same for the previous offender (Evaldsson 1993).
Evaldsson found that in the bumblebee after-school center, both boys and girls
engaged in jump rope activities on a regular basis. The most frequent game was
“Cradle of Love” which had the following participant structure: A jumper jumps as
turners and members of an audience call out the letters of the alphabet. If the jumper
misses on a particular letter, others call out the name of another child or of some
media character, who then becomes the potential (or pretend) love interest of the
jumper. For example, if Amy misses at the letter “P,” someone may call out “Paul!”
Then Amy jumps to the rhyme, “Paul do you love me. Tell me truly aye or nay.”
Then the speed of turning is increased and the rhyme continues: “Yes-No Yes-No
Yes-No,” with the romantic link confirmed or denied according to when a miss
occurs. If a jumper succeeds in moving through the entire alphabet, she can propose
the name of the love interest without the constraint of the initial letter. In this case,
however, other children quickly offer up potential names for the jumper to evaluate.
We can see that repetitions of this game among boys and girls who spend a lot of
time together take on characteristics that have as much to do with their developing
relationships toward the opposite sex as they do with their competitive skill in
jumping. Let’s look at a more extended example from Evaldsson’s work:
Cradle of Love
Sara has just successfully jumped through the alphabet. She gets to pick a name, and two
children suggest Dag (“Dan” in Swedish), who is one of the most popular boys with girls in
first grade. Sara seems a bit embarrassed and quietly says no. Then the children suggest
comic book characters like Batman and Superman, and Sara responds “no” to all these
suggestions. The children then return to offering names of children in the group.
Ania: Leif?
Sara: No.
Paul: Paul?
Fred: Someone in your class?
Paul: Axel?
Ania: Paul?
726 W.A. Corsaro
Fred: Paul?
Sara: Nope.
Axel: Per-Ola?
Paul: We’ve already had Per-Ola.
Sara: Dag (very quietly). I’ll take Dag then. Yes, Dag then.
Mona: Dag in our class?
Sara: Nope.
Ania: Dag sitting over there in the green cap?
Paul: Is that him?
Sara: Tuuurn!
Paul: Him (pointing).
Fred: Wowww! Wooowie!
All: Dag Do You Love Me
Tell Me Truly Aye or Nay (turning faster now)
Yes-No Yes-No Yes-No Yes-No (turning stops)
Yeeeessss!
Flera: Yeesss ho ho ho (laughing)
Fred: Dag! (Calling to Dag)
Flera: Ha ha ho ho ho ho (laughing)
Rick: Dag, well that doesn’t necessarily mean Dag.
Fred: But she said Dag.
Ania: Congrats, Dag!
(Adapted from Evaldsson 1993, pp. 117–119)
Evaldsson suggests that Sara was probably too shy to reveal her true preference
for Dag when the name was first suggested. Also, because there was more than one
Dag in the group, the matter was somewhat ambiguous. However, Sara clears up the
ambiguity later and takes the game seriously when she chooses the boy she is fond
of in real life. Now this ordinary, everyday game of jump rope is intensified or
transformed as the “pretend” versus “real” frame is blurred. This transformation is
nicely signaled with the children’s laughing, shouts of “Wooowie” and the teasing
of Dag and Sara. In this way, in the midst of the jump rope game, love becomes
a public topic that can engage nearly all the children at that center. Sara takes
a chance by addressing her real concerns, feelings, and uncertainties about boys, but
she is “protected” by the safety of the play frame, which in this case she dares to
stretch. Here, again we have an excellent example of how children’s well-being
develops and is maintained through interpretive reproduction in the everyday
games of their peer cultures.
23.4.4 Stratification by Gender and Status in Preadolescent

Peer Culture
Many studies have documented increasing gender differentiation in children’s

peer interactions beginning at around 5 or 6 years of age and reaching a peak in
the early elementary school years (Thorne 1993; Adler and Adler 1998; Maccoby
1999). Although there is a great deal of gender segregation in early and preado-
lescence, it is rarely complete. Most studies show consistent mixed-sex grouping
and cross-sex interaction, usually of 10–20 % (Thorne 1993). What is important
for our discussion of children’s peer cultures and their well-being is not simply
the gender segregation that surely occurs in the preadolescent period but the
nature of interactive patterns and interpersonal processes within and between
segregated groups.
Although girls and boys are often apart in preadolescence, they do work and play
together with little obvious attention paid to gender in certain situations. For
example, a number of researchers have found that children often play in mixed-
gender groups in neighborhoods, most especially if the playgroups are also mixed in
age (Ellis et al. 1981; Whiting and Edwards 1988; Thorne 1993). Others have found
consistent cross-gender interaction in schools, but it occurs primarily in settings that
are not controlled by peer groups such as in classrooms and in extracurricular
activities (Thorne 1993). However, it is in peer-dominated and highly public
settings in schools – like cafeterias and playgrounds – that gender separation is
most complete. In fact, many activities and routines of preadolescent children’s
peer cultures in these settings seem to be all about gender. In these activities and
routines, girls and boys try to make sense of and deal with ambiguities and concerns
related to gender differences and relations – key aspects of children’s social and
emotional well-being in this age period. Many of these activities involve conflict,
disputes, and teasing. Thorne (1993) has captured the complexity of such activities
with her discussion and analysis of borderwork.
Borderwork refers to activities that mark and strengthen boundaries between
groups. When gender boundaries are activated, “other social definitions get
squeezed out by heightened awareness of gender as a dichotomy and of ‘the girls’
and ‘the boys’ as opposite and even antagonistic sides” (Thorne 1993, p. 66). In her
work in elementary schools, Thorne identified several types of borderwork. The
first type is contests between groups of girls and boys. Among the groups Thorne
studied, contests were initiated by both children and teachers. Sometimes teachers
pitted boys and girls against each other in math and spelling competitions. On one
occasion, a teacher named the two teams “Beastly Boys” and “Gossipy Girls,”
thereby supporting such contests and gender stereotypes (Thorne 1993, p. 67). Boys
and girls would at times play cooperatively in sports games on the playground, but
these games were often transformed into competitive boy-girl competitions full of
taunts, teasing, and insults usually aimed at the girls.
Another type of borderwork, chasing, is also competitive, but this activity is
more symbolic in its affirmation of boundaries between girls and boys. Cross-
gender chasing is very similar in structure to the approach-avoidance routines of
preschool children I discussed earlier. Among preadolescents, chasing routines
usually begin when a child from one gender group taunts members of the other
group. These taunts lead to chases that are often accompanied by threats that are
seldom carried out. For example, boys may taunt and tease girls, leading the girls to
run after the boys and threaten to catch and kiss them. These routines are generally
referred to as “chase-and-kiss,” “kiss-chase,” and “kissers and chasers” (Richert
1990; Thorne 1993). In her work, Thorne found that the chases had a long history,
with children talking about them for days afterward with friends and even parents
(1993, p. 69). Children talk about cross-gender chases because this type of
728 W.A. Corsaro
borderwork gives rise to lots of tension. Children are experimenting with their
growing concerns and desires regarding the opposite sex. In fact, like approach-
avoidance play among preschoolers, chasing routines include the children’s mark-
ing and acceptance of safety or free zones where children find relief from mounting
tensions of the chase. Among the preadolescents, however, safety zones are more
than geographical spaces to which children flee to escape threatening agents. For
preadolescents, the areas serve as both physical and psychological havens where the
children reflect on and talk about the meaning of their experiences. In this way, the
preadolescents have more direct control over the meaning of the play and collec-
tively create shared histories of the events.
Thorne found that episodes of chasing sometimes become entwined with rituals of
pollution in playground activities. Rituals of pollution are play routines or rituals in
which specific individuals or groups are treated as contaminated (as in “having
cooties”). Pollution games have been observed in many parts of the world (Opie
and Opie 1969). Thorne found that variants of “cootie games” were very much a part
of cross-gender conflict and teasing in that while “girls and boys may transfer cooties
to one another, and girls may give cooties to girls, boys do not generally give cooties
to boys” (1993, p. 74). Thus, girls are central to pollution games that contribute to
boys’ power and control over them. In fact, boys sometimes treat objects associated
with girls as polluting and threatening to their status in all-boy groups.
Like pollution games, the final type of borderwork, invasions, has much to do
with power and dominance of boys over girls. Thorne found a pattern, which has
been observed repeatedly in similar studies of preadolescent children’s activities on
playgrounds. The boys in Thorne’s study would, individually or in groups, delib-
erately disrupt the activities of groups of girls (Thorne 1993, p. 76; also see Grant
1984; Voss 1997). Boys ran under girls’ jump ropes, kicked their markers from
hopscotch grids, and taunted and teased the girls in attempts to disrupt their play.
Although boys much more frequently invaded girls’ space, there were some
interesting exceptions to this pattern. First, while some boys specialized in disrup-
tive behavior, the majority of the boys were not drawn to the activity. Thorne
suggests that the frequent disrupters may have acted like bullies in their behaviors
with peers more generally. Second, Thorne described a small number of fifth- and
sixth-grade girls who organized themselves into what she called “troupes” and
roamed the playground in search of action. These girls would often chase boys. The
leaders of these troupes were often tall, well-developed girls who somewhat
intimidated the boys.
These exceptions are important because they draw our attention to the complex-
ity of interpreting the importance of borderwork. Borderwork, like the jump rope
activities among the Swedish preadolescents in Evaldsson’s study, is play, but in
the play, children address issues that are of serious concern. In this way, the key
feature of these types of play is ambiguity and tension. However, tension is what
makes the activities so appealing to children. In fact, this very tension and
ambiguity lead Kelle (2000) to challenge Thorne’s assumption that heterosexual
desire or interest is a precondition for borderwork. Kelle, on the other hand, found
in her study of German preadolescents that information about heterosexual desire
and interest was collectively produced in the gender games themselves. Thus,
concerns about sexuality are a product not a precondition for borderwork.
Before leaving the topic of gender segregation and cross-gender interaction in
preadolescence, it is useful to return to the work of Goodwin. In her recent book,
The Hidden Life of Girls, Goodwin (2006) further explores exceptions to the notion
of separate gender cultures with boys being more aggressive and direct and girls
more supportive and cooperative.
In this study, Goodwin explored peer relations in a racially and ethnically mixed
Southern California primary school. She found that girls that she studied in the
school arranged themselves in cliques that were composed of asymmetrical rela-
tions on the playground. In maintaining these relations, the girls made use of bald
imperatives, accusatory statements invoking age and gender, and pejorative
descriptions, and they “generally demonstrated their ability to artfully collaborate
to present a position and debate it through clever, appropriate, and forceful come-
backs” (2006, p. 119). These findings fly in the face of girls as cooperative and
supportive in their peer relations. Goodwin also found that the clique of girls she
studied challenged the right of boys to control an area of the playground (the soccer
field) and negotiated sharing the space with the boys and playground aides who at
first resisted such a situation.
Goodwin also added to her earlier work on jump rope (Goodwin 1985). In this
latest work, she again demonstrated the complexity of the game, that both boys and
girls played, and that girls were better performers and controlled boys’ participation
in cross-gender play. She also found that the girls in the fifth- and sixth-grade clique
she studies competed for status through storytelling, verbal assessments of one
another, and bragging. Assessments and types of bragging were as direct and
competitive as what has been found in boys’ groups but in some ways, were more
complex as girls who tried to place themselves too far above the group were open to
sanction.
Like Goodwin, Adler and Adler (1998) found a strong status hierarchy of cliques
in their study of children’s peer relations in and out of school in a primarily middle-
and upper-middle-class community of about 90,000 people. They discuss how the
nature of different activities contributes to popularity within the peer cultures of
the preadolescent boys and girls. They defined popular children as those who are the
most influential in setting group opinions and who have the greatest impact on
determining the boundaries of membership in the most exclusive social groups.
They found that boys’ and girls’ popularity or rank in the status hierarchy was
influenced by several factors. Boys’ popularity revolved around athletic ability,
a cult of masculinity or being tough, sophistication in social and interpersonal skills,
a culture of coolness or detachment, and, in later preadolescence, success in their
relations with girls. Girls’ popularity centered around family background, physical
appearance, social skills, precocity or adult-like concerns and style, and good
academic performance.
Adler and Adler also identified a rigid clique structure in each age and gender
group they studied, with four main strata: the high, wannabe, middle, and low ranks
(social isolates). Adler and Adler found the kids in the highest strata to be extremely
730 W.A. Corsaro
manipulative and controlling in their relations with peers. The leaders of these
popular cliques maintained their power and control by manipulating dynamics of
membership inclusion, stigmatizing those in lower groups and reminding subordi-
nates of their tenuous group membership. Through practices of inclusion and
exclusion, the popular cliques held group members, and those wanting to join the
group (the wannabes), to stringent and often capricious norms of behavior.
Things were quite different in middle-level friendship groups. These groups had
lower prestige, but they also had more secure friendships without the manipulations
that characterized the popular groups. Also, the middle groups made up a larger
percentage of the school, so the manipulative behavior of the popular kids was not
the norm. Still, the popular kids were more visible and had more power in the
school and also received more attention from the Adlers in their documentation of
peer power.
Popular boys were just as controlling and manipulative as girls within their
groups and even more likely to make fun of and tease kids in lower groups,
especially the social isolates. The Adlers’ identification of mean girls is somewhat
surprising, but not unique given recent studies (see Simmons 2002; Wiseman
2002). Girls’ aggression, although often indirect, is often very hurtful to peers
and more prevalent than once thought.
Although the formation of status hierarchies and cliques in elementary school
(and even more in middle school, see Eder 1995) is clearly challenging to children’s
emotional well-being, it is important to focus on positive as well as negative aspects
of status differentiation as described in the research literature. As I noted above, the
Adlers identified the strong positive social relations among what they termed “the
middle circle of friends” in their study; they provided much less information on
how these preadolescents contributed positively to the social and emotional well-
being of their peers. Their everyday activities were glossed over to give more space
in the analysis to the more negative characteristics of the popular clique. This
choice is in line with a tendency in research on children and youth to focus on the
negative and overlook the more positive aspects of children’s activities in their peer
cultures. This tendency is also apparent in the research on children in the media.
23.4.5 The Electronic Media and the Well-Being of Preadolescents
A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation (Rideout et al. 2010) examined
media in the lives of a nationally representative sample of third-through twelfth-
grade students, ages 8–18. It also included a subsample of 694 respondents who
volunteered to complete 7-day media use diaries. The study was conducted from
October, 2008 until May, 2009. It covered a wide variety of types of media
including computer, movies, music, print, television content, and video games.
The study focused on the children’s use of media for entertainment or pleasure and
did not include the use of these various sources for activities directly related to
schoolwork. The findings are primarily descriptive and involve comparison with
earlier findings from a study in 2004. Though descriptive, the findings are diverse
and complex, and I will only summarize some general patterns here. First, the study
found that there has been a major increase in the time children and youth spend in
using a variety of media products and platforms in their lives. Many preadolescents
and adolescents multitask in that they use a number of types of media simulta-
neously (e.g., listening to music on iPods while sending text messages or engaging
in social networking or the internet). For preadolescents, perhaps the most inter-
esting was their transformation of cell phone use from talking to texting. The report
found that on average, 7th to 12th graders report spending about an hour and half
engaged in sending and receiving texts a day, and those who text send an average of
118 messages in a typical day! Although not discussed in the report, we know from
other research that texting among preadolescents is global in nature and not
confined to the United States. Further, it is a highly abbreviated form of text often
invented by preadolescents and early adolescents and infused with their own
meanings in line with their friendships and identities (see Ling and Haddon 2008).
Livingstone (2007) laid out two differing positions in most theorizing and
research on media and children and youth. On one side, there are those who see
the media as a social problem negatively effecting children in various ways (leading
to aggression and violence, early sexuality, obesity, and so on) and set out to
identify these effects. On the other side, there are those who do not begin with an
assumption that a grave social problem exists. Instead, these process theorists and
researchers (who take a constructivist or cultural studies approach much in line with
interpretive reproduction) stress the agency of children and argue that media use
must be evaluated in social and cultural context. From this view, electronic media
can and often does have a positive side in which children and youth enjoy media,
use it, and can gain from it.
In general findings from the effects, research tradition find some short-term
negative effects (e.g., increased aggression and anxiety) especially among younger
children, but the findings are less consistent for older children and teenagers, and
long-term outcomes for all children. The findings from the process or interpretive
approach are much more complex and varied but do show that children and youth
are active, engaged, creative, and often savvy consumers and users of electronic
media (see Corsaro 2011, pp. 256–266 for a review).
Let’s return to the wide use of texting by preadolescent and teens for a focused
example of the possible positive and negative effects of electronic media use for
preadolescents’ well- being. The mobile phone itself in its various styles and
ringtones is a fashion statement for preadolescents and teens. Additionally, their
use of various lingo, jargon, and emoticons is another way of expressing ones
identity and style in peer cultures as well as exploring new and intimate relation-
ships (boyd 2010; Pascoe 2010). These positive and creative aspects of mobile
phone use have been accompanied by more negative elements such as gossiping,
bullying, and sexting (Ling 2007; Ling and Haddon 2008; Lenhart 2009). Sexting
or sending sexually suggestive nude or near nude images via text images has raised
both adult concern and debate about the legal rights of youth as some teens have
been prosecuted for child pornography for sending or having nude images of
themselves or peers on cell phones. (Lenhart 2009: New York Times 2010).
732 W.A. Corsaro
A study by the Pew Research Center (Lenhart 2009) reports that 4 % of cell-owning
teens say they have sent sexually suggestive (nude or nearly nude) images of themselves
to someone else via text messaging, while 15 % have received a sexually suggestive
image or video of someone they knew. Sexting is usually a part of early courtship among
preteens and teens as a way of exploring possible romantic and sexual relationships or
can be an integral part of ongoing romantic relationships. The study found that teens’
attitudes about sexting varied widely. Some say it as inappropriate, “slutty,” and possibly
illegal. A number of females also felt they were pressured into sharing sexual images by
boyfriends. On the other hand, many teens viewed sexting as a safe alternative to real-life
sexual activity and see it as common and not a big deal. It is doubtful that parents would
see sexting as no big deal. However, adults do not share in the everyday peer culture
which has appropriated this technology. Still, adults are better able to anticipate the
possible legal aspects and how a nude photo or suggestive message sent in confidence
can be shared with others or even be used in purposefully negative ways as a result of
acrimonious breakup. Overall, as Ling and Haddon argue, the use of cell phones and text
messaging among youth can be seen as “the best and most widespread contemporary
example of unanticipated innovation from users” (2008, p. 147).
23.5 Summary
In this chapter, I have explored children’s well-being from the perspective of inter-
pretive reproduction. Interpretive reproduction stresses the agency of children and
their collective production of a series of peer cultures for their developing membership
in society. This perspective also focuses on children as they experience and live their
childhoods rather than on how their experiences in childhood affect their individual
development and their futures as adults. Therefore, I concentrated on children’s well-
being as children and how they view their well-being from their perspectives.
I stressed that children contribute to their own well-being as early as the first years
of life and create highly complex peer cultures in the preschool and preadolescent
years. I highlighted routines such as sociodramatic role-play, fantasy play, the
protection of interactive space, and approach-avoidance play in the culture of pre-
school children to capture how children’s collectively shared activities contributed
especially to their social and emotional well-being. These routines also give pre-
school children a sense of control over their lives and help in their development of
personal identities and confidence as social actors in their childhood. I also noted that
some types of play routines (especially the protection of interactive space and
approach-avoidance play) can be misinterpreted in a negative way as selfish or
aggressive behavior. In these cases, I stress the importance of studying children’s
peer cultures in social context and from their point of view. Although research on
preschool peer culture primarily illustrates the positive aspects of children’s collec-
tive actions for the well-being, this does not deny that things like rejection of peers
and aggressive behavior or bullying do not exist in preschool peer cultures. Certainly,
some children have trouble fitting into the peer culture, may be rejected or be left at
the margins, or may try to control their peers through aggression. There is a large
literature, especially in developmental psychology, which focuses on identifying the

problems of such children and offering strategies that adults can use to help them
(Asher and Coie 1990; Ramsey 1991; Bieman 2003; Kupersmidt and Dodge 2004).
The routines of the peer cultures of preadolescents are, as I stressed in the review,
also primarily supportive of children’s well-being. In their more reflective and emo-
tional friendship processes, their complex games and lore, and their disputes and
conflicts, preadolescents collectively build solidarity in their peer relations while also
developing advanced self-concepts and personal identities. Also, as we saw preado-
lescent peer cultures are often stratified by gender and status which affects well-being
in complex ways both positive and negative. However, again I argue that we must
remember that preadolescents are active agents. They often collectively resist the
controlling behaviors of some of their peers or steer around such negative and
capricious behavior by embracing and developing their own friendships regardless
of their position in status hierarchies. Again this is not to deny that aggressive or
bullying behavior exists in preadolescent peer cultures among both boys and girls (see
Olweus 1978; Ambert 1995; Zinnecker 1998; Juvonen and Graham 2001; Underwood
2003; Goodwin 2006). Such behavior surely exists and clearly has negative effects on
children’s well-being, and we need policies to help to protect victims and to educate
perpetrators. Yet, such policies are best based on detailed and intensive research on
preadolescent culture and knowledge of the strong positive ways children collectively
support their well-being and not just that negative behaviors occur.
Finally, the well-being of preschool children and mores especially preadolescents
and adolescents is becoming more intricately interwoven with their experiences with
the electronic media (Drotner and Livingstone 2008; Drotner 2009; Ito et al. 2010).
As I discussed, process or constructivist approaches in line with interpretive repro-
duction can help us better understand the context of positive and negative effects of
the media on children’s well-being. These approaches can also document how
children and youth creatively use and embellish electronic media and how we can
best educate children and youth to be informed consumers of media.
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Capability Approach as a Framework for
Research on Children’s Well-Being 24
Susann Fegter and Martina Richter
24.1 Introduction
Currently, Amartya Sen’s (1985, 1999a, 2005) and Martha Nussbaum’s (2000)
Capabilities Approach (CA) is receiving a lot of attention in research on child well-
being. The approach seems to be particularly appropriate for countering the prob-
lems and challenges that are emerging for research in this field from the perspective
of New Social Childhood Studies (NSCS). This chapter first presents NSCS as the
central theoretical and methodological paradigm for international and interdisci-
plinary research on child well-being. It then discusses the potentials of the CA for
confronting the challenges posed from the perspective of NSCS, and reviews and
comments on selected studies on child well-being that work with the CA. It closes
by formulating perspectives for future research in this field.
24.2 Problems and Challenges for Research on Child

Well-Being from the Perspective of New Social
Childhood Studies
New Social Childhood Studies (NSCS) constitute a central theoretical and meth-
odological paradigm for international and interdisciplinary research on child well-
being. This paradigm has established itself since the 1970s within a framework
that criticizes certain directions in developmental psychology and socialization
research, and it has introduced a social-constructivist theoretical perspective to
S. Fegter (*)
Faculty of Educational Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
e-mail: fegter@em.uni-frankfurt.de
M. Richter
Institute of Social Work, Education and Sports Science, University of Vechta, Vechta, Germany
e-mail: martina.richter@uni-vechta.de

740 S. Fegter and M. Richter
research on children and childhood (see, e.g., Skolnick 1975; Thorne 1987;
Alanen 1988, 1992; Mayall 1994; James et al. 1998; Andresen and Diehm 2006;
Grunert and Kr€ uger 2006; Schweizer 2007; Turmel 2008; Honig 2009; Qvortrup
et al. 2009; Wyness 2012). This has been accompanied by a growing interest in the
life situations and social contexts of children as well as in their everyday activities
and experiences. In particular, two theoretical concepts have become established
in NSCS: the “child as social actor” and “childhood as a generational order”
(Heinzel et al. 2012, pp. 13–16). These concepts and how they interrelate are
discussed below.
24.2.1 Child as Social Actor
The methodological perspective of the NSCS on the child as social actor views
children as a distinct social group and focuses research on the reality they experi-
ence and create themselves (Honig et al. 1999, p. 119). This has had several
consequences for studies on well-being, the first being the demand to no longer
view children – as has long been standard – as part of a family, but to place them at
the center of their own separate analyses (Nauck 1995; Betz 2008). A second
consequence has been the call to examine the diversity of life domains of children
in order to gain an appropriate assessment of childhood based on those dimensions
that are relevant to daily life. A third consequence is that applying the concept of
the child as social actor in research on well-being suggests that children should be
thought of as the “experts on themselves,” and that research on their well-being
should (also) be based on their self-reports. In contrast to the previously dominant
adult-centered perspective on childhood, the NSCS takes a stronger child- and
actor-oriented approach to research (Albus et al. 2009, p. 348). NSCS stresses
regularly that this research from the perspective of children should not be misun-
derstood as being an access to “authentic” children’s voices (Hunner-Kreisel and
Kuhn 2010, p. 116). Children do not possess an “original” access to reality; it is far
more the case that they are involved in the social practices of a society and make
their own contribution to the social order as “differential contemporaries” (Hengst
2009, p. 250; see also Heinzel et al. 2012, pp. 13–16). Hence, it is always necessary
to analyze the daily experiences, perspectives, and wishes of children not only
within the context of the power-based generational and other social orders but also
as an element of the reproduction of these same orders. This applies particularly to
research on child well-being that focuses exclusively on their subjective “happi-
ness.” As Hunner-Kreisel and Kuhn have pointed out, the problem is that “by
overemphasizing the subjective perspective of children, childhood research is
possibly . . . overlooking the structural conditions of growing up . . .. Children . . .
have to be seen within the institutional and societal boundaries defining the space
within [which] they act” (Hunner-Kreisel and Kuhn 2010, p. 116). Otherwise,
social inequality and injustice are excluded from research (see Nussbaum 2000;
Marks et al. 2004; Otto and Ziegler 2007). A corresponding contextualization of
the experiences and perspectives of children is also essential from the NSCS
24 Capability Approach as a Framework for Research on Children’s Well-Being 741
perspective in order to avoid using a preordained concept of the child. This is

because the potential misunderstanding embedded in the concept of the “child as
actor” that has come to characterize its reception in childhood studies encompasses
not only the methodological level (what is assessed from the “perspective of the
child”) but also the subject itself (what is conceived as “the child”). In this context,
it is necessary to point to the risk of essentializing the agency of childhood (see
Prout 2003; Honig 2009) by understanding or misunderstanding the social-
constructivist concept of the child as social actor in the sense of some material
link between being a child and activity/competence. This may lead to the risk of no
longer seeing either the social conditions underlying children’s actual abilities to
act, decide, and shape their lives (Hengst and Zeiher 2005, p. 14) or the specific
bodily vulnerability of the child (Andresen and Diehm 2006, p. 13). Empirically,
this level of the discussion in NSCS is currently reflected in studies on the child’s
body, the societal organization of vulnerability, and the dependence on relation-
ships of care (Lareau 2003; Prout 2003; Turmel 2008; Kelle 2010). Theoretically, it
is expressed in explicit appeals to avoid a new substantial concept of the child.
“Childhood studies in the social sciences do not differ from those in the other
sciences dealing with children because they have an alternative image of the child,
but because they differentiate systematically between children and childhood”
(Honig 2009, p. 26, translated).
24.2.2 Childhood as a Generational Order
The second concept of childhood as a generational order ties in closely with the
concept of the child as social actor and extends this within social theory through the
dimensions of power and social inequality. This does not view the differentiation
between “children and adults” and their different (but interdependent) positioning
in society as something that exists per se, but as something that is being perma-
nently produced and transformed through discourses and social practices in each
specific historical context (Alanen 1992; Heinzel et al. 2012). Similar to the gender
difference, the generational difference is produced and reproduced as a decisive
structural category of social inequality that differently regulates the access of adults
and children to resources, possibilities of action, and legal positions in society
(Alanen 1992). Relatively speaking, children then represent the powerless group
that is lacking in possibilities of participation (see Fegter et al. 2010). For research
on well-being, these theoretical insights on childhood within the context of
a power-based generational order or as an element of asymmetric power relations
not only raise questions calling for further discussion but also harbor two crucial
questions regarding their normative basis: The first question addresses paternalism
within the context of research on child well-being: How can we define a concept of
well-being for children without paternalizing them in the research context? This
leads us to ask whether, when, and how we can involve children in the discourse on
understanding well-being without, in turn, conceiving their perspective in a naı̈ve
way as having no social preconditions or as being authentic, and also without
placing them under too much stress (Fegter et al. 2010). The second question is
emancipatory in nature because the concept of childhood as a generational order
obliges us to ask how we can strengthen the position of children within generation-
ally structured societies. It is not just chance that there are close ties between NSCS
and both the children’s rights movement and child policy (Hengst and Zeiher 2005).
However, the latter justify their arguments in more welfare-state-oriented than
“child-friendly” ways (Honig 2009, p. 50) and ask how a democratic society can
bring about the participation of all its members (and thereby of children as well; see
B€uhler-Niederberger and S€ unker 2009, pp. 175–182). For research on child well-
being, this means, first, that the underlying conception of well-being should also
consider possible ways in which children can participate convincingly in demo-
cratic negotiation processes while paying attention to their degrees of freedom.
Second, the potentials of research projects should also be examined to see whether
they can encourage articulation by, for example, giving a voice to children as
a marginalized group in society.
There are three final points: First, the concept in both social theory and power
theory of childhood as a generational order and the methodological perspective on
the child as social actor reveal many reasons for integrating children systemati-
cally into research on well-being. Ben-Arieh (2005), for example, names five
possible roles for children: as contributors to a study’s design, as the source of
information, as the data collectors, as contributors to the data analysis, and as
partners in utilizing the data (Ben-Arieh 2005). Second, research on child well-
being should focus convincingly on the “here and now” in order to assess the
current quality of children’s lives and experiences. Viewing childhood merely as
a transitional life phase (James and Prout 1997; Honig 2009) is not convincing
from an NSCS perspective. However, this does not mean that well-being may not
be conceived of and studied within a future-looking framework. The relevant
aspect is far more the normative benchmark from which the future of children is
anticipated. Third, research on child well-being has to face a challenge on the
level of research ethics. Doing research on children and even research with
children always means engaging in a process of “generationing” and thus in
a process of producing and reproducing power relationships. Therefore, research
on well-being also needs to consider how these dimensions of childhood studies
can be analyzed systematically and then integrated in completely concrete ways
into the process of research and analysis (Fattore et al. 2007; Fegter et al. 2010;
Alderson and Morrow 2011; Alderson 2012).
24.3 The Potential of the Capability Approach (CA) from the

Perspective of New Social Childhood Studies (NSCS)
The Capability Approach (CA) developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum
addresses the good life and human flourishing. It analyzes the necessary pre-
conditions, possibilities, and abilities that people require in order to achieve this.
This objective has resulted in the CA receiving increasing attention in interna-

tional and interdisciplinary research (see UNICEF 2007; Albus et al. 2009; World
Vision 2010; Biggeri et al. 2011), so that it is now one of the established
“conceptual framework[s] for understanding children’s well-being” (Comim
et al. 2011, p. 3). The CA possesses a particularly strong potential for addressing
the challenges and demands facing research on child well-being from the NSCS
perspective sketched above. The present section develops this argument
by outlining the central assumptions and concepts in the CA and relating
these to the NSCS.
The conception of the good life in the CA follows the Aristotelian tradition of
not restricting well-being to material aspects of life. It focuses far more on the
possible scopes and freedoms of people to live their own lives (Unterhalter 2003;
Unterhalter and Brighouse 2003; Walker 2004; Andresen et al. 2008). The CA
conception of the good life covers not only societal contexts but also individual
needs, desires, and feelings. The CA also possesses a justice theory dimension
based on defining the necessary preconditions for this good life. In the CA perspec-
tive, an equal distribution of primary goods such as human rights or income does
not necessarily lead to equal degrees of freedom as well – although possessing
goods is viewed, in principle, as an essential and fundamental precondition. How-
ever, the opportunities in life and the potentials for self-development that individ-
uals are actually able to realize also depend on which personal abilities and social
freedoms they have at their disposal with which they can actually make use of the
available goods. Hence, the most important thing is always the relationship between
the space of social opportunities and the actor-related space of individual needs and
capabilities (see Otto and Ziegler 2008, p. 12). Conceptually and categorically, this
idea is reflected in the central distinction between functionings and capabilities.
Functionings refer to what people actually do or are; capabilities, in contrast, “focus
on the objective set of possibilities of bringing about various combinations of
specific qualities of functionings” (Otto and Ziegler 2008, p. 11). Hence, the
capabilities refer to the real, practical freedom of individuals to be able to decide
for or against the realization of certain ways of living their lives (Sen 1992, 1999a),
and this is a freedom that is tied to being able to grow up in a nurturing environ-
ment. Through this relational conception, the CA “systematically links together
freedom – in the sense of social, political and cultural framing conditions – with
individual abilities – in the sense of an unfolding of potentials, competencies and
education” (Andresen and Hurrelmann 2010, p. 2).
Looking at capabilities and functionings, Sen and Nussbaum set different prior-
ities. Amartya Sen focuses on the arrangement of the different forms of acting and
being (functionings) that each individual possesses in different ways. He asks
predominantly about positive freedoms, thereby placing greater emphasis on the
principle of the ability to act: how we can manage to have more freedom to do the
things that we have good reason to value (Sen 2000, p. 30). Martha Nussbaum, in
contrast, has compiled an “objective list” of fundamental possibilities and capabil-
ities in her CA and views this list as the foundation for what she calls “human
flourishing.” She focuses on the fundamental preconditions that a society has to
provide so that all individuals will have the possibility of being able to shape their
own lives according to their own wishes or needs.1
Nussbaum’s list follows the Aristotelian tradition that the fundamental abilities
of human beings are not innate but first have to unfold through being reared and
cared for in a nurturing environment. Society is obliged to provide these conditions
and ensure their socially just distribution (see Albus et al. 2009). This reveals how
the image of humanity in the CA links up particularly meaningfully with current
perspectives in childhood studies due to its “sensitivity to vulnerability and weak-
ness, but also its recourse to communicability and responsiveness” (Dabrock 2008,
p. 39, translated). As pointed out above, these perspectives view children not only
as the shapers of their own social reality but also in terms of their dependence and
their (also bodily) vulnerability in care relationships. At the same time, this
addresses welfare-state arrangements, with the CA providing its own specific
perspective for their evaluation. According to Sen, the individual utility of educa-
tional systems and social security systems (also for children and adolescents) is
judged by the capabilities they enable. The breadth of individually realizable
possibilities then provides information on how successfully measures of social
and educational policy equip all individuals equally with a real – and not just
a merely formal – freedom to realize different lifestyles based on their own personal
values (Sen 1999a, b; B€ ollert et al. 2011). Enabling “human flourishing” in the form
of a self-determined way of life then becomes the benchmark for evaluating
welfare-state arrangements for children and adolescents (B€ollert et al. 2011,
p. 523). Further ties between NSCS and CA can be found in the following three
features of CA: (a) adaptive preferences, (b) freedom and choices, and (c) present
and future.
24.3.1 Adaptive Preferences
With its specific perspective on the good life and its differentiation into capabilities
and functionings, the CA offers a concept of well-being that links together theo-
retical perspectives on both structure and the subject. From the NSCS perspective, it
is this interlinking that is particularly productive for research on child well-being.
1
We shall summarize this list here: (1) Life: Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal
length. (2) Bodily health: Being able to have good health. (3) Bodily integrity: Being able to avoid
unnecessary pain and experience joy; to have one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign.
(4) Senses, imagination, and thought: Being able to use one’s senses to imagine, think, and reason.
(5) Emotions: Being able to have attachments to things and people, to love, to grieve, to experience
longing and gratitude. (6) Practical reason: Being able to form a conception of the good and engage
in critical reflection about planning one’s life. (7) Affiliation: Being able to live with and toward
others; to enter various forms of familial and social relationships and have the social bases of self-
respect. (8) Other species: Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants,
and the world of nature. (9) Play: Being able to laugh, to play, and enjoy recreational activities.
(10) Control over one’s environment: Being able to exercise both political and material control
(Nussbaum 2000).
It does not just restrict well-being to material issues, because it places just as much
emphasis on analyzing how children themselves see their possibilities of realizing
a good life. As a result – at least theoretically – research using the CA empirically
assesses the diversity and interlacing of the life conditions and daily worlds of
children from both a structural and an individual perspective. Moreover, it harbors
only a low risk of failing to locate the experiences and views of children within their
context or of favoring a romanticizing concept of the actor. This is because its
scientific interest centers on how individual wishes and life plans relate to their
material, institutional, and political-discursive framing conditions. Therefore, from
the CA perspective, viewing children as the experts on their lives, and using, for
example, their self-reports as a basis for assessing their own well-being, means
studying their expert status in a way that links together structural and subjective
dimensions by asking about the positive freedoms to decide on how one wants to
live one’s own life (Sen 2004). In addition, with the concept of adaptive prefer-
ences, the CA possesses a theoretical tool that can be used to systematically analyze
the relationship between subjective appraisals and social contexts. Adaptive pref-
erence is the term used to describe how people adapt to situations and, to some
extent, can still be “happy” despite exposure to “objective” maltreatment (such as
slavery or violence and abuse).
People adjust their preferences to what they think they can achieve, and also to
what their society tells them a suitable achievement is for someone like them.
Women and other deprived people frequently exhibit such “adaptive preferences”
formed under unjust background conditions. These preferences will typically val-
idate the status quo (Nussbaum 2007, p. 73). For research on well-being, this
implies that happiness cannot be viewed as a sufficient indicator of well-being
from a CA perspective. There is too great a risk of neglecting social contexts and
thereby contributing (unwittingly) to the stabilization of social inequality and
injustice (see Hunner-Kreisel and Kuhn 2010, p. 116).
24.3.2 Freedom and Choices
We pointed out above that conceptions of well-being from the NSCS perspective
ask about children’s possibilities of participation and their degrees of freedom. The
core of the CA consists precisely in demanding more scope for self-determination
and autonomy. People should be enabled to choose their own lifestyles and not
have some concrete conception of the good dictated to them in a paternalistic
manner. Whereas this concern is derived from an understanding of childhood as
a generational order in NSCS, it points to the understanding of a good life derived
from the liberal school of thought in political philosophy in the CA (see Robeyns
2005). Against the background of this orientation toward freedom and choices,
Martha Nussbaum’s list of the central capabilities for a good life is a controversial
issue. Amartya Sen, for example, takes the position that there can be no “objective
list” of fundamental conditions. He views these conditions as a political issue that
always has to be dealt with within a specific context and time. “The problem is not
with listing important capabilities, but with insisting on one predetermined canon-
ical list of capabilities, chosen by theorists without any general social discussion or
public reasoning” (Sen 2004, p. 77). Other supporters of the CA stress that it is
more than a conception of significant chances of self-realization and more of a form
of human development. Nussbaum herself says that her list is strong but vague, and
not only has to be negotiated but also is necessary for the CA to gain the political
weight it needs. Basically, Nussbaum is thereby propagating the idea of what she
calls a comprehensive liberalism that will “base political principles on some
comprehensive doctrine about human life” (see Nussbaum 2011). However,
according to Deneulin (2002), she overcomes the criticism of perfectionism and
paternalism by defining the points on her list as “rights” and not as “duties” and by
also stressing the importance of consensual negotiation. Hence, both Sen and
Nussbaum emphasize that all members of a society must be included in determin-
ing and negotiating relevant capabilities and functionings. Even though they do not
state this explicitly, this also applies to the social group of children – a group that
also has to be heard and included with its own goals, wishes, and values. Hence, the
CA fundamentally addresses the problem that any research on child well-being that
simply applies its own indicators may well be paternalistic and thereby usurp
children’s autonomy. Even when this does not mean that every CA study has to
have a participative design, it does have to clarify the basis for assuming that each
specific underlying capability and functioning is relevant and valid for the group
being studied. A glance at the empirical research landscape shows that one focus of
CA research on child well-being lies precisely in determining the relevant capa-
bilities and in asking children themselves to say what they think (e.g., Biggeri et al.
2006; Alkire 2007; Andresen and Fegter 2009; Anich et al. 2011; Kellock and
Lawthom 2011).
24.3.3 Present and Future
One demand of NSCS is to conduct research on the “here and now” of children.
This should distinguish it from research that views children predominantly from
a “not-yet” perspective and treats them as being incomplete and deficient. However,
it is necessary to ask how far this perspective runs counter to the basically
developmental perspective characterizing the CA. Development is, indeed,
a central concept in the CA. Sen, for example, understands it as the process of
extending real freedoms (Sen 2007, p. 13). However, he does not use it in the same
way as developmental psychology or socialization theory but relates it within the
context of ideas on justice theory to the arrangements in society as a whole:
“The essential idea of the CA is that social arrangements should aim to expand
people’s capabilities – their freedom to promote or achieve valuable beings and
doings” (Comim et al. 2011, p. 7). Therefore, development is focused normatively
on increasing the degrees of freedom of people in a society. These degrees of
freedom result, in turn, from a specific constellation of individual abilities com-
bined with socioeconomic and cultural framing conditions. This idea also relates to
children: The human development of children can be understood as an “expansion

of capabilities” or of “positive freedoms” (Sen 1999a). Hence, even though the
concern is with an “expansion of capabilities” in children and therefore takes
a perspective that goes potentially beyond the here and now, it is not based princi-
pally on a specific idea of childhood as developmental childhood. The focus is not on
growing up to become an adult per se, but far more on future freedoms. In this sense,
Saito (2003, p. 26) concludes that “when dealing with children, it is the freedom they
will have in the future rather than the present that should be considered.”
It should also be seen that with its concept of capabilities, the CA follows
a perspective that is simultaneously inherently oriented toward the present. The
opportunity to decide, for the good reasons one values, either for or against
a specific lifestyle is, in each case, given only in a concrete and therefore here-
and-now situation. In the CA perspective (particularly in Sen), the concern is that
these freedoms should not be constrained in either present or future situations
(that then become the present).
The CA conception’s inherent tension in this simultaneous orientation toward
the present and the future is the focus of such discussions as those over school. The
reason why education is so important for Sen and Nussbaum is that it is seen as
a precondition for capabilities not to be constrained in the future either. It is stressed
that the capability “to be educated” is linked inseparably with other future capabil-
ities (see, e.g., Terzi 2007). It is also decisive for literacy capabilities or for
relationships with others. Nussbaum uses a similar argument. She identifies three
capabilities related to education: critical thinking, the ideal of the world citizen, and
the development of the narrative imagination. In sum, it can be seen that the CA is
characterized by a very specific combination of current and future perspectives.
The idea of development in the CA is not based per se on a specific concept of
the child or of childhood as a developing childhood. However, CA research
addresses the issue of the child in another way, namely, in terms of autonomy
and self-determination. This is a controversial topic within the CA discussion on the
possibility of applying the CA to children. In its basic conception, the CA assumes
a certain form of autonomy, agency, and self-determination, and it discusses
whether this can also be assumed for children (Saito 2003; Ballet et al. 2011). For
example, Saito (2003) questions the use of the CA in children by arguing that not all
individuals are able to make just one choice out of a range of options. Accordingly,
there are objections – particularly in liberal justice theories – to the idea that
children are (already) capable of and mature enough to decide what is good for
them or – and this is presented as the most important criterion – how far they are
capable of revising their decisions (Saito 2003). Nussbaum (2000, p. 78) also
addresses this issue when she points out that the capability of practical reasoning
consists in “being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical
reflection about the planning of one’s life.” Hence, as far as children are concerned,
the essential distinction is between the capacity to make choices and the capacity to
evaluate and revise those choices. It is particularly the presence of the latter that
some authors question, and they talk about “a weak self-determination principle” in
children, by which they mean “that the individual is in a position to make choices,
but that the framework within which they make these choices must be defined so
that their capacity for evaluation may develop and that certain, particularly harmful,
choices may thus be eliminated” (Ballet et al. 2011, p. 27). Lansdown (2005) places
a different accent in this context when he, for example, stresses how important it is
for particularly children to have access to opportunity structures that promote the
development of autonomy and self-determination.
In summary, one can see that the discussion on applying the CA to children may
sometimes lead to the emergence of developmental ideas that relate specifically to
children and the ways they differ from adults. These may well run counter to the
theoretical and methodological premises of the NSCS. This points to one of the
major current challenges in the theoretical discussion on the CA.
24.4 Empirical Research on Child Well-Being Based on the

Capability Approach
Empirical research on child well-being is becoming increasingly aware of the

potential of the CA. One focus is on studies addressing children in trikont2 states.
These include Padron and Ballet’s (2011) analysis of Peruvian street children, di
Tommaso’s (2006) study on the living conditions of children in India, or Camfield
and Tafere’s (2011) study of children in Ethiopia. However, the possibilities of
using the CA are also increasingly being discovered for research on children in
affluent countries as well (see Volkert and Schneider 2012).3 For example, the
UNICEF study of child well-being in rich countries (UNICEF 2007), the national
German surveys World Vision Childhood Studies (2010) and “Wirkungsorientierte
Jugendhilfe” [Effect-oriented youth services] (Albus et al. 2010), and several
regional studies (see, e.g., Andresen and Fegter 2009; Sch€afer-Walkmann et al.
2009) all refer explicitly to the CA. Basically, these studies can be differentiated
according to whether they aim to (a) identify relevant capabilities or functionings of
children or (b) make statements on the current well-being of children and determine
the various factors on which this depends. Studies in the first category (a) are
oriented either toward Amartya Sen and openly ask participants to name the
capabilities they value, or toward Martha Nussbaum and compare her “strong
but vague list” with children’s own perspectives. Such studies apply not only
qualitative (see, e.g., Kellock and Lawthom 2011) or quantitative research methods
(see, e.g., Andresen and Fegter 2009) but also combinations of the two (Biggeri
et al. 2006; Anich et al. 2011). Although representative surveys designed to identify
capabilities and functionings are not yet available at the time of writing (Volkert
and Schneider 2012), the major capabilities for children seem to be education, love
and care, family, and other social relations. Research in the second category (b) that
2
A collective word for the poor and developing countries of Africa, Asia and South America.
3
The highly commendable literature survey from Volkert and Schneider (2012) offers a very well
commented overview of empirical CA studies on children and the aged in affluent countries.
asks about the well-being of children on the basis of predetermined capabilities

generally works with quantitative research designs. Its findings reveal a strong
consensus that the well-being of children does not derive exclusively from material
care and income. The parents’ or the mother’s education (Grundmann et al. 2011;
Volkert and W€ ust 2011), institutional provisions by the child and youth welfare
services (Albus et al. 2009), and gender and siblings (Addabbo and di Tommaso
2011) also exert a crucial influence. Harttgen and Klasen (2009) and Nolan (2010)
have carried out studies on the CA belonging to this category that focus particularly
on the situation of migrant children.
Empirical CA studies on child well-being also differ according to how far
children participate in the research process. Ballet et al. (2011) have stressed that
such participation calls for a great deal of effort by researchers, because “children’s
participation supposes a minimal autonomy, a minimal capacity of self-determina-
tion” (Ballet et al. 2011, p. 23). How far it can be assumed that children possess this
autonomy and self-determination, or whether – in the sense of evolving capabilities
(Lansdown 2005, p. 3) – it first has to be developed, is, as mentioned above, still
a highly controversial issue (Ballet et al. 2011, p. 27). Whereas some take the
position that children are, for example, (still) unable to make independent and
responsible choices (see, e.g., Saito 2003), others are decisively in favor of
a participative methodology, with the additional advantage that it can also be
used to contribute to the unfolding of capabilities in the children participating in
such research (Biggeri et al. 2006; Anich et al. 2011; Trani et al. 2011). Studies
designed to identify the capabilities and functionings of children, and to integrate
the children in corresponding negotiation processes over capabilities in line with
Sen, work with a range of participatory methods. When it comes to studies with
quantitative designs, participatory methods are applied less frequently. Nonethe-
less, the studies of Biggeri et al. (2006) and Anich et al. (2011) have demonstrated
that methodological instruments such as questionnaire surveys are also available for
integrating children into quantitative studies. Below we present two empirical
studies that are good examples of research on child well-being based on the CA.
The first example of research that applied participatory methods to involve
children systematically in the research process and both identify and prioritize
their capabilities is the study on Street children in Kampala (Uganda) and NGOs’
actions: Understanding capabilities deprivation and expansion (Anich et al. 2011).
The authors used participatory methods to understand the levels of deprivation from
the child’s perspective. They focused attention particularly on the role of NGOs in
order to get children themselves to participate in asking about the role of political
programs and institutions in reducing or expanding the capabilities of former
street children. In all, the authors’ analysis conceived child well-being multidimen-
sionally and holistically in the sense of the CA. Such an understanding required
different methodological approaches to get children involved in the research pro-
cess so that they would participate in identifying, prioritizing, and comparing
different capabilities (Anich et al. 2011, p. 115).
Against this background, the study applied both quantitative and qualitative
methods to survey three groups of children: (1) street children, that is, those who
were completely homeless; (2) rehabilitated street children, that is, those who were
living in shelters run by NGOs and receiving regular meals, medical care, and so
forth; and (3) a control group of same-aged peers who were attending five state
schools in the same region but had never lived on the street. The use of a control
group provided the authors with an important instrument for validating their
findings. By comparing these three groups, they could relate the capabilities
named by the children to their different life conditions and appraise their function-
ings. The control group also served as an instrument to uncover so-called “adaptive
preferences formation” (Elster 1982), “valuation neglect” (Sen 1985), or “deformed
desire” (Biggeri et al. 2006, p. 68). Appraisals of capabilities are always shaped by
their context and have to be analyzed accordingly. All the children in the study were
interviewed and encouraged to give subjective appraisals by applying a “dynamic”
questionnaire (Biggeri and Libanora 2011, p. 82) that the researchers worked
through together with the children. It asked them to (1) conceptualize their capa-
bilities, (2) report on their actual functioning achievements (across dimensions),
(3) focus on social or group capabilities and move toward consensus on the
relevance of these dimensions, and (4) start prioritizing the chosen dimensions
(Anich et al. 2011, p. 116). With this approach, reported in detail in Biggeri et al.
(2006), the researchers started by referring to Nussbaum (2003, 2004) and assuming
that the first concern was to get the children involved in formulating
a “nondefinitive and open-ended” list of children’s capabilities. They then went
on to follow Sen’s approach by negotiating and validating this list of capabilities
together with the children. This resulted in the following list of 14 capabilities: life
and physical health, love and care, mental well-being, bodily integrity and safety,
social relations, participation, education, freedom from economic and noneconomic
exploitation, shelter and a safe and pleasant environment, leisure activities, respect,
religion and identity, time autonomy, and mobility (Biggeri et al. 2006, pp. 65–66;
Anich et al. 2011, p. 118). The results of the study also showed that some
capabilities were named frequently by all children: education, love and care, leisure
activities, and life and physical health (Anich et al. 2011, p. 118). A further major
finding was that the level of functionings the children actually attain varied con-
siderably depending on their life situation or experiences. For example, street
children exhibit low achievement levels, particularly in dimensions such as life
and physical health, love and care by parents, participation and information,
education, freedom from economic and noneconomic exploitation, shelter and
a safe and pleasant environment, and respect (Anich et al. 2011, p. 121). The
authors concluded that a highly valued capability dimension on the one side but
a low level of functionings achieved on the other indicates the need for further
political activities and programs to close the gap between what children value and
what they actually achieve. They also highlighted this entanglement of the capa-
bility dimension and achieved functionings within the framework of this study as
indicating the need for further research on the programs of NGOs and how far they
expand or reduce capabilities (i.e., opportunities). Looking at the role of political
programs, the study showed how, until recently, the policies and goals regarding the
social development and living conditions of vulnerable groups in Uganda were only
general (Anich et al. 2011, p. 110). It is only in the very last few years that the
government has embarked on specific political initiatives and programs, and that
various NGOs have also focused attention on orphans and vulnerable children.
In sum, the authors drew attention to the still inadequate implementation and
realization of political programs while also pointing to the role of resources.
“In addition, the lack of political will and poor coordination and collaboration
between the various stakeholders working with children detract from the already
limited resources available to support the increasing needs of children in Uganda”
(Anich et al. 2011, p. 111). They placed particular emphasis on achieving children’s
rights as a starting point for improving their living conditions, and present this as
a central political approach for expanding children’s capabilities.
An example of a study working exclusively with the qualitative methods of
empirical social research that draws on Sen’s CA and involves children in the
research process is the British study Sen’s Capability Approach: Children and
well-being explored through the use of photography (Kellock and Lawthom
2011). It applied a particularly interesting methodological approach to study
elementary-school-age children. Kellock and Lawthom (2011) justified their
interest in school through the strong significance they attribute to education in
the lives of children. Fully in line with Sen (1992) and also Walker (2004, 2005),
they assigned to education the potential “to expand abilities through opportuni-
ties” (p. 138). Depending on which opportunities in this sense are available to
children and which resources they can tap, they have different possibilities of
developing competencies, which in turn can create the preconditions for
a fulfilling adult life: “In acting on opportunities and using the resources available,
children may develop the competencies to achieve a fulfilling adult life” (Kellock
and Lawthom 2011, p. 138). Against this background, Kellock and Lawthom
(2011) wanted to find out how children experience well-being, particularly within
the school context, which alongside the family so decisively shapes their daily
lives. Their methodological approach was participatory. By pointing out that the
educational setting is dominated almost completely by adults, they saw this
approach as providing an important contribution to taking children seriously as
the experts on their lives, to positioning them as actors, and to giving them a voice
(Kellock and Lawthom 2011, p. 137). When reflecting critically on the “balance
of power” (Kellock and Lawthom 2011, p. 137) in relation to school, it should not
be forgotten that the researchers who carried out the study are adults who were in
a position of power compared to children. If this aspect is neglected, the process
of “generationing” and thereby the process of producing and reproducing
power relationships will focus exclusively on the teachers and professionals
in the school.
The concrete participatory research methods in the project were as follows:
Capabilities are identified together with the children using the photo-voice
approach. Taking photographs with Polaroid cameras is easy for children to do.
By using photography, the research project can show that children have rich
opinions and draw on a range of experience in the school setting. By referring to
Wang et al. (1998), it is also stressed that this “creative and facilitative approach is
proinclusive with children and increases the level of engagement and accessibility
for all children” (Kellock and Lawthom 2011, p. 139). Hence, with photo-voice, the
authors emphasized that they were giving the children a good opportunity to
express themselves, and they also stressed that it had the “ability to build confidence
and successfully communicate ideas visually” (Kellock and Lawthom 2011,
p. 143). Drawing on Booth and Booth (2003), the authors assumed that the method
also offers potential benefits, particularly for children with learning disorders or
lacking verbal competence, “leading to a sense of empowerment for those involved
(Kellock and Lawthom 2011, p. 143). Such skill development can also boost
children’s confidence in decision making (Kellock and Lawthom 2011, p. 143).
What is interesting here is that with their methodological arguments for the use of
photo-voice, the authors did not just stress their potential for casting light on
children’s experiences at school in the here and now; they also pointed out that
the method can contribute to developing abilities such as self-confidence and
decision making as well. This is how the participatory approach to research can
also contribute to the expansion of capabilities.
In addition, the children were encouraged to create mind maps of their person-
ally selected situations in the school and formulate both “ok” and “not-ok” feelings
about them in order to express their well-being. Analyses of the photographs and
other materials such as drawings pointed to a total of four essential capabilities or
abilities: (1) being literate, (2) being physically active, (3) being a friend, and
(4) being creative (Kellock and Lawthom 2011, pp. 145–146). These capabilities
were also studied in the sense of functionings by asking whether the children
actually do (or could) attain them or do not attain them. Constraints that (poten-
tially) emerge in the realization of these capabilities were then identified and
discussed with the children. The children emphasized ideas such as having support,
having sufficient nourishment, having adequate resources, having their own space,
having choice, and having a family and friends (Kellock and Lawthom 2011,
pp. 154–155). The authors reached the general conclusion from their participative
study design that children do clearly express and are capable of expressing their
wishes and the challenges they see confronting them. They were able to tell the
researchers how they wish to have more time for playing and being together with
their peers and that they would prefer to have fewer examinations.
To summarize, both studies aimed to examine children’s capabilities empirically
by working with a participatory research program and thereby understanding
children as agents. Both studies also shared a political orientation linked to how
to strengthen children’s rights and “give them a voice.” This political implication is
confirmed by the expressly participatory approach to research. Whereas Anich et al.
(2011) believed the data collection process (in their case, questionnaires) a means
of encouraging the children to think for themselves and to participate, Kellock and
Lawthom’s (2011) study went even further and viewed processes of the data
collection itself as an opportunity and resource (in this case, photo-voice) that
had the potential of initiating an expansion of capabilities in at least some children.
Hence, the conspicuous feature of both studies sketched here, but also for nearly
all childhood studies in the CA context, is that both a perspective of futureness and
an idea of the development and expansion of capabilities are involved. As the two
studies show, the focus of research is on using the empirical analysis of the data to
gain knowledge about children’s capabilities and functionings. This then delivers
indications for institutional and structural reforms that will potentially lead to an
expansion of children’s capabilities. A central political approach to expand chil-
dren’s capabilities resulting from this is the campaign for children’s rights. How-
ever, it is also conspicuous that thinking about the “expansion of capabilities” in
relation to children focuses the debate on abilities and capacities and leads to
thoughts about the possibilities for increasing and improving these individually –
also with an emphasis on a successful adult life. In this sense it may well be that the
critical examination of constraints to the freedom of children provides an opening
(at least in some authors) for developmental paradigms to reassert themselves and
link up with the CA-specific perspective on freedom and choices. This perspective
may well then clash with the NSCS approach presented at the beginning of this
chapter. The NSCS adopts a perspective on children as social actors in the “here and
now” and on childhood as a “generational order.” This distinguishes it explicitly
from earlier research traditions that view children predominantly from a “not-yet”
perspective and childhood as a transitional life phase, and subsequently tend to
define children in terms of developmental childhood and a childhood of child-
rearing. Hence, despite the potential advantages of the CA perspective, particularly
because of its promising theoretical framework for research on well-being due to,
above all, the systematic linking together of structure, culture, and the individual, it
is necessary to pay critical attention to its readings on the enabling of children and
adolescents; otherwise, there is a risk here of no longer keeping pace with the
current theoretical debates in the NSCS.
The discussion on whether the CA can be applied to children as a whole – and
this should be addressed once more at the end of this chapter – is just beginning.
The CA “has not yet adequately engaged with children’s issues, although much has
been written about education generally from this perspective” (Comim et al. 2011,
p. 4). Hence, as already suggested above, possible ways of applying the CA in
childhood studies have not yet been explored sufficiently in the debates on child-
hood autonomy, agency, and self-determination. The CA’s basic premise is the
individual’s capacity for self-determination. However, this is a controversial issue
when it comes to children. The possibility of being able to choose a lifestyle for
one’s own good reasons is a crucial idea in both liberal justice theories and in the
CA, although the former excludes children explicitly from its analytical frame.
Even when the current discourses on the CA reveal no general agreement on which
rights and resources have to be accepted as the concrete preconditions for individ-
uals to be able to pursue “a good life,” there is a broad consensus – at least as far as
adults are concerned – on the “principle of self-determination insofar as its negation
would amount to treating individuals as unequal” (Ballet et al. 2011, p. 25). This
decisively normative approach in the CA also raises fundamental questions regard-
ing not only the definition but also the preconditions of a good life for children. This
is a particularly important issue for research on childhood well-being and calls for
further consideration of ways to operationalize child well-being and carry out
research with children as social actors (Comim et al. 2011, p. 6). This is where the
NSCS could open up more far-reaching perspectives and approaches. Then, just as
the CA offers childhood studies on well-being and its special combination of micro-
and macrolevels in the conception of a good life, the NSCS, in turn, offers the CA
a way of thinking about the way conceptions of the child and childhood are
entangled with generational and other social orders.
Acknowledgments We thank Stefanie Albus for stimulating discussions and valuable comments
on this chapter.
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Socialization and Childhood in Sociological
Theorizing 25
Lourdes Gaitán
25.1 Introduction
The critique of the functionalist paradigm of socialization was one of the key
arguments in the early work of what came to be called the new sociology of
childhood. Dissatisfaction with the usual ways of explaining children within social
sciences is at the root of the proposals that different authors, from different schools
of thought, possessing different academic backgrounds, and teaching or researching
in different parts of the (Western) world, began conducting in the 1980s (Qvortrup
et al. 2011).
This critique was greatly important, at least in the field of sociology, as it
addressed the essence of dominant sociological thinking about the role attributed
to children in society, where children are viewed as a plastic mould into which
habits and thoughts may be poured at an early stage to facilitate the maintenance of
order and the achievement of a functional society. The brevity of the infant stage,
along with the high expectations placed on the effectiveness of good socialization,
justified the efforts of an army of teachers, educators, social workers, and psychol-
ogists. This army assumed as axiomatic principles the functionalist view of child-
hood as a privileged time in the life of human beings, where patterns could be
learned that would guide the performance of social roles.
However, the paradigm of socialization was not only solidly positioned within
the “professions of the child,” it also had crossed the academic threshold, becoming
an accepted part of common sense and, of course, the adult way of thinking which
governed the rules, design, and implementation of the different types of policies for
children. In light of this, the new sociology of childhood, with its introduction of
children as social actors and childhood as a social construction and a part of
a permanent and stable social structure, was entirely heterodoxical (Blitzer 1991)
L. Gaitán
Grupo de Sociologı́a de la Infancia y la Adolescencia, Las Matas, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: lourdesgaitan22@gmail.com

760 L. Gaitán
and somewhat revolutionary compared with the existing frameworks within the
social sciences and social practice.
Once demolished, the myth of the functionalist conception of socialization and
developmental theory were considered the two key theoretical concepts for the
constriction of the child to order (Jenks), and the new sociology of childhood
seemed to disengage somewhat from theoretical developments. It began to be
more oriented to empirically demonstrating that another role of children is possible
(and real) if a different conception of the meaning of childhood is considered.
Hence, it is only much more recently that deepening interest in theoretical aspects
among followers of what has now been renamed “social studies of childhood” has
come about. There are two reasons for this change. First, more than 20 years since
the appearance of the first texts considered as fundamental, the moniker “new” is no
longer apt. Second, the field is now open to disciplinary fields other than sociology
but which share some assumptions and key concepts (such as child-centered and
agency), hence expanding and enriching the field of knowledge and research
concerning the new generation of children. However, in this chapter we prefer the
term “sociology of childhood” or “new sociology of childhood,” to differentiate
from previous sociological orientations and also to emphasize that we are adhering
to the field of sociology. This does not imply the renunciation of the possibility of
any influence that a reformulation of the concept of socialization in childhood may
have in the context of other scientific disciplines within the ambit of social studies
of childhood.
This chapter is a reflection on the what, how, and why of the critique of the
functionalist theory of socialization in the work of the 1980s’ pioneers of the new
sociology of childhood. We then consider why an alternative notion of socialization
has not subsequently developed. Is it because there is some doubt about the
existence of any kind of a process for acquiring knowledge about the rules and
ways of life in society which, somehow, can be called “socialization”? Or is the way
that socialization was conceptualized and irrevocably linked to children unaccept-
able? If the answer to this second question is in the affirmative, a new question
arises: would it be possible to reread the classics, or should we instead look to other
authors and schools (modern or postmodern) for a basis on which to reinterpret
socialization in a manner more consistent with the assumptions underpinning the
current sociology of childhood?
Our position is to consider that the latter is possible and that there are bases in the
new sociology of childhood for a redefinition of the socialization process when it
occurs early in the life of human beings. This process is not so much unidirectional,
but bidirectional. That is to say, it not only moves from more experienced beings
toward novices (from adults to children), but also consists of a complex interactive
set where the new (children) are active through vertical relationships (up and down)
and horizontal peer relationships. In this sense, two theoretical tools have been
present in the new sociology of childhood from its origin: one is the idea of
“generation” and the other is “relational.” The former seems especially robust,
which, among other advantages, may facilitate the inclusion of the sociology of
childhood in the mainstream of modern sociology, as will be argued.
25 Socialization and Childhood in Sociological Theorizing 761
25.2 The Critique of the Functionalist Paradigm of Socialization
Conventionally, sociology has considered childhood as a privileged space for

socialization, that is, as a stage of life where it is possible to introduce primary
values and norms socially accepted as forms of behavior that will lead to an
appropriate integration of individuals into society. Consequently, the interests of
sociology have focused on the socialization process and, also, analysis of the
behavior of the main institutions responsible for that process: family and school.
In both cases, children’s lives were not seen as the formal object of study but instead
served instrumental purposes: maintaining the order of the social system and the
functioning of social institutions. In this context, childhood has indeed played an
instrumental role in sociology, as a period of time to be used to initiate into social
life those who would, in due course, become real social actors. From this perspec-
tive, the subject under study was not childhood itself but the phenomenon of the
socialization of children and the deviations that occurred from the guidelines set for
this process. One of the hallmarks of the emerging sociology of childhood was its
opposition to these conventional visions.
Some signs of rejection of these conventional visions can be found in Qvortrup
(1993, p. 14), who states that the concept of socialization, in its developmental
meaning, is not useful to consider in sociological terms unless thought of as an
expression of attitudes, influence, and the power of adults. Similarly, Ivar Frones
(1994, p. 161) argues that sociological theories of socialization do not analyze the
socialization process as such, focusing rather on what this process produces. James
and Prout (1997, p. 13) note that:
The importation of a psychological model directly into sociological theory collapsed
together two definitions of what constitutes the subject; the individual as an instance of
the species and the person as an instance of society. The implicit binarism of the psycho-
logical model was uncritically absorbed into classical socialization theory. . .. They are, in
effect, two different instances of the species. Socialization is the process which magically
transforms the one into the other.
Corsaro (1997, p. 10) points out the weaknesses of what he calls the “determin-
istic model” of socialization (including both functionalist and reproductive theo-
ries), which is overly focused on results while underestimating the active and
innovative capacities of all members of society. Put another way, Corsaro maintains
that these abstract models are oversimplifying complex processes and, along the
way, overlooking the importance of children and childhood in society. Finally, it is
worth mentioning Ambert (1992), who argues that as the concept of socialization is
built by both functionalist sociologists and child development theory, children are
deprived of the opportunity to be considered as fully-fledged actors. The child in
this context is, in fact, a mere recipient and future product (Ambert 1992, p. 13),
while the child as a social actor would represent a serious dysfunction.
The conventional concept of the socialized being owes much to the Talcott
Parsons theory of social systems. Chris Jenks provided the most in-depth analysis of
the functionalist paradigm of socialization, as developed by Parsons, from the new
perspective of the sociology of childhood. Jenks (1982) first undertook this analysis
762 L. Gaitán
in his pioneering work entitled Childhood: Essential Readings, later returning to the
subject and offering similar arguments in Childhood (Jenks 1996). According to
Jenks, Parsons’ work establishes a structure of social organization that integrates
action and constriction. This structure operates on economic, political, cultural,
interactional, and personal levels and permeates all expressions of collective human
experience. For Jenks, the social system as conceived by Parsons constitutes the
oneness of the social world through two metaphors: first, the “organism,” which
refers to the unspecific, alive, and related to content; and second, the “system,”
which is explicit, dead, and related to form. According to Jenks, through the central
concept of socialization, Parsons commits a theoretical violence, particularly on
children, by aiming to turn the worlds of content into form. In Parsons’ conception
of the social system, consensual core values that operate at the level of individual
personality are presumed to exist. Based on this assumption, the socialization of
children, who are considered a primary reality and not yet socialized, involves the
construction of instrumental and expressive guidelines for the structuring
of the individual personality, with those guidelines pandering to the expectations
of the adult system as a whole.
Jenks explains that in the social system according to Parsons, the subsystem of
personality is closely related to the problems of childhood and socialization. The
unsocialized child constitutes its focus and primary reality. Consequently, this
subsystem needs to ensure that every child has an adequate environment so that
he is able to develop the appropriate capabilities demanded by the adult system. The
family appears in this theory as the most appropriate place to successfully drive the
primary socialization of children.
For Jenks (1996, p. 18), in Parsons’ theorizing about the child there is
a significant psychoanalytic dimension, shown not only by the application of certain
Freudian categories but also in its emphasis on the need to penetrate into children’s
inner selves, as the social system depends on this penetration. In essence, according
to Jenks, Parsons believes that the social system is dependent on the total capture of
personalities, but this overshadows the possibility of divergence, dissolution, dis-
sent, or difference. The Parsonian concept of “need dispositions” combines two
features that also have psychoanalytic resonance: some kind of performance or
activity and a kind of punishment or satisfaction. Therein, Jenks has found the
perfect ingredients for a homeostatic balance between desire and satiation which is
translated as the desired pattern in the child’s socialization process.
Jenks says (1996, p. 20) that in Parsons’ work, and in the tradition of the theory
of socialization that follows therefrom, the child has been successfully surrendered
to the dictates of the social system. The child is conceived of as having a theoretical
purpose, serving to support and perpetuate the fundamentals and the various
versions of man, action, order, language, and rationality. The constraints imposed
on the spontaneous behavior of children in the social practice of childhood are
sublimated under theoretical assumptions used to support ideas of integration and
order and also at the analytical level.
In his earlier work, Jenks (1982, p. 23) justifies his selection of Parsons’ work
and that of Piaget for analysis because of the clarity and insight of their works and
the significant influence they exert in the social sciences, leading academic writers
to frequently draw parallels between socialization and psychological development.
According to Jenks, these authors, and the tradition of which they are part, have, in
broad terms, captured and monopolized the child in social theory. This serves as
support for Jenks’ assertion that childhood is not a natural product but a social
construction, with its status hence constituted in particular socially located forms of
discourse. Thus, different “theoretical” children serve the different theoretical
models of social life from which they emanate.
In a more recent work, Honig (2011, pp. 66–67) undertakes a critical review of
Jenks’ own critique of Parsons. According to Honig, the problem is that Jenks
changes Parsons’ theoretical framework (i.e., how is social order possible?) and
analyzes “socialization” as a way of thinking about the child, as a social form of
knowledge, as a construct. According to Honig, this is a distortion of the paradigm
of socialization represented by Jenks as a discourse that constitutes “the child.”
Honig adds that in any case, this formulation carries the risk of confusing the
object-related and the epistemological levels of the construct concept. From our
point of view, this was precisely Jenks’ intention: to move the theoretical frame-
work to demonstrate how the subject child is subjected to the tyranny of a theory of
social order. A theory that involves this tyranny at the same time as a significant
moral component aimed at the social production of a docile citizenship (O’Neill,
quoted in Jenks 1996, p. 15) may be one of the major reasons why socialization has
attained broad acceptance in policy and social practice.
For Honig, the risk of confusion between object and concept is even clearer in
another notable author on the modern sociology of childhood, Leena Alanen.
Alanen’s criticism of the socialization paradigm addresses a way of thinking that
justifies the social exclusion of children and couches a normal childhood in terms of
physical weakness, the need for protection, and regularities of physical growth and
mental development. For her, the sociology of childhood is the antithesis of this, as
it treats children as social actors rather than objects of socialization. As
a sociological approach from the child’s standpoint, it posits the child as the main
conceptual focus (Alanen 1992). According to Honig (2011), the ambivalence of
this position lies in the combination of an epistemological critique with a normative
position. This carries the risk of an ontologization of power and a naturalization of
the concept of actor.
While it is true that Parsons’ work on the social system allows more flexibility in
interpreting his description of the socialization process than is available when
considering that offered by his detractors, the overall impression one may take
from reading Parsons’ description is that it is a story told from a single point of
view, that of an adult male, and with one purpose, maintenance of the existing
social order (Rodrı́guez 2007). However, it can be argued that Parsons stepped
forward to characterize childhood as the time when the first social links are
developed, which is important for sociology. It might also be said that this con-
striction of the child to order (in the words of Jenks), which is what comes to
represent socialization for Parsons, at least requires the participation of the child
insofar as socialization mechanisms operate only to the extent that the process of
764 L. Gaitán
learning is an integral part of a broader process of interaction in complementary

roles. Yet, despite all this, some Parsonsian text expressions are difficult to recon-
cile with the current way of thinking about children, whether scientific, based on
rights, or common sense (as are some which directly or indirectly relate to women).
This applies, for example, when undertaking a sort of blackmail, referring to the
condition of dependence of children on adults as the focal point to support the
implementation of the lever of socialization (Parsons 1988, p. 205).
Within the space shared by the new sociology of childhood, and also starting
from a critical view of the socialization paradigm, there are two authors who
advance an alternative formulation of the concept. The first is Ivar Frones (1994),
for whom a theory of socialization requires a conceptual structure that represents
the scope of modern society. Drawing on Habermas, who interprets the rationality
of modern society as a field of communicatively shared intersubjectivity that pro-
duces the potential for some form of “communicative action,” Frones considers that
the structure and form of society influences the socialization model by shaping the
social and cultural framework of childhood. Additionally, social changes affect not
only the content of social interaction but also the content of and relationships
among the social stages of individual development, influencing childhood settings.
The interactions of local culture, position in the community, and individual factors,
and the interplay between those factors and the wider cultural and social context can
produce an overall context entailing different paths for individual development.
Childhood is not seen as a process affected by other factors but as a set of structures
that influence the social development of the individual. Thus, according to Frones,
childhood forms a conceptual and analytical bridge between societal and individual
development and socialization. This bridge will be crucial in societies characterized
by social change.
William Corsaro (1997) is another author who reviewed conventional models of
socialization and proposed an alternative. After criticizing what he calls determin-
istic and constructivist models of socialization, Corsaro proposes that sociological
theories of childhood must break with individualistic doctrines that describe the
social development of children as simply an internalization of adult skills and
knowledge. On the contrary, he believes that from a sociological perspective,
socialization is not just a matter of adaptation and internalization, but also
a process of appropriation, reinvention, and reproduction. Thus, he proposes an
alternative notion of interpretive reproduction. The term interpretive refers to
innovative and creative aspects of the participation of children in society: children
create and participate in their own unique peer culture, appropriating information
from the adult world and importing it into their own to address their own peer
concerns. The term reproduction includes the idea that children do not simply
internalize society and culture but actively contribute to cultural production and
change. In contrast with the linear view of developmental psychology, Corsaro
conceives of interpretive reproduction as a spiral in which children produce and
participate in a series of interlinked children’s cultures, making up a network
similar to a spider web, crossed by various institutional fields (family, educational,
occupational, community, political, religious) within which children are producing
culture with peers and adults. Corsaro’s well-founded proposal provides an answer,
based on his ethnographic work with groups of very young children (those at
preschool level), to those who question the active role of children in the socializa-
tion process. Especially noteworthy in Corsaro’s work is the subject of peer culture
as a mediator in the process of interpretive reproduction. In subsequent publica-
tions, the author insists on the idea that socialization is not something that happens
to children; it is a process in which children interact with others, create their own
peer culture, and eventually come to reproduce, extend, and join the adult world
(Corsaro and Molinari 2000, pp. 197–198).
Returning to the more negative view of the conventional concept of childhood
socialization, a review of the literature of the sociology of childhood in the last
20–25 years offers many more examples similar to those mentioned above.
Denying the validity of the functionalist paradigm of socialization as a unique
tool for analyzing the contemporary social role and lives of children, or criticizing
its assumptions (with differing levels of success), is almost a rite required to be
fulfilled prior to approaching the study of any particular aspect of the lives and
activities of children which seeks to place the focus on their active involvement
and relational character. Yet despite this, apart from Frones viewing socialization
as an intersubjective phenomenon or Corsaro’s interpretive reproduction, it is rare
even in passing to find an explicit stance or alternative interpretation concerning
the meaning of socialization, whether from the point of view of the child’s agency
or on the structural phenomenon of childhood. This does not mean that the
sociology of childhood ignores the term; nor does it dispense with the general
idea of a process that incorporates discovery, interpretation, and reproduction of
forms of behavior. However, it seems that once one paradigm is removed, it is not
considered necessary to build another, but rather to implicitly work on
a framework similar to that stated by Frones (i.e., intersubjectivity but in
a socially conditioned form). It is as if it were thought that once children were
considered of interest in their own right, that as socialization was no longer the
object that justified the presence of children in sociological analysis, it was
possible to ignore the concept altogether.
However, we believe that even today this is not the position of other academics
studying childhood or children’s lives. These academics continue to take for
granted the validity of the Parsonsian scheme, either repeating it in broad terms
and applying it in a manner best described as mechanically routine, or, at most,
constructing their own arguments but always starting from the implicit acceptance
of this conventional scheme. It is our view that socialization is one of the issues that
should be included among both the theoretical challenges and the commitments of
a sociology of childhood that seeks not merely to play a particularistic or even
a marginal role, but also to make its own contributions to the overall pool of social
knowledge and social studies of childhood. In our view this work should begin with
a reinterpretation of the most influential sociological thought on the issue of
socialization, either before or after Parsons, to which the following chapter of this
chapter is devoted. The same task could continue with a deeper examination of the
more theoretically powerful proposals of the new sociology of childhood, within
766 L. Gaitán
which it is possible to include the issue of socialization in a manner coherent and

consistent with the paradigms commonly accepted among academics, as we seek to
demonstrate in the final section of this chapter.
25.3 Understanding Childhood as a Socialization Stage
Criticizing socialization does not mean renouncing all of its dimensions and
influences, especially when one considers that although it is a relatively recent
concept, it refers to a reality as old as human societies. The problem of
acculturation, or the introduction of new members into a society, has been
a subject of interest in philosophy (from Plato to Rousseau), anthropology (from
Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead), and history (as in the influential work, most
recently, of Philip Aries), and is currently a topic of interest in interdisciplinary
social sciences.
As demonstrated widely and repeatedly (Ambert 1992; Qvortrup 2003), child-
hood as an object of scientific knowledge was disregarded in sociology until as
recently as the early 1980s, when various authors began to draw attention to this
neglect and actively propose the recovery of the sociology of childhood. Before-
hand, children had appeared only sporadically in social research or had been used to
illustrate social problems (such as crime) or accompany explanations of social
institutions such as family or school. This is true despite the first decades of the
twentieth century having seen reformist actions that impacted children. Despite all
the activity directed at children, the sociological gaze was directed elsewhere
(Shanahan 2007, p. 409). Even the central role of children in the functionalist
paradigm of socialization comes about due to a different scientific objective, the
study of social systems.
As noted by Pinto (1997, p. 45), the issue of socialization in sociology has been
approached in two ways: from the perspective of society and respective socializing
agents and from that of individuals in the process of socialization and the respective
social worlds. In the first case, the central question is how a given society transmits
or inculcates values, beliefs, norms, and lifestyles. In the second, the focus is
primarily on the activities of individuals in the processes of appropriation, learning,
and internalization, by way of which they become self-conscious and develop the
abilities to integrate, communicate, and participate in the society and culture in
which they live. The first position is more common in conventional sociology, and
the second is an aspiration, at least, of the new sociology of childhood. Our
intention in this section is to explore, in the context of the first approach, whether
it would be possible to use classical or modern theories of socialization with a child-
centered orientation.
In sociological theory, the issue of socialization neither began nor ended with
Parsons, as we will see. Lamo de Espinosa (2001) proposes a cycle of five
generations of thinkers that summarize the history of sociology. As the author
explains, this is not about generations in the strict sense as defined by Mannheim,
but in the broader sense of contemporaries who shared the same historical period.
These generations are the following: pioneers in the eighteenth century; founders
from the early to mid-nineteenth century; institutionalizers during the early twen-
tieth century; compilers in the mid-twentieth century; and finally constructivists
that currently overlap with other trends such as the return to grand theory or
postmodernism (Lamo de Espinosa 2001, p. 30). Parsons is located in the fourth
generation of this scheme, the so-called compilers, comprising scholars and
teachers who very consciously sought to make sociology a rigorous scientific
discipline, a science of society. To do so they try to find a synthesis or convergence
among the various currents of thought that went before them, whether conservative
or critical. Within this generation, two groups dominate: the group of conservative-
minded sociologists, with Parsons figuring as its head, and the authors involved in
the development of the critical theory of society, grouped together under the label
of the Frankfurt School. Both groups were influenced by the dramatic events that
shook the world in the early decades of the twentieth century, from the Russian
Revolution of 1917, to the emergence and growth of Nazism, to the First and
Second World Wars. Their main works were published around the 1940s, with
their influence extending to the 1960s and 1970s.
25.3.1 Socialization and Education
Among the authors of the generation that preceded Parsons, the institutionalizers
(according to the Lamo scheme), is the figure of Emile Durkheim, on whose work
Parsons relied for the development of his theory of the social system, which
includes the concept of socialization mentioned above. It is generally accepted
that around 1910 it was Durkheim who first used the term “socialization” in the
strict sense that it has since acquired when he spoke of the “social nature” and
“methodical socialization,” both themes reflected in his posthumous work. It was
however much earlier, in 1828, that the Oxford English Dictionary first carried the
verb socialize, from which socialization derives, and indeed in 1897, F. G. Giddings
wrote The Theory of Socialization.
In any case, it can be said that Durkheim was the earliest sociologist to show an
interest in childhood, though this is not so much due to childhood itself but rather
because it is the object of all social institutions and practices that revolve around
education, an issue that was a topic of special concern for him and to which he
devoted much of his work.
This does not mean that it is possible to find in the French thinker something akin
to a “sociology of childhood.” Rather, we find a general concept of the nature of
childhood developed within a pedagogical and moral discourse, suggesting peda-
gogical action aimed at overcoming a childlike nature, which is confusing, vague,
and too distant from the moral rectitude an adult should display. So Durkheim
comes to define education as a generational pressure on the child to internalize
certain physical, intellectual, and moral states, and to describe the role of the child
in the interaction that occurs during the educational process as a state of hypnotic
trance-like passivity.
768 L. Gaitán
Durkheim’s thinking on education is not a particular application of his socio-

logical categories nor an addition to his general sociology; it is a central and
indispensable part of his work, inasmuch as education acts to bond two central
concepts: the individual and society, and it is the necessary tool for the proper
reproduction of the social order. Durkheim was concerned about the loss of social
ties in modern society caused by the weakening of the processes of internalization
of morality. He believed that this decline could only be arrested through regulatory
processes that promote social integration (Usátegui 2003). His interest in educa-
tional action as an expression of the pressure that society exerts on the individual to
internalize its culture and rules follows logically, the idea being that such action
will produce, on average, a more social and “human” being. Moreover, this
educational task should begin early, because human beings are not born but made
insofar as they are integrated into society, i.e., they are socialized.
It is necessary that, as quickly as possible, (society) superimposes over the selfish and
asocial being just born another one, able to lead a moral and social life. This is essentially
the work of education. (Durkheim 1975, p. 54)
The socialization of new generations is needed because the constitutive charac-

teristics of human beings (as opposed to those of animals) make it impossible to
genetically transmit all the aptitudes required for social life. Education is thus the
means by which society prepares the minds of children for the essential conditions
of their own existence. Education aims to arouse in the child a number of physical,
intellectual, and moral states required in both society as a whole and the specific
environment that is specially designed for him (Durkheim 1975, pp. 52–53).
Durkheim insists on considering the educational process as a task of socializa-
tion in several of his texts. When he says that education is a methodical socializa-
tion of the younger generation, this refers to the two beings that exist within each of
us: first, the individual being (the mental states that relate only to ourselves and
private events), and second, the system of ideas, feelings, and customs that are
expressed in the group or different groups within which we are integrated (such as
religious beliefs, opinions, and moral practices; national or professional traditions;
and collective opinions of all kinds). This dual nature creates the need for social-
ization, which affects all of the parts that constitute the social being. The final
purpose of education is simply to develop that being (Durkheim 1976, p. 141).
Durkheim conceives of education as the action exerted by a generation of adults
over the younger generation who are not yet ready for social life. As such, we may
inquire as to which segments of the adult population are exerting an educational
function and thus are particularly involved in the socialization process. Here we
find that while in most theories the family appears to be the main socializing
agency, the French sociologist differs from this criterion. In Durkheim’s sociology,
the family is not an appropriate agent to carry out the important task of moral
education, precisely because of family warmth and affection. These characterize
the relationships within the family and preclude its effectiveness as a socializing
agent (Lamanna 2002). Durkheim feared that indulgence is the normal attitude of
parents, while education, as it involves the imposition of control over one’s own
desires and the child’s impulses, requires a kind of external authority, applied from
outside the family. Furthermore, if education is an essentially social function, the
State (as the representative of society) cannot stand aside. Rather, it must play
a major role in regard to the socialization of children in the norms and expectations
of society, as well as in formal intellectual learning. Finally, the family can only
partly satisfy the child’s need for knowledge regarding social life since it is unable
to offer a breadth of knowledge matching the facets of life he will probably have to
cope with as an adult.
According to Durkheim, school provides the child with a set of mental habits,
which vary from country to country, depending on period and social environment.
Therefore, the fundamental function of schools is to establish a particular culture as
authentic and legitimate and then ensure its systematic and continuous inculcation.
In consequence, educational practice is a methodical task of differential socializa-
tion according to the social structure, that is, depending on the diversity of historical
societies and specific social groups. This differential nature means that education
plays a dual role: homogenization and diversification. Homogenization is needed
because society cannot survive if there is not enough homogeneity among its
members, to which end education fixes the essential similarities required for
collective life in the soul of the child. Diversity is required because otherwise any
constructive collaboration would be impossible, so education ensures the persis-
tence of the diversity necessary for such end (Durkheim 1975, p. 52). On the other
hand, reinforcing the authoritarian aspect of his concept of education (and thus of
socialization), Durkheim goes so far as to state that pedagogical and educational
relationships are in fact relationships of domination:
When things are seen as they are and always have been, it becomes clear that all education
is an ongoing effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling, and acting to which he
would have not come spontaneously. (Durkheim 1978, p. 124)
From this domination emerges another function of educational practice: the

development of an unquestionable moral doctrine that imposes the legitimacy of
a particular culture or way of life. Moral education occupies a preponderant place
for Durkheim because in the context of increasing secularization within which his
work is produced, he tries to find rational substitutes for the religious notions so
long connected with moral ideas in order to then develop specific pedagogical
principles (Di Pietro 2004). There are three essential properties of this “secular-
ized” morality: first, the spirit of discipline (linked to the imperative of moral
rules); second, the collective interest and adherence to the social group; and third,
the autonomy of the moral agent. From these coordinates one can understand the
prominent role that Durkheim gives to education in his work on moral education.
In this sense, the teacher plays an important role, functioning as the embodiment
of culture and representing the meaning of knowledge. In the author’s words, the
teacher represents the body of a morally superior person: society (Durkheim 1975,
p. 71). In short, education must ensure that a child submits his impulses to the rule
of will. To obtain this result, the educator must be an authority for children, one
who derives moral ascendancy and power from the impersonal source he
770 L. Gaitán
represents (society). For the child, this educator is the closest manifestation of the
supremacy of duty and reason to which the child paradoxically must submit in
order to be free.
From the perspective of the current approach of social studies of childhood, the
role assigned to the child within the theoretical framework of Durkheim would be
heavily criticized, with the child in Durkheim’s work appearing as a passive being
that must, almost more than being socialized, be tamed practically by force. By
ignoring the conflicting aspects or interactive results that may arise out of the
learning process, the child is refused any role as a social agent. Instead, an edifice
of moral legitimacy is constructed to protect the dominant relationship the adult has
with the child. However, if attention is paid to the “omission” of the family in
Durkheim’s socialization model and how the role of the family in education is
subordinated to society (represented by the State through its educational institu-
tions), it can be concluded that Durkheim’s notion emphasizes socialization of
school because it is oriented toward life in society, while the family is the place of
individuality. Seen in a generous light, one may hence perceive a latent recognition
of the role of children in the public sphere, albeit subordinate, passive, and having
value only for their docility. Also, the cultural and historical context for school can
be read as an acknowledgment of childhood education as a product of dominant
social thought which, in turn, tends to produce the desired type of childhood.
However, this does not imply an inclination of Durkheim toward what would in
the future be known as constructivism in sociology.
25.3.2 Sources of Symbolic Interactionism
George Herbert Mead was a contemporary of Durkheim and therefore susceptible to

inclusion (following Lamo) in the group of the institutionalizers in the history of
sociological theory. Yet Mead was not a sociologist but a psychologist and
a philosopher. Furthermore, his main work (Mind, Self and Society) was not released
during the years in which he was active but at a later stage, published by his students
in 1934. Despite all this, as the founder of symbolic interactionism, Mead’s influence
in the field of sociology has never fallen below that which he has enjoyed in other
fields, including social psychology. Mead’s approach is at the opposite end of
functionalism as well as being interested in the study of social structure. In contrast,
symbolic interactionism is presented as a stream of subjectivism with
a microsociological orientation, which is occasionally the cause for the criticism
that his position is excessively constrained within the scope of intersubjectivity.
Interactionism proposes an open scheme of socialization in which trajectories of
social actions contain variables of a much more diverse and complex nature than
a simple choice between conformity and deviation. In Mead’s explanation of the
socialization process, children play a crucial role: although they are not social
agents comparable to adults, they are indeed agents in a procedural sense, as
manipulators of the group’s social acquis in their learning process toward social
life (Rodrı́guez 2007). Mead’s construction of the theory of formation of self
requires the concurrence of the child from the beginning, with the child being
actively involved in developing an awareness of self and other through a continuous
interactive process involving genuinely childlike types of activity that Mead
labeled game and play.
Quoting Claude Dubar, Tomasini (2010) comments that Mead was the first to
describe, in a coherent and reasoned manner, the socializing process as the con-
struction of the self through communicative interaction with others and the estab-
lishment of community and societal relationships between socializer and socialized.
The scheme of constitution of the person is anchored in a symbolic process to the
extent that symbols and signs structure behavioral rules. The child can give
meaning to its behavior after receiving the interpretations of others when they
react to the child’s actions. In this manner, the child is incorporating social attitudes
into its pool of experience which are at first particular, linked to significant others,
and gradually become generalized until they reflect the organized attitudes of the
social group. This process introduces organization in the person.
According to Mead, the child’s play, understood in the sense of representation
of roles, is an essential step in the process of building self-consciousness. Playing
is a social activity that presupposes a developed language (words, gestures,
actions) and some contact with the world of adults, especially parents. Through
the assumption of different roles when playing, the child pretends to be in another
role (mother, father, teacher) and enters and experiences that other’s world. From
this fundamental process, two decisive consequences for child development are
derived: the first is the experience of otherness, that is, the outside world as
a different reality, which is, for Mead, prior to the experience that children have
of themselves. The second is related: having the experience of the other, the child
sees himself, that is, he is “objectified” as separate from the world, hence becom-
ing a self. Through recreational activities, the child becomes conscious of others
and himself and also (and this would be a third aspect) develops a process of
unification of these different dimensions. This is what transforms the game into
a real instance and a means of developing relationships and sociability. For Mead,
the self is above all a social product and a reality essentially cognitive in nature
(Pinto 1997).
To explain the social development of the person, Mead (1957) argues that the
child, unlike the adult, is not yet organized but is fluctuating and changing. Thus,
the characteristic relational mode of early childhood is play, in which one role
succeeds another, and what is done at one time does not determine what will be
done on the following occasion. At this stage, the capturing of other individuals is
not yet generalized. In contrast, in the game, the different attitudes that a child
assumes are organized and this organization exerts control over his own actions.
The fundamental difference between the game and the play is that in the former, the
child has to take into account the attitude of all others who are involved in the game.
These attitudes to be taken into account are organized in a kind of unity and it is
hence the organization that controls the individual’s reaction. We then have an
“other,” which is an organization of the attitudes of those involved in the same
process (Mead 1957, p. 184).
772 L. Gaitán
In the game (that is the organized group game, as occurs, for example, in sport),
the child has to relate to others and understand the rules of the game. Through his
participation, he attains an understanding of the rules he must accept and respect in
order to be accepted as a player. Mead calls this the generalized other, equivalent to
generally accepted behavior within the community, where attitudes of others are
taken and incorporated in the individual. This generalized other can be seen as the
norm in a social group or situation. In this way the individual understands what
behavior is expected and appropriate in different social situations. The family, the
baseball team, school, and society are examples of social situations through which
the child gradually develops understanding of the rules of behavior.
Mead (1982) says that the organized community or social group that gives the
individual his unity of person can be called the generalized other. The attitude of
the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community. It is in the form of
generalized other that social processes influence the behavior of the individuals
involved in them, that is, it is in this way that the community exercises control over
the behavior of its individual members, because in this manner the social process or
community enters as a determining factor in the individual’s thinking (Mead 1982,
pp. 184–185).
The “me” is an entity that designates the control system of the behavior
constructed by the child in adopting toward himself the expectations of the gener-
alized other. The individual may regulate his participation in social actions because
he has experienced himself in the roles of others involved in the common activity.
Such incorporation of the attitudes of the social group leads to the development of
organization in the person. Combining all these series of organized attitudes
provide his “me,” which is the person he is aware of being.
In short, the explanation proposed by Mead for the process of the emergence of
self and the ability to look at oneself as an object takes childhood as a key stage.
Mead points out that almost from the moment of birth, human nature is social and
not merely biological, but this is useless if not activated with the experience of
interaction. The prolonged dependency of the child is the proper ground for those
first experiences to facilitate the emergence of the self and the individual. However,
Mead rejects the view that this is achieved through a process of imitation of
behavior, instead positing a more complex development that includes two different
stages. These stages, named play and game, are successive and move from lesser to
greater complexity. The result of this process is the internalization of the social,
where the subject incorporates social control and the gaze of others in the form of
generalized other.
Although Mead’s interpretation of child development does not reject the idea of
social control and the necessary adjustment of the individual to the social order,
what stands out is the active role of the child in the process of gathering information
and interpreting that order through relationships with others and the progressive use
of symbolic tools that become available. Consequently, it may be assumed that
Mead’s approach is far more acceptable from the point of view of shared focus for
the new social studies of childhood than the functionalist or direct precedent
approach seen in Durkheim’s ideas on education.
Thus, it is not uncommon to find ideas inspired by Mead in the new sociology of
childhood, either directly or through Mead’s influence on other notable sociologists
who have in turn influenced sociologists of childhood. On the other hand, one of the
most common criticisms of symbolic interactionism has been that it attributes too
much autonomy to the individual (oversocialization) and underestimates the coer-
cive power of the structure. This critique could also be made by the new sociology
of childhood, due to the somewhat linear nature of Mead’s proposals and his
assessment of a context that does not go beyond the primary institutions and the
closest environments of everyday life, disregarding the global structural level.
25.3.3 Current Trends
Returning to the five generations of influential authors that are guiding us through
this review of the place of children in the concept and description of the socializa-
tion process, according to Lamo, the 1960s and 1970s signposted a turning point in
twentieth century sociology that allows the distinction of two main periods. The
first, running from the Second World War to the intellectual crisis of 1968, is
marked by the contrast between sociological right and left. The second opens up
a very different and still incomplete path, which instead of a polarization between
two schemes, presents itself as divided into a plurality of orientations, schools, and
styles. This new path includes, first, constructivism.
In contemporary constructivism, it is considered that what matters is not so much
to capture reality as it is and describe how things are (if they can be in some way),
but how they are interpreted, understood, or constructed by the actors. Therefore,
the key is not the “objective situation” but the (subjective) “definition of the
situation.” This represents a shift in focus from the form of producing reality to
the ways of interpreting that reality, and it is due to a change in the underlying
philosophical orientation in both models. In the previous stage, both Marxist and
functionalist visions shared a somewhat Darwinian thought process based on the
need for reconciliation between man and his environment. The new sociologists,
however, think about the world with the homology of communicating rather than
producing, considering that social order rests on the exchange of messages rather
than the production and exchange of objects. Reality is conceived of as a world of
symbols and representations. The task of social science is to deconstruct these
representations, to analyze how they come about and how they create and produce
reality (Lamo de Espinosa 2001, p. 39).
Second, the clear contrast between the equally powerful realisms of the com-
pilers and the constructivists led in the 1980s and early 1990s to a vivid debate
between micro and macro, nominalism and realism, explanation and understanding,
which has proven very fruitful in the construction of sociological theory. The
outcome of this debate has been a return to a kind of grand theory, whose major
reference works (according Lamo de Espinosa) were published between 1979 and
1984 and were authored by Pierre Bourdieu, J€ urgen Habermas, Nicklas Luhmann,
Anthony Giddens, and James Coleman. However, apart from a shared time period,
774 L. Gaitán
it is difficult to find any unity among these texts beyond the search for a global and
comprehensive analytical framework for sociology, that is, beyond their theoretical
ambition. While everyone tries to build bridges between the two dualisms inherited
from previous generations, notably in terms of the tension between structures and
actions, each author assigns different weights to each party in the relationship.
The third current trend of sociology mentioned by Lamo de Espinosa refers to
the postmodern, which occupies a location beyond the traditional and the modern.
Lamo explains that through continued use of the prefix post, contemporary sociol-
ogists seek to establish a new line of demarcation. The implication is that we are
beyond modern societies, facing a new and unforeseen change representing
a second modernization, a modernization of modernity – a reflexive modernization,
according to Beck. In short, we can say that the constructivists, the new social
theorists, and theorists of the postmodern are not three contemporary generations.
Rather, they are one and the same, albeit focused around three different research
programs: critical deconstruction of social order, creation of a social theory, and
unraveling of the mystery of postmodernity (Lamo de Espinosa 2001, p. 42).
As in previous generations, while the term socialization is commonly used in the
most recent sociological literature, its in-depth treatment, definition, or redefinition
is not so common among the various influential theorists. To end this chapter we
have selected three contemporary authors who do go into some depth on the term.
They are Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann as representatives of constructiv-
ism, and Anthony Giddens as a member of the group of authors who initiated the
return to grand theory. In addition to these authors, we review the implicit rather
than the explicit socialization concept that can be found in two other apparently
influential (or at least relatively frequently cited) authors for academics writing on
the new sociology of childhood, J€ urgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu.
25.3.4 Social Construction of Reality
The social construction of reality, first published in 1966 and authored by Berger
and Luckmann, represents a synthesis of critical Marxism, symbolic interactionism,
and phenomenology schools, whose influence is clearly visible in their citations.
The issue of socialization is greatly important to these authors since it is related
with one of the pillars of their theoretical position, that of internalization. Internal-
ization is the third stage in a continuous dialectical process that starts with exter-
nalization (the human being has to externalize himself continuously through
activity; social order becomes a human product created over the course of this
externalization), which leads to objectivation (the process by which the external-
ized products of human activity attain the character of objectivity), and ends with
internalization (by way of which the objectivated social world is retrojected into
consciousness), which happens, precisely, during socialization. These three dialec-
tical moments share a fundamental relationship in social reality, each
corresponding to an essential characterization of the social world. Thus, according
to Berger and Luckmann’s well-known thesis, Society is a human product. Society
is an objective reality. Man is a social product (Berger and Luckmann 1978, p. 84).
Only through the transmission of the social world to a new generation, as occurs in
socialization, does the fundamental social dialectic appear in its totality.
To begin, we can say that these authors define socialization as the comprehen-
sive and coherent introduction of an individual to the objective world of a society,
or a particular sector of that world. The individual experiences an early form of
socialization during childhood (primary socialization), thereby becoming a member
of society (Berger and Luckmann 1978, p. 166). Internalization is the basis for
primary socialization, first for understanding others similar to the individual, and
second for the individual’s apprehension of the world as a meaningful and social
reality. Secondary socialization is any subsequent process that introduces already
socialized individuals to new sectors of the objective world. Primary socialization is
usually the most important stage, and all secondary socialization should resemble it
in terms of basic structure. Primary socialization involves more than purely cogni-
tive learning, but takes place in the context of a huge emotional burden.
Primary socialization cannot occur without a child’s identification with its
significant others, who mediate reality for all purposes. By means of that identifi-
cation with others, the child becomes able to identify himself. This is not
a unilateral mechanical process. It involves a dialectic between self-identification
and the identification that others make, between identity subjectively assumed and
that which is objectively attributed (Berger and Luckmann 1978, p. 167). For
Berger and Luckmann, even if the child may not be a passive spectator in the
process of socialization, it is adults who dictate the rules of the game. The child may
participate in this game with enthusiasm or reluctance, but unfortunately no other
game is available. This has an important corollary. As the child is not involved in
the choice of its significant others, he identifies with them almost automatically.
The child does not internalize the world of his significant others as one of many
possible worlds, he internalizes it as “the only existing and conceivable world”
(1978, p. 171).
It is clear that socialization inevitably involves some kind of biological frustra-
tion. This is manifested especially in primary socialization, by the resistance of
children to certain impositions for social molding. Nonetheless, socialization offers
the reward of a place in the social world that is apprehended as the significant reality
by means of the socialization process.
With an idea taken directly from Mead, Berger and Luckmann claim that
primary socialization creates in the child’s consciousness a progressive abstraction
from the roles and attitudes of specific others to roles and attitudes in general. This
abstraction of the roles and attitudes of significant others is called (as in Mead) the
generalized other (Berger and Luckmann 1978, p. 169), and so the individual
identifies not only with specific others, but with a generality of others, that is,
a society. When the generalized other has crystallized in consciousness,
a symmetrical relationship is established between objective and subjective reality.
Berger and Luckmann also acknowledge historical and cultural variations in the
forms of socialization programs, hence arguing that the specific internalized content
in primary socialization will vary from one society to another. It is mostly, they say,
776 L. Gaitán
language that needs to be internalized and, through that language, various motiva-
tional and interpretive schemes. These schemes provide the child with institution-
alized programs for everyday life, at the same time establishing the difference
between the child’s own identity and the identity of other children who play other
roles. Berger and Luckmann also believe that there is great variability in the
sociohistorical definition of the learning stages. These stages are socially defined,
establishing what is to be learned at each age. This means in turn a certain social
recognition of growth and biological differentiation. Finally, they say, the nature of
primary socialization is also affected by requirements regarding the amount of
knowledge that must be transmitted.
For Berger and Luckmann, the process of primary socialization ends when the
concept of the generalized other has been established in the individual’s con-
sciousness. However, this raises two new problems: how to maintain awareness of
internalized reality and how to achieve secondary socializations at a later stage in
the individual’s life. Although not expressly stated by the authors, it is apparent
that those individuals involved in secondary socialization processes are also
children. This is the logical conclusion of Berger and Luckmann’s discourse,
maintaining that the transition from primary to secondary socialization is accom-
panied by certain rituals in most societies, or when teachers are mentioned as
institutional officials with the formal task of transmitting specific knowledge.
As Berger and Luckmann affirm, consistency is required between initial and
novel internalizations, but there are also differences between the two. Biological
constraints become less important in the learning sequences. Most secondary
socialization can occur without the emotional identification of the child with their
significant others. While the child internalizes the world of his parents as “the”
world, Berger and Luckmann insist that some of the crises that occur after primary
socialization will have their roots in the recognition that the world of one’s parents
is not the only one that exists, but is in fact a world with a specific social location,
perhaps even with pejorative connotations. Secondary socialization is also much
less inevitable, that is, the possibility of choice is more likely. In summary, in the
stage of secondary socialization the family declines as agent of socialization.
Berger and Luckmann believe that socialization always occurs in the context of
a specific social structure. Both its content and its degree of “success” have
sociostructural conditions and consequences. Successful socialization means
establishing a high degree of symmetry between objective and subjective reality.
Conversely, “deficient socialization” is understood to be a function of the asym-
metry between objective and subjective reality. Deficient socialization may have
various causes, including different institutions or socializing agents and discrepan-
cies between primary and secondary or family and peer group socialization
processes, among others.
Interactionist influence is evident in Berger and Luckmann’s approach to social-
ization. However, it also may be observed that they are working on a scheme that
has similarities with that of Parsons. There is an identification between primary
socialization and early childhood. Furthermore, the “child” appears as a universal
category, at the service of the consistency (and construction) of a theory of social
construction of reality. However, we must also recognize notable differences from

the functionalist approach.
As a tributary of interactionism, Berger and Luckmann’s theory recognizes in
the child an ability to be an active subject in the process of socialization, although it
is admitted that it is not the child who runs the game, since he is unable to choose his
significant others or the means by which to circumvent their influence. Rather, by
the ties of affection established with these others, the child is strongly linked to and
identified with them. However, unlike Mead, the theory does not consider the child
as having a social nature practically from birth, maintaining instead that only after
having passed the stage of primary socialization does the child become a member of
society.
The existence of changing elements in socialization programs is also recognized,
these being attributed mainly to cultural factors, although they are attributed only in
passing to the existence of a class structure that entails different socialization
programs. When Berger and Luckmann provide examples of the secondary social-
ization of children, they seem to give them a role that is to some extent independent
of the exclusive influence of significant others. It can be inferred that this secondary
socialization happens when the child enters into contact with other agents of
socialization, or institutional mediators. In Berger and Luckmann’s theory, conflict
is also recognized, and the protagonists are the subjects in the process of socializa-
tion. This may be due to conflict between their spontaneous tendencies and the rules
that they must accept, or to discrepancies between primary and secondary social-
ization, or, finally, to the various opportunities they may encounter in the course of
such secondary socialization.
25.3.5 An Integrational Approach
The British sociologist Anthony Giddens is the author of an extensive body of work that
has covered many of the issues that most concerned and interested politicians, social
scientists, and the general public during the latter third of the last century, ranging from
political practice to globalization. However, it can be said that his main contribution to
sociological theory lay in his efforts to integrate structure and action through his theory
of structuration, which Giddens began to introduce during the 1970s but explained in its
fullest form in his book The Constitution of Society, published in 1984.
Giddens’ theory of structuration is the result of a rethinking of the fundamental
problems of sociological theory. The author formulates this theory as a conceptual
framework that serves to show that agents produce, reproduce, and transform
society through social practices (Andrade 1999). Thanks to contact between the
large and dense European tradition of social thought and the critical and renovating
antifunctionalism impulse of American sociology, Giddens was able to base his
structuration theory on three conceptual areas: a radical review of the constituent
approaches of sociological theory, a systematic critique of Parsons’ functionalism,
and the recovery and reprocessing of the analytical contributions of the various
“microsociological” American trends. The articulation of these three analytical
778 L. Gaitán
axes also rested on convergence with the hermeneutic tradition and the overcoming
of positivism from the new philosophy of science (Andrade 1999, p. 129). As
a result, Giddens’ theory is extremely eclectic, with the author summarizing its
essence when he states that the basic domain of study of the social sciences is
neither the experience of the individual actor nor the existence of any form of social
totality, but social practices ordered across time and space (Giddens 1984, p. 2). For
Giddens, action and structure are inextricably linked in any human activity or
practice.
The coincidence in time between the work of Giddens and the emergence of the
new sociology of childhood means one finds many points of agreement in their
theoretical assumptions. This is natural when one considers that both are influenced
by similar trends of thought and affected by the same events and social changes,
sharing as they do the same time frame and interpretation of social reality. Some-
thing similar happens with the vision of socialization that Giddens presents in his
handbook of sociology (Giddens 2000). This work contains aspects that explicitly
break with former interpretations of socialization, containing explanations that are
instead closer to the views outlined in the new sociology of childhood and its
implicit notion of socialization.
Giddens defines socialization as the process by which a defenseless creature
gradually becomes a person conscious of itself, knowledgeable and skilled in the
manifestations of the culture in which it was born. He considers that socialization is
not a type of “cultural programming” by which the child passively absorbs the
influences it encounters. Rather, from the moment of birth, the child has needs or
demands that affect the behavior of those responsible for its care, meaning it can be
said the baby is an active being from the beginning (Giddens 2000, p. 52). The birth
of a child affects the lives of those who are responsible for its upbringing. They
have a new learning experience, meaning socialization brings together different
generations. Giddens rejects the idea that socialization consists merely of
conforming to preset molds that society has prepared for us. On the contrary, he
thinks that socialization is also the origin of our own individuality and freedom. In
the course of socialization, each individual develops a sense of identity and the
ability to think and act independently.
Giddens adopts an evolutionary perspective to explain the early stages of child
development and believes that by so doing it is possible to better understand the
processes by which “the child becomes recognizable as ‘human’” (Giddens 2000,
p. 53). He thus begins with the initial development of the baby, about which he
states that most scholars believe that even newborns react in a selective manner
when facing their environment, in other words it can be said that all children are
born with the ability to make certain distinctions by means of perception and to
respond accordingly. Giddens then explains that, just as children respond selec-
tively to the environment, adults discriminate between patterns of child behavior,
assuming that they provide clues about what the child wants or needs. However, this
process involves deeply rooted cultural assumptions, a point Giddens illustrates by
referring to reactions of adults to babies crying or smiling, actions that are
interpreted according to the cultural norms of the society in question. Babies do
not have to learn to laugh, but they do have to learn when and where it is considered
appropriate to do so, according to those specific cultural patterns.
Giddens explains that the first months of a child’s life are also a learning period
for the mother. Mothers (and other caregivers, such as fathers or older children)
learn to receive the communication the baby transmits through its behavior and
respond in an appropriate manner. The baby will progressively be able to first
distinguish its mother (or other primary caregiver) from other people, then smile at
certain individuals (not indiscriminately), and finally develop attachment to its
mother or caregivers. For Giddens, the birth of love toward specific individuals
marks a fundamental threshold in socialization. The first relationship, usually
between mother and child, becomes something in which strong feelings are
invested, and from its base complex processes of social learning begin to develop.
The story of child development continues for Giddens with the formation of
social responses. The author believes that the relationship between the child, the
mother, and other caregivers changes toward the end of the first year of the baby’s
life. From the first year, games start to occupy much of the child’s life. In their
second and third years, children develop an increasing ability to understand the
interactions and emotions of other family members, so that when faced with
a disagreement, they will go to console whomever seems weaker or sadder.
Between the first year and the age of 4 or 5 is when the child learns discipline
and self-regulation. Among other things, this means learning to control physical
needs and address them appropriately. Around 5 years old the child has become
a practically autonomous being, almost independent in regard to the basic routines
of home life. The child is increasingly an individual, with a level of self-awareness,
which is one of the most distinctive characteristics of humans compared to other
animals. Although children do not begin to use concepts such as “I,” “me,” and
“you” until they are 2 years old or even later, they are slowly reaching an
understanding that others have an identity, an awareness, and needs different than
theirs (Giddens 2000, pp. 57–58).
In keeping with his developmental approach and with the overall purpose of his
work, Giddens devotes ample space to explaining, criticizing, and commenting on
the theories of child development, mainly those developed by the founder of
psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and by George Herbert Mead and Jean Piaget.
He considers that the work of these authors has been and remains a widespread and
profound influence on any interpretation of the evolutionary process of human
beings in their early stages of life. For Giddens, the approaches vary according to
the theoretical perspective adopted, in part because the major theories of child
development emphasize different aspects of socialization. Thus, Freud focused
primarily on how children manage to control their anxieties and on the emotional
aspects of child development. Mead, meanwhile, mainly considers how children
learn to use the concepts of “I” and “me.” Finally, the best known works of Piaget
deal with the issue of cognition, that is, how children learn to think about them-
selves and their environment.
Giddens believes that despite the great differences between the views of Freud,
Mead, and Piaget, one may develop an understanding of child development by
780 L. Gaitán
connecting their theories. For example, the three authors agree that in the first
months of life, a baby does not properly understand the nature of the objects and
people around it or that it has a separate and independent identity. Giddens supports
Freud’s assertion that how the anxieties that occur in this early period are dealt with,
particularly with respect to interaction with the mother and father, is important to
the further development of the personality. Giddens believes that it is likely that
children learn to be self-conscious beings throughout the process, proposed by
Mead, of differentiation between “self” and “me.” However, he also agrees with
Piaget’s argument that children who have achieved a sense of the ego retain
egocentric ways of thinking. Giddens concludes that the development of children’s
autonomy probably carries more emotional difficulties than Mead and Piaget seem
to believe, and it is precisely at this point that Freud’s ideas are particularly
relevant. Being able to cope with early anxieties can determine the extent to
which the child has a successful trajectory over the subsequent cognitive stages
marked by Piaget (Giddens 2000, p. 65).
For Giddens, although the cultural learning process (socialization) is much more
intense during childhood, learning and adaptation continue throughout the life
cycle. The life cycle consists of a set of phases, both social and biological in nature,
that the human being passes through from childhood to old age. At all stages,
individuals are influenced by the cultural and material circumstances of the society
in which they live, and that is why individual development needs to be understood
within a broader social context. From this perspective, Giddens describes the
meaning of childhood and adolescence as the first stages of the human life cycle.
In his conception, childhood is the time between leaving the cradle and beginning
adolescence. He appeals to the famous work of Philippe Ariès (Centuries of
Childhood) in order to reason that the concept of childhood, like so many aspects
of our social life today, did not emerge until the last two or three centuries. He adds
that because of the length of the period that we now consider to be “childhood,”
modern societies are somehow more “child-centered” than traditional ones. Both
having children and childhood itself have become more distinct phases than was the
case in traditional communities. He notes, however, that this does not mean that the
children have a better deal or are in better conditions; it also means that the position
of children in society is being eroded as a result of changes taking place in modern
society, noting almost in passing that the fast growth of children means the
distinctiveness of childhood is disappearing (Giddens 2000, p. 68).
With respect to the adolescence life stage, Giddens points out that this is also
a relatively recent concept. Although the biological changes of puberty are sup-
posed to be universal, cultural components create significant differences in the
manner in which the transition to adulthood takes place. Giddens believes that for
adolescents living in traditional societies, this process is usually simpler than for
adolescents in modern societies, since the latter have to “unlearn” being children,
find a “middle way” between childhood and maturity, and grow in a society subject
to continuous change.
In short, we can say that Anthony Giddens does not raise any specific theory of
socialization but rather describes it using the texts or research results of other
authors. However, from his selection and criticism of these works, it is possible to
form an idea of his own concept of socialization, which appears to be an interactive
process (interactional) in which the child has an active role from the very moment
of birth. Such a process is also strongly influenced by prevailing cultural practices
in each particular society and varies historically.
25.3.6 Socialization and Communicative Action
J€urgen Habermas is considered a follower of critical theory, represented in its day

by sociologists of the Frankfurt School. Habermas’ comments on socialization are
scattered throughout his writings, from the earliest to the intermediate and latest.
While Habermas has never formulated a theory of socialization, he has used the
concept from various perspectives and in relation to various problems. As noted
by Borman (2011), from his early interest in the protest potential of the youth
movements to his most recent interest in the development of moral consciousness
and ego identity, a certain developmental conception of socialization has come to
be a crucial element of Habermas’ critical theory. In this sense, Habermas is no
different from other prominent sociological theorists, such as those on whom we
comment in this chapter, in the sense that he shares a point of view that ignores the
active role (potential or actual) of children in the socialization process. Habermas
focuses on the socializing institution (mainly family) at the expense of child
subjects in his review and critique of the theory of action in Parsons (to whose
work Habermas assigns a benchmark value due to its level of abstraction on both
a theoretical and a systematic scale) and in the rest of his most characteristic
central work in which he developed his theory of communicative action
(Habermas 1987).
In this famed theory, Habermas proposes a model to analyze society as two
forms of rationality that are simultaneously in play: substantive rationality of the
lifeworld and formal rationality of the system. The lifeworld represents an internal
perspective, i.e., the point of view of the subjects who act in society, while the
system represents the external perspective, which includes the society from the
perspective of the observer. For Habermas the lifeworld and communicative action
are complementary concepts. What is more, communicative action can be consid-
ered as occurring within the lifeworld. Habermas considers that the lifeworld has
three functions that are critical to sustaining societies. These functions are embed-
ded in the three communicative aspects of speech-acts: first, the functional aspect of
understanding, maintaining tradition and serving to renew cultural knowledge;
second, the coordination of aspect action, serving social integration and creation
of solidarity; and finally, the aspect of socialization, serving the formation of
personal identities. These three aspects correspond to the three structural compo-
nents of society, that is, culture, society, and personality. In this context, Habermas
explains that socialization of members of a lifeworld ensures that new situations
that occur in the dimension of historical time are connected with the existing state
of the world, that is, it ensures that subsequent generations acquire generalized
782 L. Gaitán
skills of action and guarantees that individual lives will be in tune with collective
ways of life. In this manner, interactive capacities and personal lifestyles are
measured by the individual’s capacity to take responsibility for his actions
(Habermas 1982, pp. 200–201).
From Habermas’ point of view, the lifeworld and the system evolve toward
greater rationalization. However, this rationalization takes different forms in each
of these areas and that difference constitutes the basis for the colonization of the
lifeworld by part of the system. Habermas’ perspective is that today we see
a growing divergence between lifeworld and system; they have been “decoupled.”
This decoupling, which Habermas identifies as characteristic of modernity, also
affects the family as a socializing institution in relation to its younger (specifically
adolescent) members. In fact, the author’s concern with respect to changes in the
socialization process within families is made clear in the final chapter of his book,
Theory of Communicative Action, in which he reviews the complex issues that
occupied the focus of the first critical theory with the stated aim of showing how
some of these concerns can be reviewed today. According to Habermas (1987,
p. 537), the first critical theory considered that subsumption of socialized individ-
uals under the dominant pattern of social controls had to be studied elsewhere: in
the family, which as an agent of socialization prepares subjects for the requirements
of the occupational system, and also in the political-cultural space, where mass
culture orients toward obedience. Thus, followers of the first critical theory search
for “structural change of the bourgeois family,” which may involve the weakening
of parental authority and the presence of subjects undergoing socializing experi-
ences outside the context of family.
In his rereading of socialization in light of the events that characterize society
decades later, Habermas points out that in the previous model, the family was seen
as the agency through which systemic imperatives interfered in the destinies of
impulses, but their internal communication structure was not taken seriously.
Habermas believes that empirical indicators now suggest a fragmentation of the
nuclear family, meaning that socialization processes are met through deinstitu-
tionalized consensual action (Habermas 1987, p. 548). A polarization between
communicatively structured and formally organized domains of action can be
observed in families and their environments, placing socialization processes
under different conditions and exposing them to a different kind of risk. Commu-
nication structures within the family represent more “demanding” and at the same
time more “vulnerable” socialization conditions. Thus, in the case of adolescence,
problems of family separation and formation of self-identity turn youth develop-
ment in modern societies into a critical test of the ability of a generation to connect
with the subsequent one. But if the conditions of family socialization are not
synchronized with those of membership organizations that the child will one day
have to satisfy, the problems to be resolved in adolescence will become increas-
ingly intractable for a growing number of young adults. A symptom of this,
according to Habermas, is the social and even political importance of cultures of
protest and youth disenchantment.
This change of situation cannot be addressed with the old theoretical procedures.
For Habermas, it is the socializing interaction that must constitute the benchmark
for analysis of ego development (Habermas 1987, p. 550). In this sense, he
considers that the communicative action theory provides a framework for
reformulating the id, ego, and superego structural model. Habermas hence con-
cludes that the theory of impulses can be replaced by a theory of socialization that
links Freud with Mead, puts the structures of subjectivity in their rightful place, and
replaces the instinctual destinies hypothesis with a hypothesis concerning the
history of interaction and identity formation.
Habermas’ work is too complex to try to trace the ultimate meaning of his
thinking about the role of socialization in the context of this short essay. However,
we believe that this task would be worth carrying out in more detail, from the
perspective of a sociology of childhood that has its main supporting points in the
historical and structural character of childhood and in the active, not passive, role of
children in all life processes. We have emphasized two initial clues from Habermas’
work to allow this analysis: first, it is not possible to address new phenomena with
old theoretical tools (nor, we might add, merely with the criticism of old theories),
and the second relates to the issue of “socializing interaction,” which could permit
the analysis of the child as a subject in its own right.
25.3.7 Focusing on Habitus, Capital, and Field, from the Perspective

of Childhood
We now continue with the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,
recognized as one of the most imaginative and original postwar thinkers. The
conceptual arsenal of this author has unquestionably become one of the most
popular in current global sociology. His style of work has been to continuously
build a system of explanatory concepts regarding society that he himself then
forcefully applies to different fields: philosophy, art, consumption, male domina-
tion, economic discourse, and so on (Alonso 2002, p. 9). Despite the breadth and
complexity of his work, it cannot be said with accuracy that Bourdieu has
dedicated himself specifically to either the theory of socialization or the sociali-
zation of children. However, reading Bourdieu from the perspective of childhood
can be generally rewarding and undoubtedly useful in analyzing the social space
of childhood as well as the situations and lives of children. Especially significant
for this purpose are the three central concepts of Bourdieu’s work – habitus,
capital, and field – making it prudent to summarize the essence of these three
concepts.
Bourdieu defines habitus as a system of lasting and transferable dispositions,
structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as
principles that generate and organize practices and representations that can be
objectively adapted to their target without the actor consciously assuming any
purpose or aim or requiring express domination of the operations necessary to
784 L. Gaitán
achieve them, being objectively “regulated” and “regular” without being at all
the product of obedience to certain rules, and, for all this, collectively orches-
trated, without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor
(Bourdieu 2007, p. 86).
According to Giménez (1999, pp. 11–12), Bourdieu presents the genesis of habitus
as a process of inculcation of an arbitrary culture and as an incorporation of certain
conditions of existence. This suggests two ways of generating the habitus: inculcation
and incorporation. Inculcation is a pedagogical action performed within an institu-
tional space (family or school) by specialized agents, with authority to delegate using
arbitrary rules and disciplinary techniques. Incorporation, however, refers to the idea
of an internalization by the subjects of the regularities enrolled in their conditions of
existence. Bourdieu tends to favor one or the other of these perspectives in his
presentations of this genetic process, but he always insists on reciprocity. Furthermore,
in the formation of primary habitus within family education, the effect of the ongoing
inculcation of parental education also integrates previous conditions of existence
incorporated during the course of the parents’ lives. Conversely, experience is
acquired by confronting living conditions already informed by a system of objectified
and institutionalized meanings. Stimuli are presented as positive or negative because
the world of experience is already prestructured from a symbolic order. What
Bourdieu posits is a dialectic articulation between incorporation and inculcation,
between the institutional and the social world experience.
The concept of field is inseparable from that of habitus, as it is from that of
capital. While habitus is the result of the incorporation of social structures by means
of “internalizing the externality,” field would be the product of “exteriorization of
interiority,” that is, institutional materializations of a system of habitus developed
in a previous phase of the sociohistorical process. In a strict sense, field is defined –
like all social space – as a network or configuration of objective relations between
different positions, socially defined and largely independent of the physical exis-
tence of agents who occupy it (Bourdieu 1992, p. 72). It is therefore a sphere of
social life that has progressively become autonomous through history based around
certain kinds of social relations, with interests and resources of its own, different
from other fields.
According to Bourdieu, the type of resource (or the particular combination of
types of resource) that occurs and circulates within each field determines its
specificity. Despite their apparent diversity, these resources can be grouped into
three main categories: (1) resources of economic nature (where money plays
a preeminent role as a universal equivalent), (2) cultural resources (among which
school and university diplomas have become increasingly important), and (3) social
resources, consisting of the ability to mobilize, to one’s own benefit, extensive
social networks of greater or lesser reach, deriving from membership of different
groups or “clientele.” These resources are respectively named economic capital,
cultural capital, and social capital. Bourdieu also introduces a fourth kind of capital:
symbolic capital. It consists of certain impalpable, ineffable, and quasicharismatic
properties that seem inherent in the very nature of the agent. Such properties are, for
example, authority, prestige, reputation, credit, fame, notoriety, honorability, talent,
gift, taste, and intelligence. According to Bourdieu, symbolic capital understood in

this manner would be economic or cultural capital as recognized by others
(Giménez 1999, p. 15).
The fundamental analogy of the field would then be that of a market, but not
a horizontal market with conditions of perfect competition. In this case, the market
would be hierarchical, where different proportions of any type of capital guarantee
different social positions. But here lies the great contribution of Bourdieu in his
attempt to formulate a kind of generalized political economy: capital does not
merely derive from economic reason, and markets do not exist merely for material
goods, they also exist for all kinds of symbolic goods. Therefore, we find all the
aforementioned forms of capital in the market: economic (material), cultural (or
sets of skills produced by education systems), social (essentially the set of relation-
ships and networks of relationships possessed by an individual or group that can be
mobilized on their behalf), and symbolic (or sets of rituals, symbolic goods, honor,
and recognition conferring authority and generating social benefits and positive
appreciation) (Alonso 2002, p. 20).
Bourdieu argues that economic capital has a decisive and preponderant weight
among these forms, as witnessed throughout history. Moreover, equity in
a determined field is distributed unevenly, usually among the agents according to
the position they occupy. What we see in reality is a specific structure of capital
distribution which is variably concentrated or dispersed depending on the history of
the field under consideration and, therefore, according to the evolution of the
struggle to appropriate capital. From here, one can understand the relationship
between capital and power. The balance of power resulting from an unequal
distribution of capital is what defines the dominant and dominated positions within
a field and, therefore, the ability to exercise power and influence over others. In
other words, the mere fact of having economic and cultural assets is a source of
power over those who have less or none of the same assets. Finally, it can be noted
that even if relatively autonomous, fields always function against the background of
the social class structure, which in a way functions as the “field of fields.”
Whether considering the genesis of habitus, as in the formation of primary
habitus or in relation to the results of differences in cultural or social capital related
to class position that give rise to different positions of children as subjects in school
or in life, we can see that the theoretical contributions of Bourdieu impact on our
object of study. As Madelaine Leonard says:
While Bourdieu can be criticized for his failure to fully acknowledge use value and
childhood in his analysis, his concepts of agency, habitus, power and competence combined
with the insights provided by the new sociology of childhood could provide a framework
for potent understanding of the significance of social capital in the everyday lives of
children and its impact on childhood and adulthood. (Leonard 2005, p. 620)
In fact we can observe that it is not uncommon to find the use of these concepts
as a conceptual framework for the analysis and interpretation of certain aspects of
the lives of children in the literature of the new childhood studies (see, e.g., Morrow
1999, 2001).
786 L. Gaitán
25.4 Basis for a Redefinition of the Socialization Process in the

New Sociology of Childhood
As noted in the Introduction, since its inception the new sociology of childhood has had
a more empirical than a theoretical development. However, this should not be under-
stood as implying a lack of theoretical formulations, or a lack of interest in theory as
a foundation for research practice. In fact, one of the earliest and most widespread texts
of the current sociological approach to childhood is specifically entitled Theorizing
Childhood (James et al. 1999). This book naturally had the stated aim of theorizing on
the field of the study of childhood, taking into consideration the variety of previously
utilized approaches. It hence begins by reviewing the theoretical and explanatory
models of childhood that the authors consider pre-sociological, which are those that
have been part of the sociological tradition. At the same time, these have served to
inform contemporary scientific analysis and also the understanding of what constitutes
common sense in relation to children. After the models that the authors of the
aforementioned text describe as transitional (including the developmental and func-
tionalist socialization models), they begin to articulate the four ways that show the
awakening of the social theory of childhood, according to which the child becomes
“sociologically constituted.” These approaches are denominated “socially constructed
child,” “tribal child,” “minority group child,” and “social structural child.”
A little later, Mayall (2002) and Alanen (2003) reduced these four typologies to
three types. The first, “sociology of children,” takes as its starting point the idea that
children deserve to be studied for themselves and from their own perspectives. The
child is seen as an agent engaged in the daily construction of knowledge and
experience, the typology attaching particular importance to the views of children
themselves. The second is the “deconstructive sociology of childhood.” Here,
deconstruction is considered necessary to remove the discursive power of conven-
tional ideas of childhood in society. The third perspective is that of the “structural
sociology of childhood,” within which childhood is seen as a permanent feature and
part of the social structure of modern societies, as well as a “structure” in itself,
comparable and similar, for example, to class or gender.
From our point of view (Gaitán 2006a, b), the first of the above types mentioned
by Alanen and Mayall is more practical than theoretical, as in reality the umbrella
of “sociology of children” covers the various studies, undertaken mainly in Britain,
that involve research focusing on the position and views of children. However, we
can consider that the proposal developed by Mayall of a relational theory of
childhood is a variant of this approach, while already pointing to some theorizing
proposal that will gradually become more present in the new sociology of child-
hood. Mayall’s proposal also includes some influence of the structural approach,
but also introduces two aspects that other authors also emphasize: children’s
ongoing relationships with their social environment and the relationship between
theory of age and gender theory.
Indeed, there are other authors who have attempted a theoretical formulation of
the sociology of childhood, seeking to give coherence to the common premises and
identify the link between alternative orientations already mentioned (basically
trying to connect the micro- to the macrodimension). Those authors also seek to
apply the generally available great social theories to the study of childhood. With
reference to American sociology, Shanahan (2007) comments that the basic scheme
is simpler than the European one as it reduces theories on childhood to only two
broad categories: (1) childhood as a social construction created and affected by
contextual factors (macroanalysis) and (2) social construction created in part by
children and thus never fully understood without studying children themselves
(microanalysis).
In any case, despite the diversity, the majority of aforementioned sociological
approaches share a number of common features, including the following: they are
more globally than individually oriented; they are aimed more at studying the
typical conditions that are normal and common for most children than the situations
of children who are particularly arduous or conflictive; they maintain a skeptical
and critical position toward conventional ideas of socialization and developmental
theory; and they are connected to changing patterns over time, with respect to being
a child in the context of relationships between children and adults, and in the way in
which modernization affects each party.
Meanwhile, distinctions are found in the different emphasis that each theory
places on the role of children as actors and coconstructors of childhood, or on
childhood as a permanent and stable component of the social structure. This is
a difference that links to the debate between structure and agency that was long
considered the basic issue of modern social theory and involves the selection and
application of different methodological tools. While some sociologists believe that,
in general, the diversity of approaches is positive because a theoretical and meth-
odological pluralism corresponds to the pluralism of social reality (Beltrán 1991),
within the sociology of childhood there are also authors who think that one of the
main challenges for childhood researchers today is to find ways to begin to truly
integrate these different approaches. This is the case for James (2010), who pro-
poses a model to reconceptualize studies of childhood which links the different
positions, making them necessary and interdependent components of the same field.
Yet the issue of the future of what used to be called the new sociology of
childhood, or current multidisciplinary studies of childhood, is not limited to
solving the problem of integrating structure and action. There is also the question
of how to integrate the sociology of childhood into general sociology and social
theory. It is at this point that the main issue driving this chapter, i.e., the socializa-
tion of children, returns to the fore. This is because socialization remains a key
concept in general sociology, while socialization of children is at the same time
a field of social construction of childhood and thus should be a central theme in
studies of childhood, as noted by Honig (2011).
At this point one wonders on what basis the sociology of childhood might rely
in order to formulate a concept of socialization that could integrate socialization
into the basic scheme of its theoretical model, by picking the best and most
favorable for children from both the older and the modern theories of socializa-
tion. Should we choose one of the approaches described above? Would the prior
integration of models, as advocated by James, be necessary? Is there already
788 L. Gaitán
some concept that serves the purpose of socialization? From our point of view,
the answer is yes to the last question. A concept does exist that for various reasons
has become a key element in the sociology of childhood, especially in structural
and relational approaches. This concept is generation. One of the reasons gener-
ation has become a key element is that it allows the empirical linking of children
with childhood. Another reason is that the notion of generation is relational in the
sense that it allows the establishment of comparisons, continuities, and breaks
from one generation to another. Moreover, the theory of generations serves as the
basis for a sociology of age, within which also fit a sociology of youth and
a sociology of aging.
The word generation is conventionally used in everyday language with different
meanings; it is also frequently used with descriptive purposes in social research.
Thus, the fact that generations exist and that children are a generational group are
ideas that have probably been more implicit than explicit in the studies undertaken
in the name of the new sociology of childhood. However, only a few years after the
appearance of the first texts referring to the new sociology of childhood, the subject
of generations has received some specific treatment among scholars in the field.
A book published in 2003 (Mayall and Zeiher 2003) addressed the debate on the
different notions of generation and the meaning of the term in the context of the new
social studies of childhood. The book features a revival of Mannheim’s ideas
regarding what he called “the problem of generations.” Moreover, it rethinks the
idea of generation as a system of relationships between adults and children and
seeks to establish the idea of a generational order similar to the one that gives rise to
the class system or gender system, both used by sociologists to talk about social
structure. Finally, the concept of generation in its anthropological dimension is
taken into account along with the identity formation of children as a sociocultural
generation.
In every case, except in the context of the structural approach (which includes
the simultaneous presence of three generational groups in the shape of children,
adults, and senior citizens), the perspective of the new sociology of childhood
seems to be restricted to a dualistic approach (adult-children). In this manner, the
opportunity is missed to see long cycles of three or more generations in depth,
following one another, transmitting or sharing experiences with each other, or
confronting or allying at a given moment. Also lost is the ability to connect with
other recent sociologies based on population groups identified according to age, as
stated. However, if one accepts that the social phenomenon of childhood is mainly
a generational phenomenon, it is necessary to understand the specific generational
structures within which children live today and those generated in their childhoods.
This calls for more attention, more studies, and more effective conceptual and
methodological tools.
In terms of methodology, generational analysis proves to be a useful tool in the
study of childhood as it allows the study of the position of children compared with
other generations, offers an account of the changes that have been experienced over
time, or reveals the differences that occur within a given generation of children
(Gaitán 2006a). This can be seen in Fig. 25.1, which represents the succession of
Historic time
Social situation
Generation F
Historic time Generation E

Social situation
Generation D
Generation C
Generation B
Generation A
Analysis of
a generation
Comparison between generations
Relationship between generations
Fig. 25.1 Keys for generational analysis
generations. In each historical or social situation, it is considered that several

generations coincide. In the figure, the overlapping generations are simplified into
three, corresponding to a child, adult, and elderly life cycle. Also reflected in the
chart are the dimensions that may be considered in the analysis. This would be
composed of at least the following: (a) analysis of the internal characteristics of
a generation; (b) comparison between the characteristics of the current generation
with a generation of the same age but from an earlier stage, historical moment, or
situation; and (c) relationship between the generations, at the micro- or macrolevel.
In this framework, socialization can be understood as a process of interaction
between children and adults (and older adults) who share the same historical time
period. in this context, socialization means contact and exchange between things
already experienced (from the side of adults) and things being experienced (by
children who are amassing new individual identities), but it also involves new
forms of social relations. In this way there are changes in institutions (family,
school, State) due to the action of the actors, and changes in the role of the “child,”
increasingly represented by different children. At the same time, and in line with the
proposal of Corsaro, we are referring to the socialization that children themselves
are developing in relationships with their peers and with significant adults via
790 L. Gaitán
interpretive reproduction. These processes are what endow a particular generation

of children with its particular character, which in turn can be compared to other
child generations, contemporaneous or historical. Finally, the succession of gener-
ations can explain the characteristics of permanence and change that can be
observed in any present or past child generation.
While it is true that a generational approach is inherently relational because it
must somehow concern relationships between generations, a specifically rela-
tional theory also has sufficient elements to become the necessary foothold to
articulate the sociology of childhood, and to include therein the issue of sociali-
zation. In a recent work, Alanen (2012) proposes a turn to relationality, bringing
to mind a fragment of the work of Jenks (1982), where the British sociologist
argues that the relationship between the child and the adult is a necessity in theory
and in common sense. This is because the children cannot be imagined except in
relation to a conception of the adult. Interestingly, though, it also becomes
impossible to produce a well-defined sense of the adult and his society without
first positing the child.
Having completed the review of the background, emergence, and different
trends in the sociology of childhood, Alanen proposes a “structural-relational
sociology of childhood” that would connect with a “relational turn” in the social
sciences, such as that defended by Donati (2010) and Crossley (2011), as well as be
inspired by relational sociology as Pierre Bourdieu. The suggested structural-
relational sociology appears to be connected with the concept and idea of genera-
tion. So Alanen writes that “childhood is a position (a social space) within a socially
generated generational structure,” and that the research focus of this sociology
would be “the generational (relational) within which practices co-construct chil-
dren: themselves as ‘children’ and their relational counterparts as ‘parents’,
‘teachers’. . .”.
25.5 Summary
This chapter is only an initial approach to the subject of socialization and its
relationship with social studies of childhood in general and with the sociology of
childhood in particular. Upon investigation of this area, the importance of social-
ization in advancing the development and consolidation of a sociology of childhood
that operates as an independent sociological subdiscipline (but remains connected
to the mainstream of contemporary sociology) has become ever clearer. Moreover,
reconceptualizing socialization in a manner properly linking it to the aims and
objectives it shares with the new social studies of childhood would prove useful for
research in various fields of knowledge related to childhood and the lives of
children. We consequently advocate that the path begun in this chapter be continued
in the future within the context of social studies of childhood.
While we began by referring to the criticism of the conventional theory of
socialization, a criticism that has come to be almost a hallmark of the new sociology
of childhood, we then endeavored to present (within the limits dictated by the need
for brevity in a work of this nature) the most significant of the theories of social-
ization produced both before and after the functionalist paradigm.
We have found that while most theories of socialization focus on the processes
that take place within a specific explanation of reality or social order rather than on
children, they do include sufficient elements to make it is possible to successfully
connect them to the basic assumptions that underpin the current sociology of
childhood. Within this framework, we have shown that the concepts of generation
and intergenerational relations can provide a solid foundation for the progress of
both the sociology of childhood and its connection with general sociological theory.
It must however be acknowledged that in the task of recovering the concept of
socialization, the sociology of childhood struggles to reconcile the social with the
biological and psychological as interlocking factors that shape both the condition of
being a child and the constructed reality of childhood.
The ideas discussed here relate to child well-being in several respects. First, they
attempt to make a particular contribution to this multidisciplinary field of study.
Furthermore, they may represent a further step along the way toward a “conceptual
emancipation of children,” as stated by Qvortrup some years ago. The aim is to
change the position of the child in the theory of socialization, from merely instru-
mental to active, reflecting the real role of children as they interact with others and
contribute to the social construction of both reality and childhood.
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Section IV
Children’s Activities and Well-Being
Schooling and Children’s Subjective
Well-Being 26
E. Scott Huebner, Kimberly J. Hills, Xu Jiang, Rachel F. Long,
Ryan Kelly, and Michael D. Lyons
The study of positive well-being of children and adolescents in general is

a relatively recent phenomenon. Although there is a long history of attention to
poor mental health and behavior problems (e.g., conduct disorders, depression) and
schooling (see Roeser et al. 1998), attention to indicators, determinants, and
consequences of positive well-being has lagged behind. In particular, serious
research efforts focused on positive subjective well-being (SWB) among children
and youth have only recently been undertaken (Huebner 2004). In contrast to
models of mental illness represented by the presence of psychopathological symp-
toms (e.g., aggressive behavior, chronic negative emotions), models of SWB
attempt to differentiate the presence of more optimal levels of functioning. Diener
(1984) developed a widely used tripartite model of SWB for adults, which has been
extended downward to children of ages 8–18 (Huebner 1991a; Huebner and Dew
1996). The model includes three major components: positive affect, negative affect,
and life satisfaction. Positive affect refers to the experience of frequent positive
emotions, such as joy or interest, while negative affect refers to the infrequent
experience of negative emotions, such as anger or sadness. Life satisfaction gener-
ally refers to an individual’s judgment of the positivity of her or his life as a whole
(i.e., global life satisfaction) or with specific life domains (e.g., school or family
satisfaction). Life satisfaction judgments are usually designed so that an individual
can report a broad array of judgments ranging from very negative (e.g., “terrible”)
through neutral and higher levels of satisfaction (e.g., “pleased” or “delighted”).
Thus, persons who have high SWB are ones who, over time, experience frequent
positive emotions and infrequent negative emotions as well as report positive levels
of satisfaction with their lives.
E.S. Huebner (*) • K.J. Hills • X. Jiang • R.F. Long •

R. Kelly • M.D. Lyons
Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
e-mail: huebner@sc.edu; hillskj@mailbox.sc.edu; bnujiangxu@mailbox.sc.edu;
longrm@mailbox.sc.edu; rmk003@gmail.com; msdnoyl@gmail.com

798 E.S. Huebner et al.
In some nations, such as the United States, education as a discipline pays little
attention to monitoring, understanding, or promoting positive SWB in children
(Noddings 2003). Such neglect is consistent with several factors in educational
practices and policies. In an era of increasing globalization and economic compet-
itiveness, one major factor has likely been the increased demand for accountability
in schools related to learning basic academic skills, such as the functional reading
and mathematics skills required for successful employment. Consistent with the
advent of the No Child Left Behind Act (2002), accountability efforts in education
in the United States have focused primarily on measuring academic achievement as
the essential indicator of student and school success. Beyond interest in managing
behavior problems in the classroom, relatively little emphasis has been placed on
assessing or cultivating positive social-emotional well-being in students or in
school settings (Cohen 2006; Roeser 2001). Such an agenda illuminates the current
value in some societies on the role of schooling as preparation for future vocational
and economic success.
Another likely associated factor involves the disproportionate emphasis on future
outcomes associated with schooling (i.e., “well becoming”) to the relative neglect of
interest in the current “well-being” of children. Several authors (e.g., Ben-Arieh
2008; Qvortrup 1999) have argued persuasively that the present well-being of
children is important in its own right. Although not questioning the importance of
devoting attention to the promotion of children’s positive futures, these authors also
argue that children should not be reduced solely to “human becomings.” Compared to
adulthood, childhood is a unique psychosocial time period, with different experi-
ences, opportunities, expectations, and identities. “Too much focus on the future
might, for example, mean that children are drilled for very long hours in school,
leaving no time for socialization and fun in the present” (Burton and Phipps 2010).
Children who are unable to live up to adults’ academic expectations, such as teachers,
parents, or school administrators, may be particularly at risk for spending their entire
school day focused on remediating their problems and subsequently decreasing their
morale instead of allowing them at least some time to exercise their strengths and
pursue their interests, thereby enhancing their perceived self-efficacy and engage-
ment in school (Gordon and Crabtree 2006; Noddings 2003). Some scholars have
thus recommended that children’s caretakers, such as educators, must take into
account both children’s future opportunities and current life conditions in order to
conceptualize and promote healthy development in the most comprehensive fashion
(e.g., Ben-Arieh 2008).
In addition to a possible disproportionate emphasis on future outcomes, some
authors have noted that most schools’ goals, curriculum, and experiences are
developed by adults, with little or no input from students (Noddings 2003). Such
an adult-focused perspective may be limited in relation to understanding and
promoting children’s SWB, especially current well-being, since children’s perspec-
tives may differ from those of adults. For example, Ben-Arieh et al. (2009) found
discrepancies between the perceptions of elementary school teachers and students
on school safety. Specifically, they found that teachers perceived students to be
26 Schooling and Children’s Subjective Well-Being 799
safer at school than the students did. Because school safety is an important
contributor to children’s overall well-being, the authors cautioned that school pro-
fessionals who do not recognize the concerns of students may direct resources to
areas that are less critical to students’ needs.
A final major factor in students’ experiences of schooling in the United States is
the long-standing focus on student deficits in schools. Schools have historically
concentrated their efforts on providing relatively standardized curricula and stan-
dards for students, particularly in elementary schools. Student progress has been
measured against such standards, and efforts have been directed toward remediating
students’ deficits in cases where progress does not match expectations. The focus on
students’ problems has been so entrenched in American schools that Sarason (1997)
lamented that the modal teacher was unprepared to exploit opportunities to promote
wellness in students as opposed to remediating or preventing problems.
The relevance of SWB to the context of education may not be well understood
by school professionals. Although research on children’s positive SWB and school-
ing is relatively new (Casas in press; Huebner 2004), recent variable- and person-
centered research studies have supported the usefulness of including negative (e.g.,
measures of negative emotions and behavior) and positive indicators (e.g., positive
emotions, life satisfaction) in comprehensive assessments of students’ adaptation.
For example, a variable-centered study involving middle school students revealed
that the incorporation of measures of positive emotions yielded incremental validity
in predicting students’ school engagement and coping behaviors (Lewis et al.
2009). Another study investigated the benefits of differentiating adolescent students
with “very high” SWB from those with “average” and “low” levels of SWB
(Gilman and Huebner 2006). Relative to students with “average” levels of SWB,
the “very high” group of students demonstrated superior scores on a variety of
educationally relevant variables, such as hope, social stress, and attitudes toward
teachers.
Using a person-centered approach, Antaramian et al. (2010) revealed that four
groups of adolescent students could be identified using assessments that included
SWB measures along with measures of externalizing and internalizing behavior
problems. Most critical for this discussion, a group of students was identified that
showed low levels of problem behavior along with low levels of SWB. Although
this group of youth (referred to as vulnerable students) would have been missed in
traditional mental health screenings that focus on the presence of psychopatholog-
ical “symptoms,” they showed significantly lower levels of behavioral, cognitive,
and affective school engagement and grade point averages compared to the group of
students who showed low levels of problem behavior along with high SWB.
Furthermore, the vulnerable students differed remarkably little from a group of
“troubled” student who reported low SWB and high levels of behavior problems.
Similar results were obtained in a study by Suldo and Shaffer (2008). Taken
together, the person-centered research, as well as the variable-centered research,
provides strong support for the usefulness of understanding students’ SWB in the
context of schooling.
To date, the majority of studies of SWB in school-age students have focused

on identifying nonschool (e.g., family and self-related variables, such as
personality and cognitions) determinants and consequences of individual differences
in children’s SWB (Huebner et al. 2006). Few literature reviews have focused on SWB
and school-related variables (for an exception, see Suldo et al. 2006). This limited
focus continues despite Sarason’s (1997) caution that “wellness is always embedded in
an interpersonal, social-familial, and institutional context” (p. x).
The importance of school experiences in students’ lives is suggested in the
relationship between children’s school satisfaction and their satisfaction with their
lives as a whole. Numerous studies have demonstrated that children’s satisfaction
with their school experiences is a statistically significant but modest correlate
(r ¼ 0.30 range) of their global life satisfaction, relative to the stronger relationships
observed for satisfaction with their family, friends, self, and living environment. This
finding is particularly true among students in the United States compared to students
in other countries. For example, Park and Huebner (2005) found that school satis-
faction was much more strongly associated with overall life satisfaction among South
Korean students than American students. Furthermore, Ash and Huebner (1998) also
found that school satisfaction was a stronger predictor of global life satisfaction for
gifted students relative to their non-gifted counterparts. Interestingly, mean ratings of
students’ satisfaction with their lives overall and with specific domains, such as
schooling, show significant differences. For one example, in a study of more than
5,000 US high school students, Huebner et al. (2000) found that student ratings of
their school satisfaction were the lowest among six domains, including family, peers,
self, living environment, and overall (i.e., global) life satisfaction. Using the
delighted-terrible scale (Andrews and Withey 1976), almost 25 % of the students
reported some level of dissatisfaction with their school experiences, with almost 10 %
describing their experiences as “terrible.” Similar results were found in a study of
United States middle school students (Huebner et al. 2005). Given that school and life
satisfaction levels appear to decline as children move into the adolescent years
(Proctor et al. 2010; Suldo et al. 2006), the authors concluded that secondary level
schooling may represent a significant source of dissatisfaction for a substantial
number of adolescent students.
The overarching purpose of this chapter is thus to evaluate the extant research
base on school-age students’ SWB and school-related variables. In doing so, we
will first provide a brief overview of the status of the measurement of SWB in
children and adolescents. Second, we will summarize the literature on children’s
SWB, specifically focusing on school-related variables. Finally, we discuss impli-
cations of the research for future research and educational practice and policy.
26.1 Measurement of SWB in Children and Youth
Compared to research with adults, the development of valid SWB measures,

appropriate for the general population of children and youth, has lagged behind
(Gilman and Huebner 2000). Nevertheless, several psychologically sound measures
have been developed over the past several decades for children ages eight and
above (Casas in press; Gilman and Huebner 2000). Child and youth SWB measures
can be categorized as unidimensional or multidimensional in nature. Unidimen-
sional instruments focus on the measurement of satisfaction with life as a whole
whereas multidimensional instruments focus on satisfaction with specific life
domains (e.g., family, peers, school satisfaction).
A central assumption of SWB measures is that SWB represents subjective
experiences of the child. Thus, self-report methods have emerged as the primary
source of data. Concerns with self-reports have been expressed regarding the
possible effects of response styles (e.g., social desirability responding) and/or
contextual influences (e.g., mood, situations). Nevertheless, the existing research,
based mostly on research with adults, but some with children, has not supported the
concerns. SWB reports have shown reasonable internal consistency (Huebner
1991b, 1994), stability (Antaramian and Huebner 2009; Funk et al. 2006; Huebner
1991b), construct validity (Greenspoon and Saklofske 1997; Huebner 1994;
Huebner et al. 1998), predictive validity (Haranin et al. 2007), responsiveness to
planned interventions (e.g., Farrell et al. 2003; Froh et al. 2008; Gilman and
Handwerk 2001), and modest social desirability effects (Huebner 1991c; Gilligan
and Huebner 2007). Informant reports (e.g., parent) also correspond significantly
with child reports (Huebner et al. 2002; Gilligan and Huebner 2002). Overall, the
research to date suggests that several measures of child and adolescent SWB
reports, both global and multidimensional, show acceptable reliability and validity
for research purposes (Gilman and Huebner 2000; Huebner et al. 2006). Additional
research will be beneficial, especially research focused on the development of
measures with better standardization samples. Given the increasing interest in
SWB among children and adults, as evidenced by this handbook, it seems likely
that the development and refinement of measures of SWB, appropriate for children
and youth of ages eight and above, will continue. The availability of suitable
techniques for use with children below the age of eight represents a major gap in
the literature. The unique problems of communicating with very young children,
along with their limitations in cognitive development, will likely necessitate multi-
method, innovative alternatives to the reliance on self-report approaches.
26.2 Summary of Schooling and Children SWB Research
In this section, we review the existing research on the major school-related corre-
lates of children’s SWB. Consistent with the definition in the introduction, studies
of SWB include those addressing children’s positive emotions and global life
satisfaction and domain-based satisfaction, specifically satisfaction with school
experiences. Furthermore, we focus on key-presumed antecedents of SWB,
although we discuss consequences of individual differences in children’s SWB
where relevant.
The importance of the students’ overall school context is illustrated in a recent
study of 1,402 fourth to seventh grade students in 25 Canadian public schools
(Oberle et al. in press). Using multilevel modeling techniques, the findings revealed
differences in SWB related to schools. Although specific features of schools that
account for the differences were not revealed, the demonstration of the school-
student SWB linkage is crucial. Such findings highlight the notion that major
institutional settings in childhood (e.g., a child’s school) exert influences on
children’s SWB. Given that schools can be modified and improved, it is possible
that schools can be designed to provide substantial support for student SWB and
other aspects of positive development (Oberle et al. in press).
Suldo et al. (2006) identified specific school-related contextual and personal
factors in a comprehensive review of the existing literature related to children’s life
satisfaction. The school contextual factors included an overall school climate
factor, consisting of several components, such as student-teacher relationships,
parent involvement in schooling, peer relationships, sharing of resources, order
and discipline, and appearance of the school building. Student’s levels of academic
achievement (e.g., grades) and problem behaviors at school were also considered
contextual factors. The personal factors included students’ attachment to school and
personal academic beliefs. Additionally, in a study of the relationships between
school climate factors and individual differences in adolescents’ school satisfac-
tion, Zullig et al. (2011) identified similar key school climate factors: academic
support, positive student-teacher relationships, school connectedness, order and
discipline, social relationships, and academic satisfaction. Such studies provide
the framework for the review below.
26.3 School Climate
26.3.1 Perception of Safety
School-age children’s perceptions of school climate and school experiences relate

to their academic performance and behavior at school, as well as SWB, including
life satisfaction (Flanagan and Stout 2010; Milam et al. 2010; Suldo et al. 2008;
Wang 2009; Way and Robinson 2003). Particularly, students’ perceptions of physical
safety seem to be strongly related to SWB. If students do not feel safe at school
(e.g., they fear being threatened or injured by someone with a weapon, having
property stolen or damaged), their overall life satisfaction is lower (Valois et al.
2001). Not surprisingly, students who are physically bullied by their peers report
lower levels of overall life satisfaction (Martin and Huebner 2007).
The perception of a psychologically safe and supportive classroom environment
is also important to students’ satisfaction with school and life. One study of United
States urban children in low-income elementary schools showed that children’s
perception of their classroom as a psychologically safe environment directly
affected their school satisfaction (Baker 1998). Furthermore, a study of Dutch
and ethnic minority children of ages 10–12 also showed that a supportive academic
and social climate in the classroom was related positively to students’ levels of
satisfaction with school (Verkuyten and Thijs 2002). On the other hand, children
who are relationally victimized (e.g., teased by peers or purposefully excluded from
peer groups) experience significantly less frequent positive emotions in school and
lower global life satisfaction (Martin and Huebner 2007; Martin et al. 2008).
26.3.2 Teacher’s Organizational and Instructional Practices
Studies show that teachers’ organizational and instructional practices relate to their
students’ satisfaction with their schooling. Studies demonstrate that higher levels of
school satisfaction are associated with a high degree of clarity in classroom rules
and a predictable teacher behavior and classroom routines (Baker et al. 2003),
a task-oriented classroom ethos (Baker 1998), the provision of ample praise for
appropriate behaviors (Baker 1999), an emphasis on goals that promote future
academic aspirations (Malin and Linnakylae 2001), and the establishment of
curricular activities that promote choice and relevance (Karatzias et al. 2002). In
contrast, teachers who establish class structures that are overly controlling or give
more attention to misbehavior than good behavior can diminish students’ school
satisfaction (Baker 1999; Carey and Bourbon 2005).
26.3.3 Social Relationships in School
High quality student-teacher relationships appear crucial to high levels of student

satisfaction with both school experiences and life overall. In fact, there is evidence
suggesting that the perceived quality of student-teacher relationships is the stron-
gest predictor of school satisfaction, stronger than peer and parent relationships,
even among adolescents (DeSantis-King et al. 2006). Judgments of the quality of
the student-teacher relationship, from both teacher and child perspectives, relate to
student school satisfaction (Baker et al. 2002), with caring, supportive relationships
with a teacher related to school satisfaction by as early as third grade (Baker 1998).
Similarly, international studies provide supportive evidence for the key role of
positive student-teacher relationships. For instance, a study of 11-, 13-, and
15-year-old students in Finland, Latvia, Norway, and Slovakia revealed that the
most important predictors of students’ satisfaction with school were their feelings
that they were safe at school, treated fairly by others, and supported by their
teachers (Samdal et al. 1998).
Another important contributor to SWB is the quality of students’ relationships
with classmates and peers. Students whose peers have positive attitudes toward
school show more positive attitudes toward school themselves (Epstein 1981).
Students who report high life satisfaction report positive relationships with peers
(Dew and Huebner 1994; Ma and Huebner 2008; Man 1991). A key psychosocial
mechanism accounting for this association may be students’ levels of trust with
their peers (Nickerson and Nagle 2004). As one special peer relationship, the
support of close friendships has also been specifically implicated in the
determination of students’ school satisfaction (DeSantis-King et al. 2006). Also,

children with more friends and higher quality friendships score higher on measures
of global life satisfaction (Huebner and Alderman 1993).
On the other hand, students who experience negative interactions with their
peers report lower levels of school and life satisfaction (DeSantis-King et al. 2006;
Martin and Huebner 2007). For example, Davis (2007) documented that children
who perceive their classroom peers as hostile or antagonistic report lower levels of
school satisfaction. As noted previously, frequent peer victimization (i.e., threats of
bodily or social harm) and affiliation with peers who support delinquent behavior
are inversely associated with life satisfaction (Flouri and Buchanan 2002; Martin
and Huebner 2007). It should be underscored, though, that low levels of SWB are
not only associated with purposeful acts of physical or relational victimization.
Martin and Huebner (2007) found that students who received frequent prosocial
acts from peers were more likely to experience high global satisfaction whereas
students who received few prosocial acts were more likely to experience low global
life satisfaction. This finding suggests that students’ SWB might be influenced by
benign neglect as much as by active victimization by peers.
26.3.4 Parental Support and Involvement in Schooling
High quality relationships with parents also appear crucial to high levels of student
global life satisfaction (Dew and Huebner 1994; Edwards and Lopez 2006; Ma and
Huebner 2008; Nickerson and Nagle 2004; Young et al. 1995). In fact, satisfaction
with family life is a stronger correlate of global life satisfaction than satisfaction
with peers across studies of students in elementary through secondary school (Dew
and Huebner 1994; Terry and Huebner 1995). Key components of this relationship
appear to be the provision of appropriate emotional support, autonomy, and mon-
itoring of child behavior (Suldo and Huebner 2004). Within the framework of this
chapter, however, the parental behavior of most relevance is parental involvement
in schooling. Students’ perceptions that their parents care about and are involved in
their schooling appear crucial to students’ global life satisfaction. In the study by
Suldo et al. (2008), students’ perceptions of their parents’ involvement in schooling
were the second strongest predictor of students’ global life satisfaction, following
perceptions of student-teacher relationships. Important parental involvement activ-
ities include communication between home and school and parent visits to the
school.
Students’ perceptions of the quality of family life are also positively associated
with school satisfaction (Baker 1998; Huebner and McCullough 2000). Similar to
the findings for global life satisfaction, the quality of parent attachment was found
to be a greater predictor of school satisfaction than peer attachment in adolescents
in the United States, suggesting the continued importance of parents in their
children’s lives (Elmore and Huebner 2010).
Parental involvement appears to necessitate investment from both mothers and
fathers. Studies have shown that levels of maternal and paternal support are equally
important in predicting the global life satisfaction of adolescent males and females
(Vilhjalmsson 1994; Young et al. 1995). Specifically, the experience of psycholog-
ical closeness to fathers (Amato 1994) and the extent of father or father figure
involvement (Flouri and Buchanan 2002; Zimmerman et al. 1995) have been shown
to make unique contributions to youth life satisfaction.
The major conclusion that can be derived from the school climate literature is the
apparent importance of positive interpersonal relationships related to the school
setting. Furthermore, there appear to be multiple important relationships that
contribute to students’ SWB in school. In addition to the importance of positive
relationships with teachers, positive relationships with parents and peers also
represent critical sources of healthy student SWB. A strong sense of community
in schools appears critical to students’ SWB.
26.4 Student Factors
26.4.1 Academic Performance
Research on the relationship between SWB and academic performance (e.g., grade
point average (GPA), standardized academic achievement test scores) has been scant,
and the findings have been mixed. A few studies have examined the relationship
between academic achievement and life satisfaction among groups of students with
known differing academic abilities. For example, McCullough and Huebner (2003)
found similar levels of domain-specific and global life satisfaction among high school
students with learning disabilities and typically functioning students without learning
disabilities. These results suggest that although students with learning disabilities
display poorer academic functioning than their typically functioning peers, there is no
significant relationship between life satisfaction and academic achievement. Like-
wise, Huebner and Alderman (1993) found similar levels of global life satisfaction
among elementary school students at risk for academic failure when compared to
a matched control group of students not at risk for school failure, further suggesting
that academic achievement and life satisfaction are not significantly related.
In contrast, other studies of regular education students have revealed significant
associations between academic achievement and life satisfaction. For example,
Gilman and Huebner (2006) divided a sample of secondary level students in the
United States (N ¼ 490) into three groups: very high (top 20 %), average (middle
50 %), and very low global satisfaction (lowest 20 %). Adolescents who reported
very low global life satisfaction reported lower GPAs (M ¼ 3.01) than students with
average life satisfaction (M ¼ 3.42), who did not differ significantly from students
with very high life satisfaction (M ¼ 3.49). The zero-order correlation between life
satisfaction and self-reported GPA was 0.32 for the entire sample.
In a more recent study of 410 adolescent students in the United Kingdom,
Proctor et al. (2010) found that students who categorized themselves as “very
happy” on a life satisfaction measure reported significantly higher academic
performance than students who categorized themselves as “average happy.” Fur-

thermore, “average happy” students reported significantly higher academic perfor-
mance than students who characterized themselves as “very unhappy,” using the
self-report item of “I am doing well in school.” The zero-order correlation between
global life satisfaction and self-reported academic success for the complete sample
in this study was 0.39.
Studies of the relationship between SWB and actual grades and standardized test
scores have also been reported. The correlations between SWB measures and actual
GPA have ranged from approximately 0.14 (Huebner 1991b) to 0.21 (Antaramian
et al. 2010) to 0.29 (Cheng and Furnham 2002), suggesting modest to moderate
relationships at best. The former two studies involved United States students
whereas the latter study involved students from the United Kingdom, suggesting
the possibility of cultural differences.
Further support for the notion of cultural differences, and possibly developmen-
tal differences, can be found in study of the relationships between SWB and
standardized achievement test scores. For example, a study conducted by Chang
et al. (2003) yielded a significant relationship (r ¼ 0.38) between academic test
scores and life satisfaction among a sample of Chinese second graders (n ¼ 115),
but not among eighth graders (r ¼ 0.18). On the other hand, Bradley and Corwyn
(2004) conducted a study of adolescents of ages 10–15 from 310 families across
five sociocultural groups (European American, African-American, Chinese Amer-
ican, Mexican American, and Dominican American) in the United States. Within
this sample, there was no relationship (r ¼ 0.01) between level of life satisfaction
and scores on a standardized achievement test. Similarly, a study of United States
secondary students indicated correlations of 0.06, 0.10, and 0.12 between SWB
(a composite of global life satisfaction and positive and negative affect scores) and
standardized language, science, and math test scores (Antaramian et al. 2010).
A recent longitudinal investigation suggests further complexities in SWB-
academic performance linkages. In a study of 257 US fifth graders, Quinn and
Duckworth (2007) evaluated the directionality of the relationships between SWB
and academic performance. Results revealed that when controlling for IQ, SWB at
time 1 predicted increases in GPA at time 2 (partial r ¼ 0.24). GPA at time 1 also
predicted SWB at time 2, controlling for time 1 SWB (partial r ¼ 0.21).
These findings yielded a reciprocal relationship between SWB and academic
performance; children with higher levels of SWB earned higher grades on their
subsequent report cards, and higher report card grades were associated with higher
levels of SWB in the future. This study suggests that children who perform well in
school may do so in part because they are happy, and performing well academically
may make children happier (Quinn and Duckworth 2007).
26.4.2 Academic Perceptions
One of the most robust findings in the child and adolescent SWB literature is that
youth who hold more positive evaluations of their school-related competencies
(e.g., academic self-efficacy) also tend to report higher levels of global life satis-
faction (Huebner et al. 1999; Suldo and Huebner 2006). Academic self-efficacy is
one aspect of self-worth that refers to an individual’s belief that she or he can
successfully attain a specific academic goal (Bandura 1977; Schunk and Pajares
2002). Academic self-efficacy is grounded in self-efficacy theory (Bandura 1997)
which posits that people are likely to engage in activities to the extent that they
perceive themselves to be competent at those activities. Self-efficacy is
a multidimensional construct in that individuals can possess differing efficacy
beliefs for any number of activities in academic or other domains (Elias and Loomis
2002). With regard to education, the importance of general academic self-efficacy
is supported by the considerable body of research showing that academic self-
efficacy influences academic motivation, learning, and academic achievement as
well as SWB (Pajares 2009; Schunk 1995). For a specific example, Verkuyten and
Thijs (2002) found that academic self-efficacy was significantly related to educa-
tional performance (r ¼ 0.61) in a study of elementary students in the Netherlands.
A strong sense of academic self-efficacy in turn appears to contribute to SWB.
For example, Huebner et al. (1999) found significant relationships among middle
school students’ global life satisfaction and verbal self-concept (r ¼ 0.27), math-
ematical self-concept (r ¼ 0.30), and general school self-concept (r ¼ 0.37). In
a study of seventh grade students in Hong Kong, Leung and Bond (2004) found
a correlation of 0.52 between perceived academic competence and life satisfaction.
Such findings and others (see Suldo et al. 2006 for a review) suggest that children’s
SWB is more strongly related to students’ perceptions of their academic perfor-
mance than more objective indicators, such as GPA and standardized achievement
test scores.
26.4.3 Student Behavior
Numerous studies have shown an association between student behavior (in school
and out of school) and SWB. The relationship between global life satisfaction and
student behavior problems has been investigated most frequently (see Proctor et al.
2010 for a review). Problem behavior in students is typically characterized as
externalizing behavior (e.g., hyperactive, aggressive, and delinquent behavior) or
internalizing behavior (e.g., withdrawn, depressed, and anxious behaviors). For
example, Huebner and Alderman (1993) reported a correlation of 0.35 between
life satisfaction and a composite score for teacher-reported internalizing and exter-
nalizing behaviors specifically observed in school. With respect to general behavior
problems (not limited to the school hours), global life satisfaction has been shown
to correlate at 0.50 with self-reported internalizing behaviors and 0.35 with self-
reported externalizing behaviors (Haranin et al. 2007). Parent-rated quality of life
of students with severe emotional and behavioral problems has also been found to
be a significant correlate of externalizing and internalizing behaviors (State 2009).
As specific examples of more serious externalizing and internalizing behaviors,
significant associations have been demonstrated between global life satisfaction
and risk behaviors, including physical fighting, carrying a weapon at school

(MacDonald et al. 2005; Valois et al. 2001), and suicidal ideation and behavior
(Valois et al. 2004a). Problem behaviors have also been significantly correlated
with dissatisfaction with school, as well as dissatisfaction with life as a whole
(Elmore and Huebner 2010).
Significant relationships have been demonstrated between students’ SWB (i.e.,
life satisfaction) and other risk-taking behaviors, each of which has been linked
with academic outcomes (Hawkins 1997). These behaviors include alcohol and
drug use (Piko et al. 2005; Zullig et al. 2001) and sexual risk-taking behaviors
(Valois et al. 2002). For example, in a study of perceived life satisfaction and sexual
risk-taking behavior among 4,758 students in grades 9 through 12, Valois et al.
(2002) found a significant negative relationship between life satisfaction and
engaging in sexual intercourse, age of first intercourse, and number of sexual
partners. Furthermore, the nature of the risky behavior and the level of life satis-
faction was moderated by gender and ethnicity.
Relationships between SWB and “protective” factors have also been explored.
Engaging in physical activity has been positively associated with global life
satisfaction in students. For example, life satisfaction has been positively related
to strenuous activities in Icelandic and Danish students (Holstein et al. 1990;
Vilhjalmsson and Thorlindsson 1992). In relation to the amount of exercise, one
study found that adolescents’ global life satisfaction was negatively associated with
not exercising at least 20 min in a given week (Valois et al. 2004b). Such findings
may relate to the presence (vs. absence) of strong health education programs in
schools.
Participation in structured extracurricular activities also appears to be
a protective factor related to higher global life satisfaction among adolescents
(Gilman 2001). Perhaps related to physical and social factors noted above, research
has highlighted the specific importance of students playing on sports teams. For
example, Valois et al. (2004b) found that greater dissatisfaction with life among
American adolescents was related to not playing on a sports team (school or
otherwise). Similarly, Vilhjalmsson and Thorlindsson (1992) demonstrated
a positive relationship between life satisfaction and participation in clubs and social
groups among students in Iceland. Similar results have been reported in
United States middle school students where males and females who reported not
playing on sports teams were more dissatisfied with their lives (Zullig and White
in press).
The relationship between life satisfaction and behavioral problems has also been
investigated using person-centered research approaches. Based on global life satis-
faction scores, the aforementioned study by Gilman and Huebner (2006) identified
three groups of students: very high, average, and very low satisfaction. The findings
revealed that no students in the “very high” level of life satisfaction demonstrated
clinical levels of psychopathological symptoms, whereas 7 % of the “average” group
and 42 % of the “very low” group reported clinical levels of symptoms.
Finally, SWB, in the form of frequent positive emotions, has also been related to
students’ interpersonal coping behavior. Using a coping scale based upon the
context of peer interactions at school, adolescents’ experiences of frequent positive

emotions, but not negative emotions, were associated with problem-focused coping
behavior, specifically engaging in direct problem-solving efforts and/or seeking
social support. The problem-focused coping behaviors, in turn, mediated the rela-
tionship between adolescents’ experiences of positive emotions and their school
engagement (Reschly et al. 2008).
26.4.4 School Engagement/Dropout
High levels of student engagement in schooling are related to student SWB.

Understanding the relationship between SWB and school engagement is important
because researchers have theorized that SWB and school engagement relate to each
other as well as academic outcomes. As described by Appleton et al. (2008), school
engagement is typically conceptualized as having three components: behavioral
(e.g., cooperative school behavior, effort), affective (e.g., emotional connection
to school, liking school), and cognitive (e.g., positive attitudes and values related to
schooling). Research has suggested that school engagement mediates the relation-
ship between school liking and students’ academic performance, as early as
kindergarten (Ladd et al. 2000). The importance of liking school (i.e., school
satisfaction) is underscored by the finding that the United States Department
of Education has identified dissatisfaction with school as the most frequent
reason given by adolescents for dropping of school (US Department of Education
1990). This section reviews additional studies of school engagement and
student SWB.
Lewis et al. (2011) conducted a longitudinal study of the relationships between
global life satisfaction and school engagement among middle school students.
Cross-sectional results revealed significant associations among the life satisfaction
and behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement measures (rs ¼ 0.34 to 0.43).
Further, longitudinal analyses revealed significant bidirectional relationships for
cognitive engagement and life satisfaction. This latter finding suggests that not only
do higher levels of cognitive engagement facilitate higher levels of life satisfaction,
but the reverse is also true. Higher levels of SWB appear to facilitate higher levels
of cognitive engagement, which may promote an upward spiral of higher levels of
positive SWB and school engagement. These results are important for several
reasons. First, the results underscore the importance of discriminating among
different types of school engagement. The authors suggest that it is possible that
life satisfaction may be an important determinant of cognitive engagement for
middle school students; however, life satisfaction may also predict lower levels
of behavioral engagement as students reach high school and college. However, this
study only followed students across 2 time periods in middle school, 5 months
apart; significant changes in behavioral engagement (skipping school) tend to occur
later in schooling. Indeed, Frisch et al. (2005) demonstrated that low levels of
overall life satisfaction significantly predicted dropout rates of undergraduate
college students. Second, the authors note the findings are also significant because
cognitive engagement is intended to measure students’ attitudes toward education

as a whole. Higher levels of cognitive engagement in early adolescence may be
a precursor of the “lifelong learner” that many teachers aspire to develop. On
the other hand, lower levels of cognitive engagement in early adolescence may be
a precursor of school dropout.
Research has also investigated possible moderators of the nature of the school
engagement-SWB association. For example, You et al. (2008) studied differences
in the relationship between school engagement and life satisfaction as a function of
bullying status. On the one hand, they found that student school connectedness
(a component of affective engagement) was a partial mediator of the relationship
between hopeful thinking and global life satisfaction for students who were “non-
victims” of bullying in school. In contrast, the authors found that school connect-
edness was not a statistically significant mediator for students who had experienced
more frequent peer bullying.
Taken together, studies of student behavior, including student engagement
behavior, support the notion that both environmental and individual difference
variables are significantly associated with student SWB. The overall findings are
also consistent with the social-cognitive model of life satisfaction of Suldo et al.
(2008) in which cognitive factors (e.g., academic self-efficacy) mediate the rela-
tionship between contextual factors (e.g., school climate) and school satisfaction,
which in turn influences global life satisfaction. However, the results of the relevant
longitudinal studies suggest that the model may need to be extended to incorporate
bidirectional relationships, for example, between global life satisfaction and student
engagement.
26.5 Conclusion
Schooling is a primary activity during childhood and adolescence. In light of the

amount of time that children and adolescents spend in school, it is perhaps not
surprising that the quality of their school experiences appears to be associated with
students’ SWB. The results reviewed herein suggest the importance of a number of
key aspects of the school environment that matter, including the quality of interac-
tions with teachers and peers, parental involvement in schooling, instructional
practices in the classroom, students’ perceptions of safety, students’ perceived
and actual academic performance, and opportunities to participate in extracurricu-
lar activities. The school context is clearly an important determinant, beyond the
family environment, of positive child and adolescent SWB and quality of life. In the
aforementioned Suldo et al. (2008) study, the combination of school climate and
individual difference measures (e.g., efficacy beliefs) accounted for a full 41 % of
the variance in the students’ school satisfaction reports. Nevertheless, as should
be apparent from this review, such research remains preliminary, with much
additional work needed to clarify the nature of the relationships between schooling
and student SWB.
26.5.1 Research and Practice Implications
Current research suggests that school-age students’ SWB reports and school
experiences are interrelated and, in some cases, predict negative school outcomes,
including the likelihood of cognitive and behavioral disengagement from school.
Nevertheless, there are limitations to the extant body of research. Specifically,
a substantial number of the studies are cross-sectional; longitudinal studies are
rarer and needed to help elucidate causal mechanisms. For example, investigating
the buffering effects of SWB and/or school engagement on stressful life experi-
ences or chronic family, neighborhood, or peer problems over time with large,
diverse samples is critical to our understanding of the directionality and potential
bidirectional influences of these variables. Diener’s (2009) recommendation to
strive toward asking more complex questions by using the most advanced statistical
techniques available is also prudent for further research in the area of student SWB
and schooling. Ecological, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary studies within and
across disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, education) are also necessary to
move this body of research forward.
Measurement issues also need to be addressed. A review of current research
suggests that several psychologically sound measures of SWB exist and are used
regularly in research contexts; however, the use of unidimensional versus
multidimensional measures varies across studies. Future research investigating the
relative usefulness of using single indicators versus multidimensional indicators is
needed. Further, context-specific research is important to determine specific corre-
lates/predictors, moderators/mediators, and consequences are associated with differ-
ent components of SWB (e.g., frequency of positive emotions and negative emotions
in school as opposed to positive emotions and negative emotions in general).
The availability of suitable techniques for use with children below the age of
eight represents a major gap in the literature. Research that extends to early
childhood will be helpful in the endeavor to understand the relationship between
SWB and specific correlates/predictors over time and development. From
a bidirectional model, SWB in the short run is probably more predictive of behavior
than grades, but in the long run, maladaptive, disengaged school behavior may lead
to decreased grades, avoidance of more challenging courses, and dropout. That is,
comprehensive efforts to promote SWB may involve simultaneous attention to
supporting positive academic performance and behavior as well as SWB.
The body of research investigating the relationship between child and youth
SWB and academic outcomes is in its formative years. However, if we combine
the SWB research with adults with the research on children, substantial evidence
exists to suggest that attention to student well-being and assets in addition to deficits
is critical to creating school environments in which children do not just achieve
standards, but flourish. The research implies that children and adolescents who
experience frequent positive emotions are more likely to experience success in
school given that they are emotionally prepared to explore, cope effectively, and
persist at learning tasks (Reschly et al. 2008; Wolfe and Brandt 1998). Significant
linkages between academic performance and school behavior thus support notions
that children’s reports of SWB should be measured and attended to in system-level

and individual-level plans in schools to address and promote more economically
driven “vocational” or academic goals (Huebner et al. 2009).
The body of research reviewed throughout this chapter strongly suggests that
attention to systemic factors within schools, like school climate, is essential given
their relationships with child well-being. Systemic factors represent key interven-
tion avenues to promoting flourishing. Research has consistently demonstrated the
importance of positive student-teacher relationships on a personal and an instruc-
tional level for enhanced SWB and school outcomes. For example, both positive
student-teacher relationships and positive peer relationships are important factors
associated with student perceptions of safety and support at school. Children who
perceive their school environment to be safe and supportive are more likely to
achieve expected academic and social outcomes.
The research also supports the importance of nonschool elements of
microsystems (e.g., family, community factors). The research investigating parent
involvement in schooling suggests that this variable has significant relationships
with both student SWB and educational outcomes. Parent involvement in schooling
throughout both primary and secondary school is significant. Positive community-
school collaboration also demonstrates a positive relationship with children’s
schooling and school climate. Within these mesosystems (home-school relation-
ships, community-school relationships), research has demonstrated the importance
of student engagement in extracurricular activities (e.g., sports, physical exercise,
civic, and/or arts-related activities during and after school). Thus, a positive school
climate reflects more than what takes place within the school walls. A positive
school climate appears to ideally involve a “village” of parents, teachers, peers, and
adult models working in concert in the community (Benson et al. 1998). This
research is timely in that recent literature has suggested that youth today will be
required to be more flexible, culturally competent, and creative to flourish in
a global community (Pink 2006).
At the student level, intentional promotion of healthy academic and social self-
perceptions (e.g., academic self-efficacy/competence), tempered by constraints of
reality (Pajares 2009), should remain a critical aim of education. SWB promotion
efforts do not mean that the aim should be complete elimination of negative affect.
Studies indicate that negative affect can serve as an important motivator in some
environments and activities. Oishi et al. (2007) show that extreme levels of positive
emotions are not always “optimal” for certain life outcomes, such as those that
require motivation for self-improvement. That is, those individuals who were not at
the highest level of happiness, but at the second highest level of happiness,
performed better in those domains that required achievement motivation. Their
research suggests that relationships of SWB with outcomes, such as achievement
(including income) and education, may be nonlinear. Thus, optimal levels of SWB
may differ across contexts. Noteworthy contextual differences are also evidenced
by studies investigating differential benefits of positive affect across groups differ-
ing in socioeconomic status (Diener et al. 2002). Further, the relationship between
SWB and schooling outcomes may be moderated by the importance of schooling
within a given culture (Park and Huebner 2005). More research is needed to
determine how functionally different levels of SWB influence academic outcomes.
Research that investigates the optimal levels of SWB for students and how the levels
can differ across groups (e.g., SES, ethnicity) and across activities (e.g., academic,
social) will be critical to adequately inform appropriate applications. Attention to
developmental factors is also important given the consistent trend of decreased SWB
in adolescence (Goldbeck et al. 2007; Suldo and Huebner 2004).
The school environment appears to have the potential to influence student SWB for
the better – or for the worse. Perhaps, the major conclusion from this research is the
central importance of interpersonal relationships in school in determining the SWB of
students. Given this social context of schooling, Baker et al. (1997) recommend
a relational approach to schooling that is constructed around an ethic of care in four
fundamental ways (see also Noddings 2003). First, the professionals in such “caring”
schools model caring relationships among all persons in the schools. Second, school
professionals engage children in formal and informal “lessons” on ethics and values
related to caring, respect, and responsibility. Third, they encourage children to engage
in service activities in the school and community, developing a sense of responsibility
beyond the self. Finally, school professional reinforce students’ caring behaviors
whenever possible. Consistent with many surveys of parents’ desires for public
schools, caring schools thus continue to stress basic academic learning, but aim “to
prepare students broadly, not just for productive work but also for successful relation-
ships with other people, for civic responsibilities, and for fruitful and rewarding leisure
activities” (Bok 2010, p. 157). School policies should thus be developed and evaluated
in light of their ability to foster such broad-based aims of education. Again, the results
of such efforts should be subsequently evaluated through ongoing monitoring of
student SWB, school climate, and related variables (Huebner et al. 2009).
In short, preparing students for economic and vocational success is likely not
sufficient to prepare them for a more comprehensive “life worth living” (Bok 2010).
The body of research on student SWB should help pave the way for increased
attention to the individual and systemic variables that can help students flourish at
school and beyond.
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Children’s Work
27
Michael Bourdillon
27.1 Introduction
Much literature on children’s work focuses on how, as “child labor”, it can harm
children and hinder their development. In most cultures throughout the world,
however, adults and children consider work to be essential to good child rearing
and children consider work to be constituent of growing up. A comprehensive view
of children’s work considers both benefits and harm it conveys to child well-being.
The discussion on “child labor” is frequently based on values and ideology
rather than evidence: in particular, a romantic ideal of childhood, free of responsi-
bility for others, has become dominant and conceptually associated with wealth and
success but with little empirical support from studies of child development.
A growing body of ethnography of childhood is challenging Western assumptions
that children’s work is incompatible with their well-being. Jo Boyden, Birgitta
Ling, and William Myers produced a comprehensive challenge to common
responses to “child labor” in their book, What Works for Working Children
(1998), in which they produced evidence to show how work can have both positive
and negative effects on children’s lives. The argument has been taken forward in
our book, Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work (Bourdillon et al. 2010), which
takes account of much recent research in a variety of related disciplines.
In this chapter, I initially try to avoid ideology by starting with observations of
how work enters the lives of the majority of the world’s children and how it
frequently contributes to their development. The term “children” is used generally
as in UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: to cover young people up to
18 years of age. Where relevant, distinctions are made roughly according to age,
particularly between younger children and adolescents, but this chapter considers
generally the work of children from middle childhood (starting at the age of
M. Bourdillon
Department of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe, Mt Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe
e-mail: michaelbourdillon@gmail.com

822 M. Bourdillon
around six) onward. By the start of middle childhood, the brain has developed
physically and children are rapidly acquiring motor, social, and physical compe-
tencies (Campbell 2011).
This chapter first considers the family context and how young children naturally
start participating in social activities like work; they acquire basic skills – motor,
technical, and social – in the home through imitating and participating in activities
of older children and adults, including their work. The next section shows how this
process continues as children grow and spread their relationships beyond the family
context, particularly in gainful employment. The section presents a variety of
situations in which children commonly work, discusses reasons for working, and
shows how work is fundamental to growing up for many children throughout the
world and so contributes constructively to their well-being.
The third section discusses things that can go wrong with children’s work and
how in certain situations it can hinder their full development. It presents harmful
and potentially harmful work situations and different ways in which work can have
adverse effects on children. It indicates what research can tell us about relationships
between work and schooling. The fourth section considers ways of assessing the
influence of work on children’s well-being, taking into account both benefits and
harm that can result from children’s work. This leads to a discussion of strategies
for protecting children in the workplace: to focus only on protection from harm
without taking potential benefits into account is ultimately not protective, and
options that might be genuinely protective are suggested. Finally, this chapter
points to some gaps in our knowledge.
27.2 Work and Growing Up in the Context of Family
In a recent article, Barbara Polak (2012) describes a family at work on a bean

field in Northern Ghana. Present were the mother and three sons, aged 11, 7, and 5.
All the children had eagerly accompanied their mother to the field, and she
had arranged special hoes for the two younger ones to use. The 11-year-old was
fully competent and worked at roughly the same rate as his mother and for longer,
since she had other household chores to perform. The middle child was able to help,
but did not work continuously, and the mother and the oldest child had to check and
sometimes complete his work. The important roles of the middle child were to work
alongside the youngest and supervise him, to teach him, and to protect the crop from
damage: the 7-year-old was already acquiring some competence and responsibility.
The two younger ones playfully imitated the shouting and behavior of adults they
had watched at work, but easily tired and interrupted work to play at the edge of the
field (sometimes imitating work activities). When the mother sent them to fetch
drinking water for the party, they responded enthusiastically to the chance to
contribute to the family work in a different way – and a way in which they were
fully competent; they returned with the water some time later, having been dis-
tracted at the village – for which there was no recrimination.
27 Children’s Work 823
This vignette illustrates a number of features of the work of young children that
are at odds with common perceptions of children’s work in Western societies.
Although participation was expected, especially on the part of the older and more
competent child, no compulsion was exerted on any of the children. Rather, their
engagement in the work was enthusiastic. The younger children combined work
and play in their participatory activities. Through their participation, the children
were learning motor and other skills necessary for this productive activity,
becoming reliably competent with practice as they grew physically and socially.
The skills they were learning were important for future subsistence: the partici-
pation was useful to the children in the long term. In addition, they were learning
appropriate social behavior. The youngest child needed supervision to ensure that
crops were not damaged, and the 7-year-old could not be relied on to complete
some tasks. Generally, far from adults exploiting the help of children, their
tolerance of the children’s wish to participate incurs extra responsibility. There
is nothing to suggest that such participation in work by young children is detri-
mental to their well-being: in situations like this, exclusion is more likely to be
damaging.
27.2.1 Learning Through Work
Developmental psychologist Barbara Rogoff argues that the process of learning

through imitation and social participation is the most fundamental social mecha-
nism of human cognitive development. In her book, Apprenticeship in Thinking
(1990), she offers on-the-job training as a paradigm for learning and she describes
in some detail how children learn through “guided participation” in social activities
with the help of one or more mentors. In this way, they learn not only how to
perform tasks necessary for the livelihood of the family but also how to engage
successfully in the complex human relationships surrounding all these tasks. So, she
argues, people develop through participation in social activities.
A good illustration of the role of children’s work in their development and
socialization is provided by Inge Bolin’s ethnography of childhood in a pastoral
society in the Peruvian highlands, based on a study that covered more than a decade
(2006). She draws a picture of rich cultural and social lives in the midst of severe
economic poverty, where children’s work was both an economic necessity and
a vehicle of cultural transmission. She shows how play, learning, and work were
sometimes indistinguishable from each other. In their play, young children imitated
the tasks they saw family and community perform: they made toys out of natural
objects to represent, for example, animals that they would soon be herding and their
toys were related to the productive life around them. As they became able, they
voluntarily joined in the work, from which they learned not only competence in
carrying out tasks but also patterns of social cooperation, expected standards of
behavior, arts of self-expression, binding rituals and cosmic beliefs, and moral
discernment. Tasks entrusted to children, such as herding animals, were consistent
with their capacities and often provided opportunity for play while working, as well
824 M. Bourdillon
as learning essential skills. Children generally took pleasure and pride in their work,
which was rewarded with praise and, at certain points, with more substantive
recognition, such as a rise in community status or the gift of an animal of one’s own.
These Peruvian children enjoyed considerable freedom and participated fully in
the social and religious rituals that define their culture and so apparently avoided
a difficult transition through adolescence into adulthood. Despite severe poverty,
the children grew up happily, suffered little conflict and violence, acquired a rich
store of life skills, and apparently adapted well to their own society while remaining
flexible enough to fit into formal education and town life where that was an option.
Bolin attributes much of this developmental success to the empowering and mutu-
ally respectful social environment in which the children were reared. Participation
in work was a central vehicle of that empowerment and mutual respect.
Cindi Katz (2004, 59–108), based on studies over 15 years, describes in detail
how Howa children in Tanzania learned about their environment and developed
a variety of life skills through a constant combination of work and play. The lives of
the Howa were changing in response to the development of irrigated agriculture in
their land and contact with global markets. Although these changes resulted in
increased workloads for children, they still managed to find ways of including
playful touches while they learned creatively to accommodate new realities.
Anthropologist David Lancy has surveyed a mass of ethnographic literature on
childhood and provides a more general picture. He speaks of a “chore curriculum”
(2008, 235–245), arguing that prior to the modern era, education took place everywhere.
This process of learning through work continues in many societies where children
observe and emulate proficient members of the community and start from a very early
age to undertake a variety of tasks. These include cleaning, collecting and preparing
food, working in the fields, caring for animals, and caring for children younger than
themselves. They learn efficiently by imitating older siblings and adults and through
practice, only rarely receiving verbal instruction from a teacher. Lancy points out that
although chores are necessary, demands take into account the growing capacities and
competencies of children, and there is often a degree of negotiation in what the children
do and how intensively they work. As in the case of the Peruvian highlands, children
brought up in this way generally find means of combining work with play: young
herders (usually boys) have plenty of opportunity for play while the animals under their
care are grazing; girls caring for infants also have chances to play with their peers.
The farming skills behind the agriculture that feeds most of the world’s population
are almost everywhere learned from childhood through early participation in fields
and pastures. This is the way rural children can acquire detailed knowledge about
their environment. Similarly, most of the world’s women learn to manage homes and
care for children through their participation in chores with their sisters and mothers.
Children may fail to acquire such practical skills and environmental knowledge if
they give much of their time and energy to school knowledge; this can even apply to
the loss of social skills in high-income societies (e.g., Katz 2004, 113–117, 174).
Gerd Spittler (2012) describes how Tuareg pastoralists in Niger long resisted sending
children to school since it prevented them from learning the very intricate knowledge
necessary to herd camels and participate in trading caravans.
The “chore curriculum,” however, is not always without problems for the
children. Studies of children’s use of time often show substantial hours given to
unpaid work in their homes, especially in communities involved in small-scale
agriculture. A study that analyzes this topic in detail in a poor rural setting in
Zimbabwe shows that girls in particular can have little free time for leisure
activities (Reynolds 1991). Tasks undertaken in the home can interfere with
schoolwork (see below) sometimes because parents fail to notice that traditional
expectations do not always accommodate changing demands on children’s time.
More generally, the culture children learn through their work in the home can be
more advantageous to some than to others. Through the kind of participation they
are encouraged to undertake, girls and boys may learn to take for granted the heavy
burden of housework that is laid on women. In hierarchical societies, children may
learn to accept without question the allocation of certain kinds of work associated
with a particular class or caste, as well as the deference demanded by those higher
in the social scale and a lack of respect for those lower in the scale.
Through their developing competencies and the contributions they make, chil-
dren acquire status in their families and confidence and self-esteem in what they
achieve. This benefit depends, however, on the contributions being appropriately
recognized: if these are minimized and denied the status of work, some of the
benefit may be lost. Often children and their families take for granted the tasks that
children undertake and may reduce their importance by referring to them as “help,”
reserving “work” for what adults do – normally paid employment or otherwise
productive work. Nevertheless, children’s chores are work in the broad sense of
effort toward an end (as is the work of housewives, although it is not always
recognized as such). Using the term “work” to cover a range of related activities
helps to avoid belittling the contributions of children to their families and commu-
nities and to avoid prejudging the value of particular activities.
A further point made by Rogoff in a subsequent book (2003) is that children
develop competencies in different ways depending on the training and expectations
that prevail in specific cultures. Stages of development as described by psycholo-
gists in the West, such as those of Piaget, do not apply cross-culturally. For
example, while childhood risk is largely avoided in several Western cultures
(such as the UK and the USA), elsewhere children are guided in dealing with
risky situations and in particular how to handle potentially dangerous tools.
Western societies generally avoid placing responsibility on young children; even
when older children may be allowed some responsibility with respect to those
around them, the dominant assumption is that their main responsibility is school-
work and citizenship in the future. In other cultures, children take on a variety of
responsibilities at a very early age – well before they are 10 years old, including the
care of infants, and in pastoral societies children may be placed in charge of herding
the family wealth. While in the West, emphasis is often on developing motor and
cognitive skills, in many societies, communication and social relationships receive
priority over such skills, and a sense of social responsibility is included in judg-
ments of children’s intelligence (e.g., Serpell 2011). Since expectations affect the
development of children and how children and their communities assess their
826 M. Bourdillon
achievements, work has differing roles in different societies; cultural context is

therefore relevant to how work impinges on the well-being of children.
A major variation in what work is expected of children relates to the economic
status of societies and families. Poor families often need and expect contributions
from all members to maintain an acceptable livelihood. Even when children’s work
is not necessary for the family economy, they may be expected to work to improve
or maintain the family’s standard of living. Wealthy families, however, do not need
contributions from children. Such families have resources to pay for mechanized
household appliances and for outside labor to maintain the home, and they have no
need of extra income. The trouble of supporting and monitoring children’s attempts
to contribute, and the difficulty of ensuring that they can do so safely, often results
in children’s offers of help being rejected.
Moreover, in high-income societies, children are largely separated from the
daily lives of adults. In particular, children have little chance to accompany adults
to their workplaces and so to participate in the activities of work; indeed, the
presence of children in places of work may be prohibited by national safety
regulations. Many toys and leisure activities bear little relation to life skills or to
the life of adults. Young people learn in specialized institutions, under the guidance
of specialized adults from a very early age. Children have little chance of
experiencing through work responsibility for others who depend on their competent
performance of certain tasks. They grow up largely in the company of siblings and
peers. It might be expected that in such circumstances they learn a culture domi-
nated by young people rather than by the adult community.
Some communities try to find ways in which children can gain work experience
while still attending school, in what is called “cooperative education” in the USA,
and there have been recommendations for schools to take account of pupils’ part-
time employment in the UK (Howieson et al. 2006, 227, 230–231). Another
response has been for such societies to make virtue out of necessity and present
as an ideal a childhood without work or responsibility, reinforced by a Romantic
tradition in art and literature (for a discussion of the changing perspectives of
childhood in Western societies, see Cunningham 1995). That only relatively
wealthy people in the world can afford to live up to such an ideal means that it
readily becomes a goal for others to aspire to, a goal that has become dominant in
high-income societies and among the wealthy elite in low- and middle-income
societies. Since such a childhood is largely taken for granted in the Western
societies in which most psychological research takes place, we have little informa-
tion on how the well-being of children is affected by their being deprived of the
chance to contribute to their families through work.
27.2.2 Economic Activity in the Family Context
One line of argument is that children’s work for the maintenance of the home or
for subsistence is acceptable, but any kind of economic activity by young children
amounts to exploitation and is not acceptable. There is some justification for this
argument in that production for markets is not limited by needs of home con-
sumption, and excessive demands can be made on children for such production.
However, the divide between economic and noneconomic work is not always
clear and is not a reliable guide to work that is harmful or exploitative. The
feminist argument applies to children as much as to women: unpaid work within
the home should be recognized as economic in that it enables other members of
the household to earn, and it can be exploitative, sometimes more so than paid
employment (Nieuwenhuys 2005). Moreover, not all work in economic enter-
prises (especially those operating within the family context) has been shown to be
harmful to children.
Work in family farms where the main crop is commercial, such as cocoa
for export, need not be fundamentally different from production for subsistence
or for the local market. A study of cocoa farming in Ghana (Bøås and Huse 2006,
49–52) shows that most cocoa was produced on small family farms, which
utilized family labor especially in the short harvesting season. Young children
normally performed light and easy tasks. Partly because of the prosperity of
cocoa farmers, school enrolment was high notwithstanding the work that children
performed in the industry. To prohibit children from working on such farms
restricts their opportunity to acquire farming skills as well as restricting
family income.
While children of peasant families with land can readily contribute to production
on the family farm, children of poorer families do not have this opportunity. When
their parents depend for subsistence on working on other people’s land for wages,
children may still wish to participate in such a family enterprise. When parents are
paid on a piecework basis, the contributions of children can improve the family
income. In Mexico, for example, children from poor agricultural areas travel with
their families to earn seasonal money when their own agricultural season is over
(Bey 2003). Children remain with their families, learn about the wider world,
including how to earn and to deal with employers, and work on light tasks to
contribute significantly to their family economy. Adults carry heavy crop buckets,
while children perform the lighter work of picking. As with productive work
generally in the home, these children are able to learn while they work. Although
such travel may seriously disrupt schooling, teachers have commented that children
are often sharper and brighter when they return from such trips and show improved
social skills. The wages for all are low and living conditions are poor, but the work
of children enables the family to earn the substantial amount that they need to meet
their obligations at home, while the children acquire knowledge and skills that are
likely to be useful for their future livelihood.
In both rural and urban areas, small-scale trade is common in many communi-
ties, and children often acquire the necessary skills by accompanying and helping
their trading parents. Children may start trading as a kind of game, imitating adults
(Invernizzi 2003). Children as young as seven may sell small items to their peers
while their mothers trade with adults in more expensive items (Sharp 1996, 37–38).
As in other kinds of work, children involved in petty trade find ways of entertaining
themselves, particularly by socializing with peers. As they grow, they become with
828 M. Bourdillon
practice more competent in trading: they learn to relate to outsiders and in particular
to potential customers.
Children can learn through family economic activities when these are conducted
in the home. Ali Khan (2007) describes the trade of stitching footballs in Sialkot,
Pakistan, before it was disrupted by an international (and largely ill-informed)
campaign against the involvement of children in this activity. Most stitching took
place in homes through a system of piecework subcontracting. This allowed the
whole family to participate and to fit work with other schedules. Women could
combine stitching footballs for income with their domestic work and caring for
young children. Children in the family could help their parents when they were free,
normally in a relaxed and protective atmosphere, and learn the skills required.
Beginners could stitch the simple seams, leaving the more complicated parts to
those who were older and more skilled in stitching. Children were learning skills
that would be useful in the future while they contributed to the family economy.
Although the economic nature of work can sometimes result in excessive
demands on children, economic work also frequently provides useful learning
environments while it provides important economic benefits for poor families and
their children.
27.3 Expanding Experiences and Relations
So far, this chapter has largely been about work within the context of the family.
Outside a protective family environment, there are greater risks for children. I now
consider work outside the nuclear family and potential benefits that might outweigh
the risks involved.
27.3.1 Work in Other People’s Homes
In many societies, the family is broader than the nuclear family. The extended
family shares responsibility for children, and children grow up as contributing
members of this larger community. When nuclear families move apart, children
may weaken their ties with the larger group, resulting in insecurity when death,
conflict, or economic disaster disrupts an isolated family. On the other hand, ties
and shared responsibility can be maintained even when the kin are distant by
placing children in the homes of relatives; such movement may be determined by
adults, or the children concerned may be willing participants in the decisions. The
practice is especially important when livelihood is insecure due to potential failure
of crops or other shocks. Movement between homes can offer more than improved
security of livelihood for children: when a child moves to a wealthier home or
a more resourceful environment (as in movement from a poor rural area to a city),
he or she may receive material benefits, sponsorship of education, and help in
marriage and in building a career. Living in places away from home can broaden the
child’s experience and knowledge. Children’s contributions to the households they
move into, using the skills they have learned through working at home, make such
movement possible. Indeed, when children have to leave home because their
parents have died or as a result of some other shock, the extended family offers
a home and means of survival; the fact that children exchange services for their
board allows some room for negotiation about where they are to stay and how they
are to be treated. Western ideas that protection of children requires that they live
with parents or immediate family appears unnecessarily restrictive in many
societies.
Such arrangements, nevertheless, carry risks as well as benefits. A study in South
Africa (Bray 2003) showed that children living in homes away from parents or
grandparents worked on average significantly longer hours in domestic work than
did those living with their immediate family. Wealthy relatives do not always treat
poorer kin according to traditional expectations, and there is a possibility of
children being exploited.
Children sometimes move to the homes of people who are not kin in attempt to
improve their lives or make their livelihood more secure. This may be an informal
arrangement similar to moving between kin, or it may constitute formal domestic
employment for wages as well as benefits in kind. While many children profit from
such arrangements, the risks of exploitation and abuse are greater, and they are
common in certain cultural contexts (see below).
27.3.2 Labor-Market Work
In the first section of this chapter, the term “work” has been used in a broad sense to
cover a variety of activities involving effort with a utilitarian purpose. This section
focuses on work as gainful employment or labor-force work, but does not exclude
heavy productive work in the home.
From early adolescence, and sometimes earlier, children in both high- and low-
income countries frequently seek gainful employment outside their homes, in most
cases in combination with schooling. Such work is often associated with poverty
but, even in high-income countries, part-time employment during adolescence
appears to be a majority experience, often in defiance of cumbersome regulations
intended to limit and control the employment of children (e.g., White 1994;
Lavalette et al. 1995; Hobbs and McKechnie 1997; Mortimer 2007, 117).
Some children are compelled to work and in such circumstances that they hate
what they have to do. Work can go badly wrong for such children. The vast majority
of working children, however, are not simply passive victims, but exercise some
agency in their work (Liebel 2004). They exercise some choice in whether or not
they work and the kind of work they do; or they perceive that they have such
a choice. The choice to work may be instigated by the children, or they may
willingly or reluctantly accept the suggestion of elders. The choice of jobs is
sometimes in the hands of adults, or the children require the help of adults to
make contact with employers, but the children frequently have a say in what kind of
work they do.
830 M. Bourdillon
The range of labor-market work performed by children is considerable, from

agriculture and herding, through working with textiles and other productive indus-
tries (both in the home and in factories), to a variety of services, including
delivering milk and newspapers in high-income societies. Sometimes the work
involves hard manual labor. The entertainment industry provides well-paid jobs
for a few, abusive exploitative work for some at the other extreme, and a range in
between. Many young people find ways of earning through self-employment,
particularly in trade and services on city streets.
Jobs are usually short-term and sometimes seasonal. As young people grow in
experience and learn to deal with employers and customers, they often
progress from dull and repetitive jobs at first to jobs that require some skill and
enterprise. Jobs often have a gender bias. In many societies, girls are heavily tied up
in unpaid domestic and related work, while boys are more likely to work in the labor
market.
Conditions of work also vary widely. Some jobs occupy only a few hours
a week; others take up more time and can interfere with schoolwork; still others
are full-time, inhibiting any schooling. Employers range from those who try to
make maximum profit out of their young workers at one extreme to those who are
concerned about their employees – even employing them precisely to help. In some
situations, children are treated with scant respect and have no opportunity to
exercise any initiative; in others, enterprise is encouraged.
Except in extreme cases, young people frequently establish some control over
their lives through labor-market work. They acquire experience in dealing with
people beyond the confines of family and peers and particularly with employers.
Their income provides a degree of autonomy.
27.3.3 Why Children Work
There is a vast literature on why children engage in labor-force work, and it can be
categorized into three main perspectives. One relates work to child rearing and
education in its broadest sense. This theme arose in the section on learning through
work, and the relationship between school and work will be discussed below.
A second perspective emphasizes cultural values, in an extreme form of which
children are regarded as family assets to be exploited. While many societies
consider that the good of families and communities is more important than that of
the individuals that make them up, ethnographic literature rarely, if ever, shows
families and communities having no concern for the well-being of their children.
Moreover, if cultural explanations are to be convincing, they need to take into
account variations within societies and environmental and economic factors that
influence cultural values.
The third and dominant strain in the literature is that children’s work is related to
poverty and, in particular, that children are forced to work to be able to survive.
Children’s work is especially significant when the contributions of children will
make the difference between adequate nutrition and undernutrition, which has been
shown to have long-term effects on physical and cognitive development (Behrman

2012). The work of older children may be important for the well-being of younger
siblings.
There are broad statistical inverse correlations between the wealth of societies
and the labor-force work of children in them. Demographic considerations explain
why this might be expected. In low-income countries, the incomes of the adults are
much lower and the proportion of children and youth in the population of
low-income countries is nearly double that of high-income countries. Low-income
countries cannot therefore provide the resources that high-income countries can in
support of a work-free childhood. Broad correlations between low income and child
work do not, however, indicate precise causal relations: research shows the rela-
tionship of children’s work to poverty to be complex (Bourdillon et al. 2010,
66–87). Many children who work are not particularly poor and many poor children
do not work. Sometimes children from poor families have little opportunity to find
gainful employment: their problem is child unemployment. Times of relative
prosperity in a given society can reduce the amount of work undertaken by children,
but do not always do so.
There are specific situations in which poverty regularly gives rise to children’s
work. Many studies relate children’s work to shocks and emergencies to which
families that are already poor are particularly vulnerable (Bourdillon et al. 2010,
74–76). These may be widespread such as crop failure, or war, or natural disaster; or
they may be specific to the family, such as loss of a major breadwinner through
illness or death – or even simply the loss of a job. Poor families have few reserves
for dealing with shocks and the work of children can be important for the family’s
recovery. Children’s contributions can also help them to deal with their own
trauma: there are many examples of children taking pride in making a financial
contribution to help resolve family problems (e.g., Crivello et al. 2012, 227–231).
At the community level, during the Second World War, British children were
encouraged to participate in the war effort through productive work (Mayall and
Morrow 2011), and more recently in India, there is evidence that children benefitted
from being involved in planning and activities appropriate to their age in the
reconstruction after the tsunami of 2004 (International Institute for Child Rights
and Development 2006).
Many children have to work because they have no adult support, which is often
not available from social services in low-income states. In 2005, sub-Saharan
Africa had just over 9.1 million orphans under the age of 18 who had lost both
parents, representing approximately 1 in 40 of all children (from UNICEF 2006, 36,
Table 2) and resulting in large numbers of child-headed households in many
countries. The devastation of HIV/AIDS means that many other children live
with incapacitated parents and so become effective heads of household and princi-
pal breadwinners for their families. Throughout the world, there are children on city
streets who have to support themselves because they have no parents, or their
parents are unable to support them, or they have fled abusive homes. In such
situations, children need income from work to survive. Surviving through their
own efforts can sometimes give meaning to their disrupted lives.
832 M. Bourdillon
While many children are under pressure to work to acquire necessities for life,
this discussion builds on the supposition that the most common reason for children
taking up gainful employment is that such work is a fundamental human activity,
and young people like to participate in it as they grow up. They exercise agency in
their work. The reasons they give for working are relevant to the way in which their
work affects their well-being. When asked, young workers have provided several
reasons for working (see Bourdillon et al. 2010, 35–38), and these inform what
follows.
The most common primary motive that children report for seeking employment
is the need or desire for income. Many working children say that poverty drives
them to work and that they must work to support their families.
Even when families are not so impoverished as to be short of nutrition, contri-
butions from children, whether to family enterprises or from earned income, can
improve the quality of life for the family; these contributions can help with such
things as clothing, improving the homestead, and, particularly, expenses for school-
ing. In middle-income families, children’s earnings can enable them to meet
expenses that, though not strictly necessary, allow them to maintain their status
with respect to their peers and so release parents’ earnings for other household
expenses.
Over and beyond the basic needs they help to meet, working children often say
that their financial contributions generate greater respect for them and higher
standing in their families. Young workers often take great personal satisfaction in
being considered providers.
In better-off families where child work is an optional part-time activity, children
value income for entertainment and luxury goods, such as fashionable clothes and
electronic gadgets. While these items are not strictly necessary, young people enjoy
them and can feel pressure from peers and advertisers to spend in this way, even
occasionally on entertainment that interferes with schoolwork.
Some children value paid employment, particularly if it is away from home, as
a means for renegotiating their relationships with adults in their families; it helps
them to move toward adult status while maintaining good relations through their
contributions. One survey showed child workers in Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Scotland claiming to value their work and income for relieving
them from dependence on others and giving them a degree of independence and
control over their own lives (Liebel 2001, 61–62).
Some reasons for working are social rather than economic. Young workers say
that their jobs allow them to keep the company of their friends or to expand social
ties. Another is to earn social status and respect. In rural Nigeria, girls approaching
marriageable age become visible to prospective suitors through the work of vending
(Robson 2004, 206). Working children in South America argued that their work
kept them from getting involved in criminal activities or begging and allowed them
to live a decent life in spite of their poverty. In other ways, work may contribute to
a young person finding a place in society – to become “someone in life” (Liebel
2001, 60–61). Children deprived of the opportunity to earn feel a loss of status,
especially when they become dependent on donations.
Vinod Chandra’s study of children of Indian descent in England and India shows
how they find meaning in their work in family enterprises, through which they
assert their status in the family and their cultural identity (Chandra 2008, 112–141).
Related to status is a sense of responsibility: child workers in England commented
that in their jobs they were trusted as responsible and competent in a way that they
did not experience at school (Mizen et al. 2001, 44–45).
A study in the USA suggested that good relations with a supervisor at work can
provide relief from tensions that children feel at home (Call and Mortimer 2001,
110, 118–119). This is often the case when young people migrate away from home
to work (below). Success in the workplace can also provide relief from tensions and
poor achievement in school.
Some children say they work in order to increase their long-term future prospects.
Many work at least partly to pay for school expenses in the hope of a better future.
Children often prefer jobs that will open up future possibilities, through experience
and skills and useful contacts, even when such work is hard or hazardous. Advanta-
geous employment can help girls to gain control over their lives, including decisions
about their marriage; work can help to delay marriage where early marriage is the
norm and to accumulate a dowry that might facilitate a more advantageous union.
General statistical studies on relations between early work experience and future
incomes have produced mixed results: in some cases, early work correlates with
higher later earnings, but in others with lower earnings – perhaps because it
interferes with schooling (Bourdillon et al. 2010, 85–86). Long-term benefits
depend on the kind of work, the conditions under which it is undertaken, the
aptitudes of the children, and the employment environment. A study in Minnesota,
USA, showed that steady work in adolescence was a good predictor of quick entry
into career-oriented work in young adulthood (Mortimer 2007, 192–196). Apart
from learning how to handle work situations and relate to employers, work expe-
rience can help young people to learn to manage their time. There is, therefore, no
evidence to reject generally the views of children and their families that certain jobs
can enhance their future prospects.
Children regularly report that they value their work for its intrinsic qualities that
they feel are fun and constructive. They talk about learning at work things that they
cannot learn at school. Several studies have shown that a majority of working
children enjoy their work, and young workers have repeatedly surprised researchers
by saying that they would like to continue working even if it were not necessary for
their family’s livelihood (Bourdillon et al. 2010, 38). Many express a preference for
combining work with schooling, regarding both as important components in their
lives. While this does not necessarily indicate that they do in fact benefit from work,
it is relevant to the children’s subjective experience of well-being.
27.3.4 Migration for Work
Young people from relatively poor communities often find employment away
from home. In many situations, young people migrate – without accompanying
834 M. Bourdillon
adults – in search of better incomes, better lives, better schooling, or simply for
broader experience. Usually this involves moving from rural to urban areas and
sometimes crossing international boundaries. The possibility of higher earnings
away from home provides an incentive to travel. Gainful employment can meet
transport and living expenses, making the travel they desire and the experience of
new places possible for children with few material resources.
Much official thinking and policy on child migration is dominated by cases of
children in extremely difficult circumstances (such as street children) or children
who are trafficked and abused (Hashim and Thorsen 2011, 13–14; Alber 2011). In
situations of dire poverty, parents might encourage a child to earn money away from
home or even demand this. We find accounts of children being sold to traffickers for
domestic service or abusive work in agriculture or industry (Riisøen et al. 2004,
28–31; Blanchet 2005; Ould et al. 2004). In a region of West Java (Indonesia),
teenage girls from land-poor families are under great pressure from parents to go
abroad to earn money in the entertainment industry, the sex trade, or domestic
service (Sano 2012). Occasionally children are simply abducted. Younger and more
inexperienced persons are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse when
they have no supporting adults around them (Dottridge 2004, 19–20). While such
situations demand urgent attention, several studies indicate they comprise
a minority of child migrants.
The majority of child migrants are willing travelers, looking for a chance of
a better future through income, experience, education, or other training, or they
simply want to keep up with their peers. Studies in India, West Africa, and
Bangladesh show migrant children taking the initiative to travel or being happy
to cooperate with the suggestions of their parents. Children sometimes have to
negotiate permission to migrate – or they might leave without permission, espe-
cially when their desire for life elsewhere conflicts with the need for their labor at
home (Whitehead et al. 2007, 23–24; Iversen 2002, 821).
In some cases, the decision to migrate is dictated by need. I have mentioned
movement of children to overcome food insecurity. The collapse of local econo-
mies in Zimbabwe and Mozambique has driven many children to undergo danger-
ous and illegal journeys to South Africa, where they risk harsh treatment and arrest
(Staunton 2008). Occasionally a child flees harsh or abusive treatment at home, and
a small minority of young migrants speak of being neglected by their parents
(sometimes they mean that their parents cannot afford to provide what they need
or want). Even when undertaken under duress, such migration constitutes an
attempt by young people to take some control over their lives.
When the need is not dire, young people might be attracted by better living
standards away from home. Sometimes children move in the hope (not always
realized) of continuing their education when this is no longer possible at home.
They might specifically look for experience and training that will enhance their
future prospects, particularly when they see little use in the schooling available to
them. Sometimes too, they migrate to earn money for the education of younger
siblings (Whitehead et al. 2007, 28–33). In some societies or some sections of
societies, it is culturally expected that children travel to work and to gain experience
(e.g., on the Dogon of Mali; see Dougnon 2011). Moreover, poor rural areas may
offer little to engage adolescents out of school. When children have nothing to do at
home, especially if they are thereby getting into trouble, parents may encourage
them to go and find work elsewhere.
A study of migration in West Africa (Hashim and Thorsen 2011) shows teenage
boys leaving home to work, often without parental permission, partly to attain
a degree of independence and to escape oppressive control and workloads imposed
by adults at home. In many poor rural communities, young people see migration for
work as the only way to improve their livelihoods. Migrating also allows young
people to negotiate a new status in their families through their financial contribu-
tions, even when the initial move did not have parental permission.
Although life in the cities does not always meet their hopes and expectations,
migrant boys show enterprise and flexibility in adjusting their plans. Some lessons
they learn from dishonest and exploitative employers are harsh, but nevertheless
useful. They learn to assess risk and to deal with it, which can have a positive effect
on their development; such learning is possible only because things can sometimes
go wrong for them. Some migrants fail to achieve what they had hoped, making it
too embarrassing for them to return home – or perhaps they have no home to return
to. In this way, many children from poor rural areas can end up on struggling to
survive on city streets.
Even voluntary migration often removes young people from their normal sup-
portive networks and can make them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. When
they move outside their network of acquaintances or kin, they have little chance of
contacting their families or escaping harmful treatment. The presence of kin is no
guarantee of safety; however, a study in Ghana showed migrant children as likely to
complain about their treatment when working for kin as when working for others
(Hashim 2006, 11).
It is often assumed that the migration of young teenagers away from home
disrupts relations with the family. Rupture with families, however, is not usual.
Even when children migrate to escape tensions at home, perhaps over poor perfor-
mance at school, they often restore their relations with their families by contributing
from their earnings. More generally, movement often involves the cooperation of
kin: young people may travel with kin or call upon relatives to provide accommo-
dation near the place of work. Especially where there is a cultural tradition of
children migrating to work, there is often a network between the places of work and
the home community, even crossing international frontiers, which informs prospec-
tive migrants on what to expect, provides helpful contacts to make the trip
a success, and enables migrants to keep regular contact with their homes.
In practice, children have both positive and negative experiences of working
away from home. Even those working on city streets may see benefits in their
situation. Some children have improved their lives and the livelihood of their
families by leaving rural homes for city streets in a variety of ways: perhaps
improving nutrition, acquiring cognitive and other skills necessary for their work,
and developing income-generating enterprises and life trajectories (see, e.g., Nunes
et al. 1993; Rizzini and Butler 2003). Sometimes, the decision to travel involves
836 M. Bourdillon
cutting ties (at least temporarily) with families who are unable to support them
adequately (Ofosu-Kusi and Mizen 2012). Young people who return home after
years of work away sometimes express a desire to travel again to a more fulfilling
way of life.
27.3.5 Apprenticeship
In many societies, individuals learn a particular trade or career through formal or

informal apprenticeship, in which the student moves from observation and periph-
eral participation to full and guided participation in the activities of the craft under
an established master.
To illustrate informal apprenticeship, a child among the Kyrgyz nomads in
Central Asia might become a tentmaker by watching and helping a master, who
may be his father or some other relative. The child learns how to care for the trees
that provide the wood, how to form the wood, and how to make the roofing. It takes
only a month to make one tent, but the apprentice must stay with the master for
a year, at the end of which he will be given equipment and told to work on his own
(Bunn 1999, 80). Noncommercial skills are learned in a similar way but without the
formality of completing an apprenticeship.
In West Africa, common apprenticeships for girls include sewing, embroidery,
weaving, tailoring, and knitting; boys become apprentices in mechanics, carpen-
try, welding and other forms of metalwork, fishing, tailoring, and as assistants on
trucks (Riisøen et al. 2004, 22). Apprentices are paid little or nothing: typically
the families of an apprentice pay a fee to the teacher for the training. Sometimes
apprentices have to buy their tools, which they are not always allowed to keep,
and there may be further payments to be made for the receipt of a certificate of
qualification and release from the master. Apprentices are often treated with scant
respect and frequently beaten. Their tasks are not usually clearly defined and
include cleaning the workplace, watching over it during the night, and often
doing domestic and even agricultural work for their masters. The apprenticeship
is sometimes subsumed into a form of fostering, in which the master takes
responsibility for the apprentice, who joins the household of the master. In
Nigeria, parents try to find people to whom they can foster out their children,
as a way of finding them an urban footing and entering a trade (Bass 2004,
23–34).
Most apprenticeships start in a child’s middle to late teens and last for a period of
2–3 years, but there are wide variations, depending on teachers and local cultures
(Morice 1982). In Senegal, apprenticeship for tailoring can last up to 10 years: the
child may start as young as 10 years old and the work excludes formal schooling
(Bass 1996). Notwithstanding their potential and actual shortcomings, systems of
apprenticeship can be an effective way for children to learn a trade. Apart from the
skills of a particular craft, apprentices learn the value of quality work, the costs of
making mistakes, and how to trade their products or services. Moreover, they enter
a network of trading contacts that often results in gainful self-employment in
adulthood. Such lessons and advantages are not easily incorporated into institution-
based vocational training.
This form of learning a trade through participation is maintained in some
developed countries for older teenagers and under controlled conditions. In
Germany, for example, while apprentices receive training at work in a particular
occupation under an experienced craftsman with teaching qualifications, they also
spend 1 or 2 days each week in school. The state pays for the apprentices’ schooling
and the salaries of their teachers. The apprentices receive a low wage for their work,
which underscores the fact they are still primarily learners rather than workers
(Hansen et al. 2001, 133–136).
27.4 Harmful and Hazardous Work
The previous sections have shown ways in which work can be a significant ingre-
dient of a flourishing childhood. On the other hand, in certain situations, work can
damage children physically and psychologically and hinder their development.
Some children find themselves in extremely abusive situations. In 1999, the Inter-
national Labour Organization (ILO) passed its Convention 182 on “worst forms of
child labor,” which received immediate and widespread (though not universal)
ratification. This Convention demands programs of action to eliminate as
a priority the worst forms of child labor from the lives of all young people under
the age of 18.
27.4.1 Worst Forms of Child Labor
First among the worst forms of child labor mentioned in this Convention are all
forms of “slavery or practices similar to slavery” (Article 3a). This category is
defined by the relations and conditions surrounding the work rather than particular
kinds of work and includes the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and
serfdom, and “forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory
recruitment of children for use in armed conflict”. Forced or compulsory labor
can arise in agriculture, in industry, and in domestic work, and children separated
from supporting adults are particularly vulnerable: even if not physically
constrained, such children may not have the means to escape their situation. Loss
of freedom is frequently accompanied by physical and psychological abuse and
generally denies children the opportunity for healthy psychological and cognitive
development. This category clearly excludes work that is voluntarily and willingly
taken on by children.
Second, the Convention forbids “the use, procuring or offering of a child for
prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances”
(Article 3b). Such practices are contrary to the values of most cultures and are
therefore psychologically damaging. Prostitution carries serious risks to health.
838 M. Bourdillon
The sex trade is often associated with trafficking, loss of freedom, and physical
abuse, and is therefore viewed as contrary to the well-being of children.
In certain cultures, however, prostitution carries no stigma and is considered an
acceptable occupation for older girls, which they might prefer over work they
would otherwise be doing, such as laboring in the hot sun on family fields.
Assessment of how various forms of intervention can affect the well-being of
girls in such situations is not straightforward, and there is a danger of ethnocentric
imposition of foreign values (for a full discussion, see O’Connell Davidson 2005).
A third category of “worst forms” is the involvement of children in illicit
activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs. Such activities
put children in conflict with wider society, often expose them to physical violence,
and in the drugs trade can result in severe damage to health.
A substantial study of children in such activities, by Luke Dowdney (2003) in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, warns of the complexity of the situation. Children move into the
trade through social association with dealers on the streets and through lack of
alternative prospects to improve their lives. They are drawn into dealers’ gangs,
which give them an identity and status in an organization, together with some
excitement, even as it subjects them to violence and sometimes death. Dowdney
points out that to treat such activities simply as a criminal matter is unlikely to
succeed; rather children need realistic prospects to improve their lives in other ways.
Finally, ILO Convention 182 forbids “work which, by its nature or the circum-
stances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of
children”. This category, commonly referred to as “hazardous work”, covers
a range of situations and is open to a variety of interpretations. Some work by
children (and indeed by adults) is irredeemably hazardous, such as work in glass
factories of Firozabad, India, where children worked long hours in intense heat and
at high risk of injury, in conditions in which even adults often cannot continue
beyond their mid-thirties (Wal 2006, 52–62). More frequently, hazards can be
reduced and conditions improved without preventing children from working.
Even when the nature of the work is agreed to be unacceptably hazardous for
children, dealing with the working children requires sensitivity and care to ensure
that they are not even more damaged by prohibitions on their work. Underground
mining, for example, is widely agreed to be unacceptably hazardous for children
because of its intrinsic dangers and particularly the dangers for children of working
extensively in a confined and often polluted environment. Yet in some situations,
young miners have argued that, in the absence of better alternatives, mining is their
best option (Bourdillon et al. 2010, 168). This situation raises two points: first,
intervention must ensure that better alternatives are available, and second, it must
consider the damage to children’s well-being that can result from ignoring their
considered opinions.
There is disagreement on how broadly to interpret “hazardous work” as one of
the “worst forms of child labor”. Some people argue to include a wide range
of work to be banned under this category, to provide extensive protection from
risk. If, however, too broad an interpretation is accepted, the focus on and priority
of situations requiring urgent attention becomes blurred. Moreover, a broad
interpretation of work coming under this category can restrict opportunities for
young people to gain experience and improve their lives through work. So it is not
necessarily protective to interpret “hazardous work” as broadly as possible.
Estimates of children worldwide caught in the worst forms of child labor are
published from time to time. The sources of these estimates, and variation in what is
to be considered hazardous, make them unreliable. Nevertheless, a significant
number of working children are caught up in the very worst forms of child labor
and are therefore in need of urgent intervention. Research generally indicates that
these are a small minority of all working children, although many others are
working in conditions that are not satisfactory and need to be improved.
27.4.2 Hazardous Work
Different kinds of harm can result from children’s work. Many concerns about
physical hazards in children’s work relate to health and safety standards in the
workplace generally and conditions that not even adults should experience. Some
factors, however, relate particularly to children. Since children have lower body
weight than adults and because they are growing, hazards from chemicals can be
particularly dangerous; such chemicals include insecticides in agriculture, toxins in
manufacturing, and other pollutants in the place of work. Other hazards to which
young workers are particularly susceptible include exposure to excessive heat and
noise and ergonomic hazards linked to repetitive motion, high force, and awkward
posture. Sometimes hazards result from mismatches between the small body size of
children and the machinery, tools, workstations, and protective equipment they may
have to use (Fassa and Wegman 2009, 129).
Although attempts to establish the effects of work generally on health and
growth on children have produced inconsistent results (Levison and Murray-
Close 2005), a number of hazards to health and growth are posed by particular
kinds of work or work environments (e.g., Forastieri 2002; Dorman 2008; Fassa
et al. 2010). Some kinds of harm are immediately observable in injuries and illness
that occur in an unsafe environment or immediate sickness from toxic chemicals.
Some kinds of harm may have permanent effects, perhaps becoming apparent only
years after exposure to the damaging environment. For example, silicosis (leading
to tuberculosis) is associated with work in stonecutting and pottery in India, but the
disease may develop only after 20 years. Some work can have mixed effects on
health: scavengers in Manila, Philippines, had higher levels of lead but lower rates
of anemia than schoolchildren in metropolitan Manila (Ide and Parker 2005).
Hazards do not necessarily result in actual harm to children. When boys wield
machetes on family farms, accidents happen. A boy is less likely to cut himself if he
has been trained in the use of the instrument and if it is the right size for a person of
his stature. The question remains as to whether or not the risk of working with
a machete is commensurate with the benefits to the boy and his family. Some
studies simply enumerate injuries sustained in a particular type of work without also
considering the benefits of this work and without comparison to the injury rate in
840 M. Bourdillon
other activities: these have limited use in assessing child well-being. (A similar
question concerning risks and benefits can be asked of much play and sport.)
Apart from such areas of discretion, children’s well-being demands that hazards
be removed from, or minimized in, their workplaces. If this is not possible or if the
working environment inevitably results in serious damage, the work is clearly
unacceptable.
A common problem with children’s work is its intensity and the time given to it.
A frequent concern is that work interferes with schooling and reduces the possibil-
ity of leisure activities. Relationships between work and school are discussed
below; first, I consider how work can become excessively extensive.
When work is undertaken under compulsion or duress, the hours of work
cannot always be restricted to reasonable limits. When the livelihood of the
child or the family depends on the productive work of children, extensive working
hours have to be weighed against the need for nutrition and other necessities.
This kind of situation is particularly likely to arise when poor families
suffer some kind of crisis. Crises can lead to incurring debt, again compelling
children to work, sometimes as laborers bonded against the debt. When children
from poor families are compelled by such a situation to forego schooling and other
activities for too long, they get caught up in the cycle of poverty with much reduced
chance of developing opportunities to earn a more secure livelihood when they
grow up.
It is not, however, necessarily the work itself that is the primary threat to the
child’s well-being. The work contains risk to development but is a response to deal
with a greater problem. The loss of income may be due to the absence of other
resources, such as medical facilities or adults’ access to gainful employment. The
families, and often the children themselves, make a decision that in their situation
the benefits of work outweigh its disadvantages for the well-being of the child.
Stopping the work will not improve the child’s situation and prospects unless other
support is provided to deal with necessities. Children of the poor generally accu-
mulate multiple risks, which need comprehensive attention (see Wachs 2012). To
eliminate one risk – such as excessive work – without attending to the larger
situation is unlikely to contribute significantly to child well-being and may indeed
be damaging.
Apart from the need to produce or earn, crises can affect the work of children in
other ways. Owing to the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa, increasing
numbers of children there have inherited heavy responsibilities of caring for the
sick and for household work that adults can no longer perform. Even in high-
income countries such as England, many thousands of young people have been
heavily involved in caring for invalids in their homes with little external support,
a responsibility that can interfere severely with schooling and socialization and
sometimes damages the health of the caregivers (Dearden and Becker 1999, 2004).
Nevertheless, caring work for parents and other close relatives can provide impor-
tant benefits in strengthening family relations and dealing with trauma in the family,
particularly when the end is bereavement. Children’s well-being may require
support in the work rather than protection from it.
Even when the work is not strictly necessary, individual or cultural values may
increase demands on children to work beyond what readily fits in with other
activities. In some cultures, it is expected that children work to support adults in
their families, and children are at the beck-and-call of any adult who wishes for
their services. Particular problems arise from the demands sometimes made on girls
for child care and domestic work, which can leave them with little free time and can
sometimes interfere with their schooling.
Some apprentices are exploited by their employers; they may work long hours in
the workshop and undertake domestic chores besides. Another area in which
children are frequently required to work long indeterminate hours is domestic
employment, where a child can be on call day and night, sometimes 7 days
a week. In virtually any field, there are likely to be some unscrupulous adults
who try to maximize profits by making excessive demands on their workers.
Children, whose work is often not formally recognized and even sometimes illegal,
are particularly vulnerable in this respect, with no protection from trade unions. The
vulnerability is often exacerbated when working children come from families or
communities of much lower status than those of their employers and can be
compounded by gender inequalities.
In several contexts, young people have pointed out that work for employers is
more demanding than unpaid work at home: at home, you can rest when you are
tired or not feeling well. Nevertheless, parents or other guardians can also be very
demanding, and some young workers report that what they do in employment is no
more strenuous than what they had previously to do at home. Some studies have
shown that extensive unpaid work in the home can be disruptive to schooling (e.g.,
Assaad et al. 2007; see also Guarcello et al. 2007, who suggest including nonmarket
activities in estimates of child labor). Problems can arise when parents fail to
recognize that traditional chores can interfere with schoolwork, particularly when
older girls are expected to do virtually all the housework while in their final years of
secondary school. Indeed, in some contexts children are concerned about the work
demands made by parents and guardians at home, in contrast to which paid
employment is a positive experience (see, e.g., Bourdillon 2009, 30). A study of
children who had migrated from hill villages to work in carpet factories in
Katmandu, Nepal, showed the boys preferring to be back at home but girls happy
to be there since factory work was easier than their workload at home (Johnson et al.
1995, 57, 65).
The demands made on children depend partly on their relations with their
employers. Work may be carried out in a totalitarian environment, with supervisors
and other adults dictating what the young workers should do and allowing no
freedom or negotiation: this kind of working environment can apply to adults as
well as children. But with no formal recognition of their work and often with no
formal contracts and the possibility of easy dismissal, children are particularly at
the mercy of their employers.
In some situations, children are regularly scolded, even beaten, for perceived or
real mistakes. Punishments can include withholding wages and imposing fines,
which in some cases are severe and arbitrary. Children have little chance of
842 M. Bourdillon
compelling employers to pay due wages: few working children have access to
legal systems and rare recourse to courts has sometimes failed on the grounds
that the work was not legal. When children are dependent on employers for
board and shelter, as in domestic work or apprenticeships, food may be withheld
as a form of punishment. Child domestic workers in particular are frequently
abused sexually, and sexual and other forms of harassment can take place in all
work situations.
A major concern of many child workers is that they are not treated with respect.
Disrespect can take a number of forms, including beating, abusive language
and forms of punishment from employers. A mild form is to belittle children’s
work in a variety of ways: it is not valued in monetary terms; it is belittled in
language and denied recognition as work; it is sometimes characterized as shameful
or illegal.
Disrespectful and abusive treatment can be very damaging to children’s self-
esteem and self-confidence and consequently hinder their development as much as
physical hazards. Such treatment is not confined to workplaces: it occurs also in
schools and even homes and can be part of a broader problem related to the way
children are perceived in a social context that accepts abusive language and beating
children. Sometimes young people seek employment precisely to escape from such
treatment at home or at school.
Concern has been raised in the literature that the employment of children leads to
behavioral problems (particularly in the USA, e.g., Greenberger and Steinberg
1985) and that their enhanced sense of independence can adversely affect family
solidarity and unity. Income from work can be spent on entertainment in ways
that can disrupt schoolwork and family life and even damage children’s health.
A study of working and nonworking adolescents (aged 16–18) in the USA showed
that those who worked were a little more likely to disagree with their parents
over such things as dress, friends, going and staying out, helping in the house,
sex, smoking, money, school, and family (Manning 1990, 192). It is not
clear, however, whether work causes these problems, since children with prior
problematic behavior at school or at home are more likely to look for paid
employment, nor is it clear whether the problems are temporary or more enduring
(see, e.g., Mortimer 2003, 165).
We have little information on the effect of work on behavior in low-income
communities, where work is accepted as normal. As indicated earlier, contributions
from children can improve their status in their families and in the case of young
migrants can contribute to restoring tense relations. I have also pointed out that
working children in South America argued that, far from making them delinquent,
their work kept them from getting involved in criminal activities. A comparison
between children doing similar street work in Brazil shows that those working from
home usually maintain the values of their families, while those living on the street
are more dependent on peers for support and more likely to get involved in criminal
activity (Campos et al. 1994).
Possible adverse effects of work on the behavior of young people, therefore,
remain an open question requiring further research in a variety of contexts.
27.4.3 Work, School, and Education
A frequent concern about children’s labor-force work is that it can interfere with
schooling and so inhibit cognitive development. In particular, work is thought to
prevent children from acquiring skills that will enable them to earn good incomes in
adulthood. Thus, the ILO Convention 138 relates the minimum age of employment
to the age for the end of compulsory schooling. In economic terms, it is frequently
assumed that children’s work emphasizes immediate returns and inhibits the for-
mation of human capital. Research reveals a much more complex relationship
between school and work (for a fuller discussion of this topic, see Bourdillon
et al. 2010, 108–132).
Numerous studies show correlations between children’s work on the one hand
and lower performance or attendance rates at school on the other. Econometricians
frequently speak of such correlations as showing the “effects” of work on school,
even when cause and effect have not been indisputably established. First, it is
necessary to consider factors that affect both work and school (intervening vari-
ables). Children in poor areas often have no or difficult access to schools, so
attendance is likely to be low and rates of work high. Children from impoverished
families, or with uneducated parents, are less likely to attend school or perform well
at school than their better-off peers: they are also more likely to work, both at home
and outside. Children from impoverished families may have had their cognitive
development impaired by malnutrition, compromising their performance at school,
and they need to work to help their families. There are also cases of children from
marginalized communities having problems with the language or culture at school,
in addition to being more involved in work. In such cases, background appears to
affect both work and school; we have no indication, however, as to whether the
work itself affects schooling.
Careful use of multivariate regression can control for such background factors
and establish a relationship between work and school attendance or performance.
This still leaves the direction of the link open. Schools in poor areas are often poor
in quality and short of resources: pupils in poor-quality schools learn less, leave
school earlier, and take up employment earlier. Similarly, children from marginal-
ized communities often lose interest in school when they face language and other
difficulties and so leave for work. In this way, poor school performance can push
children into work rather than work taking children away from school (see Bhalotra
2003). Even in high-income societies, children with little aptitude for schoolwork
sometimes seek more satisfying occupation in work.
It is possible that the statistical technique using instrumental variables can
establish that work affects schooling in a particular context. But valid instruments
are often not available. To be valid, an instrument must meet strict criteria: first, the
instrumental variable must be able to influence children’s work and not be
influenced by it; second, it can have no possible effect on schooling except through
work. Not all studies pay adequate attention to these conditions and to the second in
particular; if the conditions are not met, the most sophisticated mathematics cannot
establish causality.
844 M. Bourdillon
Econometric tests to show that outside work generally affects school perfor-
mance have yet to prove convincing (see the discussion in Edmonds 2008). Some
specific patterns, however, have been established.
The first relates to hours of work: surveys that fail to take into account the
amount of time taken up by work can establish little. Full-time work does correlate
strongly with decreased school attendance, although this does not indicate whether
children leave school because of their work, as happens in some situations, or
whether they start working because they have left school for some other reason, as
happens in many others. What counts as full-time work depends on the situation but
is normally above 30 h a week; the criterion applies to work within the child’s home
as much as to paid employment. There is no evidence, however, that part-time work
generally affects school attendance. Different situations point in either direction: in
some cases, children in part-time work are less likely to attend school; in others,
attendance does not differ significantly between working and nonworking children;
and in others still, part-time work has correlated with better school attendance. The
last is often at least partly because the children earn their school expenses through
their work: for some children, work makes schooling possible.
Children drop out of school for many reasons: for some, the schools are
inaccessible; many families cannot afford the costs; the benefits of local schools,
or of schooling in the local job market, are perceived as too limited to be worth the
investment of time and money; some children are discouraged by failure in
the classroom; some are beaten by teachers or harassed by other pupils; and
some – a minority – drop out in order to work (Bourdillon et al. 2010, 119–121).
Work is an attractive alternative for children already out of school. Several studies
have shown that when children return to school, whether through financial incen-
tives or by improved accessibility of quality schooling, the amount of work they
undertake drops (though rarely do they give up work completely); there is little
(if any) evidence that simply stopping children from working pushes them back
into school.
Does work take time away from school even if it does not prevent school
attendance? Again, research results are not consistent. As has been pointed out,
extensive work at home or in employment can interfere with schoolwork. Studies
suggest, however, that school and work usually compete only marginally for time.
When schoolchildren start working part-time, that time is mostly drawn from
leisure and passive activities. When working children find an opportunity to return
to school, perhaps through economic support or improved access to quality schools,
they usually reduce the time they give to work, but not by as much as the time they
give to school. Rather than assuming that work and school are in direct competition
for time, there is need to research the ways in which children use their time in
various activities and in particular situations.
Even if work does not affect school attendance or hours of schooling, it might
make children tired and less able to perform well at school. Generally, it is agreed
that up to 10 hours of work a week do not adversely affect school performance. The
effect of longer hours on performance is disputed and, as with attendance, research
results are not consistent. In some situations, working children perform less well
than other pupils; in others, they perform as well or better. Some academically less
able children seek satisfaction in work, where they find gainful and rewarding
experience even while they continue to achieve weak results at school. In such
cases, it is not so much that work affects school performance, as that poor school
performance encourages work.
A consideration remains in terms of the formation of human capital. Numerous
studies show that schooling correlates strongly with improved earnings in adult-
hood. It might therefore be argued that even a possibility of interference with school
is sufficient justification to prevent children from working, especially children of
the poor, who are most in need of improved incomes later. There are problems with
this argument. One is that studies of the effects of schooling on future earnings do
not take into account the aptitudes of pupils and rarely consider school quality or
job opportunities in particular environments. While children who are learning well
in a good school have prospects of lucrative employment when they complete their
schooling, gross figures do not indicate that children with poor backgrounds in
under-resourced schools and growing into a very restricted job market would
benefit in the same way from extra years at school (see Glewwe and Kremer
2006). Moreover, many important economic skills, such as those in agriculture or
various crafts, are learned through work rather than through school. One study
found that Brazilian child street vendors acquired mathematical skills through their
work that were better developed and more useful than those they were learning in
school (Nunes et al. 1993). Some studies have shown that in certain circumstances
work experience, even more than school, contributes to higher earnings in adult-
hood (Bourdillon et al. 2010, 85). So it is not always the case that work embeds
children in a cycle of poverty.
A further consideration in the relationship between work and school is the kind
of economic success promised by school. Large benefits from school for future
incomes of children in poor rural communities arise when it enables them to move
out of small-scale agriculture and into professional employment. Such a life tra-
jectory normally means leaving the small-scale agricultural communities that
comprise the large majority of the population in low-income countries. This can
greatly benefit certain individuals, but it cannot cover the whole rural population,
especially when opportunities for white-collar employment are few. Moreover, it
denigrates rural life and depicts as failures those who have little aptitude for school
and decide on a future in agriculture or other directly productive work (see White
2011, 6–7).
In the 1970s and 1980s, an ideal of combining work and school – “education
with production” – in the development of children and youth was widely accepted.
Such a perspective views classroom skills as only part of education. This philoso-
phy, however, was largely lost in the heavy emphasis in the 1990s on literacy and
numeracy skills and in the determination to remove children from labor-force work
(Myers 2001, 311–313); the term “education” is now frequently used as a synonym
for school. Yet since formal schooling is often restricted to academic learning,
compulsory schooling does not always fulfill children’s right to education, directed
to “the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical
846 M. Bourdillon
abilities to their fullest potential” (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child, Article 21,1a).
Rather than perceiving work as competing with education, it appears more
constructive to take account of different kinds of learning and to consider education
as comprising – for most of the world’s children – both appropriate work and
appropriate schooling. This requires the hours and nature of work to be appropriate
to the age of the workers and particularly to allow adequate time for schooling and
for rest and leisure.
Combining work and school also requires school hours that allow for work and
other activities. In situations where demands on children’s work are seasonal, as in
family or commercial agriculture, it is often possible to adjust school hours or
school terms to cater for them. Apart from initiatives in “education with produc-
tion”, there have been various experiments in adapting schooling to meet the needs
of working children, both in the times they operate and in the curriculum
(Bourdillon et al. 2010, 128–129). Some of these adjustments have been well
managed and as effective, or more effective, in imparting classroom skills com-
pared to standard schooling; nevertheless, there is a danger that informal schools
with short hours can deteriorate into inferior schooling.
The conclusion from this discussion is that school and work are not necessarily
incompatible; indeed, they can be complementary in a child’s full education.
There is little empirical evidence to support or refute the common assumption by
economists that child work is incompatible with human capital formation (Emer-
son 2009, 8). To improve school attendance, it would be more useful to attend to the
accessibility, costs, and quality of schooling than to drive children away from work,
often an alternative activity when school fails.
27.4.4 Problems with Classification of Children’s Work
Children’s work can be beneficial, and it can be harmful. How do we sort the
good and the bad? Some practitioners distinguish between “child work”, which is
benign, and “child labor”, which they define as harmful work that should be
abolished (the distinction is often difficult to translate into languages other
than English). The difference is clear enough at the stereotypical extremes.
Working all day down an insecure mine shaft with no freedom to stop or even
rest and no chance of schooling is clearly “child labor” to be abolished. Helping
mother with the odd kitchen chores is clearly benign. But most work that children
do has both harmful and beneficial aspects, actual or potential, making the catego-
rization of work into harmful or benign difficult and distracting: if an ambiguous
work situation is classified as “child labor”, the benefits that children may derive
from it are easily ignored; if it is classified as benign “work”, problems are ignored.
Frequently, such classification is assumed prior to study and analysis, bypassing
serious assessment. While identifying work that should be stopped is an urgent need
in extreme cases, the well-being of working children would more frequently be
served by identifying and minimizing the harmful aspects of the work they do and
by enhancing rather than stopping the benefits they derive from it. The division of
children’s work into “child labor” to be abolished and “work” that is benign might
simplify intervention, but it is not helpful for understanding the relation of work to
child well-being nor for ensuring that intervention promotes the best interests of
children.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child mentions the right of
children to be protected from economic “exploitation” (Article 32) but fails to
define this term. In the context of adult labor, “exploitation” usually refers to
inadequate compensation for work done, but for children the term is often used
more broadly and vaguely: some people assume that any children’s work outside
the family must inevitably be exploitative (e.g., Schlemmer 2000, 12). This gives
rise to incongruous situations where paid work is regarded as exploitation and
unpaid “help” (e.g., in maintaining a school) is not. In practice, children are often
caught up in exploitative situations where the poor have to work for small rewards,
and more lavish rewards are reaped higher in the chain of production. The work
of poor children, whether in the home or for wages, is thus linked to global
inequalities and arguably to the possibility of work-free childhoods for the wealthy
(Nieuwenhuys 2005).
The difficulty in classifying work as benign or harmful is well illustrated in the
case of child domestic work outside the context of a child’s immediate family
(Bourdillon et al. 2010, 156–161). On the one hand, as mentioned earlier, this can
be beneficial to children, spreading childcare beyond the immediate family,
increasing security, and broadening the child’s experience. Even outside the
extended family, there are numerous recorded cases of children improving their
lives through this kind of employment, especially when they move into a more
resourceful home; indeed, there are recorded cases of employers using such
employment to provide an opportunity for disadvantaged children to work for
their own improvement and of children finding employers supportive and helpful.
On the other hand, there are numerous recorded instances of abuse, especially
where children are living in the employers’ homes away from their kin; such
abuse includes excessive working hours, humiliating treatment, beating, inadequate
food, and not infrequently sexual abuse. Even kin sometimes mistreat children from
the extended family who are staying in their homes. In certain cultural or social
contexts, the mistreatment of child domestic workers is so widespread that there
seems no reasonable alternative to treating it as one of the worst forms of child
labor; in other contexts, intervention may serve children better by focusing on the
conditions of work and sensitizing employers about how best to treat their
young employees rather than depriving children of the chance to better themselves
in this way.
It is therefore difficult to categorize kinds of work into harmful and benign, and it
is not always in the interests of the specific children concerned to do so. What is
more important is to be aware of potential hazards and benefits in different kinds of
work and situations.
848 M. Bourdillon
27.5 Balancing Benefits and Harm
Table 27.1 lists major factors arising from work that can affect the well-being of
children positively and negatively.
The physical environment is important. A safe and healthy working environment
with an appropriate balance of learning, work, play, and rest can be beneficial for
children; while adverse working conditions, especially when health is threatened by
accidents or toxins and excessive workloads, can damage children’s development.
Most physical hazards are relatively easy to identify. They can be dealt with in
ways that are appropriate to any workplace: adequate training, protective clothing
and equipment, procedures to minimize risk – all appropriately adapted for young
people. Remaining risk can be weighed against material benefits such as useful
experience and learning, improved nutrition, and cash for other necessities.
Besides, even hazardous work can sometimes convey considerable psychosocial
benefits as well as economic ones, and all these need to be weighed against the risks
incurred (Woodhead 2004, 324). Children undertaking hazardous work are often
aware of the hazards but believe them to be outweighed by benefits, particularly the
long-term benefits that are derived from work experience.
Psychosocial factors, however, dominate this table and apply for the most part
not to the nature of the work but to the social relations and social environment
surrounding it. Consequently, the well-being of child workers is likely to be better
served by attending to the work environment, and particularly to the social envi-
ronment, than by categorizing types of work to be prohibited.
The balance of costs and benefits of any work depends on the situation of the
children concerned. In a family short of food, the nutrition to be gained from work
is essential and outweighs many disadvantages that the work may bring; in a family
with adequate resources, material income carries less weight. If a child is working
hard at school in the hope of entering a professional career, even small distractions
can be damaging. Context is especially important in the consideration of psycho-
social factors.
27.5.1 Psychosocial Effects of Work
Psychologist Martin Woodhead has given much attention to ways in which work
can benefit or harm children psychologically (1999, 2004, see especially his
summary table on p.338, from which I draw what follows). He points out that
harm and benefit from children’s work are related to the cultural context surround-
ing it.
Secure relationships and consistent settings promote children’s well-being.
When work involves the breakdown of social networks and emotional bonds and
there are no supportive relationships to help children cope with disruptions to their
familiar surroundings, it can be very damaging. This is particularly likely when
children are away from home and totally dependent on an abusive or exploitative
employer. A child’s sense of security can be further damaged when he or she has no
Table 27.1 Potential benefits and harm in children’s work

Field Potential benefits Potential harm
Physical
Health Improved nutrition – for worker and Unhealthy environment
other children in family Tiredness from excessive work or lack
of sleep
Growth Exercise Excessive work hindering growth
Working Excessive hours, poor lighting,
conditions excessive noise, cramped conditions
Hazards Learn to deal with dangerous situations Toxic chemicals
Air polluted by dust or vapors
Dangerous equipment
Abusive punishment
Income
Improved livelihood – for worker and No or inadequate remuneration
other children in family Remuneration taken by guardians or
Growing autonomy others
Rights in family resources
Psychosocial
Learning Life skills, trade skills Schooling prevented or hindered
Learning to interact with adults,
customers, etc.
Experience for future labor-force work
Responsibility Developing a sense of responsibility Anxiety from excessive expectations
Agency Growing autonomy Being forced to work with no choices
Sense of purpose, especially for those Loss of control over life in an abusive
out of school work situation
Developing resilience by dealing Loss of confidence after failing to cope
successfully with adversity and stress with excessive stress
Discipline, learning to manage time Loss of opportunity for creative
activity
Relations Broadening of relationships with adults Independence and loss of adult
and peers guidance
Relief from tension at home or school Harmful relations in the workplace
Shared experience with working parents Disrupted relations when away from
home
Improved relations in the home Social isolation
Tensions in the home
Self-esteem Sense of achievement Denigration, work not appreciated
Status
Status Status in family and among peers Loss of freedom and dignity
Empowerment Gender discrimination, sexual
Improved status for girls harassment
Recreation Escape from a dreary home Loss of leisure
Source Bourdillon et al. 2010, 175–176
850 M. Bourdillon
protection against an unscrupulous employer and can be dismissed at whim. In the

absence of any kind of protective environment, the fear of abuse can be as
damaging as the abuse itself. However, when work takes place in a stable environ-
ment with predictable routines, it need not be disruptive. Even where work involves
a change in the environment, as occurs when children travel, it need not be
damaging if the change takes place in the context of supportive relationships.
Families can be supportive of their working children and respect their contribu-
tions to the family. On the other hand, some parents make excessive demands on
their children and may even collude with exploitative employers. Work can be
particularly debilitating when all payment goes directly to parents and guardians
and children have no control over their earnings.
The nature of the work and guidance received can be important. In the home,
children progressively participate in socially valued activities. Under sensitive and
consistent guidance, they can learn appropriate skills and responsibilities. Such
learning can take place in workplaces outside the home. On the other hand, work
that is monotonous and not stimulating carries little if any benefit. When children
receive little encouragement in their work, but instead are regularly disparaged and
humiliated, and when they are stigmatized because of the work they do, this can be
damaging. Here the problem is not simply how employers treat working children
but also whether others in society respect or denigrate the work that they do.
A further possible influence is that, rather than teaching skills and responsibil-
ities, some work introduces children to values and behavior that are not socially
constructive, particularly when it involves illegal, even criminal, activities.
I have pointed out that work can provide opportunities for building healthy relations
with peers and for mutual support. In some situations, work can involve bullying and
violence among peers. Sometimes work takes children away from their peers, and
working children are occasionally stigmatized and rejected by other children on
account of the work they do. In some cases (as sometimes in domestic work), children
are isolated in the homes of employers and kept away from any social contacts.
Work can be beneficial when it allows full participation in school and other
social activities. Incompatibility among such activities may result from excessive
hours of work; it may also arise where teachers, police, or others in authority
stigmatize or exclude working children.
Particularly important for the development of self-esteem and resilience is the
experience of facing up to adversity and overcoming it. Work can be an important
means by which children help their families deal with economic shocks or crises
and so help to restore their families’ fortunes. On the other hand, if their efforts fail,
children can lose self-confidence. When a child takes up gainful employment in an
attempt to take control of his or her life, work can be a protective factor in life and
contribute to overcoming trauma (Boyden 2009). Disparagement and rejection of
such efforts can add to the trauma of adversity.
These observations indicate why universal classifications of kinds of work are
unlikely to be a reliable guide as to what work situations benefit or harm children.
More important are the contexts in which children undertake different kinds of
work. Further, the value of work for children depends at least in part on how it is
valued by others: it has been widely observed, by working children themselves and
by others, that the pain of social disrespect for their work, such as denigrating or
criminalizing it or arbitrarily removing them from it, can be more damaging to their
self-respect and socialization than the stresses within the work itself (Woodhead
1998; Boyden et al. 1998, 27–111; Bourdillon et al. 2010, 1–2, 8).
27.5.2 Opinions of Children
How important are children’s perspectives in considering whether or not work is in

their interests? It is not uncommon in the West that children have to be compelled
and cajoled to pay due attention to schooling, which is in their long-term interest;
left to themselves they would spend much time in front of TV screens and video
games, preferring immediate pleasure. When some children express a preference
for work over school, is this to be taken seriously? A first response is that the
perception of young people as irresponsible relates particularly to societies in which
children are not encouraged to contribute and indeed where their attempts to
participate in responsible activities are often rejected.
There is a more fundamental reason for respecting the opinions of children.
Much has been written on children’s right to participation in decisions that affect
their lives, the means to achieve such participation, and benefits that can accrue to
children from it (see ▶ Chap. 86, “Child Participation, Constituent of Community
Well-Being” by Martı́nez and Cusianovich in this volume, Lansdown 2001;
Thomas 2007). It is now widely accepted that children’s opinions should be
heard, taken seriously, and have some influence on decisions. Such procedures in
themselves (often lacking in interventions to stop child labor) have a beneficial
effect on children’s well-being – the converse of the damage done to children by
arbitrarily removing them from work without consulting them.
One of the observations on the psychosocial effects of work is that these depend
in part on whether or not work is a valued activity. The value that children see in
their work depends partly on how it is perceived by those around them – family,
peers, and society at large. Nevertheless, the important factor in developing self-
esteem is the value they themselves place on what they are doing. This is partic-
ularly so when the child is using work as an attempt to respond to adversity. The
circumstances and motivation for the work are significant for the child’s well-being.
The value children place on their work and the motives for undertaking it can only
be ascertained by consulting them.
The question remains as to how reliably children are able to judge what is
good for themselves in either the short or the long term. Clearly, the brevity of
their experience limits their knowledge, and they can get things wrong. Children
are not in a position to establish empirically the long-term effects of different
kinds of work, many of which are also not well understood by adults. Street
vendors or garbage scavengers, for example, are unlikely to know about the
dangers of lead pollution and its long-term consequences; yet they may value
their work as being lucrative, exciting, and free from adult control. Children may
852 M. Bourdillon
not be fully aware of long-term benefits deriving from schoolwork. But some-
times children are well aware of hazards and prefer to face them: when children
express a desire to participate in underground mining despite the hazards, if they
are to be overruled, it has to be clear why and how and what alternatives are
offered.
Adults can also make mistakes based on limited knowledge: indeed, adults are
often divided on precisely how to restrict children to reduce risk. Moreover, adults
are often motived by other interests, such as the convenience of control over
children, or approval by others, or fear of scandal. In particular, adults sometimes
overlook problems that children face. Consulting children’s opinions and taking
them seriously at least ensure that their interests are not overlooked.
Nevertheless, adults in society have an obligation both to guide children and to
protect them from harm. When young children wish to participate in activities that
are dangerous to them, perhaps because they do not yet have the strength to use
equipment safely or because particular activities can harm young growing bodies,
they are rightly prevented from incurring such risks. Tension sometimes arises
between children’s right to protection and their right to participate in decision-
making.
27.6 Promoting the Well-Being of Working Children
There are significant numbers of children and young people in extremely abusive
work situations, and these need urgent attention. A larger number of children work
in conditions that carry unnecessary risks. And yet work can contribute to child
development, especially in families that lack resources. What needs to be done to
ensure that children’s best interests are served?
27.6.1 Reflections on the Campaign to Stop Child Labor
One response is to adopt a “safe” approach: since some work is undoubtedly

harmful to children, the best way to protect them is to establish an age limit
below which children may not work. This is the argument adopted by the ILO in
its Convention on a Minimum Age of Employment (138 of 1973) and its subsequent
policy. The Convention prohibits “employment or work in any occupation”
(Article 1,1) below a minimum age, usually set at 15, with allowance temporarily
to set the age at 14 and a recommendation to increase it to 16; there is allowance for
“light work” 2 years below the set minimum age and for work in small family
enterprises provided production is not for external markets. The adoption of
Convention 138 largely ignored the advice of a report commissioned by the ILO
itself (see Dahlén 2007), and the Convention received little attention outside the
developed world in the first 25 years after its promulgation; nevertheless, it is now
widely accepted as a universal standard for child protection by policy makers and
many organizations.
The policy has, however, never been seriously assessed for its impact on children
and has received an explicit and direct academic challenge (Bourdillon et al. 2009).
There has been accumulating evidence that application of this policy often works
against the interests of children, particularly the children of the poor (children in
high-income communities often ignore its provisions and are ignored in its enforce-
ment). There is little if any evidence that the policy benefits children directly.
Sometimes campaigns to stop child labor have inspired interventions to improve
education and access to it, and sometimes they have tried to tackle poverty, but
children put out of work or denied the opportunity of employment do not always
benefit from such interventions (see, e.g., Bourdillon et al. 2010, 180–192). Evi-
dence does not support the idea that stopping children from working reliably pushes
them back into school.
A policy to stop work based on a minimum age of employment can divert
attention from more important considerations. First, it can blur the focus on those
particularly harmful work situations that require urgent attention. Second, it can
divert attention away from the poverty and structural inequalities that are often
behind the need of children to work. Instead, such a policy puts the blame for
children’s hardship and the responsibility for change on parents and individual
employers, who are often themselves victims of the social injustices that lie behind
the workload of children.
Behind the popular support in wealthy countries for campaigns to stop child
labor is a perception that child labor is a problem of poor and “backward” societies
and the inaccurate belief that in “modern” and “developed” societies child labor has
been eliminated (for a critique of this modernization perspective, see Cunningham
and Stromquist 2005, 55–58). This perception partly relates to a contrast between
practices that are common and therefore largely taken for granted in Western
societies and very different practices elsewhere. The employment of children in
entertainment and advertising, or in such jobs as delivering newspapers, or sometimes
unpaid work on family farms or in family enterprises, is usually taken for granted – or
at least tolerated – in Western societies; but paid employment of children in agricul-
ture or textiles is foreign to such “modern” societies and rejected. Children of the
poor are indeed more likely to be involved in heavy work. Stopping them from
working removes some of the discomfort caused by the clear evidence of grossly
unequal childhoods, but it does not necessarily attend to interests of children whose
circumstances put them under pressure to work.
The term “child labor” is frequently defined in terms of harmful work, and in
popular stereotypes, it is usually associated with worst forms: it is a value-laden
term. When the term thus defined is linked to a policy based on a minimum age of
employment, harmful work becomes confused with work that is not necessarily
harmful and in some cases not even illegal. Even if the term is carefully confined to
refer only to harmful or hazardous work, there is a problem when analysis and
policy are based exclusively on negative aspects of work and when the benefits are
ignored. There is therefore a case against using this term in academic discourse.
Focus on harm or risks in work characterizes a restrictive approach to child
protection. Much child protection focuses on removing risk from the lives of
854 M. Bourdillon
children. While this is important, it can lose sight of the greater need to protect
children’s opportunities to develop full and meaningful lives (Myers and
Bourdillon 2012). The focus on harm usually treats working children as victims
and fails to consider the agency they exercise in trying to control their lives. In
certain circumstances, protection against all risk can restrict children’s chances to
broaden their experience and capabilities. In the absence of appropriate alternatives
to work, a ban on child labor can damage the prospects of many children.
The one-sided focus on harm is a weakness of many reports on “child labor” by
watchdog organizations and journalists. They emphasize sensational cases that
might require and provoke action and rarely pay attention to the choices children
make in working or to the benefits that children may lose if they have to stop
working altogether.
27.6.2 Protecting Working Children
An alternative perspective starts from the observation that work is a fundamental

human activity. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 23, 1)
articulates everyone’s right to work and to join worker associations: there is no
evidence that children benefit from being deprived of this right. According to this
perspective, children should be protected in their work and not necessarily from it.
Approaches to children’s work that reliably protect the well-being of children
need to fulfill at least two conditions. First, they need to take full account of both the
benefits that can accrue to children through work and the damage that can result
from it. Second, they need to be flexible and sensitive to the environments in which
different children live and work. These conditions allow and encourage interven-
tions that protect opportunities for children to take control over their lives and that
offer meaning and hope.
Some promising approaches have been developed that, rather than rigidly trying
to apply universal standards, involve local communities in attending to the needs
and welfare of working children in their midst (Bourdillon et al. 2010, 178–179,
194–200). Local communities are in a good position to assess what work is
beneficial to particular children and what work is unacceptably hazardous. They
are in the best position to persuade employers, and sometimes parents, to attend to
the needs of young workers. They can also provide support for children in their
efforts to take control over their lives.
One way of supporting working children is to facilitate associations in which
they can support each other. These have grown up in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America. They can be more or less formal and are usually under the control of
the children themselves with adult help and guidance (the most comprehensive
account of such associations is still Swift 1999; see also Liebel 2004, especially
19–37). Since children are usually denied membership of formal workers’ unions,
these associations can serve some of the functions of a union in supporting
individuals in trouble with employers and sometimes in negotiating with policy
makers. But their dominant function is to provide an environment in which young
workers can share their experience and problems and provide moral support. They
also often provide training in useful skills, both technical and social, and sometimes
some schooling. A frequent observation is that, through their participation in
working children’s organizations, young workers often acquire self-confidence in
self-expression and develop pride in what they manage to do for themselves.
Some associations have become formal, crossing national boundaries, led by
children who claim to represent working children generally. These certainly help
many working children and provide forums in which young workers can safely and
confidently express their views. Some have managed to engage officials and policy
makers to improve certain conditions for working children. What remains ques-
tionable, however, is the extent to which they reach and represent the majority of
working children, many of whom live in rural areas remote from meeting places;
furthermore, young workers most in need of support often have little opportunity to
attend meetings or participate in the activities of such organizations.
27.6.3 The Politics of Child Labor
If work is a typical and instinctive activity of children with many benefits for their
development and well-being, why is there such a strong and pervasive antagonism
to children’s work in elite societies? Voices were raised against the campaign to
stop child labor in Britain in the nineteenth century: how is it that these appear to
have been totally defeated? If a work-free childhood can restrict children’s devel-
opment, how can it have become such a dominant ideal? These questions comprise
a topic for thorough research, and I can only suggest some partial answers.
One possibility is that antagonism to children’s work arises from revulsion at the
historical abuse of children in nineteenth-century industry in Britain and elsewhere
and by sensational accounts of abuse in the contemporary world; even though not
all children’s work involves such abuse, work becomes symbolically associated
with abuse. A further suggestion refers to the sociology of taste: a romantic
childhood is affordable only by relatively wealthy families and so becomes an
ideal for all to aspire to, acquiring moral value in the process. Another is the political
weight of an organization such as the ILO, which is committed to the elimination of
child labor for a variety of motives and which is not amenable to changing its policy
in response to findings of empirical research (see Woodhead 2007). One view
relates disproportionate reactions against children’s work to anthropological theo-
ries about taboo: in complex high-income societies, the lives of children have
become spatially separate from the lives of adults and are ideologically depicted
as preserving the value of innocence against the ruthlessness of the adult world, and
children’s work is an activity that threatens this conceptual dichotomy and so must
be rigorously rejected (O’Connell Davidson 2005). A further factor may be peo-
ple’s instinct to assume the correctness of their own culture and, consequently, the
inferiority of practices that diverge from it: attention to “child labor” usually
focuses on the work of poor children and ignores child work in high-income
societies. This distinction relates to the symbolic association of child work with
856 M. Bourdillon
poor societies and the absence of it in “modern” ones. All or any of these factors can
influence attitudes to children’s work irrespective of compelling empirical evidence
of what lies in the interests of children.
27.7 Conclusion
While this chapter draws on a large and growing body of research material on
children’s work, there are important themes on which information remains sparse.
This chapter concludes with a brief comment on research needs before summariz-
ing the main argument.
27.7.1 Research
Research that looks comprehensively at the place of work in children’s lives remains
sparse. There is much published research that focuses on negative aspects of children’s
work, where arguments are geared toward its abolition. Such research is unable to
provide a comprehensive understanding of how work relates to child well-being.
Many econometric studies are based on material collected for other reasons and cannot
therefore provide sufficient information on the specific situations of working children.
Estimates of worldwide numbers of children in “child labor” or in the “worst forms of
child labor” are unreliable: there are difficulties in assessing the amount of work that
children do and often their precise ages, and political interests affect the ways in which
figures are estimated in different countries (see, e.g., Ennew et al. 2005).
To protect the well-being of working children effectively, policy and interven-
tion must be based on careful investigation of their particular situation and the place
of work in it. Understanding the hazards is important, but equally important is
knowledge of the specific benefits that may accrue to children through their work
and of their own perspectives on their work. An area that needs research attention is
how social and life skills are learned through work and how such learning can be
accommodated with schooling in a variety of contexts. Context-specific research
is important.
When interventions are deemed necessary on behalf of working children, their
effects on the well-being of the children involved need careful assessment. Simply
counting those in or out of work does not comprise such an assessment. More
research is needed on how policies and interventions affect children’s lives, and
particularly the policy of prohibiting employment below a certain age.
A further area of research that has received insufficient attention is the effects of
depriving children of the opportunity to work. When children have no chance to
participate in fundamental social activities or to experience responsibility for
actions on which others depend, how does this affect their transition to adulthood?
What difficulties do they face later in life? What happens when their attempts to
participate are rejected? What are the effects on child development of separating
radically the world of children from that of adults?
27.7.2 Summary
The material presented in this chapter depicts work as a normal, human activity for
children, at least from middle childhood onward, and indicates that children
instinctively try to participate in the social activities surrounding them, among
which work is prominent. Although work in stressed or abusive situations can
interfere with children’s learning and development, work more frequently contrib-
utes constructively to a child’s immersion into the society to which he or she
belongs. Work – even labor – can bring to children both material and psychosocial
benefits and contribute to their learning life skills. Appropriate work can contribute
materially and psychologically to overcoming adversities faced by children and
their families. Contrary to popular assumptions, work and schooling are not neces-
sarily incompatible: they can often complement each other in contributing to
a child’s education and development.
The boundary between work that is harmful and work that is benign is not easy to
draw. Work within the home or within the family unit can sometimes be harmful,
while appropriate paid work outside it can be beneficial. There is no clear age
before which either paid or unpaid work is clearly harmful, although certain tasks
are not appropriate for young children. Most work contains, at least potentially,
both harmful and beneficial factors: even work that is in some way hazardous may
contain compensating benefits. In any particular work situation, the context and
particularly the social relations surrounding work are important influences on its
costs and benefits to child well-being.
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After-School Activities and Leisure
Education 28
Jaume Trilla, Ana Ayuste, and Ingrid Agud
28.1 Introduction
Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of stories that have filled the leisure time of
many readers both adult and child alike, wrote an essay in 1887 suggestively
entitled “An Apology for Idlers” which defended the virtues, including those in
the educational sphere, of idleness. He offered the following dialogue between an
upstanding citizen and a boy who, during school hours, was lying under the linden
trees on the bank of a stream:
“How now, young fellow, what dost thou here?”
“Truly, sir, I take mine ease.”
“Is not this the hour of the class? And should’st thou not be plying thy Book with diligence,
to the end thou mayest obtain knowledge?”
“Nay, but this also I follow after Learning, by your leave.”
“Learning, quotha! After what fashion, I pray thee? Is it mathematics?”
“No, to be sure.”
“Is it metaphysics?”
“Nor that.”
“Is it some language?”
“Nay, it is no language.”
“Is it a trade?”
“Nor a trade neither.”
“Why, then, what is’t?”
“Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go upon Pilgrimage, I am desirous to note
what is commonly done by persons in my case, and where are the ugliest Sloughs and
Thickets on the Road; as also, what manner of Staff is of the best service. Moreover, I lie
here, by this water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson which my master teaches me to call
Peace, or Contentment.” (Stevenson 2009)
J. Trilla (*) • A. Ayuste • I. Agud

Department of Theory and History of Education, University of Barcelona, Mundet, Campus
Mundet, Llevant, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: jtrilla@ub.edu; the@ub.edu

864 J. Trilla et al.
The educational universe during Stevenson’s time was quite different from that
of today. In addition to the informal education that the boy in the story enjoyed and
flaunted, there was the family, the school (which many were unable to attend), and
a few other educational institutions. Nowadays, at least in developed countries,
schooling is compulsory and many other institutions have emerged with explicit
educational purposes. The educational life of our children is no longer limited to
family, school, and the street. In fact, our children spend many hours in school and
little time in the street (and even less beside a stream). After school many children
attend art workshops on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays or basketball practice
Tuesdays and Thursdays for a game on Saturday or Sunday. Some of those who do
not participate in sports take part in weekend activities at recreational centers or are
members of an organization such as the Boy Scouts. Some children might go to the
neighborhood play center or toy library or regularly attend music school. There are
those whose parents have hired a private tutor because they are doing poorly in
math. In summer, some children go to camp for 2 weeks, and because school
holidays are so long and parents have no idea what to do with their children,
some are enrolled in other extracurricular activities. In a study of a large sample
of children and adolescents in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, we found that
more than three fourths of the subjects regularly participated in extracurricular
activities, and more than one third of the sample also participated in more than one
activity (Trilla and Rı́os 2005).
This chapter is devoted to the entire range of after-school and free-time education
opportunities which are based on two premises that we assume are widely shared. The
first is that free time is important to the welfare and quality of life of people in general,
including children (Levy 2000; Trilla et al. 2001). The second premise is that previous
education influences how a person uses their free time. As expressed, these premises
are hardly debatable. However, while their theoretical and generic formulation may be
generally accepted, there are many significant issues that are far less clear when trying
to specify the premises in more exact terms or when trying to act on them. Do all uses
of free time contribute to the welfare of people and the community? Are some leisure
activities humanly and socially more desirable than others? If so, which ones? Finding
an answer to this question is necessary when addressing the second premise from an
educational perspective. For example, how can education help children enjoy quali-
tatively better leisure time? What free-time educational institutions, programs, and
resources currently exist and what others should exist? These are the questions we
explore in this chapter.
This chapter is divided into three parts. The first section deals with conceptual
issues related to free time and leisure and their application with respect to children.
The second section discusses the relationship between education and free/leisure
time. It begins by considering the justification for educational intervention into
children’s free time, based on an analysis of values and countervalues of educa-
tional intervention. Subsequently, the various aspects of what we call the “peda-
gogy of leisure” (education in, for, and through free time) are systematized. We also
devote part of this second section to identifying the factors that have influenced the
development of this education sector. The third section presents the various
28 After-School Activities and Leisure Education 865
educational environments in which to spend free time, such as institutions, pro-

grams, facilities, activities, and resources. These are presented as an index, after
which their shared characteristics are analyzed. Then, in the epilogue, and drawing
on the suggestions offered in Stevenson’s text, the possible limitations that should
be imposed in the name of children’s welfare on the accumulation of institutional-
ized educational activities are discussed.
28.2 Free Time and Leisure: Ideas and Realities
28.2.1 The Concept of Free Time
“Leisure,” “free time,” and other similar terms such as “recreation” and “idle time”
are common expressions whose meanings are clear when they are used colloquially.
When we try to define them rigorously or use them in real situations, however, we
realize that the concepts they represent are not always as clear as they seem. We
devote this first section of the chapter to these conceptual issues and to proposing
certain stipulations that will be useful for the remainder of the chapter.
Initially, the concepts of free time and leisure are usually defined as the opposite
of work. Free time would be the time left once an individual has fulfilled his or her
obligations at work (in the case of adults) or at school (in the case of children).
Nevertheless, it is obvious that not all non-work time (or non-school time) is real
free time. The time allocated to one’s basic biological needs and certain family
obligations would not be classified as free time. The formulas normally used for
a rough definition of free time or leisure are shown in Fig. 28.1. This simple outline,
which may be valid as a first approximation, is clearly insufficient when it is used in
an in-depth exploration of the real structure of the time and activities of today’s
complex society. In our view, the outline is insufficient for the following three
reasons:
1. Because it is only really applicable in the case of working adults or in-school
children. The outline does not address what free time or leisure represents for
those social groups who do not work or attend school. For example, what is free
time for a prisoner, a sick person, the unemployed, or a child excluded from the
education system? Are these people fortunate to have plenty of non-work time,
or does their particular situation make it difficult for or even deny them the
possibility to truly enjoy leisure? At this point it would be helpful in the
framework of our social-labor context to interpret a consideration made by de
Grazia (2000) when commenting on Aristotle’s concept of leisure. De Grazia
explains that for a Greek philosopher, the condition for enjoying leisure is not
only to have “non-occupied time” at one’s disposal, but more accurately to be
freed from the need to be busy. In this sense, people who ought to be working but
are unemployed would not be in the best condition to enjoy leisure, despite
having all time in the world at their disposal. Based on this idea, it could be said
that only those who have freed themselves from the need to work for a while
because they have worked before, or those who, as in Aristotle’s times, did not
Fig. 28.1 Simple outline of

the concepts of free time and “NON-WORK” TIME
leisure
WORK TIME BIOLOGICAL

(SCHOOL TIME) NEEDS, LEISURE
FAMILY and or
SOCIAL FREE TIME
OBLIGATIONS, etc.
have to work because they had an army of slaves to do it for them, are truly able
to appreciate leisure.
2. The outline is also insufficient because it does not include activities or times
which for certain people have a marked quantitative or qualitative significance.
For the religiously devout, is time devoted to their religious practices free time? Is
time a person dedicates to philanthropic tasks or volunteer work leisure time? The
outline in Fig. 28.1 is overly simplistic, requiring very dissimilar activities to be
placed in the same bag, activities to which people no doubt assign a very different
meaning. The central sector of the outline would have to include a diverse range
of activities all grouped together such as personal hygiene, standing in line to
renew your passport, praying, taking care of children, or carrying out acts of
solidarity. To address this, some authors have introduced other terms or concepts
into the discourse on time which highlight the insufficiency of the simple division
between work and free time or leisure. Concepts such as “socially useful time”
and “idle time” (instead of free time) suggest the need to use a more complex and
precise outline than the one proposed in Fig. 28.1.
3. The outline is too simple because it does not provide criteria to distinguish
between free time and leisure. It is true that in everyday language both expres-
sions are used interchangeably. In some cases, however, it may be appropriate to
distinguish them based on the denotative or connotative contents that they both
represent. On the one hand, free time, literally refers to an area or specific type of
overall time, while leisure seems to refer to a type of activity. Free time would
be, so to speak, a container, and leisure would be its possible content.
We therefore propose a more precise model than the previous one, overcoming
some of the limitations mentioned above (Trilla 1993a). In the outline in Fig. 28.2,
we no longer start out from the difference between work and free time or leisure but
from two more general, clearer categories that we call available time and
nonavailable time. These categories are explained in more detail below, but, in
short, nonavailable time is that which individuals have committed to tasks that
cannot be avoided. It is time usually governed by external forces, dictated by
inescapable obligations according to the status of the individual. Available time
would be that which remains.
Nonavailable time can be divided into the time spent directly or indirectly by
work (or school for children) and the time occupied by what we call non-work
Professional work (or school)
Work (or Housework

school)
Outside-work (or extra-curricular)
Non-available activities
Basic biological needs
Non-work Family obligations
obligations
Social obligations
TIME
Religious activities
Self-imposed
Social volunteering activities
social
occupations Other institutionalised training activities
Available
Non-autotelic personal occupations.
Free time Sterile free time
Leisure
(J. Trilla)
Fig. 28.2 Complex outline of free time and leisure
obligations. In the first case, we have paid work or housework and the time spent on
work-associated or school-associated activities such as travelling or homework.
In the non-work obligations category we include basic biological needs: sleep,
personal hygiene, and eating. We call them “basic” because when the time taken for
such needs exceeds the strictly necessary minimum, or when we add another
dimension to those activities, they acquire an additional significance (or even
a different substantive significance) which would place them in another category.
Sleeping-in on a Sunday morning just for pleasure or a meal where gastronomic or
social enjoyment are the main motivations would be activities closer to leisure than
to the nonavailable time category. The second non-work obligation is family
obligations such as looking after children, and the third is social, administrative,
and bureaucratic obligations such as completing income tax returns.
After discounting these times, there is some time left that we can use with much
greater discretion. This is what we call available time. Available time also has two
subcategories: the time for self-imposed social occupation and genuine free time.
The difference between the two is that for the first type we make a commitment,
albeit independently and voluntarily, with an authority beyond our control.
Examples of self-imposed social occupations would be certain religious activities,
voluntary activities with social purposes (volunteering in the strict sense of the
word, political affiliation, trade-union membership), and institutionalized training
activities. In these latter activities we do not include the formal schooling of
children since for them this would be comparable to adult professional work.
In all these cases, the commitment is acquired voluntarily, but until the individual
decides to end it, his or her decisions will be determined by others. The difference
between self-imposed social occupations and genuine free time is often very subtle
but can be illustrated with examples. An individual can decide to devote time to
reading poetry on a daily basis, but if one day he fails to do so he does not have
explain it to anyone since he has not established any external commitment. How-
ever, if a young person, with the same autonomy, decides to dedicate every
Saturday afternoon to being a child-group facilitator, he makes a commitment to
an external body. Therefore, if he does not show up on Saturday, he should
apologize and give a reason why. To put it another way, in self-imposed social
occupations the individual voluntarily gives up a portion of his available time to an
institution (philanthropic, political, trade-union body), and the management of that
time is transferred, to a certain extent, to that institution.
Finally, genuine free time can be further divided into three different kinds of
activities: nonautotelic voluntary occupations, sterile free time, and leisure in its
strictest sense. In a nonautotelic voluntary activity, the subject has absolute auton-
omy in deciding whether and how to carry out the activity, but the activity is not the
end in itself and performing the activity is not necessarily pleasant. An example
could be activities related to cultivating the body beyond that necessary to maintain
health. The difference between these and leisure activities is that the main motiva-
tion of the former is the achievement of something other than the gratification
offered by the activity itself. Those who devote a portion of their free time to lying
in a tanning machine do not always do so for the pleasure offered by this act but
rather to show off a tan.
Sterile free time is poorly lived free time, i.e., time that generates feelings of tedium
and frustration, a “whiling away of time” but with a bad conscience. It is called sterile
time not because it is not productive (because leisure is not productive either),
but because when a person does not produce anything, there is no satisfaction for
that person who has sterile time on his hands. Sterile time is time to which not even the
subject himself gives significance.
28.2.2 Three Basic Conditions of Leisure and Their Application to

Childhood
The concept of leisure refers to a type of activity rather than a type of time. Leisure
is closely related to free time, but the two should not be confused or considered to
be exactly the same. In this section, we first discuss one of the most classic and well-
known definitions of leisure, proposed some years ago by the French sociologist
J. Dumazedier; and second, we propose a more restrictive and coherent character-
ization of leisure in accordance with the preceding outline and considerations.
Based on a survey of individuals’ perception of leisure taken early in the second
half of the last century, Joffre Dumazedier (1915-2002) proposed the following
definition of leisure (Dumazedier 1960): “Leisure consists of a number of
occupations in which the individual may indulge of his own free will – either to rest,
to amuse himself, to add to his knowledge or improve his skills disinterestedly or to
increase his voluntary participation in the life of the community after discharging
his professional, family and social duties.” After stating that leisure is a kind of
activity or occupation, Dumazedier proposes one of its most essential characteris-
tics: its voluntary nature. To be considered a leisure activity, it must give the
individual the freedom to decide to do it or not. The definition goes on to give
the characteristic functions of leisure: rest, amusement, and development. Finally,
the definition establishes the conditions that make leisure possible. Leisure can take
place once the individual has freed a portion of his time from work, family, and
social obligations. Dumazedier’s definition thus offers a broader conceptualization
than that proposed by the previous outline since it coincides with what we call
available time. In this sense, a different way to characterize leisure is that it consists
of any activity in whose performance the following three conditions converge:
autonomy, autotelism, and pleasure/satisfaction.
28.2.2.1 Autonomy
We understand the first condition, which we call autonomy, but for which other
words such as freedom or voluntariness are also often used, in a twofold sense:
autonomy in the what and autonomy in the how. Autonomy in the what means
freedom to choose the activity. Thus, leisure presupposes the existence of free time.
He who has no free time – according to the characterization of the concept we
propose above – is unlikely to enjoy leisure. Autonomy in the how means that
during the activity the individual maintains control over its development and how it
unfolds. However, since these concepts (autonomy, freedom, and voluntariness) are
extremely complex and subjective, and to avoid falling into an idealistic or idyllic
view of leisure, we must add at least two additional clarifications. First, the
autonomy referred to is relative. It is obvious that as in any other aspect of life,
autonomy in leisure is never total. In relation to leisure activity, each individual
enjoys a defined level of autonomy that we call the “freedom field,” which is made
up of a variety of factors, discussed below.
Contextual factors. The context (family, social, cultural, geographic) gives the
subject a set of possibilities with which to fill his leisure with content. These
possibilities refer to the availability of spaces, resources, and products, as well as
to that of people with whom he can relate (peer groups, family, friends). Thus, the
freedom field of a specific individual’s real free time depends upon the range,
diversity, and richness of the set of possibilities that his context offers. As a simple
example, if someone lives in a tropical country, the daily practice of Nordic skiing
is not part of his freedom field.
Socioeconomic factors. While important, contextual factors often do not act
alone in determining leisure activity. In fact, what really affects this is the place
the individual occupies in the context, e.g., his social role or economic status.
Accessibility to certain leisure possibilities offered by the context also depends
on the individual’s ability to afford them economically.
Psychophysiological factors. Each person’s freedom field is limited (or enabled)

by their psychophysiological and evolutionary status. Leisure options vary
depending on each individual’s development, state of health, and so on.
Stereotypes and selective or discriminatory traditions. The leisure context also
includes a set of social codes, moral norms, customs, traditions, fashions, and
stereotypes that constrict real possibilities in the use of free time. Such codes
guide and sometimes impose (or deny) certain leisure pursuits according to vari-
ables such as gender and family role (e.g., “girls have to play with dolls, and boys
with toy soldiers”).
Educogenic factors. The personal and, in particular, educational background
(schools, family, and informal education) determine the leisure of each person.
Depending on this background, certain individuals will have the necessary aptitude,
abilities, skills, and disposition (or not) to make a leisure activity viable. There are
cultural and instrumental skills (languages, techniques, knowledge) and propensi-
ties that are necessary to be able to enjoy certain kinds of leisure. While a person
may be able to afford a certain activity, unless their previous education has instilled
in them a certain predisposition for that activity it is unlikely to form part of their
field of possible choices. A child choosing to read for leisure depends not only on
the availability of books or libraries but also on whether his or her education has
aroused a taste for reading.
Another point that needs to be made about autonomy as an essential condition
for leisure is that it must be understood as a subjective feeling of autonomy,
something akin to what Neulinger (2000) calls “perceived freedom.” Leisure can
be – and indeed often is – induced, manipulated, or alienated. Moreover, in this
sense and as is discussed later, leisure can be more subtly or subliminally induced
than other activities that are imposed in a direct or explicit way. However, to call
something leisure, the subject must at least have the subjective consciousness that
he is acting voluntarily, even when objectively and from the outside it may be
obvious that the individual is being heavily manipulated. At this point we are not
trying to define positive leisure, just leisure and nothing more. Consequently, while
the individual is aware, albeit incorrectly, that he or she has chosen leisure auton-
omously, even the most manipulated and unconsciously directed leisure is no less
leisure than leisure of the most personal, creative, and truly autonomous nature.
28.2.2.2 Autotelism
The second condition in defining leisure is autotelism, highlighted by Aristotle as
the most essential part of this concept. It means that the leisure activity has purpose
in and of itself (Cuenca 2004). Even when the activity can produce certain results or
material goods, and even when one of the individual’s motivations is to obtain such
an outcome, the first justification of the activity must be the intrinsic satisfaction
that it is able to produce. A person who likes fishing, if successful, obtains
a material product from the activity – a fish that he can eat or give to friends.
However, a pure leisure activity seeks no reward; it is partaken in because the
fisherman likes fishing and feels good when doing it. As is well known, many
fishing enthusiasts return their catch to the sea.
28.2.2.3 Pleasure and Satisfaction

This brings us to the third essential condition: leisure as a pleasant task, satisfactory
and fun. An unpleasant, boring, or tedious leisure activity is, if anything, simply
failed leisure; it is not really leisure at all but the sterile time discussed above. The
pleasure or satisfaction referred to here, however, should not be confused with the
most rudimentary or prosaic meaning of “amusement.” The leisure activity does not
necessarily mean laughter and revelry, it means being happy with what you are
doing. And leisure does not exclude effort. Those who devote leisure time to
solving intricate chess problems call upon a considerable amount of intellectual
effort, and the physical or psychological effort of those who climb mountains is no
less significant. However, both chess and mountain-climbing may well be consid-
ered leisure because despite being activities whose pursuit requires effort, they are
also enjoyable to those who participate in them.
To summarize, regardless of a particular activity, leisure consists of the use of
free time to engage in an autotelic occupation, autonomously chosen and
performed, whose practice is pleasant for the individual.
The concept of leisure must be applied to the different stages of life, taking into
consideration the specific parameters (especially social and psychophysiological)
that characterize each stage. Specifically, children’s leisure has two features that at
first glance appear contradictory: one that plays down autonomy and another that
would make childhood a privileged period for leisure.
If it is possible to establish comparisons between the different stages of life
based on the role played in each of them by the extremes of security-autonomy,
dependence-independence, or control-freedom, it is obvious that, in general terms,
during childhood the importance of or need for the first term in each pair is greater
than in subsequent stages. Psychogenic and physiological characteristics, socioeco-
nomic conditions, and legal frameworks constrict the possible autonomy of a child
in favor of protection and custody. These questions, which naturally affect all
aspects of a child’s life, are particularly relevant with regard to leisure. Physical
and mental immaturity, economic dependence, and laws that limit the legal respon-
sibilities of children define the possibilities for children’s leisure that render them
qualitatively and quantitatively different from those of an adult. In terms of an
absolute and somewhat idealistic concept of freedom, this would mean that the
level of autonomy in children’s leisure is lower than in the following stages of life.
However, even if that were true, it would be nothing more than a trivial finding
unless it produced more operational consequences.
The greater need for custody in childhood can be understood either as a restric-
tion on a child’s autonomy of leisure or, more positively, as a requirement for
a more appropriate form of protection and oversight of the child’s possible auton-
omy. Since this autonomy is more fragile, more easily manipulated, and more open
to arbitrariness exercised by persons and institutions that have control over child-
hood, appropriate mechanisms must be established to protect child leisure. Some of
these mechanisms already exist but are not always adequate. They are often ladened
with adult projections, double standards, and an excessively protectionist spirit.
Rather than actually protecting children’s leisure, these mechanisms limit and
reduce children’s leisure even more than may be justified or reasonable. Of course,
it is not easy to find the right balance between security-autonomy, dependence-
independence, and control-freedom, but if in all aspects of childhood the search for
such balance is necessary, in that of leisure it appears as one of the principal
educational challenges.
While it is true that children’s leisure is more constrained than that of adults,
paradoxically there exists a diffuse ideology that considers childhood a privileged
period for leisure and play. Indeed, a good deal of what constitutes the cultural
concept of childhood – which, according to the well-known thesis of Ariès (1996),
has been forged in the modern age – is made up of elements that are related to
leisure. Today’s concept of childhood is being shaped by progressive schooling, the
consequent distancing of the world of work, formation of the bourgeois nuclear
family, and other elements often closely related to leisure, e.g., specific clothes for
children, differentiation between child and adult games, the emergence of child-
specific literature, and so on.
This modern concept of childhood is basically represented through three addi-
tional images that place the child respectively in the school, the family, and at play.
Literature and iconography illustrate these three images corresponding to the three
fundamental roles in modern childhood: the “schoolchild,” the “child as son/
daughter,” and the “playing child.” Thus, the world of play becomes one of the
three fundamental contexts of childhood. And no sooner do we consider it a world
typical of that period, the social construct excludes all other periods of life from the
recreational world: adult play, for example, is thought of as childish, a residue of
childhood, or at best something accepted as a way of keeping physically and
mentally fit for work and thus subordinate to it. In this construct, it is most
appropriate for a child to learn and play and for an adult to work. Thus, according
to this modern view of the roles of each stage of life, the world of play – and by
extension, leisure – corresponds, in a privileged fashion, to childhood.
28.3 Leisure and Education
28.3.1 Justification of Educational Intervention: Values and

Countervalues in the Context of Free Time and Leisure
Social representations of free time and leisure have differed throughout history.
Both positive and negative images of leisure have been created. Leisure as some-
thing positive and desirable is how it was portrayed in classic Greece and Rome,
with different contents in each case. The ancient Greeks and Romans understood
leisure as a value, even as something dignified that could make life virtuous and
happy. Conversely, leisure has at various times been represented as just the
opposite, a countervalue, a vice, or the source of all evil. This is the Puritan concept
of leisure that dominated certain attitudes from the seventeenth century and is still
present today, though perhaps only residually.
In this sense it is interesting to note how certain reflections that tried to propose
a positive social image of leisure provocatively used the negative connotations
imposed by bourgeois Puritanism on such terms as laziness or idleness. In The Right
to Be Lazy (1880), Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue argues that we should aspire
not to the right to work, but to the right to welfare. He began the first chapter of his
work with the following quote from Lessing: “Let us be lazy in everything, except
in loving and drinking, except in being lazy” (Lafargue 2002). In a 1932 essay
suggestively entitled In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell wrote:
“Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: ‘Satan finds some mischief
for idle hands to do.’ Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told,
and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment.
But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone
a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense
harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in
modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the
sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven
of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. This traveler was on the
right lines. . . . The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization
and education. A man who has worked long hours all his life will become bored if he
becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from
many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the population
should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us
continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists”
(Russell 1960).
As we mentioned before, free time is basically like a container. It can host
values and countervalues, positive social functions, and other more dubious
contents, positive leisure and negative leisure all at the same time. Thus, it
would be realistic and reasonable to see that just as any other social reality in
a world of contradictions, free time and leisure are ambivalent and contradictory
realities.
Figure 28.3 summarizes some of the values ascribed to leisure and their
corresponding countervalues, which are discussed in the following sections.
28.3.1.1 Freedom, Autonomy, Independence versus Alienation,

Manipulation, Dependence, and Control
Free time is, as the name suggests, an area of freedom, a time when personal
autonomy should dominate when choosing an activity and how to do it. It is the
freedom in the “what” and the “how” mentioned above. However, it is also a time
for alienation and manipulation: alienation made more dangerous because we are
not generally aware of it. We all know only too well that work is usually subject to
someone else’s decisions or processes that we cannot personally control; yet at the
same time we may be under the impression that we do what we want in our free
time, when in reality it is a time often subject to hidden pressures, stereotypes,
fashions, and control.
VALUES COUNTER - VALUES
freedom, autonomy alienation, uniformity, manipulation
happiness, pleasure, amusement frustration, boredom, tedium
autotelism, disinterested knowledge ostentation, leisure merchandise
creativity, personalisation consumerism, mass production
isolation, lack of communication,

sociability, communication
negative solitude
activity, self-motivated effort passivity, indolence
culture cultural trivialisation
everyday values monotony, inertia
extraordinary values extravagance, the bizarre
solidarity, social participation lack of solidarity, indifference
Fig. 28.3 Values and countervalues of leisure and free time
28.3.1.2 Happiness, Pleasure, Amusement versus Frustration,

Boredom, Tedium
The other essential feature of a leisure activity is the satisfaction or pleasure
produced by its realization. However, free time is also a producer of dissatisfaction,
frustration, unhappiness, boredom, and tedium. Leisure activity can produce
dissatisfaction when we do not have access to certain products because the leisure
activity is something that creates want and at the same time is extraordinarily
selective and discriminatory. Frustration can arise from having high expectations
(e.g., about a holiday) that will never be achieved. Free time can also produce
unhappiness in the form of a guilty conscience generated by the still-present Puritan
work ethic because we are not doing something apparently useful or profitable.
Finally, free time (supposedly the quintessential time for pleasure) is occasionally
a time of boredom and tedium, sometimes because it is not easy to ascribe any sense
to such time since it is yet to be fairly valued by society, and sometimes because we
have not had the opportunity to learn how to use it satisfactorily.
28.3.1.3 Autotelism, Disinterested Knowledge (Value of Use) Versus

Utilitarianism, Ostentation, Leisure Merchandise (Value of
Exchange)
We have already seen that according to the Aristotelian concept, leisure is an activity
that has an end in itself. However, in contrast to this autotelic leisure value, there is
the countervalue of leisure as a form of ostentation, as shown by Thorsten Veblen in
his now classic work from 1899, The Theory of the Leisure Class: leisure as
a symbol of status, wealth, and power (Veblen 2004). An example would be one
who travels not for the pleasure of travelling in itself, but to show off that he can
afford to go to fashionable destinations. This leisure merchandise includes the free
time of those who use tanning machines or work out in the gym, not for health or
wellness but to show off their fantastically beautiful body. Countervalue also
includes the value of free time employed in activities and relationships by
those whose aim is to climb the social ladder. Leisure is thus perverted when its
ostentatious function predominates over its value of use and the very sense of the
activity itself.
28.3.1.4 Creativity, Personalization, Difference versus Consumerism,

Mass Production
It is said that leisure is also the most suitable time for exercising creativity, for an
occupation dominated by the highly personal nuance that each individual can give
it, a time for personalization, originality, creativity, and authenticity. However, the
opposite often occurs: leisure pursuits can be the most mass-produced, vulgar,
uniform, and mediocre of all human activities. It is not difficult to perceive the
real contradiction that leisure (the abstract kingdom of personalization) is some-
thing even more impersonal than work itself. It would be hard to find 100,000
individuals doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment at work, yet
this occurs regularly at a football stadium or when thousands are on the road
returning from a leisurely weekend, or millions of people are watching the same
TV show at the same time.
In regard to consumerism, we can see that not only has the consumption of
products and services and the use of institutions and professionals become essential
for leisure, consumption itself has become a leisure activity. Going shopping (or
window-shopping) and walking around the mall are considered leisure activities as
much as going for a walk, to the cinema, or to the theatre.
28.3.1.5 Sociability, Communication Versus Isolation, Lack of

Communication, Negative Solitude
Free time is a special time for social relationships and communication but it is also
a time when solitude (of the negative or unwanted variety) is even more obvious
and pathetic than in any other moment in life (Kelly 1983). The loneliest solitude is
what we feel when alone at a party, when we have no one to go out with on
a Saturday evening or to go on holiday with.
Likewise, there are other pairs of values and countervalues that fall into free
time: time for activity, self-motivated effort, indolence, and passivity, or, in con-
trast, time for frenetic, blind activism, culture, banality, and cultural frivolity; space
where the best of the everyday can be realized (relaxed relationships with others,
gathering for coffee, and the small, enriching hobbies we all have), as can the worst
of monotony, inertia, and routine; time too for the extraordinary, adventure, but also
fertile ground for simple extravagance; and finally, time for solidarity and social
participation as well as for indifference and not caring.
Free time is, therefore, an ambivalent and contradictory reality: a container filled
with the best and the worst contents, the best and the worst possibilities. Pedagogy
must begin to recognize it as such because it is precisely this ambivalence that
justifies educational intervention in leisure. If free time were an idyllic reality,
a world in which freedom, creativity, sociability, and solidarity truly predominate,
pedagogical action would be unnecessary if not hazardous: “If it ain’t broke, don’t
fix it.” If free time were the best of all worlds, there would be no reason to improve
it with education. The fact that free time leaves much to be desired is precisely the
reason that educational action is needed.
On the other hand, if free time failed to offer real expectations of social and
human development, pedagogy should not intervene either, and it would be better to
find a more suitable area for intervention (Kleiber 1999, 2001). The pedagogy of
leisure makes sense precisely because of the ambivalent reality of free time;
because leisure time is abounding in values and countervalues, in positive and
negative possibilities, in noble and harmful contents, and in which educational
action can help optimize. To achieve this, however, the educational intervention
would have no alternative than to make value choices, options that will promote
certain forms of leisure and reject others. That is perhaps why after highlighting its
virtues in general, so many experts who have studied the educational issues relating
to leisure end up qualifying it with adjectives: creative leisure (Csikszentmihalyi
2002), serious leisure (Stebbins 1992, 2007), humanist leisure (Cuenca 2000).
Without these or other positive adjectives, educational intervention in leisure
would be confused and aimless.
28.3.2 Purpose of the Pedagogy of Leisure
The relationship between education and free time/leisure is often approached on the
basis of the two concepts respectively referred to as “education in free time” and
“education for free time.” In the former, free time would simply be a space
that could be used to host some type of educational activity. In the latter, free
time becomes the educational objective. Both approaches are logically distinct
but not necessarily conflicting or contradictory. In analyzing them a possible area
of convergence can be seen (Fig. 28.4). When free time is taken as a space for
some educational process (education in free time), there are two possibilities: One
is that the process is oriented toward purposes that have nothing directly to do with
leisure, e.g., the child who has to devote some part of his non-school time to
receiving private classes. The other possibility is that the educational process that
takes place in free time is directed at developing some kind of knowledge, skill, or
attitude that allows the individual to use his leisure in a richer, more positive, and
pleasant way.
Something similar occurs when free time is understood as an objective (education
for free time). Two alternatives may also be considered in this case: that education for
free time can be achieved in typically leisure situations or in contexts outside that of
leisure, such as the school (Ruskin and Sivan 2002; Sivan 2008). It is conceivable that
Aimed at non-
leisure purposes
Education IN
free time
Aimed at leisure
purposes
Education
THROUGH
leisure
In leisure situations.
Education FOR
free time
In non-leisure
situations
Fig. 28.4 Relationship between education and free time. The purpose of the pedagogy of leisure
even in its curricular activity, the institution of school could include among its goals the
provision of cultural resources that enable richer leisure possibilities. For example,
the subjects of language and literature could be useful not only for learning spelling
or the history of literature, but also for developing the capability and sensibility to
enjoy reading.
Doubtless the core of the outline described above would constitute a more
specific justification of the pedagogy of leisure. That is to say, the most suitable
purpose of such pedagogy would be to educate simultaneously in and for leisure.
In fact, the combination of both approaches reinforces each individually. To use
free time for purposes contradictory to it, though perfectly legitimate, means
converting that time into something else; this free time evidently ceases to be
experienced as such. On the other hand, it seems that the best way to educate for
leisure is to do so in free time, in other words, through leisure. It would not
be necessary to insist on this if we were not so accustomed to forgetting the simple
core statement of active pedagogy: “What we learn is what we do.” The best way to
learn how to use free time in a very autonomous, pleasant, and creative way is
naturally through situations and activities that effectively make such conditions
a reality.
Thus, in a limited sense the pedagogy of leisure would be education through
leisure (that is, simultaneously in and for free time). In a broader sense, however, it
may also include the other possibilities mentioned in the full outline.
28.3.3 Factors in the Development of the Pedagogy of Leisure
Having described the general justification for educational intervention in leisure,

we now examine a number of factors that have motivated the emergence and
development of a diverse but quantitatively significant set of institutions, programs,
resources, facilities, and educational activities related to children’s free time. We
consider the reasons for the proliferation of free-time educational centers, toy
libraries, extracurricular activities, summer camps, scouts and guides, and a long
and varied list of other organized educational provisions in our society.
There are two reasons for the appearance and development of new educational
institutions or interventions. The first stems, in principle, from outside education
itself and consists of social, economic, demographic, and political factors. There are
educational needs that arise as a consequence of phenomena that initially have little
to do directly with education. A clear example is nursery schools. Centers for
early-childhood education were first created not so much for educational needs
but rather for custody. It was the incorporation of women into the work world
outside the home that caused the need for such schools. It is from there that
the pedagogical discourses began to emerge to legitimate on the one hand and
implement on the other this form of infant education. Applying this idea to the other
end of life, the same could be said of the increasingly cited and demanded
“pedagogy for the elderly.” Interventions and programs with educational content
addressed to senior citizens have not appeared because only now have we discov-
ered that the elderly can continue learning (this has always been known), but
rather because of factors as far from pedagogy as the increase of life expectancy
or the advancement of the retirement age. In short, pedagogical actions are often
responses to situations produced by factors that are not initially directly related to
education.
It is also true that this kind of sociologistic explanation for educational inter-
vention does not entirely address its raison d’être. Social factors explain the
emergence of the need for and characteristics of a certain area of action, but they
cannot account for the peculiarity of the educational response that such need
receives. In order to prepare a response, pedagogy has to be theoretically and
technically prepared. It is for this reason that clarification of the genesis of new
educational interventions also demands recourse to the internal pedagogical dis-
course, to its conceptual and theoretical basis, to the technical background it has
accumulated, and to possible antecedents that prepare and facilitate new educa-
tional actions.
28.3.3.1 Social Factors

Among other possible factors outside the field of educational science that have
converged to create the need for educational institutions addressing children’s free
time, there are two that are particularly relevant and paradigmatic. One is the
gradual disappearance of traditional spaces for spontaneous play and the informal
horizontal socialization of children, and the other is the partial loss of the family’s
role in safeguarding and giving content to their children’s leisure.
It is hardly surprising that the pedagogy of leisure was originally

a fundamentally but not exclusively urban reality. It was in cities where the need
for playgrounds, toy libraries, and organized summer activities urgently arose. This
was primarily due to the very young being increasingly deprived of their traditional
spaces for play and peer relationships. Traffic and safety issues expropriated the
street from children, and land speculation and excessive construction did the same
with other natural spontaneous play spaces (vacant plots of land, nonurbanized
areas). It is true, however, that play can be adapted to environmental conditions.
Moreover, the conditions themselves often become the reason for or means of the
recreational activity. The city, as Jane Jacobs (1961) brilliantly described in The
Death and Life of Great American Cities, with its streets and squares, markets and
shops, neighbors and passers-by, trees and pavement, has served as a stimulus,
argument, playing field, hideout, and place for adventure for children’s spontaneous
amusement. However, despite this huge capacity for play to adapt, which materially
and symbolically transforms any environment into a space and object for play, there
is a point where conditions become so adverse that this proves impossible. The city
then becomes a dangerous and hostile place for the child (Tonucci 1997). It is true
that the sight of children playing in the street is disappearing from the urban
landscape, thus creating the need for alternative scenarios: toy libraries, enclosed
and expressly designed playgrounds, or commercial recreational spaces.
Another major social factor that has created the need for children’s free-time
educational institutions is the family. Certain transformations in family life have
resulted in the reduction or loss of some of the family’s traditional functions in
relation to children’s leisure. In addition to being an economic unit and the heart of
affective relationships, the traditional nuclear family was a leisure community, i.e.,
the framework in which a good deal of its members took part in free-time activities
together. School and the nuclear family became established as the two main
institutions for children’s custody and education. But while the school played
a minor role in the direct provision of child leisure activities, the same could not
be said of the family. For the very young – and to a lesser extent the slightly older
child – the most significant natural setting for their leisure was in the family
environment. Directly or indirectly, and for better or worse depending on the
case, the family was the most relevant authority to guide, enable, and give content
to children’s free time. Control over and responsibility for children’s leisure rested
traditionally within the family institution, which shaped both everyday leisure
activities and those weekly or annual routines (weekends and holidays).
This picture of family leisure has been changing in parallel with other alterations
taking place in that institution. Women’s work outside the home, a significant
relaxation of relationships within the family, progressive disengagement of the
conjugal family (parents and children) in relation to other family members (grand-
parents, uncles, aunts), the quest for higher levels of personal autonomy for each
group member, or the diversity of today’s family models (reconstructed families,
single-parent families) are factors that have blurred the image of the family as
a leisure community. It is true that the family is still important in this task, but
a series of educational institutions has appeared to take over the family’s role.
Summer camps, children’s clubs, extracurricular activities, and the like now
assume the functions related to children’s free time that were previously carried
out within the family structure.
28.3.3.2 Pedagogical Factors

The previous section offers examples of social factors at the root of the need for
free-time educational institutions, but to enable them to be developed and extended
there must also be a relevant pedagogical discourse that legitimizes and justifies
them. This is examined in the following section.
Broadening the Concept of Education

One of the most significant theoretical evolutions to have taken place in pedagogy,
especially since the second half of the twentieth century, was the broadening of the
concept of education and, consequently, extending the possible range of intentional
educational interventions. On the one hand, there has been a vertical extension:
From considering childhood and youth as almost the only stages at which we are
susceptible to education, we have moved to accepting, without reservation, that we
are receptive to teaching throughout our entire life. The concepts of lifelong
learning and continuing or recurrent education for adults, and even the elderly,
are now commonly accepted in the education sciences. Another expansion has been
horizontal. The concepts of nonformal and informal education (and others that are
parallel or similar such as open learning and extracurricular education) demonstrate
the idea that education extends far beyond the strict confines of the school (Trilla
1993b). If we accept these concepts, we cannot ignore the educational scope of the
design of play spaces and materials, free-time educational centers, and, in general,
the wide range of institutions and resources that will shape an entire field of leisure
education.
Recognition of the Role of Play in Development

Recognition that play is an essential activity for childhood development is another
factor that legitimizes the pedagogy of leisure. This is not the place to review the
many explanatory theories used to justify the pedagogy of leisure, but it is necessary
to highlight the fact that almost all psychological theories about children’s play
stress the importance it has in child development. Since the theory of K. Groos, who
explained that play is a preparatory exercise for adulthood and which he considered
a spontaneous mode of self-education, all subsequent authors on the subject
(W. Stern, S. Hall, E. Claparede, F. Buytendijk, K. B€uhler, J. Piaget, and the
psychoanalytic theorists) have emphasized one aspect or another but they accept
the role of play in development (Elkonin 2010). Some, like Vygotsky, go even
further by considering play a “basic factor of development” and a “conducting
activity that determines the child’s development” (Vygotski 2001, pp. 154-155).
Play is not the only free-time activity, but it is one of the most paradigmatic,
above all in early childhood. Thus, recognition of recreational activity as a factor in
childhood development necessarily had to strengthen the refinement of pedagogical
reflection on free time.
Growing Appreciation of the Values Traditionally Marginalized by School

The school as an institution traditionally has favored the intellectual over other
learning dimensions of the individual. However, the pedagogical requirement of
a comprehensive education that omits none of the facets of the human being and
harmoniously strengthens each of them is now dated. The idea of integral education
is a long-standing pedagogical aspiration that school has rarely satisfied in practice.
This institution has focused on cognitive aspects, while in the curricula and practice
in general the presence of emotions, sociability, artistic expression, or even physical
education (other than the few exceptions that simply prove the rule) have tradition-
ally occupied a secondary and subordinate role.
If the integral education discourse served to reassess a series of personality
aspects such as those mentioned above and the educational institution par excel-
lence, i.e., the school, failed to assume them to a satisfactory extent, other areas or
educational institutions should have assumed them on a supplementary basis.
However, the school, or at least the “traditional” school, was reluctant to accept
a set of values that were being updated ideologically, such as spontaneity, auton-
omy, creativity, relationship with the environment, and so on. The organizational
models of the traditional school (rigid, fossilized, bureaucratic, and hierarchical)
and their methodologies (rote learning, passive, decontextualized) were, in fact, the
antitheses of the values that the most advanced pedagogy was demanding.
In short, the theoretical overview of pedagogy was growing with a set of new or
recovered goals and values that conventional educational institutions failed to
properly address. What was being asserted was that the cultivation of creativity,
sociability, self-expression, and autonomy would perhaps be more in keeping with
a kind of educational institution or medium that had free time as a sphere of action.
Thus, it is a fact that leisure educational institutions have championed the values
mentioned above. On occasion they have assumed them in the belief that they
should do so as a necessary complement (or supplement) to the school.
Formulation of the right to education in free time

Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United
Nations in 1948, already established the right to the leisure: “Everyone has the right
to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic
holidays with pay.” The definition of this right in the case of children, as established
in 1959 by the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, explicitly linked it
to education. Principle 7 of the Declaration, devoted specifically to education, states the
following: “The child shall have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should
be directed to the same purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall
endeavour to promote the enjoyment of this right.” In the update of the document which
led to the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in 1989, also by the United
Nations, an entire article is dedicated to children’s leisure. Article 31 states that
“(1) States Parties recognise the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in
play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate
freely in cultural life and the arts. (2) States Parties shall respect and promote the right
of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the
provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and
leisure activity.” Furthermore, many nations have incorporated explicit references to
the children’s right to leisure and education in their free time into their own legislation
(constitutions, and educational, social, and cultural laws) (Lázaro 2006).
Obviously, the legal recognition of a right does not mean that in reality the
necessary conditions exist for everyone to exercise it, let alone have equal oppor-
tunities to do so. Social and economic inequalities in the formal educational system
are certainly the same or probably even more so for free-time education. Nonethe-
less, it remains true that these legal formulations regarding education in free time
have contributed to the social endorsement of this educational area and to the public
bodies that are gradually assuming their responsibility in relation to it.
28.4 Specific Areas of the Pedagogy of Leisure
28.4.1 Institutions, Programs, Activities, and Resources
As we have seen, educational activities related to free time can take place in a very
wide range of institutions, programs, facilities, activities, and resources. In fact, all
the educational contexts and mediums that have a bearing on the use that individ-
uals make of their free time should be considered areas of the pedagogy of leisure.
The simplest way to organize the existing diversity of these areas is to divide them
into two groups: specific and nonspecific.
Specific areas of the pedagogy of leisure would be all those institutions and
activities that are simultaneously specifically educational and specifically linked to
free time, i.e., institutions expressly created for the purpose of educating through
pursuits that are characteristic of leisure. This group includes toy libraries, educa-
tional activities for holidays, children’s free-time clubs, and certain extracurricular
activities. Nonspecific areas would be those that are not specifically educational and
are not specifically linked to free time, i.e., school, family, and leisure industries.
The school is a specifically educational institution but, except at specific times, does
not act through free-time activities; leisure industries obviously address free time but
are more accurately characterized by their economic and commercial components
than by the components potentially connected with education. As nonspecific
mediums have already been widely and expressly discussed in other chapters of
this book, we present the most significant specific institutions, activities, and
resources in the following sections (Calvo 1997; Puig and Trilla 1996; Trilla and
Garcı́a 2002).
28.4.1.1 Children Clubs and Centers for Free-time Education

Children clubs and centers for free-time education refer to a wide range of institu-
tions that have different names according to the traditions of each country but they
explicitly approach free time as an area for educational intervention and assume it
in an overall fashion. They do not specialize in just one kind of leisure activity such
as toy libraries or other institutions which we discuss below. Children centers are
constituted as spaces for meeting and a range of activities, with the presence of
facilitators (professionals or volunteers) and where the users are usually children
from the same community. There are basically three types of children centers:
(1) those that operate on a weekly basis, (2) those that operate on a daily basis, and
(3) those that operate only at specific times of the year (mainly during school
holidays).
Despite the organizational and institutional diversity and the variety of peda-
gogical methodologies they may adopt, perhaps that which best characterizes this
type of educational institution is the collective leisure dimension that they facilitate
and encourage. Without eliminating the possibility that a child may choose some
individual leisure activity while at the club (reading or playing alone, for example),
the purpose of this institution is to be a place of encounters. If these children’s clubs
have any justification it is to provide the option of collective play, activities that
require company and reciprocity, cooperative leisure, building peer relationships,
and shared projects.
28.4.1.2 Holiday Educational Activities Performed Outside the Child’s

Place of Residence: Summer and Overnight Camps,
Excursions, Volunteer Camps
As reflected in the section heading, in this section we bring together a variety of
children’s free-time educational activities that share the characteristic of taking
place outside their usual place of residence. Despite their limited duration (gener-
ally 10-15 days), they have relevant educational potential that can be summarized
by the following characteristics:
1. Intensity of the experience. These are short but remarkably intense experiences
as they encompass the totality of the child’s life, 24 h a day. In terms of time,
they represent a total educational situation. This requires a more comprehensive
pedagogical approach than other, part-time leisure educational institutions.
2. Opportunity of educationally addressing the everyday. From that described
above, these activities include a variety of everyday life situations (meals,
sleeping, down time) which are omitted from possible pedagogical interventions
in other educational institutions except in the family or at boarding school. The
treatment of everyday events as an area of meeting primary needs is one of their
most important educational dimensions.
3. Temporary separation from the family environment. For the child, these activ-
ities mean experiencing temporary separation from the physical, emotional,
relational, and regulatory bastion of the family environment. For younger chil-
dren, this may be an important moment in the necessary and progressive process
of reducing family dependency. The subject experiences a different model of
time management, relationships, and so on that provides a more objective
perspective of their own customary family model.
4. Contact with a different environment. For the city child, a stay at a summer camp
offers the possibility to know the rural world first hand and to have direct contact
with nature. Since these activities are not limited to city children, they always
represent a change from the child’s own environment, with a broadening of his
or her horizons, with all that it may mean (e.g., ways of life, customs,
landscapes).
Other formats also exist in this group of educational activities, e.g., thematic
summer camps where all the activities revolve around a certain area of interest (e.g.,
sport, music, ecology); volunteer camps where the “holiday” dimension makes
room for carrying out some form of service, whether social, agricultural, or
archaeological in nature; or treks (walking, cycling), which would be something
akin to travelling camps.
28.4.1.3 Playgrounds and Recreational Open Spaces

Though we must continue to insist that urban policies, where possible, adopt as one
of their objectives the recovery of streets and public squares as favorable places for
spontaneous play, this does not deny the fact that it may often be necessary to adapt
open spaces to ensure that children have the opportunity to play outdoors. From
a pedagogical perspective there are two fundamental criteria to consider when
designing play spaces: they must be based on the real requirements of spontaneous
play and they must stimulate and enrich such recreation.
In regard to the first criterion, it must be said that any intervention to set up play
spaces and their equipment should be based on knowledge of the reality of
children’s play. Direct observation of spontaneous games is a necessary source of
information in designing a truly functional park. The needs of different age groups
must be taken into account when determining the size of the space and its elements.
Younger children must be able to play with earth, sand, and water, and depending
on the location of the park, they should do so in a more or less protected space. It
would be appropriate to have conventional play elements at their disposal (e.g.,
slides and swings) as well as multipurpose structures that can be turned into a house,
hideout, or shop counter. Older children will require more open spaces where team
sports can be played, an element that entails a certain amount of controlled risk.
Nonetheless, just as we mentioned above that it would not be appropriate to isolate
leisure spaces too much, it would also be unadvisable to separate play areas
according to different age groups. Interactions between children of different ages
are always enriching. Younger children try to imitate and emulate older children’s
play through observation; older children learn to respect the play of the young.
The design of the park must awaken new and richer play possibilities. This can
be achieved by shaping the land (e.g., level changes, slopes, vegetation, hideouts,
ponds, water channels, places for skating and biking, roundabouts and porches) and
the incorporation of certain elements such as structures, trampolines, tunnels, walls,
and painted signs on the floor. In general, spaces and components that allow for
multiple uses are preferable to those that are for special use. One of the virtues of
spontaneous play is the adaptation and symbolic and/or physical re-creation that the
child does with places and materials.
Parks or adventure playgrounds also deserve special mention. These are spaces
whose main characteristic is their intentional lack of specific order or explicit
structures. They are expressly designed desert islands in an urban environment. In
this kind of park, children enjoy absolute freedom in their use of the space and
usually have rudimentary materials at their disposal with which to build cabins,
hiding places, and so on. They are a way of facilitating the components of
experiment, adventure, secret, and apparent disorder that the group games which
children play often possess.
28.4.1.4 Play Centers and Toy Libraries

The playgrounds we have just discussed satisfy a part of the child’s need to
enjoy adequate spaces for recreational activity. However, there are games
that require another type of equipment and special facilitators such as toys. Play
centers were created to provide this space and to expand the usability of these
facilitators.
The first toy library seems to have been opened in Los Angeles in 1934. In 1960,
UNESCO popularized the idea and since then they have spread worldwide.
In addition to their primary function (i.e., to provide an adequate public space
with good toys for children’s recreational activity), toy libraries usually serve other
purposes related to play and education: guiding parents on the purchase and use of
toys, the creation of new play materials, encouragement of activities and collabo-
ration with other neighborhood institutions, and testing and assessing industrial
toys. Of course, toy libraries also address the tasks directly derived from their
primary functions, such as the selection of toys based on quality, hygiene, and
educational criteria; the cataloguing, repair, and maintenance of toys; and guidance
and help provided by facilitators in the use of toys.
As with outdoor playgrounds, an important aspect of toy libraries in relation to
their function as a social service is their location. The characteristics inherent in
their use make them a type of facility that must be easily and readily accessible,
which means their distribution should be decentralized. Rather than a few
macrocenters that entail a long journey to get there, it would be more beneficial
to establish a good network of small and medium-sized toy libraries that reaches
numerous neighborhoods and villages.
28.4.1.5 The Scout Movement

Founded in 1907 by the British military officer R. Baden Powell, scouting has been
one of the most popular child and youth movements in the world. Originally it
accepted only teenagers, but in 1914 admission was extended to include younger
children, and girls had their own scouting group in 1912. Leaving aside the (in
some cases) significant ideological and religious differences and nuances
that numerous national and international scouting associations have incorporated
into the movement, there is remarkable unity in the underlying principles and basic
methodologies of the scouting associations. In fact, scouting constitutes a complete
civic education program that has been enjoyed by thousands of young
people over generations. Though scouting is still a significantly active movement,
crises have been arising for some time over some of its more formal aspects such as
uniforms and rituals. On a deeper level, issues have also arisen because of certain
resistance to the much-needed methodological renewal that the movement’s
material and ideological transformation requires. Despite this, as far as our
subject is concerned, it must be said that the emergence and development of

many other free-time educational initiatives has been used the techniques, experi-
ences, and people from scouting. Scout movements have covered and still cover an
important space in the framework of free-time educational interventions.
Some of the traits that mark other areas of the pedagogy of leisure (e.g., summer
camps, free-time clubs) are perfectly applicable to scouting. There is, however, one
fundamental difference: diverse methodologies, doctrines, and pedagogical
models usually emerge in other expressions of the pedagogy of leisure; in contrast,
scouting is in itself an entire educational methodology. Moreover, it is
a methodology based on and fueled by an explicit and well-defined philosophy
of life and education.
28.4.1.6 Monothematic Activities, Facilities, and Leisure Resources

Grouped under this heading are all the associative entities created to encourage,
usually altruistically, some particular artistic, cultural, or sports specialty during
free time. Members or practitioners of these kinds of activities partake of them
more for their content than for some utilitarian purpose. This does not prevent high
standards and demands being achieved on many occasions. In any case, the
enjoyment and satisfaction, which are the essence of any leisure activity, are
never lost. Examples are children’s choirs, folk groups, theatre groups, amateur
sports teams, and excursion groups. This category also encompasses a realm of
extracurricular activities that take the form of courses or workshops on a wide range
of subjects, including visual arts, dance, music, new technologies, yoga, and
languages. We should also include such institutions and facilities as libraries,
museums, zoos, and other cultural installations that usually offer specific programs
aimed at filling children’s free time through their educational sections or
departments.
28.4.2 Shared Structural and Functional Characteristics
Though educational institutions, mediums, activities, and resources for free time
are quite broad and diverse, they have some shared characteristics which we
examine in this section.
A heuristic resource to identify the characteristics of a certain educational area
consists of identifying their differences from another area. Since the school has
been and still is the educational institution of reference, it is not surprising that it has
often been used to characterize, by contrast, that which is typical of free-time
educational institutions. Thus J. Franch (1985, p. 22), warning of the danger of
oversimplification inherent in this type of formula, proposed the comparative table
in Fig. 28.5.
Taking into account the information of the chart above (Fig. 28.5) we will
discuss the general characteristics that are more significant in free-time educational
institutions, beginning with the most structural or organizational elements and
continuing to the more functional or methodological aspects.
SCHOOL FREE-TIME INSTITUTION

Its function is to ensure a common cultural base It allows for diversification in the ways of
for all. participating in culture.
In this sense, it acts as a levelling mechanism. In this sense, it acts as a diversification mechanism.
The essential content of the school’s message is The essential content of the free-time institution
the transmission of codes and concepts and focuses on completion and deepening of the
abstraction from those elements. experience, and on the elucidation of specific
meaning.
The interpersonal relationship is normally, at most, The interpersonal relationship is promoted as an

tolerated. essential condition.
The planning of activity projects does not usually Activity projects are usually planned by children.
involve children.
The code used is language and logic. There is no single code. On the contrary, the
tendency is to use a variety of different
instruments for expression and creation.
The experience that takes place is selective. The experience that takes place is overall.
It has its own boundaries of time and space. It also has its own time and space boundaries, but
they are different, and this difference carries
significant consequences.
Fig. 28.5 Differences between the school institution and free-time educational institutions
(Franch 1985)
28.5 Structural Elements
28.5.1 Reduction of External Requirements
Compared with the school, free-time institutions have a substantially lower number
of external determining factors and expectations. Their degree of relative autonomy
therefore is higher. This reduction in external requirements is seen in such aspects as
1. Lack of compulsory and standardized study plans, curricula, and programs.
Thus, each institution, movement, program, or pedagogical intervention is able
to develop its own goals and methods with quite a high level of autonomy.
2. Fewer legal and bureaucratic conditioners. Since free-time educational institu-
tions are a relatively new area, a body of law and bureaucracy that excessively
restricts their institutional operation has yet to be developed.
3. Reduced social and family expectations. As the school is still the main educational
institution in our society, together with the family, a high and ambitious number of
social expectations fall on its shoulders, justified or not. Besides fulfilling its most
primary function (the transmission of a basic cultural background), school is also
supposed to meet varied expectations such as disciplinary functions, act as
a platform for social mobility, and remedial actions in addition to any new specific
needs that may appear on the educational landscape (e.g., sex education, health
education, environmental education). In contrast and perhaps due to their limited
and as yet not entirely socially legitimized presence, free-time institutions face
lower expectations from society and specifically from families. Apart from reason-
able health and safety requirements in their role as guardian and ensuring that the
children find a pleasant environment that meets certain minimums of education,
parents do not usually demand much more of free-time institutions. This leads
to certain negative components (depreciation of their value and educational possi-
bilities, for example), but also entails positive aspects such as greater autonomy and
flexibility to undertake projects more in line with their conception.
28.5.2 Less Institutional Inertia
Since they do not have long and established institutional and operational traditions,
free-time educational centers are able to develop without the burden of inertia that
is associated with the institution of the school. They are more easily receptive to
new situations, allow less sclerotic action, are best suited to the context in which
they operate, and are generally more open to methodological innovations. In return,
they have high levels of instability and of lack of continuity.
28.5.3 Diversity of Institutional Forms
The school is a remarkably uniform and monolithic institution. Except for some
substantial differences (i.e., public or private, traditional or progressive), all schools
are quite similar. The landscape of free-time institutions is very different. Their
diversity lies as much in management forms, funding, and institutional dependence
as in objectives, projects, and pedagogical methods.
28.6 Methodological and Functional Aspects
28.6.1 Emphasis on Relations and Groups
Although the school constitutes a collective situation, it has traditionally been

characterized as leaving the development and educational treatment of sociability
in the background. In contrast, leisure institutions have always tended to emphasize
interpersonal relationships. Providing suitable spaces, times, and environments for
collective play, the creation of groups and the exchange of initiatives are tasks
usually considered a priority in the pedagogy of leisure. Likewise, the conflicts that
arise from living together in a community constitute educational opportunities of
the greatest pedagogical interest. The relational aspects are highlighted when we
find that a good number of the pedagogical debates addressed in free-time
educational institutions refer to such issues as group size and formation (natural or
imposed groups, homogeneous or heterogeneous in terms of age ) and the level of
children’s participation in deciding and managing the agenda.
28.6.2 The Specific Learning Contents as a Medium
Free-time institutions have prioritized the (let’s say) educational (behavioral and
attitudinal aspects) over the instructive (contents and intellectual skills). With respect
to the instructive, greater emphasis has been placed on the concrete than on the abstract
and the conceptual. As free-time institutions are not expected to cover curricular
requirements, the contents and specific skills to be learned are not seen as the main
objective but usually as necessary elements in the performance of activities or projects
with a wider scope. In this way, specific learning, which undoubtedly also takes place
in such situations, is carried out in a much more contextualized and active way.
“Learning by doing,” the slogan of pedagogical activism that progressive pedagogues
have tried so hard to introduce into the school, is the natural consequence of the very
identity of free-time institutions. In these institutions the learning content always
depends on the activity to be performed, i.e., the order of factors is the inverse of
that of the school. In schools, learning contents are always predetermined by the
programs, from which the appropriate activities are designed to achieve the most
effective learning. In contrast, in free-time institutions it is the activity itself that
determines which skills and what knowledge must be acquired for its proper perfor-
mance. The process of acquiring such contents usually takes place through practice.
This is true even for those free-time educational activities in which greater emphasis is
placed on the need to acquire and perfect certain skills such as choir singing, dance,
and competitive sports. Note that in these cases the very names of the learning
processes – rehearse, exercise, and train – directly denote the intrinsic link between
the act of learning and the practice of what the individuals are learning.
28.6.3 Possibility of an Educational Approach to the Everyday and

of Gestation of the Extraordinary
Free-time situations are often opportunities that allow for educational moments in
everyday life. The formal nature of school impedes it from acting on these appar-
ently simple or routine instances in individual and collective life (sleeping, dress-
ing, meals, cleaning tasks, shopping, idle moments, informal interactions). In
certain free-time educational activities, the everyday sector of life is not marginal,
but something on whose functioning rests a good deal of the success and educa-
tional projection of those activities.
Naturally, revaluing the everyday does not exclude enhancing the extraordinary
and leisure situations are equally appropriate for this purpose. It is also the task of
the pedagogy of leisure to instill in children the capacity of collectively creating
alternatives to the monotonous and routine passage of time. A predisposition to the
occasional exploit which is out-of-the-ordinary and an inclination toward
adventure, imaginative conduct, or creative action are values that can be cultivated
in free-time with fewer restrictions than in other educational situations. After all,
the extraordinary is memorable, and the memorable, if experienced positively,
makes the learning achievement far more enduring.
28.6.4 Hosting and Facilitating the Development of One’s Own

Projects
The above-mentioned external impositions mean that the activity of school children
is generally heteronymous; it is determined on the basis of previously and exter-
nally established programs and contents. In some cases these activities have been
preceded by some motivational process that to a certain extent can make them
attractive and interesting. Certain school pedagogies have attempted to connect
learning processes with the interests that children are able to express in an open and
receptive school environment. Such is the case of active pedagogies, the project
methods, and Freinet’s work plans. In free-time educational institutions, however,
embracing children’s interests, wishes, or initiatives must necessarily become one
of their methodological constants. This is not simply a question of embracing or
giving free rein to the expression of such interests but of facilitating the design and
preparation of the resulting activities and projects. This is one of the important
aspects of adult educational intervention through leisure institutions: to provide
a suitable framework for the performance of simple free-time activities that can be
carried out autonomously by children and to enable the realization of more complex
projects arising from the very dynamism of the groups (Franch and Martinell 1994).
28.6.5 Immediate Relationship with the Environment
Free-time educational institutions usually have been characterized as being more

deeply rooted in the immediate environment than the school. Traditionally, the
latter has had a kind of centralizing isolationist inclination, closing in on itself,
a tendency to distance itself from its surroundings (Trilla 2004). In contrast,
free-time educational movements from the outset have followed a contrary
direction (in this sense, scouting may be very paradigmatic). Knowledge of
the environment (natural, social, urban, cultural) and active participation in it
are usually predominant goals in the educational practice of these institutions
(Casas et al. 2008; Hart 1997; Trilla and Novella 2001).
28.7 Epilogue
Throughout this chapter we have advocated the need to intervene educationally in

children’s free time. Now, to conclude, some caveats are necessary to avoid
misinterpretation.
We have stated that one of the main purposes of free-time educational interven-
tion is to enrich leisure experiences. However, scrupulous respect of one condition
in this intervention is required: the leisure activity in which there is educational
intervention must continue to be truly experienced as leisure. In other words, the
educational intervention must respect the three essential aspects we attributed to
leisure: freedom, autotelism, and pleasure.
28.7.1 Leisure and the Joyful Use of Useless Knowledge
In the book In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell promoted what he provocatively

called “useless knowledge.” In an accelerated historical review, the English
philosopher noticed certain moments in which knowledge was given a value
that was not solely utilitarian. He paused, of course, on the Renaissance when,
in his own words, there was “a revolt against the utilitarian conception of
knowledge . . . Learning, in the Renaissance, was part of the joie de vivre, just as
much as drinking or love-making. . . . The main motive of the Renaissance
was mental delight. . .” (Russell 1960, p. 17). Later, Russell warned how in
today’s time (as true in his day as in ours) “Knowledge, everywhere, is coming
to be regarded not as a good in itself, or as a means of creating a broad
and humane outlook on life in general, but as merely an ingredient in technical
skill” (Russell 1960, pp 19-20). Education for leisure should therefore defend
this disinterested knowledge, this autotelic value of culture as a source of
delight which, after all, was the genuine meaning of leisure in Greek culture
(Morgan 2006).
28.7.2 Pleasure, Risk, and Self-control
In their now classic work on Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process, Elias and
Dunning (1986) discovered a close relationship between leisure, risk, and pleasure.
They explained how recreational leisure activities
“. . .constitute the acceptance of some risk. They tend to defy the strict regulation of the
routinized life of people. . . . They allow people to relax or to ridicule the rules that govern
their non-leisure life. . . . They imply that one ‘plays with the rules’ the way one ‘plays with
fire’. Sometimes they go too far. . . . In recreational occupations, apparently antagonistic
feelings such as fear and pleasure not only oppose each other (as it ‘logically’ seems), but
are inseparable parts of a process of recreational enjoyment. . . . In this sense, no satisfaction
can be obtained from recreational pursuits without small doses of fear alternating with
pleasant expectations, brief shocks of anguish alternating with other feelings of pleasure.
. . . This is the reason why different types of excitement play a central role in recreational
activities. And only in this way is it possible to understand the ‘de-routinizing’ function of
leisure. Routines entail a high degree of security. Unless we expose ourselves to a little
insecurity, to having something more or less at stake, the routines we have embodied in us will
never loosen, we will never be able to rid ourselves of them, even temporarily, and the function
of recreational activities will be lost” (Norbert and Dunning 1992, pp. 127, 134–135).
So according to Elias and Dunning, the deroutinization that forms part of the
nature of many leisure activities entails the social and personal assumption of
a certain level of risk. This risk can overflow easily; an excessive risk can appear
that exceeds both social and individual minimum security thresholds. It is then that
certain systems of regulation are needed. Basically, two types of systems exist to
channel or restrain the excessive risk that leisure can bring. The first type would be
legal and social, e.g., restrictions on alcohol or drug consumption, police security
mechanisms. The other type of risk control system is what interests us here because
it is the one that refers directly to education. Learning risk control involves self-
knowledge (knowing our own limitations, possibilities, and expectations), will
power (to guide action in accordance with our intention and conscience), respon-
sibility (knowing and assuming the consequences of our actions), and the capability
of self-control. Leisure implies risk and therefore requires self-control, a faculty
only education can help develop.
28.7.3 Freedom to Choose or Freedom to Project and Build
Education should also contribute to developing a deeper sense of freedom. We

often understand freedom in leisure as the freedom to choose from predetermined
options: one show or another, this TV program or that, any of the many video games
available on the market, a brand of clothes, one distraction or the other. This is the
freedom to choose from what the market has to offer – the freedom to choose
products – which undoubtedly constitutes a degree of freedom, but it is still a poor
freedom and educationally too simple. The freedom that a pedagogy of leisure
should enhance is not only that of choosing products, but also of choosing paths and
processes i.e., the freedom to conceive and conduct our own projects; the freedom
to build leisure and not only to consume it.
28.7.4 Ensuring the Availability of Noninstitutionalized or

Controlled Free Time
To educate for leisure and in leisure means to facilitate learning about how to use
free time. Learning that concept curiously seems to be achieved by dispossessing
the subjects of their own time. Here lies the kind of hyperinstitutionalization of free
time that children are often exposed to: a time almost entirely occupied by extra-
curricular activities, facilitators, coaches, babysitters, private teachers, classes and
courses of any kind, and other forms of custody. It is as if we wanted to prepare for
the good use of free time by turning it into something alien, by distancing it.
Educating for leisure requires maintaining or, given the case, restoring sufficient
doses of this time that is not allocated in timetables or restricted by institutions: the
time that some have described in these words: “The clock – Ernst Junger said – does
not form part of the forest. Neither does it form part of the world of lovers, games or
music. The hours the spirit spends in leisure or devoted to a creative work, these
hours the clock does not measure. . . . Deep down it is a matter of a demand for
freedom in areas we have not yet tamed.” “Our enjoyable and pleasant occupations
are precisely those in which we pay no attention to measured time. . . . Children play
until they are called or get tired. They play until the sun goes down. . ..” “Recreation
is greater the less we watch the clock” (Junger 1998, pp. 13, 14, 26, 28). A child’s
quality of life does not consist of trying to fill free time with institutionalized
recreational activities. It is necessary to ensure the presence of a time for truly
free and autonomously generated activities as well as the existence of appropriate
contexts for horizontal socialization without the direct guidance of adults. It would
be a matter of preserving (or perhaps recovering) those moments in which our
children can also receive, like the boy from Stevenson’s tale mentioned at the
beginning of the chapter, their own informal lessons of “peace and contentment.”
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Crı́tica.
Play and Well-Being in Children’s Life
29
Jan Van Gils
29.1 Introduction
It is not the aim of this chapter to contribute to the discussion on the definition of
play, neither the objective is to offer an overview of Huizinga’s, Piaget’s,
Vygotsky’s, and Sutton-Smith’s theories of this world. However, this chapter
clarifies what is meant by children’s play.
Later, different kinds of play and the effects of play for children will be described,
ending with an overview of elements that promote or inhibit children’s play.
The second part of this chapter will focus on the relationship between children’s
play and children’s well-being. The intent is to describe moments and situations
and contexts where play and well-being meet each other, where they influence
each other.
29.2 Play: Two Approaches in One Concept
In general two approaches to play can be distinguished. Play can be seen as:
– Characteristic of children’s being related to development of several qualities (the
developmental approach)
– Characteristic of human beings related to enjoying life, being creative without
a productive objective (the cultural approach)
There is a great consensus that both approaches are complementary, while the
developmental approach is more typical for children’s behavior and the cultural
approach is for all human beings. However, most of the authors have a special
interest for one of the aspects.
J. Van Gils
International Council for Children’s Play, Mechelen, Belgium
e-mail: jvangils100@gmail.com

896 J. Van Gils
The first approach is based on a vision on children’s development stressing

children’s need to find their own place in the surrounding world. In Vygotsky’s
terms, it is a “corollary of a basic instinctive trait of human nature, namely, the
instinctive motivation to seek social contact and maintain part of
the (social cultural) world with others” (Van Oers 2011). This world is – at his
birth – an unknown environment in which he has to position himself. It includes that
the environment has to be explored – the material world in all his aspects – the
smell; the color; the weight; the feeling; how to handle it; how to use it; how
sturdy it is; how soft and strong are water, earth, wind, and fire; how are animals
and plants, etc. Also the social world has to be explored: how important are
other people, how to contact them, how to please them, how to convince or
dominate them, how to love them, etc. And within this environment, even
the child has to explore himself: his possibilities; his limits; how strong, fast,
creative, and kind he is; and what are his capacities to interact with the
environment.
This process of giving meaning to himself and the environment is very important
as such, but at the same time a lot of capacities and characteristics are developed: as
there are the development of the intelligence, of the motor and the sensory-motor
skills, of social skills, of the self-esteem, etc. Of course in this development –
besides play – also the biological evolution and genetic factors have a lot of
influence. But to play stresses the agency of children in this development: while
playing children contribute to their own development (Elbers 2011), children are
participating in their development. And that is in the relation to well-being very
important.
In educational contexts – where external inputs are dominating – this process is
conducted to well-defined objectives, for example, to the development of musical
qualities or to a sport or to an empathic attitude (with varying success). Most of the
time (during leisure and in periods that adults do not use to say what the child has
to do), the child is the actor in the playing process. He decides himself what, where,
with whom, how long, with what material, etc., he will play. Most of this play
behavior is passing between and even during other activities: while washing
themselves, while eating, while watching television, etc. They are jumping from
one activity to another one, children often are doing undefined activities, and they
call them “play” (Van Gils 1991). The drive to play is an intrinsic motivation:
children do it because they want to do it.
The second approach starts from the definition of humans as cultural beings.
Cultural behavior is very varied, but a part of it can be called play. Most known
is theater: the actors in the theater are called players; also people active in sports
often are players. It means that they are acting besides the daily serious reality:
certain norms are not applied longer such as being productive, earning money,
and respect of hierarchy. There is more space for fantasy, for fun, for humor, for
enjoying, etc. Looking at these illustrations, these activities have – within our
economic-oriented society – a marginal position: they are isolated within the
leisure time. On the other hand, some authors plea to see play more as a quality
of the way of living (Kane 2004). Especially in the last context, but within the
29 Play and Well-Being in Children’s Life 897
Play
Commitment
Creativity
Agreement
Voluntary
Flow
Uncertainty crystallized
Improvisation organized
Spontaneous structured
Fig. 29.1 Play on the continuum improvisation – structured
global cultural approach, there is, next to the noun “play,” a need for an
adjective – playfulness – as Huizinga also said (Huizinga 1997).
You can say that, after being grown up, these activities are what rests as
a remnant of a child’s past (Bergen 1998) and that nevertheless differs from it.
This playing behavior is more crystallized, more circumscribed, and besides
a strong intrinsic motivation, there is also an extrinsic motivation at stake.
Both approaches can be placed on a continuum with on the one hand uncertainty
and improvisation and on the other hand time-related imperatives and rules; in
common they have creativity, agreement, and not compulsory (inspired by Lavega
1998). On the common characteristics “commitment” could be added. We do not
add pleasure not on the common characteristic nor on one of the approaches,
because even if pleasure is often a quality of play, it is not always; play can also
be very hard: a boy who is exercising, exploring, and developing his capacities to
handle a skateboard makes a lot of efforts that are more characterized by “com-
mitment” and by “flow” than pleasure. However, pleasure can be seen as an
objective of play but in that sense we prefer the word “satisfaction”: play offers
a lot of satisfaction which often can be linked to pleasure. Another common
characteristic is the agency of the players. Players are active, are changing and
adapting their behavior, and are filling in their activity; it is never a routinely
behavior (Fig. 29.1).
29.2.1 Play in a Broader Context
The continuum is useful to clarify the evolution of the approach of children’s play
in the last decennia. After World War 2, there was an explicit awareness on the
importance of children’s play. Learning from the observations of children at play in
the ruins after frequent bombing, persons such as Lady Allen of Hurtwood (1968)
stimulated the organization of incidental play, playgrounds without leaders,
adventure playgrounds, and neighborhood playgrounds. But this movement was
not up to the trend to use play for explicit educational objectives. More attention
went to organized play activities as far as they could be integrated into educational
activities. This is called the pedagogization (Depaepe et al. 2008) of children’s
898 J. Van Gils
play: the more children’s play is discovered, the more it is recuperated by adults and
integrated in educational processes.
The continuum is also interesting because it clarifies the evolution of young
children’s play to adult’s play. In children’s play, there is more attention for
uncertainty, for exploring your capacities, and for learning, while in adult’s play,
there is more exploitation of capacities. However, it is a continuum and as children
can exploit their capacities, also adults can explore them, but in general there is an
evolution from improvisation to organization.
Also in the pedagogical praxis, this continuum can be recognized. The educational
intervention becomes – with the age of the child – more directive. It starts by
stimulating children’s self-directed play for babies and toddlers, and it evolves in
the direction of educational and therapeutic use of play at the age of 6 years. Roberts
also notes it in terms of more assimilation in early childhood and more accommoda-
tion in middle childhood (Roberts 1980).
This approach clarifies also the perturbation when data on the evolution of
children’s play are recognized. So there is the evolution of less playing in public
space: in Flanders, Belgium, the presence of children in public space in their living
environment was halved during the last 25 years, with an evolution from
diminishing creative play categories in favor of play categories related to move-
ment (Van Gils et al. 2008). And it is well known that during the last decennia
children spend more time and on a younger age on crystallized play activities.
The concept of play, used in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
(art. 31), lays on the side of crystallized behavior as it makes an explicit relation to
rest and regeneration after work and to cultural activities. It might be seen as a bias
of the convention. Today, a general comment on the CRC regarding play is in
development. It might be expected that it will result in a more balanced attention for
the developmental and the cultural approach.
29.2.2 Different Forms of Play
The overviews developed by Bergen (Bergen 1998) and Hewes (Hewes 2007) are
interesting as starting points to get a quite general overview of different forms of play;
their work has been supplemented on some points (Johnson et al 2005; Elkind 2007).
Age range of greatest

Kind of play Description incidence
Exploratory play/ Very young children explore objects and 0–2.5 years
object play/sensory environments – touching, mouthing, tossing,
play banging, and squeezing. Sensory play appears in
children’s early attempts to feed themselves.
As they get older, materials like playdough, clay,
and paint add to sensory play experiences
Dramatic play (solitary Many young children spend a lot of time engaged 3–8 years
pretense) in imaginative play by themselves throughout the
early childhood years. They invent scripts and
(continued)
Age range of greatest

Kind of play Description incidence
play many roles simultaneously. Toys or props,
e.g., dolls, cars, action figures, and cloths, usually
support this kind of play. As children get older,
they create entire worlds in solitary pretense
Construction play Children begin to build and construct with 3–12 years
commercial toys (LEGO, tinker toys, blocks),
with found and recycled materials (cardboard
boxes, plastic tubing), with a variety of modeling
media (clay, playdough, Plasticine), and most of
all with sand. Older children play for extended
periods with recycled material (tires, shelves, rags,
etc.) to build huts, castles, etc. Children across the
age range engage in this kind of play by themselves
and in groups, often combining it with episodes of
solitary pretense or sociodramatic play
Physical play Sensorimotor play begins as young infants 3–12 years
discover they can make objects move. Physical
play in the preschool years often involves
rough-and-tumble play, a unique form of social
play, most popular with little boys. Rough-and-
tumble play describes a series of behaviors used
by children in play fighting. Older preschoolers
and primary school kids engage in vigorous
physical activity, testing the boundaries of their
strength by running, climbing, sliding, and
jumping, individually and in groups. This kind
of play often develops spontaneously into
games with invented rules
Sociodramatic play, Pretend play with peers – children take on social 3–12 years
imitation, symbolic roles and invent increasingly complex narrative
play scripts, which they enact with friends in small
groups
Games with rules, Children begin to play formal games in social 5 – . . . years
sports games groups. These games have fixed, predetermined
rules, e.g., card games, board games, traditional
games, soccer, and hockey.
Children also invent their own games and/or
modify the rules of traditional playground games
in their self-organized playgroups
Speech and language Children are playing with sounds, cries, and 1- . . . years
songs: they experiment with it. While growing
up, it becomes more and more complicated.
Youngsters go to poems. Humor takes an
important place in this category
Computer games Since the 1980s, also computer games take a firm 4- . . . years
place in play; keywords are violence, fantasy,
pro-social behavior, eye-hand coordination, and
addictive
900 J. Van Gils
29.2.3 Effects of Children’s Play
The effects of children’s play can be ordered in four big categories; these categories
are quite artificial as many times a concrete play activity has characteristics from
more than one category. Not all these effects are the fruit only of children’s play;
some effects also can be reached by training or by therapy. You only can estimate
the extent to which they are caused by playing.
29.2.3.1 Sensory-Motor Development and Physical Health

Playing children develop a lot of fine and gross motor skills while running,
climbing, jumping, using sticks, etc. Doing so, they are exploring and developing
their sensory-motor capacities, varying from simple acts (catch a toy) to
complicated actions (riding a bike). They are looking for physical challenges
(yes, I can climb this tree) and for their own position compared to others (I am
faster than you). They are enjoying their movements, their body, their agility, and
their capacities.
At the same time, they develop their muscles, their condition, their endurance,
their respiratory system, their brains, etc. It has a positive influence on health.
It does not solve health problems, but it contributes to a healthy life.
29.2.3.2 Emotional and Psychological Development

While playing, there are a lot of emotions at stake. The most striking emotion is fun.
Children are enjoying their play: they laugh and cry, they jump and sing, and they
dance and have fun. They find satisfaction and express it. But to play is not always
funny. There are very stressful moments, for example, the moment that the child is
not sure if it is able to make a nice sand castle when the sand is always sliding away.
Also the competition while playing can be hard: to lose the battle is not funny at all,
but even the discussions on “what shall we play” are not always pleasant. Playing
children are handling these feelings often in an “as if” situation which is safer as
a “serious” competition.
To play different roles offers also possibilities to explore emotions as taking care
of someone (while playing with puppets) and being angry. By imitation, children
learn to understand feelings, to express them, to react on feelings of others, etc.
29.2.3.3 Development of Sociability and the Self

The informal social network of children refers first of all to the family and secondly
to the peers (within or outside pedagogical provisions). Within these networks,
children experience and develop social connectedness and at the same time
awareness of themselves: the self within the social environment. This process
takes place in and during all activities of children in contact with other people
and, thus, not only while playing. Especially in contacts of young children with
adults, there is a constantly jumping back and forth from play to reality. In the
contacts with peers, there is more space for experiments with less consequences
for real life. However the underlying process is as follows: children are learning to
communicate, to negotiate, to please, to convince, to give, to cooperate, to resolve

conflicts, to respect, to lose, to defend oneself, etc.
This learning process can be seen as a process of giving meaning, a process by
which you learn about the characteristics of matter: it is difficult to catch water with
your hands, a stone is hard and cold, and a car is faster than a bike. The child learns
very early that sand has to be wet if you want to build a castle with it, and a child
learns to ride a bike and to operate the television: so this sand, this bike, and this
television have a very specific meaning for this child. At the same time, the child
learns about his own skills to handle the sand, to control the bike, and to look for
another TV program. The child learns if he or she is smart, fast, kind, strong,
popular, etc. – the child is giving meaning.
29.2.3.4 Cognitive Development and Learning

The process of giving meaning is strongly connected to learning. Mostly, it is a
nonformal process of learning in the sense of not intentional. But the brains have
a very important function in it, and thus the development of the brains. This is the
world of imitation, imagination, language, logic, etc.
While singing and reciting rhymes and while discussing and leafing through
a book, they are discovering the wonderful world of words and language. They
enjoy to invent new (stupid, for them funny) words and even languages.
They decipher characters and affect the difference between reality and fantasy.
They discover up and under, left and right, light and heavy, and cause and effect
(some of the basic concepts of mathematics).
29.2.4 Play-Stimulating Factors
Play-stimulating factors do not function as separate factors. In fact it needs

a climate, a play-promoting climate which is a complex set of many factors
that have to work synchronized. To disrupt that process is easier as to
build it up. Three factors can be distinguished: freedom, safe environment, and
other people.
Freedom – An important play-stimulating factor, or even a condition to play, is
freedom. A more concrete terminology could mention free will, autonomy, freedom
of action, internal locus of control, etc. Children need the opportunity to decide
themselves about their activities (Van der Kooij 2007). This freedom is strongly
influenced by the living conditions. Children need to have time, space, and toler-
ance to play.
1. Children have to dispose on their time. A well-known saying said play starts
where the decisions of adults about the activities of children end. To illustrate it,
we refer to the place of the recess time in the school activities, to the time needed
for homework, to children who have to work or who are forced to attend
additional educational activities, etc. However, children are very clever to find
some “loose time” between two organized activities, so they play while going to
902 J. Van Gils
school, they play in their bed, and they even play while eating. But in order to
find this loose time, there has to be some tolerance.
2. Children have to be allowed to play, at home, in the school, on the street, in the
shopping center, in the car, etc. This freedom of choice (Van der Kooij 2007)
depends on the approach of parents to play and on the approach of the
educational staff and of the public opinion and the politicians; in fact it depends
on the vision of adults on children and on growing up and thus on play.
3. Finally, children need space to play: at home, in school, in the living envi-
ronment, in public space, etc. This space needs to have some qualities. It has to
be varied, accessible, safe, and challenging. We are talking about toys,
furniture, play equipment, light, aeration, color, etc. Some of these qualities
might seem contradictory: environments that are challenging or adventurous
are not without risks, and such risks might suggest insecurity. And indeed they
are not safe on the same way as an elevator has to be safe: a lift should not
pose a threat, through the eyes of the children a play environment should be
challenging, risky. On the other hand, the risks should not be hidden and
children should note the risks. There has to be a balance between safety and
risks. Also, variation should not be overwhelming: too much visual, auditory,
and sensory stimuli make children nervous and impede to choose a play
activity.
Safe Environment: A safe environment has to be defined from both the viewpoint
of adults and the viewpoint of children. For children the environment needs to have
a sense of security; it means children have to feel safe. This feeling is quite different
on different ages, for example, toddlers feel safe as long as a parent can be reached
by calling, crying, seeing, etc. For young children, it is important that adults are
within the reach; in very crowded places, the real presence of adults can be
important. On the other hand, in some cases the absence of adults contributes to
the safe feeling, just because of the lack of control; in this case, the term “feeling
comfortable” is more in its place and is quite near to the freedom of choice
mentioned earlier. And so we meet the safety paradox on children’s play. In
many play activities, children are looking for some risks: they are looking for
things and activities they do not know yet and they are exploring their capacities
(and meanwhile confronted with their limits); it included that they take risks which
they can estimate or which they cannot overview. So, from the viewpoint of
children, a playful environment includes risks. But, and here the paradox is at
stake, our society is more and more obsessed by safety being the absolute control
over all risks and they expect the play environment should be safe on the same way
as the elevator: there should be no risks at all. This approach does not fit with the
children’s approach. However, the adults have much more power as the children, so
a lot of play spaces and other spaces that could be made playful for children are as
safe that they are boring.
The challenge is to combine the concerns of adults with the need of risks of
children which can be done by avoiding all risks children cannot estimate, hidden
risks on the one hand and by an attitude of adults being aware that children besides
safety also need to learn to handle risks.
Other Children: The presence of other children is a very stimulating factor for
children’s play. Of course children also are playing alone, but playing with other
children offers more opportunities, because there are more ideas about what to do.
The social interaction of children enlarges the play opportunities, the challenges,
and the variety of play. Other children make the play environment a lot
more challenging and attractive. So other children are not only important for the
development of social attitudes but also for the fun of play.
29.2.4.1 Play-Inhibiting Factors

The play-inhibiting factors that can be identified directly are a lot of persons
hindering children to play (parents, teachers, neighbors, etc.), lack of time (other
activities have priority), and lack of space (also here, other activities have priority).
The very concrete implementation of these factors varies from child to
child. They are difficult to handle because they mostly have underlying structural
causes.
The structural causes at the base of the inhibiting factors are (Lester and
Russel 2008):
Environmental stress due to poverty: Family stresses, housing conditions,
poorer social networks, and outdoor physical environment do not support
playing. A lot of poor children were complaining about not having the
opportunity to play (computer) games, because their parents were always on
the computer.
Culture of fear and risk aversion: Fewer children per family make children more
valuable; society entrusted parents with more responsibility, better information
about risks and how to avoid risks. Most attention goes to safety in traffic and
social safety.
Inappropriate design of the public space with more attention for economic goals as
with human well-being: Also specific provisions as recreation areas and parks
are not always welcoming for playing children.
Difficulty to be part of society in the public realm: Children have to stay indoors and
have limited options for meeting up and hanging out with friends. This has to do
with the culture of fear and with the inappropriate provisions.
Commercialization of play: You have to pay to visit indoor playgrounds; creation of
crazes and combining commercial initiatives with play are not negative as such
(some initiatives are very creative and playful) but quite expensive (video games).
Climate of priority of intentional learning activities to activities without
clear (educational) objectives because of the utility orientation of our society:
In order to prepare children to live in this utility-oriented society, all their
activities have to contribute to useful capacities. This prioritizing is based on
the belief of education and the manufacturability of children.
Institutionalization of childhood: More institutions are created to organize childcare
and child education, first of all because of economic reasons (both parents have
to work), secondly for safety reasons (culture of fear), and only in third
place because of children’s needs.
904 J. Van Gils
29.3 Play and Well-Being
To organise the reflections on the relation of play and well-being, it is helpful

to distinguish objective and subjective conditions of well-being (Ben-Arieh
et al. 2001). There are some basic conditions of children’s well-being that can be
observed and compared to each other and that are not related to feelings.
The subjective well-being “acknowledges that individuals evaluate the quality of
their own live” (Lester and Russel 2008). Within this group, three broad themes
emerge: emotional well-being, psychological well-being, and social well-being.
This can be illustrated by looking for play in some extreme bad situations of
objective well-being: in such situations, children simply do not play. On the other
hand, once children are playing, this play behavior contributes to their (subjective)
well-being. But as this subjective well-being has different components, the relations
of play with well-being will not always be the same.
29.3.1 Play and Objective Well-Being
Factors such as poverty (housing, environment, social network) are recognized as

having a strong negative influence on objective well-being and affect in a negative
direction the play: in certain circumstances, they make play impossible. A child
who is starving will not play, neither will a very ill child, but every parent knows
that when the child is playing again, it is recovering. Expecting – on the other
hand – the child’s play should have a constructive influence on such factors would
be very naive. It seems to suggest that child’s well-being has to reach a basic level
before play comes into the game and that from that point, it has even a positive
impact on (subjective) well-being. This suggestion might refer to the hierarchy of
needs, as Maslow describes (Maslow 1970): In his approach the need to play is not
situated at the basic needs at the bottom of his pyramid.
But there are also very bad living conditions in which play opportunities
can have an important role. UNICEF – see the numerous illustrations on the
Internet – increasingly understands that in major disasters, such as earthquakes
and war, play still is possible and even that children need to play in such situations.
Play opportunities offer them the chance to give the disaster a place in their
own experience. One can also think that the game is the perfect distraction from
the disaster, but more important is the process of giving meaning. In the terminol-
ogy of Maslow, this is a part of “self-actualization.” Play gives children the
opportunity to contribute to their self-actualization; it is the instrument at their
disposal to master (partly) their own development and to contribute to their own
process of growing up and to their actorship/agency. In this case of objective
negative well-being, play is turning it over into possibilities to develop subjective
well-being.
A similar approach can be recognized in play therapy in which play is the tool to
unlock some entries to (subjective) well-being.
29.3.2 Play and Subjective Well-Being
29.3.2.1 Play and Emotional Well-Being

The contribution of play to well-being is quite well known. It is applied in many
commercials with images of laughing, singing, and dancing children. It is the play
behavior endlessly observed and photographed by parents (and grandparents); it is
the classic image of happy children, which is often recognized as the externalization
of well-being.
And while playing, children often feel happy; they enjoy life, their body, their
capacities, and their environment. They are very concentrated, they push their
limits, they acquire their world, and they make fun.
It is a more instantaneous approach of child well-being, focusing on the mental
well-being, feel good status, and happiness. It is a status that can be recognized
by satisfaction, enjoyment, internal rest, showing vitality, openness to the
environment, spontaneity, positive feelings about yourself, etc. This aspect of
well-being is often the only aspect that is taken into account when talking about
children’s play, but the relation between play and well-being is more fascinating
especially when other characteristics of play activities are coming on the scene: the
efforts play is asking, the discomfort, and even frustrations provoked by play.
More concrete, children can feel very tired while digging holes and walking with
the dolls, they do not feel fine when they fail to climb a tree or build a tree house,
when they lose a game, when they are bored at the end of an activity, when they
are hurt, etc., but however it is part of the game.
On the other hand, also well-being is influencing children’s play. Freedom
(free will, autonomy, freedom of action) as a play-stimulating factor is an important
aspect of subjective well-being: in enjoying freedom, play and well-being are both
stimulated.
29.3.2.2 Play and Psychological Well-Being

To illustrate the psychological well-being, the concept of resilience is very
helpful. This concept helps to deepen the idea of self-actualization related to
well-being. This multifaceted concept refers to the capacity to do well in the
stressful situations. With Vellacot (2007), we prefer to use this concept here in
a more general context (not only in stressful situations) meaning and focus
more on the genesis of resilience and thus to the dynamics of the development
of every child (Van Gils 2005). In the image “la casita de la resiliencia”
(Vanistendael and Lecomte 2002) (house of resilience), five rooms (factors) can
be recognized: the base of the resilience of a person is the fundamental acceptance
of the person which is the core of the social network. It is the base of every well-
being: every child needs at least one person by whom he is accepted uncondi-
tionally and who is accepted by the child to be such a person. Another layer is the
capacity to discover sense and meaning. The creation of the concept of resilience
is strongly influenced by observing children growing up into strong persons in
spite of extreme situations of adversity they experienced; in such situations, to
906 J. Van Gils
Social
Self-esteem Humour
capacities
Giving of meaning
Informal social networks

Accepted unconditonally acceptance
Fig. 29.2 House of resilience
discover your potential of meaning is so inspiring. To discover meaning is what

every child is doing from the beginning of his life until his death: in this case, we
do not restrict “to discover meaning” to the ultimate sense or nonsense of life but
we include the sensory-motor activities by playing, the linguistic activities by
experiencing with sounds and words and sentences, the ethical exploration on the
value of interpersonal relations, etc. – all these are activities that children do while
playing. The third layer is composed by self-esteem skills and competencies and
humor. These are the results of the supporting social network and the discovering
of sense in interaction with each other and with genetic predisposition. Under the
roof, attic is space for any other experiences to be discovered. Where the whole
concept of resilience is referring to well-being, especially the roof of discover
meaning, refers to children’s play.
An interesting characteristic of this resilience concept is that it takes into account
how children are developing and how children are important and active partners on
their development (Van Gils 2005), especially by giving meaning on which play
plays a very important role (Van Gils 1995) (Fig. 29.2).
It does not mean that children are able to give meaning all by themselves and
independently from others in every situation. In a lot of situations, children need
some support. Play therapy can help children to overcome some problems of giving
meaning by offering them some incentives to express their feelings or to tell some
experiences or situations they were not able to sort out properly. Play provisions as
toy libraries, play work, and childcare also support children by enriching their
environment with material and immaterial incentives, by offers of play leaders, and
not at least by bringing together several children that all are potential playmates.
And at last also parents stimulate children’s play by giving them appropriate
playthings and time and place to play.
29.3.2.3 Play and Social Well-Being

The higher mentioned aspects of well-being are more focused on the child as an
individual. But a human being is more than an individual; it is also a social being.
So, also social well-being needs to be discussed. Aspects of social well-being often
cited are supportive relations and belonging (Barry et al. 2009). How are these
related to play?
Even while play is not always a social activity, it is quite often an occupation in
which other children and/or adults are involved. Especially other children (peers)
play an important role. They are partners in the activity. While playing, they are
negotiating about how the activity will be organized: with what material and where
and how, etc. Especially in the self-directed play, but also in games, this process of
negotiating is going on during the whole activity; it is even part of the play activity.
The process of giving meaning as higher described is here also at stake. Children
need other children to compare themselves to, to get feedback, to build a realistic
self-image, to join forces, to deal with the fun, to be courageous in exploring and
transcending limits, to imitate, and to pick up knowledge. The social aspects of play
offer the opportunity to develop social capacities and to deal with several feelings
which both open the door for supportive relations and for feelings of belonging.
The same feelings of belonging children have when they are playing with their
parents. It opens the parent-child relation to aspects as relaxation, unintentional
education, etc. It contributes to the quality of the relation in line with mutual loyalty
and belonging together.
Children living in poverty are complaining about their isolation at school and on
the streets, of having no friends to play with, or, even worse, of being bullied. They
feel quite uncomfortable with it. A similar isolation and connected feelings children
living in poverty have regarding the access of play and other leisure opportunities.
For that reason, they are looking for peers, congeners to play with. Children can find
them in clubs, organizing aside of childcare initiatives, and also in play provisions.
Young people who do not live anymore under the wings of their parents are
organizing their own activities. They find each other at school and on the street
and they organize their meetings and leisure activities themselves, with the
well-known so-called nuisance. It does not mean that children are not able to play
alone, but playmates are enriching the play environment and create more play
opportunities. However, poverty is influencing play opportunities.
Another aspect and contact point of play and social well-being is the develop-
ment of a peer play culture. Play culture refers first and foremost to games that
during a period are very popular. There are folkloric games as playing with marbles,
knucklebones, knock chestnut, and rope jumping that appear and disappear; the
rules are changing a little bit, but the games remain recognizable. Other elements of
the play culture are influenced by (new) popular toys as the hula hoop and
908 J. Van Gils
skating (different forms) or by popular culture as songs, clothes, decoration of

bikes, comics, and books. And there are also the fruits of the technological
evolution (Lester and Russel 2008): games, computers, mobile phones, MP3,
etc. Commercial impact in these cannot be denied. A quite different aspect of the
play culture are the public spaces where children and young people meet each other:
they claim the ownership on a corner where they meet before to bike together to
school, or on certain place in the train station, or on the market place. Once again
such claims are not always appreciated by other people, but exactly these conflicts
confirm their own identity. The whole play culture (the difference with child culture
or youth culture is not easy to make) expresses the need for a common group
identity, different from adults, different from other age groups, and different from
groups with another ethnic and/or social background. This is very explicit for young
people in the age that they are looking for their own place in the society and that
they want to belong to the society, without accepting all the roles and rules the
society is prescribing.
29.4 Conclusions
1. Play and well-being are both multifaceted realities; both can be described, but to
define them definitely seems to be impossible. Play is difficult to define, because
it includes very different appearances and at the same time the subjective
elements (intentions, experiences) are very hard to be observed. And well-
being too has so many subjective connotations, and it is, unlike playing, not
describable in terms of behavior. The concreteness of both is different. The
consequence is that to describe the relation of well-being and play is a big
challenge.
2. Well-being is influencing children’s play, because a basic dose of well-being is
necessary to permit children to play. This dose has to do with health: a starving
child or a very ill child will not play. Play as such will not contribute to these
basics of well-being.
3. Children’s play is influencing children’s well-being as play is their way of
being: the dynamic in children’s lives is in their play. By playing, they are
who they are, giving meaning to themselves in the world/society, and they
become who they are by developing their capacities and their relations. These
aspects belong to subjective well-being, more especially to the psychological
well-being.
4. Looking at the play-stimulating factors, they are aspects of children’s well-being
too. Freedom, safe environment, and other children are positive factors both in
well-being and in play stimulating especially as it concerns the spontaneous
self-directed play and the relation to subjective well-being in all these aspects.
It illustrates how children – while playing – contribute to their own development,
including their well-being. It is a tool they deserve themselves. It does not mean
that they realize it as individuals or as social category; undoubtedly, children

need and mostly enjoy some support by parents, play leaders, etc., as long as
they do not inhibit play: they belong to the play environment.
5. Not all play behavior is contributing to well-being. Sometimes, at the personal
level, play is frustrating and at that inhibits children’s well-being. Play can also
be destructive at the social level: vandalism, bullying, etc., cannot be considered
contributions to well-being, neither for the actors of it nor for the victims.
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Sport, Children, and Well-Being
30
Yngvar Ommundsen, Knut Løndal, and Sigmund Loland
30.1 Introduction
In Western societies children’s participation in sport has for long been a widespread
leisure pursuit. With “sport” we refer to a variety of physical activities including
organized training and competition in sport clubs, self-initiated play, spontaneous
games, exercise, and various kinds of extracurricular school-time physical activi-
ties. Following Article 1 in UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, “children”
(in this chapter used interchangeably with “young people”) refers to people up to
18 years of age (United Nations 1990). Whereas traditionally children’s psychoso-
cial development and well-being has received scant attention from researchers,
there seems to be a recent vitalization of this research agenda within sport science
as well as within other academic fields. Within sport research there are several
reasons for the renewed interest.
Firstly, there is evidence that the obesity epidemic poses a threat to children’s
overall physical and psychosocial functioning, well-being, and health (Rocchini
2002) and that sport in various formats has a role to play in combating this health
threat (Lyell et al. 2007). Improved theoretical frameworks have stimulated several
researchers to advance the empirical field in this respect (Blanchard et al. 2009;
Ryan and Deci 2000).
Secondly, a strand of research has begun to emphasize the role played by
children’s physical-motor functioning and activity levels for cognitive functioning
and academic performance in school (Biddle and Asare 2011; Fedewa and Ahn
2011; Keely and Fox 2009; Trudeau and Shepard 2008).
Y. Ommundsen (*) • S. Loland

The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Ullevål Stadion, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: Yngvar.Ommundsen@nih.no; Sigmund.Loland@nih.no
K. Løndal
Oslo and Akershus University College, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: Knut.Londal@hioa.no

912 Y. Ommundsen et al.
Thirdly, originating in social capital theory (Putnam 2000), a body of research

has been generated on the assigned role of sport to solve social problems and as
a major instrument in social policy (Vermeulen and Verweel 2009). The focus is on
the potential of extracurricular community sport programs as a preventive mecha-
nism against antisocial behavior and as securing well-functioning integration of
young people into society in general (Eccles et al. 2003; Mahoney and Stattin
2000). The possibility for well-being effects of young peoples’ social connected-
ness with nonparental adults as mentors has been particularly emphasized
(Grossman and Bulle 2006).
Research on children’s sport and well-being demonstrates a series of complex
relationships and hence the need of systematic and critical studies (Whitelaw et al.
2010). In the following we will provide an overview of relevant research and topical
questions.
30.2 Chapter Focus
The chapter starts with sketching briefly the sociocultural background of children’s
sport and how these activities have been interpreted and valued historically. We
then encircle various formats and contexts in which children do sport today. We
proceed by offering a conceptualization of children’s well-being and elaborate on
various definitions and approaches with relevance for children in sport. A focus on
sport as an arena for various dimensions of children’s well-being follows, thus also
setting the stage for an overview of empirical studies of well-being outcomes. We
discuss physical, mental/psychological, as well as social well-being. While physical
activity and sport may be defined in various ways and take place in various formats
and contexts, we deal primarily with well-being outcomes of participation in
organized, adult led sport for young people, and generalized context-free physical
activity. This is due to the fact that these are the most common activities among
children and also the most investigated from a research point of view. We conclude
by reflecting upon current developments in youth sport and their potential for well-
being outcomes.
30.3 Sport for Children: Background and Justification
According to cultural historian Johan Huizinga, play and games are at the very core
of human culture and as old as culture in it itself (Huizinga 1955). Traditional sports
as we know them are of far more recent origins with roots in Britain in the mid- and
late 1800s. Sporting games follow the ideals of industrialism and modernity with
standardization of rules and external conditions and with precise measurements of
individual and team performance (Guttmann 1978). Interestingly, the development
of sport was part of an educational project for the young often referred to as
“Muscular Christianity.” The premise was that “sport builds character,” in partic-
ular in young men. In British public (i.e., private) schools of the time, students were
30 Sport, Children, and Well-Being 913
taught team games such as rugby and football to develop fitness and to cultivate
team spirit and solidarity. Individual sports such as boxing were thought to develop
courage and controlled aggression. One key aim was to install in young men the
virtues needed to sustain and expand the British Empire (Mangan 2000).
British colonialists brought competitive sport to the world. Part of “white man’s
burden” (to paraphrase Kipling) was considered to be spreading the assumed
blessings of sport among the “natives.” Today traditional colonial regimes are
gone but strong public interest in sport with British roots seems to remain. African
nations perform well in athletics and football, and Indians have a passion for
cricket. Moreover sporting success at elite levels is considered a sign of a healthy
nation and an efficient instrument in the construction of new, national identities
(Goksøyr 2010). International sport found its form in the early 1900s with the
International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Games as a model case. It has
gained increasing social, cultural, and economic value and is currently one of the
most powerful products on the international entertainment market.
The British sport model has also been met with resistance. Both in Europe and in
former British colonies opposition had ideas of national movement cultures as more
“genuine” marks of identity. In Northern Europe, for instance, traditional play and
games were considered morally superior to sport with different ideals of modera-
tion and “manliness” (Goksøyr 2010). Moreover, physical education in schools
(PE) was developed as an alternative to competitive sport. The ideal was not
objectively measured performances and competition but students’ all round devel-
opment and relative progress according to their own abilities and skills. PE was
considered an important part of a humanistic cultivation scheme (Anderson 2002;
Loland 2006).
Both the competitive sport model and the visions of local sport cultures and PE
seem to have in common an organizational pattern in which adults define and take
responsibility for implementing aims, goals, and organization. In the mid-1970s
alternative movement cultures emerged originating in the diversity of preferences
and needs of the population at large. In Europe national sport policies changed from
focusing on sport for young men to include activities for women and children.
Public sport policies have changed from one of patriotism and morality to one of
public health. Most European states follow the advice of the European Council and
embrace the ideal of “sport for all” (Slack and Parent 2007).
Another developmental trend is rooted in alternative youth culture. In Western
culture the 1960s and 1970s were a time of protest and alternative thinking. One
aim was independence from traditional hierarchical structures dominated by adults.
An emerging alternative movement aimed for experiences of playfulness and
freedom in education, music and popular culture, and lifestyle. In sport and physical
activity, this meant a revival of self-initiated activities in youth (Gutman and
Frederick 2004). The so-called board sports provide illustrating examples: skate-
board, kiting, and snowboard. Key ideals are individualism, freedom and creativity
from adult control, and a particular aesthetics including outfit and music. Today
board cultures are mainstream youth culture engaging millions of children all over
the world.
During the last decade a fourth kind of children and youth activity has emerged
originating in the development of the fitness industry. Initially activities such as
aerobics, introduced by American medical doctor Kenneth H. Cooper in the late
1960s, attracted women who did not find meaningful traditional sport activities.
Fitness studios emerged offering a variety of exercise activities for new population
groups including aerobics. Currently the fitness sector is a key agent in the sport and
training industry both financially and culturally (Maguire 2008). In developed
Western countries up to 30 % of the adult population are members of such clubs.
Fitness clubs attract young people to an increasing degree. The norms and values
of the fitness centers are diverse. One core theme is an instrumental one: Exercise is
justified with reference to improving health and preventing illness and (to an
increasing degree) to improving bodily appearance according to certain body
ideals. In this sense the fitness trend can be seen as being in direct contradiction
to the intrinsic ideals of the board culture discussed above.
30.4 Modes of Sporting Activities
What then are the experiences and well-being outcomes of these various sporting
forms? What modes are being cultivated?
In self-initiated play and games, participants are in what we with Huizinga
(1955) can label the playing mode. Activities are experienced as being of autotelic
value, that is, as being valuable in and for themselves. When a particular kind of
play is repeated, gets a history, and becomes regulated with rules, it can be said to
turn into a game (Meier 1988). Game playing can still be autotelic in character from
the experiential point of view but may also have the character of instrumental
activities in which external goals take priority over internal ones.
Let us take an example. When children engage in spontaneous play such as
kicking a ball, they generally engage because of intrinsic values. They play
primarily because it is fun, exciting, and challenging. If intrinsic values decrease,
generally the playing will change character or cease to exist. The game of football is
regulated ball playing with a long history. Rules define what is allowed and
disallowed and what counts as winning and losing. Again, many children and
youth engage due to the intrinsic values of football. In structured practice, however,
the game does not cease to exist even if it loses intrinsic value. With adult
regulation and in an organized sport setting, training and working ethos easily
emerges together with an orientation toward objectively measured performance
and results.
This development is followed closely by researchers and will be discussed in
more detail below. At this point it suffices to say that it represents a significant
challenge to children’s sports. Many young people drop out of organized sport in
their early teens, and there is evidence that this is due to psychological conditions
that run counter to young athletes’ well-being (Sarrazin et al. 2002; Pelletier et al.
2001). Motivational climates with an emphasis on play, cooperation, and intrinsic
values seem to be of key importance to well-being outcomes.
30.5 Children’s Sport: The Current Situation
Since the 1970s there is a trend toward increased sport participation among children
and young people across Europe and worldwide (Green 2008). Physical activity and
sports belong to the most popular leisure activities (Dollman et al. 2005; Koska
2005; Telama et al. 2002), and the sport activities are taking place in a variety of
contexts. Large surveys regarding children’s participation in organized sport have
been carried out in several countries. Although the results differ from country to
country, the proportions of children participating in such activities are generally
high. A recent study from Norway shows that 67 % of the boys and 55 % of the girls
aged 8–12 years regularly participate in training and competitions organized
by sport clubs (Norwegian Ministry of Culture [NMC] 2007). However, the
participation drops significantly during secondary school age, from about 60 %
for 13-year-olds to about 30 % for 17-year-olds (Seippel et al. 2011). The
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report that 63 % of Australian children
aged from 5 to 14 years participate in organized sport and that participation was
highest among the 9- to 11-year-olds (ABS 2010). In 2005, 51 % of children aged
5–14 in Canada regularly took part in organized sports (Clark 2008). All these large
surveys show that more boys than girls participate in organized sports and that
participation drops significantly during secondary school age.
Besides the mentioned increase in participation in sports among children and
adolescents, studies also show that the dropout rate during late adolescence has
declined markedly. Young people are thus likely to continue with sport
and physical activity even after completing full-time education (Green 2008;
Roberts 1996).
There are national differences when it comes to whether children’s training
sessions and sport competitions are organized by sport clubs or by schools.
Thus, the percentages presented above are not fully comparable. In the USA, for
instance, children and youth sport tend to take form of extracurricular sport and
interscholastic competitions organized and delivered by school coaches, while in
Europe voluntary sport clubs commonly are the main providers. Also in Europe,
however, for instance in England and Wales, there is an emerging trend for schools
to provide after-school sporting activities for the pupils (Green 2008).
In this context we work with a wide interpretation of sporting activities and
include self-chosen recreational activities alone or among family members
and peers. For children up to 10 years of age, such activities are often part of self-
managed physical play (Løndal 2010a). But also older children engage in recrea-
tional sports outside of clubs and schools. Green (2008, p. 119) claims that “there
has been a broadening and diversification in the kinds of sports undertaken by both
adults and young people” and that there has been a shift toward so-called lifestyle
activities: noncompetitive or less competitive activities. Popular lifestyle activities
among children and youth are noncompetitive cycling, swimming, running, skiing,
dancing, rollerblading and skateboarding, and “health and fitness center activities”
but also team sports such as football, volleyball, and basketball as well as partner
sports such as badminton (Green 2008; Macdonald et al. 2005; Seippel et al. 2011).
Despite the fact that there has been an increase in children’s sports participation
during the last decades, investigations also show an increase in the proportion of
inactive children. According to Engstr€ om’s (2010) studies from Sweden, far from
all children and adolescents participate in sport and physical activity. This is a trend
confirmed by Australian studies (Dollman et al. 2005). The situation is character-
ized by social segregation; children from middle-class homes are more likely to
participate in sport clubs and physical activity than children from lower socioeco-
nomic groups. A particularly vulnerable group in this respect seems to be girls from
immigrant families (Larsson 2008).
Finally, sport is a part of children’s in school-time curricular and extracurricular
physical education (PE). In most countries worldwide, young people take part in PE
on a reasonably regular basis (Green 2008). However, there is a clear trend toward
less curricular PE in many countries, for example, Australia, USA, England,
Germany, and Sweden (Dollman et al. 2005; Hardman and Marshall 2000, 2005).
A priority agenda of emphasizing “academic” development and theoretical issues
put pressure on practical issues such as PE, thus squeezing their curricular time.
30.6 Conceptualization of Children’s Well-Being
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to review all conceptions of well-being

and specific theories that has informed research in this area. Hence, we
present a selective overview based on our perception of their relevance for
children’s sport.
In general terms we can talk about well-being as lives going well physically,
psychologically, and socially. Well-being is a combination of feeling good, being
able to pursue intrinsic goals and values, and functioning effectively (Ryan et al.
2008; Huppert 2009). “Resilient” well-being does not imply that young people
need to feel good and function effectively all the time. Nevertheless, physical,
psychological, and social well-being would seem compromised when painful
physical symptoms, negative emotions, and negative social relations are long
lasting and interfere with young peoples’ capability to handle efficiently his or
her daily life (Huppert 2009).
In recent years the research literature on well-being has borrowed from positive
psychology (Diener and Seligman 2002) and shifted toward putting particular
emphasis on positive physical and mental states rather than just absence of disorder
and various forms of physical and psychosocial dysfunction and affective states
such as anxiety and depression. Further, models of health and well-being such as
Antonovsky’s salutogenetic approach have focused on a resource perspective
and identified resistance resources as protective factors that help protect against
stress-inducing risk factors in life. According to Antonovsky, a sense of coherence
represents a source of resistance. Hence, a main question posed is: What makes
a person maintain good health and positive well-being (Antonovsky 1997)? This
shift toward the positive side of the coin and taking a resource perspective is also
reflected in WHO’s recent definition of positive mental health (adult focused

though) as “a state of wellbeing in which the individual realizes his or her own
abilities, can cope with normal stresses to life, can work productively and fruitfully,
and is able to make a contribution to his or her community” (WHO 2001).
In research literature the concept of well-being is used in a highly variable sense.
Based on a systematic review of the child well-being literature, Pollard and Lee
(2003) refer to Columbo 1986 who forward the following definition: “[Wellbeing is]
a multi-dimensional construct incorporating mental/psychological, physical and
social dimensions” (Columbo, cited in Pollard and Lee 2003, p. 64).
The term mental well-being has been identified as including three main
dimensions, emotional, social, and psychological, and is seen as comprising
several aspects. Examples are emotional well-being, life satisfaction, optimism
and hope, self-esteem, mastery and a sense of control, having a purpose in life, a
sense of belonging, and personal support (Scottish Government 2009, cited in
Whitelaw et al. 2010).
30.6.1 Differentiating Well-Being from Quality of Life
Whereas some researchers approaching the concept of well-being have focused on

dissecting various aspects of the concept itself, recently others have tried to
disentangle the concept of well-being from quality of life, while also dissecting
the well-being concept itself (Guerin 2012). According to Guerin, the concept
of quality of life should best be seen as a conceptual umbrella under which we
may place subdimensions such as well-being and health-related quality of life.
Further down in the hierarchical structure, she places life satisfaction (connected
to health-related quality of life), whereas she dissects well-being into subjective
well-being (comprising of a hedonic conception including positive and negative
affect and life satisfaction). Psychological well-being embraces the eudaimonic
conception operationalized as vitality and likewise life satisfaction being linked to
health-related quality of life. In addition to these vertical differentiations, she also
argues for a horizontal continuum from subjective to objective criteria in
her proposed model. Life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, and vitality
represent the subjective ones, while objective criteria include objective indices of
physical functionality and to some extent indices of physical pain.
The bottom line of Guerin’s umbrella model fits well with that of Diener and
Biswas-Diener (2002) who offer the following definition for subjective wellbeing:
“[Subjective wellbeing] is defined as people’s evaluations of their own lives.
Such evaluations can be both cognitive judgments, such as life satisfaction, and
emotional responses on events, such as feeling positive emotions. Subjective
wellbeing thus refers to several separable components: life satisfaction and
satisfaction with life domains, feeling positive affect most of the time, experiencing
infrequent feelings of negative affect, and judging one’s life to be fulfilling and
meaningful” (2002, p. 1–2).
30.6.2 A Self-determination Approach to Well-Being
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a “meta-theory that highlights the importance

of humans’ evolved inner resources for personality development and behavioral
self-regulation” (Ryan and Deci 2000, p. 68). SDT presupposes that human beings
have a disposal toward activity and integration. This growth tendency of natural
activity and curiosity is referred to as intrinsic motivation. However, humans are
still vulnerable toward passivity. Three innate psychological needs that are the
basis of human self-motivation and personality integration have been identified:
autonomy, competence, and relatedness (ibid.). Autonomy in personal activity is
held to be more stable and enduring and to affect human well-being more positively
than controlled activity. A sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness is seen
as essential for personal development of self-regulation and ability to sustain an
activity (Ryan et al. 2008). Relatedness refers to the sense of being understood and
respected by significant others.
According to SDT the basic need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness must
be satisfied through the life span to experience an ongoing sense of integrity and well-
being (Ryan and Frederick 1997). A basic need is seen as “an energizing state that, if
satisfied, conduces toward health and wellbeing but, if not satisfied, contributes to
pathology and ill-being” (ibid., p. 74). An important distinction within the SDT
perspective is that of hedonic versus eudaimonic conception of well-being. Hedonic
research emphasizes well-being as a valued, but restricted state of being, namely,
seeking pleasure or comfort or generally positive affect and absence of pain.
Eudaimonic conceptions of well-being, in contrast, refer to living well and using and
developing the best in oneself. Hence, this conception conceives of well-being indica-
tors such as vitality, intimacy, health, and sense of meaning, among others (Ryan et al.
2008). According to Huta and Ryan (2010), hedonic and eudaimonic conceptions of
well-being should not be set up as contrasts. Positive affect and pleasure are both
correlates and consequences of living well – of eudaimonia – a good life.
SDT also focuses on social-psychological contexts that enhance or hinder the
satisfaction of basic needs and thus intrinsically regulated motivation and
well-being. Research emanating from the SDT perspective has revealed that
contexts supportive of autonomy, competence, and relatedness foster intrinsic
motivation and well-being, whereas controlling contexts thwart the satisfaction of
these needs and enhance extrinsic motivation or lack of motivation as well as
indices of ill-being. More specifically, excessive control, nonoptimal challenges,
and lack of connectedness may disrupt the inherent actualizing and organizational
tendencies. Thus, such factors not only result in the lack of initiative and
responsibility but also in distress and psychopathology. As such, well-being should
be seen as affected by the context in which their activity is conducted in that
contextual specificities either enhance or thwart the basic needs of the individuals,
which in turn help to stimulate or reduce a sense of well-being.
Recently, efforts within sport and exercise psychology have been made to com-
plement SDT theory with the achievement goal perspective. This opens up also for
examining the role of mastery-oriented versus performance-oriented psychological

contexts on indices of young peoples’ well-being in sport (Ames 1992; Reinboth et al.
2004; Ommundsen et al. 2010). A mastery climate is fostered by the coach focusing
on athletes’ learning, self-improvement, and participation behavior such as optimally
challenging tasks and effort. A mastery climate would seem important for intrinsi-
cally regulated motivation and sense of vitality. Such a climate would foster chal-
lenge seeking and having participants become motivated by the intrinsic aspects of
the tasks (e.g., doing the tasks, accomplishing the tasks, and learning the skills).
Indeed, motivation generated by challenge seeking and accomplishment of tasks are
embedded in the concept of intrinsically regulated motivation and fits well with ideals
of play and of eudaimonic conceptions of well-being.
In contrast, a performance climate has its focus on social comparison rewards,
normative ability, and the more able athletes. Further, a performance climate
is promoted by the coach emphasizing interpersonal competition, public evaluation,
and normative feedback. In a performance climate, mistakes are punished,
reinforcement and attention are differentially provided as a function of ability, and
there may be rivalry, poorer friendship patterns, and less peer acceptance among
athletes. A performance climate may be perceived as controlling and facilitating less
self-determined forms of motivation and giving rise to amotivation and reduced
vitality. Indeed, there is ample evidence to show that a mastery climate associates
positively with young peoples’ well-being in sport, whereas a performance climate
seems to generate psychological stress and reduced well-being (Ntoumanis and
Biddle 1999).
30.6.3 Differentiating Between Contextual Influences on

Well-Being and Well-Being Per Se
A critical issue with many of the frameworks established to increase the under-
standing of the concept of child well-being is a lack of distinguishing between
dimensions of the actual well-being of children themselves and dimensions of the
context in which they live. To meet with this void, Lippman et al. (2009, p. 32)
emphasize the important role of the contextual variables: “Indicators of such vari-
ables are extremely important in that they represent critical inputs into the devel-
opment and wellbeing of children; however, they are not measures of child
wellbeing per se.” Building on a theoretical perspective based on ecological theory
(Bronfenbrenner 1979, 1995) and social capital theory (Coleman 1990; Putnam
1995), they suggest a framework for positive indicator development. This frame-
work can also be helpful in understanding the concept of child well-being and its
contextual input variables. As shown in the framework presented below, Lippman
et al. (2009) suggest three overacting categories (individual child well-being,
relationships, and context) in the framework and four to five dimensions within
each category.
Framework of Child Well-Being

The individual child’s well-being
• Physical health, development, and safety
• Cognitive development and education
• Psychological/emotional development
• Social development and behavior
Relationships
• Family
• Peers
• School
• Community
• Macrosystems
Context
• Family
• Peers
• School
• Community
• Macrosystems
(Lippman et al. 2009, p. 18–19)
By distinguishing between individual child well-being outcomes and the

interacting context, the risk of confusing dimensions of context with dimensions of
well-being is carefully taken care of. Unlike earlier frameworks of child well-being,
“relationships” are suggested as a separate category, distinct from the category of
“the individual child’s well-being” but also distinct from the category of “context.” It
is argued that relationships are not to be regarded as measures of the external contexts
in which children develop. However, Lippman et al. (2009, p. 11) refer to studies by
Fattore et al. (2009), Matthews et al. (2006), and Hanafin and Brooks (2005) and state
that “relationships have been found to be of the highest importance to children in
studies which ask children to define what makes them flourish in their own lives.”
There seems to be agreement among researchers that the child’s total well-being
is influenced across different types of dimensions (for a comprehensive review
of current theoretical accounts, see Lippman et al. 2009, Appendix A). The
dimensions of the individual child’s well-being suggested of Lippman and colleagues
are fairly similar to those identified by other researchers, but dimensions of contexts
and relationships are carefully excluded from the category of well-being. When it
comes to the categories of relationships and context, these are suggested assessed
within five varied domains of the children’s life that can contribute to the children’s
well-being: family, peers, school, community, and the larger macrosystem.
30.6.4 A Child-Focused Approach to Child Well-Being
It is a commonly used approach that researchers decide on dimensions and indicators

of child well-being. This approach has been criticized for being adult centric and for
neglecting the voice of children themselves in the study of their well-being. It is argued
that dimensions of quality of life, as the children experience here and now, have to be
included in the concept of child well-being (Ben-Arieh and Frønes 2007). Children
often are denied “agency” because they are considered to be vulnerable and
incompetent, and that children should be awarded a role as active participants
rather than of objects for research (Ben-Arieh 2005; James and Prout 1997;
Komulainen 2007).
Meeting with such criticism the child-focused approach has been developed
during the last 10 years (Fattore et al. 2007). The aim is to directly involve children
in the entire research process, including the establishment of dimensions and
indicators of well-being. This approach is affected by an increasing concern for
listening to children’s “voices” in social research. Fattore and coworkers (2007)
carried out a qualitative and phenomenological research project aimed to identify
areas for dimension and indicator development, developed from children’s own
understanding of the concept of well-being. The researchers involved 126 children
within the state of New South Wales in Australia, aged 8–15, as co-constructors of
knowledge at the data gathering and analysis stages of the project. The researchers
developed dimensions and indicators informed by “what children consider as
important for ‘the here and now’ and for the future” (ibid., p. 25). They also paid
careful attention to elaborate the children’s understanding of the concept of well-
being. To quote the findings:
“In particular, children focus on what contributes to positive experiences of wellbeing. Their
conceptualization of positive wellbeing is, however, not a straightforward one. For example,
while children associate with wellbeing that are typically regarded as positive feeling states
such as happiness, excitement and peacefulness or calm, some children include being able to
integrate anger and sadness into their lives, as part of wellbeing” (ibid., p. 17).
Also in the study of child well-being and sport, children’s subjective views of
their lives have to be taken into consideration. Indeed, conceptualizing well-being
as subjective well-being and psychological well-being within the umbrella model
offered by Guerin (2012) fits nicely with this child-focused perspective.
The recent shift toward a more child-focused approach has moved the thinking
from negative indicators that influence well-being to positive indicators that
strengthen well-being (Fattore et al. 2007). Fattore et al.’s (2007) findings about
children’s understanding of the concept of well-being show the relevance of such
a move. The dimensions constructed by Fattore and colleagues complement more
traditional dimensions, reflecting children’s lived experience comprising autonomy
and agency, keeping safe and feeling secure, experience of self, material resources,
physical environment and home, and activities and being active. One of the dimen-
sions, “activities and being active,” refers to what the children referred to as things in
which they took part, for example, physical activities and sport. It is worth noting
that “activities and being active” refer to both actions (verb) and activities (noun).
Fattore et al. (2007, p. 20) have an interesting comment on this in their article:
“Activities were evident in our data as separate entities in so far as they were associated
with sensory experiences, for example physical exhilaration in sports or visual responses to
creativity. Apart from these sensory experiences, activities had no separate concrete
meaning in themselves, rather they are contexts in which children experience and negotiate
competencies and relationships and may also have ‘fun’.”
The blend of categories such as “activities and being active” together with
“autonomy” and “agency” and “feeling secure” brought forward by this phenom-
enological approach fits well with theoretical reasoning within the SDT perspective
and with the framework of Lippman et al. (2009) described earlier in the chapter:
Sport may be seen both as a part of the children’s context and as an activity which
can contribute positively or negatively to their well-being.
30.7 On the Role of Sport for Child Well-Being
Sport may operate to have both direct and indirect influences on one or more
dimensions of the children’s well-being, be it physical, mental/psychological, or
social ones. The framework of Lippman et al. (2009) alongside those referred to by
Whitelaw et al. (2010) clearly captures several of dimensions of physical/mental/
psychological or social well-being. Hence, we take several of these dimensions as
starting points when approaching the role of sport for children’s well-being.
30.7.1 Sport and Physical Aspects of Child Well-Being
As an example and as indicated in the introduction, obesity during childhood and

adolescence is a growing public health threat. Even though many programs aimed
to reduce the overweight problems have shown to have little impact on the
individual’s body mass index (BMI), an increase in physical activity seems to
positively influence on their physical health and quality of life (Blair and Brodney
1999). Moreover, irrespective of weight concerns, inactivity poses a threat to young
peoples’ physical functioning aspects of their well-being. Effects of enhanced
physical activity include enhanced metabolic function, better skeletal health, and
generally normal physical growth and development (Janssen and LeBlanc 2010).
Hence, sport participation might increase well-being through the dimension
“physical health, development, and safety” as well as on the “psychological/
emotional development” dimension of well-being.
30.7.2 Sport and Cognitive Aspects of Child Well-Being
Although a direct causal link between physical activity, sport, and cognitive
functioning seems questionable (Keely and Fox 2009), recent meta-analyses on
the effects of physical activity and physical fitness have provided strong evidence of
a clear relationship (Fedewa and Ahn 2011; Singh et al. 2012). Physical activity
interventions comprising aerobic exercises have shown the greatest effect on
cognitive functioning followed by regular physical education programs in school
and perceptual motor training programs (Fedewa and Ahn 2011). The role of
physical fitness as a moderator in this relationship however is still unclear (Etnier
et al. 2006; Fedewa and Ahn 2011). Research on the role of physical activity and
sport for cognitive and academic function suggests that children’s attachment to
school as well as their self-esteem and ability to concentrate during school lessons
may be enhanced by physical activity, which in turn affects cognitive functioning
and academic achievements (Biddle and Asare 2011; Trudeau and Shepard 2008).
Changes in brain structures, functions, and neurotransmitters do also occur in
individuals who are more involved in physical activity and sport (Kramer and
Hillman 2006; Trudeau and Shepard 2010).
Following such a chain of argumentation, sport and physical activity can con-
tribute in an indirect manner to the cognitive development and education dimension
of the child’s well-being (Trudeau and Shepard 2008). Further, given society’s
quest for education of young people and parental reinforcement of the value of
children’s school success, enhanced cognitive functioning and academic achieve-
ments would seem important for children’s mental/psychological and social well-
being. The concept of “brain health” (Trudeau and Shepard 2010) indeed points to
the enhanced status of cognitive functioning for children’s well-being.
It is a paradox then that in times of a testing culture in school focusing on the need
for competence in subjects such as mathematics and reading, there is a pressure
toward marginalizing physical education and extracurricular physical activity during
schooltime (Fedewa and Ahn 2011). Interestingly, given these circumstances, extra-
curricular sport programs may play a compensatory role by enhancing young peo-
ples’ well-being by also helping them thrive and function well in schools (Park 2004).
30.7.3 Sport and Mental/Psychological and Social Aspects of

Child Well-Being
Several psychological and social characteristics embedded in the context of sport

may help facilitate or hinder children’s mental/psychological well-being as an
outcome of participation. To mention a few, communication styles of significant
others, group dynamics of the activity, and organizational values and ideologies
may play a role. One strand of research has looked into how the motivational sport
climate may affect children’s well-being. In a climate characterized by autonomy
support and mastery focus, children are typically met with experiences capable
of developing an overall positive sense of self, fuelling need for competence,
autonomy and relatedness, intrinsic life goals, and motivation. This leads to
psychological well-being in the format of vitality, as well as positive affective
states (Blanchard et al. 2009; Ryan and Deci 2000; Ommundsen et al. 2010). By
way of contrast, a context of organized sport perceived as controlling and focused
on social-comparative performance and winning may easily come to thwart need
satisfaction, thus restricting eudaimonic well-being, instead leading to defensive or
self-protective psychological accommodations with severe costs for well-being
(e.g., low vitality and high levels of emotional and physical exhaustion, negative
affect, and anxiety reactions (Bartolomew et al. 2011a)).
Sport activities of various kinds may also be used to strengthen children’s social
relationships, attachment, and social bonding to family, friends, coaches, and wider
community. In this respect, researchers have conceptualized sport as a “social

convoy” in that participation both widens the social settings to which children are
exposed as well as strengthening relationships within those settings (McGeea et al.
2006). By being included in the “social convoy,” children’s social well-being may
also be indirectly affected by preventing them from involvement in antisocial
behavior (Ferguson 2006; Mahoney and Stattin 2000).
Hence, provided constructive social relationships and a proper structure within
specific sport contexts as well as in the general environment, children may take
advantage of sport to develop psychological and social well-being. Sport may also
have the potential to influence well-being dimensions, most likely the dimensions
“psychological/emotional development” and “social development and behavior,”
as introduced in Lippman et al.’s (2009) model.
Below, we pose the question of why sport can play a role for children’s mental/
psychological and social well-being, emphasizing both potential mechanisms and
pointing to the role of environmental circumstances. Thereafter, we offer a short
review over studies of children’s sport and physical activity related to aspects of
their mental/psychological well-being.
30.7.4 Why Might There Be a Relationship Between Sport and

Mental/Psychological Well-Being?
The mechanisms by which sport may play a role for various aspects of
young peoples’ mental/psychological well-being may be several and have been
illuminated from several perspectives. Physiological, mental/psychological, as well
as social factors have been argued for (Fox 2000). Before going into a detailed
overview, it seems important to note that physical activity and sport represents
a bodily active leisure pursuit as compared to exemplars of physically inactive ones,
like TV watching and playing video/computer games. Does it make a difference to
make this distinction when it comes to mental/psychological well-being?
Representing a physically active leisure pursuit, researchers have found sport
participation to be positively related to happiness and positive self-esteem, while
physically inactive leisure pursuits such as watching television and playing video
games showed the opposite pattern. The question is whether sport activity
effects on well-being outcomes can be attributed to the activity per se or to some
environmental conditions of the activity. According to Whitelaw and coworkers
(Whitelaw et al. 2010), this would be a simplistic approach to understanding the
role of sport activity for well-being. They argue:
“To achieve enhanced wellbeing via physical activity and sport, both the theoretical link
between the concepts (e.g. physical activity and sport and wellbeing), and conducive
environmental circumstances are required” (p. 65).
In physiological terms of mechanisms, improved mental/psychological well-

being has been perceived to be associated with various “proximal” changes such
as increased body temperature, increases in endorphins, a change in the
serotonergic systems, and effects on neurotransmitters (Bouchard et al. 2006).

Improved mental/psychological well-being has also been attributed to physical
fitness, weight loss, and with the feeling that the body is more toned (Biddle and
Mutrie 2007).
Psychological constructs have also been seen as significant: A mastery hypoth-
esis suggests that effects are linked to increases in self-esteem (self-worth) and
personal control that come with accomplishing physical activity and sport tasks
(Fox 1999). Indeed, sport has been shown to enhance well-being by acting as
a protective factor by providing feelings of competency and meaning (Caldwell
2005). A “distraction” or “time-out” thesis has also been forwarded whereby sport
activity takes young people away from stressful parts of their lives (“stress-
buffering hypothesis”) (Penedo and Dahn 2005). There is support for this buffering
hypothesis in that sport and physical activity may protect against the effects of
negative events (Brown and Siegel 1988; Tedeschi and Calhoun 2004).
A more “distal” perspective focuses on the wider sociological factors, that sport
and physical activity develop and reinforce social interaction and sense of belong-
ing through collective experiences leading to better community integration. Indeed,
sport has been shown to enhance well-being by acting as a protective factor by
providing social support and enhancing social relations (Caldwell 2005). In line
with social capital theory (Putnam 2000), this would help enhance social aspects of
children’s well-being by strengthening their social networks, by better coping with
problems in everyday life, reducing life stress, and building self-esteem (Morrow
1999). The social and cultural status and social acceptance attached to sport and
physical activity for young people may also lead to increases in their self-esteem and
help to encourage health-promoting norms (Putnam 2000; Whitelaw et al. 2010).
30.8 On the Role of Sport for Children’s Mental/Psychological

Well-Being: What Do We Know?
In this part we first review a selection of recent studies that predominantly have
taken a self-determination perspective and in some instances bridged by an achieve-
ment goal perspective focusing on the role of psychological characteristics of the
sport context for children’s well-being in sport. Hence, as a starting point, we
narrow our focus by prioritizing the organized sport scene, typically competitive
sport for children and youth led by adult coaches. This approach fits nicely with the
approach taken by Lippman and colleagues (Lippman et al. 2009) who make the
distinction between well-being per se and contextual dimensions and specificities
that make an influence on well-being. This coheres also with our reasoning above
(e.g., Whitelaw et al. 2010) concerning mechanisms and environmental circum-
stances conducive to strengthened well-being.
While providing autonomy support and creating a mastery-oriented climate appear
to be important for young peoples’ well-being, the very nature of organized sport as
objective context unfortunately easily facilitates a controlling and a performance-
oriented climate. Why is that? First, task-contingent rewards are prevalent and
training and competitions are scheduled in advance, creating fixed “deadlines” for
training and performance. Young people involved in sport are continually under
scrutiny being observed and evaluated by coaches, parents, and peers. Moreover,
the competitive structure with leagues, competitions, and win-loss statistics puts
pressure on coaches to prioritize winning over effort, learning, and skill development
for all. Hence, these objective contextual characteristics make children in sports have
less choice and input in the process of participation. This would seem particularly so
in organized children’s sport in which coaches usually take responsibility for planning
of the training and for tactical dispositions ahead of and during competitions. As such
children’s sport may easily become antithetical to autonomy support and a mastery
focus and thus young peoples’ well-being in sport (Deci and Ryan 1987; Ryan and
Deci 2007; Ames 1992). Indeed, building upon Putnam’s (2000) social capital theory,
Perks (2007) has questioned the role of competitive sport for young people to foster
social capital by facilitating a sense of belonging, social integration, cooperation, and
community cohesiveness. The competitive element of sport may instead come to
enhance antagonism, hostility, peer conflict, and intra- and intergroup rivalry that
would be antithetical to young peoples’ psychosocial well-being (Perks 2007).
Despite such more objective contextual characteristics of sport (Lippman et al.
2009), coaches have the possibility to impact on young peoples’ friendship relations,
social-moral reasoning, and well-being by creating compensatory psychological
contexts emphasizing autonomy supportive and mastery-oriented psychological
climates (Ommundsen et al. 2003; Ommundsen et al. 2005). As indicated in the
introduction, sport can be practiced with an emphasis on play. To this end, the way
coaches structure the activity and the nature of their interpersonal behaviors with
young sports people becomes decisive for their well-being through sport. In
the following we present the results of selected empirical studies that emphasize
the role of the coach in this respect.
30.8.1 Empirical Findings Taking a Self-determination and

Achievement Goal Perspective
Using the framework of self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci 2000),

Gagne et al. (2003) conducted a 4-week diary study of 33 young American female
gymnasts aged 7–18 examining the relations between perceived parent- and coach
supports and the athlete’s motivation, need satisfaction and the effect of daily
motivation, and athletes’ psychological need satisfaction during practice on their
well-being. Using a positive and negative affect scale as well as a measure
of subjective vitality and self-esteem as indices of hedonic and eudaimonic
conceptions of well-being, results revealed that, as hypothesized, the quality of
the gymnasts’ daily motivation (e.g., intrinsically regulated motivation) influenced
pre-practice well-being. Further, changes in well-being from pre- to post-practice
varied systematically with the need satisfaction experienced during practice.
Perceived parent and coach autonomy support was associated with more autono-
mous motivation toward gymnastics. The results supported self-determination
theory’s proposal that autonomy support serves to satisfy psychological needs that
are necessary for sustained autonomous motivation and well-being. Implications of
this study to the training of young sports people seem clear. The way training is
carried out has an influence on their well-being and perhaps on their participation.
Training contexts where coaches support the gymnasts’ autonomy by listening
to their concerns and affording them some choice, where athletes feel
well connected to teammates, and where they receive some positive competence
feedback, are likely to help fuelling their well-being by allowing for sustained
positive emotions, being more energized, and having a higher and more stable
self-esteem.
In a study among 207 young Canadian players involved in organized basketball,
Blanchard and colleagues (2009) examined the role of a controlling interpersonal
style from the coach upon players’ need satisfaction, regulation of motivation, and
their well-being in basketball. In line with expectations, perceptions of coaches’
controlling interpersonal style negatively impacted feelings of autonomy. In turn,
all three psychological needs positively predicted intrinsic motivation in basketball
and greater hedonic well-being as indicated by enhanced sport satisfaction
and positive emotions. Regarding a controlling interpersonal style on the coach’s
side, the authors underline that coaches’ controlling behaviors related negatively
to autonomy need satisfaction. This finding coupled with the link from need
for autonomy to motivation and well-being suggests that the players’ perceptions
of controlling behaviors undermined their feelings of well-being. A controlling
interpersonal style in which coaches interact with their athletes in a highly directive
manner and tend to coerce them into certain behavioral patterns seem to
pose a threat to young peoples’ sense of well-being in basketball. An opposite
pattern was found for team cohesiveness. The more players felt connected to
their team, the stronger their social relatedness were shown to be, which in turn
positively influenced psychological well-being indices such as positive emotions
and satisfaction when playing basketball.
A coercive interpersonal style was not found to negatively influence the need for
competence and relatedness. One possible reason for this could be that when
measuring the negative effects of a controlling interpersonal style, need satisfaction
rather than thwarting of need satisfaction was measured. Other researchers (e.g.,
Bartholomew et al. 2011a, b) have made the point that explicitly measuring need
thwarting rather than lack of need satisfaction would be expected to better capture
the negative effects of a controlling interpersonal style. This claim was supported in
two studies among young team- and individual sport participants. First, while need
satisfaction positively predicted the athletes’ eudaimonic well-being, need
thwarting was found to predict ill-being as measured by signs of burnout and
mental and physical exhaustion (Bartholomew et al. 2011a). Second, mediated by
need thwarting, experiencing a controlling climate in young peoples’ sport
predicted ill-being as indicated by elevated levels of depression, negative affect,
and signs of burnout and exhaustion (Bartholomew et al. 2011b).
Ommundsen and coworkers (Ommundsen et al. 2010) investigated the mediat-
ing role of young Norwegian soccer players’ satisfaction of their need for perceived
competence, autonomy, and social relatedness in the relationship between coach-

created motivational climates and the players’ motivational regulation. Second, the
combined effect of climate, mediators, and motivational regulation on subjective
vitality was examined. Participants comprised young male and female soccer
players taking part in an international youth soccer tournament in Norway. Building
upon tenets from achievement goal theory and self-determination theory (Nicholls
1989; Deci and Ryan 1985), regression analyses revealed that satisfaction of
the need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness significantly and partially
mediated relations between a coach-created mastery climate (e.g., one in which
coaches emphasized progress, learning, and mastery of skills) and intrinsically
regulated motivation. Further, a mastery climate, satisfaction of the need
for autonomy, and intrinsically regulated motivation all independently predicted
subjective vitality in soccer. A performance climate, in which coaches emphasize
winning, social comparison, and being the best, predicted lack of motivation and in
turn reduction of a sense of players’ eudaimonic well-being. The study findings
point to the value of investigating aspects of achievement goal theory with
self-determination theory together and underscore the role of the coach in generat-
ing growth experiences for young players so that they can thrive and enhance their
well-being. Coaches emphasizing winning and being the best, in contrast, may
come to deprive young players from sport experiences vital for well-being. Sarrazin
and coworkers (Sarrazin et al. 2002), in a study among young French handball
players, supplemented these findings by showing that a performance climate not
only detracts from intrinsically regulated motivation but also raises the possibility
that young people leave the sport, whereas a coach-created mastery climate works
as a protective mechanism for dropping out.
Based on the self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci 2000), Alvarez and
colleagues (Álvarez et al. 2009) in a study of 370 young male Spanish soccer
players tested a model of the assumed sequential relationships between perceived
autonomy support from coaches, psychological need satisfaction, self-determined
motivation, and well-being outcomes in the format of positive (enjoyment)
and negative (boredom) affective states. The hypothesized mediational roles of
psychological need satisfaction and self-determined motivation were also studied.
Path analysis results supported theoretical predictions. Psychological need
satisfaction fully mediated the relationship between autonomy support and
self-determined motivation, while self-determined motivation partially mediated
links between psychological need satisfaction and enjoyment (positive) and
boredom (negative). The authors conclude that the results underscore the
importance of creating a motivational autonomy supportive atmosphere that favors
satisfaction of psychological needs and more self-determined types of motivation in
players. An autonomy supportive atmosphere and corresponding motivation facil-
itate the development of positive affective states, such as enjoyment, thereby
improving the well-being of sports participation.
Reinboth and colleagues (2004) examined the relationship of dimensions of
coaching behavior to intrinsic need satisfaction and indices of psychological and
physical well-being among British male adolescent athletes involved in soccer and
cricket. Structural equation modeling analysis among the sample of 265 athletes
showed that autonomy support, mastery focus, and social support from the coach as
perceived by the players predicted their satisfaction of the needs for autonomy,
competence, and relatedness. The need for competence was shown to be the most
important predictor of psychological well-being (sense of vitality and intrinsic
satisfaction/interest in soccer and cricket) and physical well-being (negative phys-
ical symptoms in the 2 past weeks). This finding suggests that sport participants
who perceive they possess high physical skills may find their sport participation
more intrinsically interesting, enjoyable, and energy enhancing. Although mod-
estly, the need for autonomy positively predicted subjective vitality and intrinsic
satisfaction/interest in sport, both considered to be indicators of eudaimonic
well-being (Waterman 1993). The authors argue that the positive prediction is
aligned with Ryan and Frederick’s (1997) argument that autonomy should play
an important role with regard to feelings of being vital. In line with Ryan and
Frederick (1997), they argue that an internal locus of causality is a prerequisite for
experiencing their energy as personal and related to self. As a result, they should
report higher levels of subjective vitality. Reinboth and coworkers state: “For
example, athletes who feel powerless and compelled in their participation may
perceive less energy available to themselves compared to those athletes who feel
that they practice their sport autonomously and wholeheartedly” (p. 308).
In line with self-determination theory, results add support to the view that
particular aspects of the social environment should help satisfying particular
psychological needs. While others have shown the importance of all three needs
for young people’s self-determined motivation (Álvarez et al. 2009), in this study,
perceived competence stood out as important for team-sport participants’
psychological and physical well-being.
Fry and Gano-Overway (2010) studied the effects of the motivational climate on
young soccer players’ well-being within a competitive community sport program.
They observed that players perceiving a strong caring climate, in which they
perceived to feel safe, supported, respected, valued, and cared for on their team,
reported a stronger sense of enjoyment on the team than their counterparts. Results
seem to support that when young athletes, even within a competitive sport context,
perceive a caring climate in which coaches want to help them and are caring toward
them and the team, they experience a sense of well-being as indicated by strongly
expressing a sense of enjoyment while taking part.
The conception and influence of a caring dimension add to a mastery and
autonomy supportive climate and reveal that young athletes’ perception of social
assets of the sporting context is also important for their well-being in sport.
Probably, a caring climate helps both strengthening team cohesiveness (Blanchard
et al. 2009) and satisfying the need for relatedness to the team (Ryan and Frederick
1997) and reinforces the interdependency between athletes within a sport group
(Bruner et al. 2011). The latter is worth noting: A felt task and outcome type of
interdependency between young sport participants seems more important than the
type of sport they take part in when it comes to well-being related developmental
experiences (Bruner et al. 2011).
The studies reviewed under the umbrella of self-determination theory and

achievement goal theory attest to the role of constructive contextual circumstances
as a prerequisite for generating mental/psychological well-being outcomes from
taking part in organized sport. Several of these studies also points to possible
mechanisms or mediating factors through which contextual circumstances generate
well-being outcomes. As has been observed through several of these studies, sport
experiences that help satisfy young peoples’ need for feeling competent, the need
for having a sense of autonomy and self-determination as well as having a sense of
belongingness and feeling socially related, seem fundamental for young peoples’
growth and well-being through sport. Indeed, studies that help unravel how and why
sport activities may influence mental health outcomes have been called for to gain
a better understanding of well-being outcomes in sport (Cerin 2010). The study
examples reviewed meet with this call. Nevertheless, most of them are cross-
sectional. Hence, there is a need for prospective and experimental studies that
better allow for causal testing of the role of contextual circumstances and mediating
mechanisms in the domain of sport and well-being for young people.
30.8.2 Empirical Studies Including Nonspecified Theoretical

Frameworks or Other Conceptualizations of Mental/
Psychological Well-Being
Depression represents one of the more serious forms of illness in childhood given
that depressive episodes may lead to potential life-threatening outcomes. Up to
2.5 % of children and 8.3 % of adolescents have either major or minor depression
(American National Institute of Mental Health 2000). Depression is an indicator of
mental/psychological ill-being, and steps toward prevention seem worthwhile.
Michaud Tomson and coworkers (Michaud Tomson et al. 2003) examined the
relationship of physical activity to depressive symptoms in close to 1,000 American
children 8–12 years of age. Children were classified as physically active or inactive
by parents and teachers. The study also assessed the relationship of self-reports of
playing sports outside of school, and of meeting health-related fitness standards, to
symptoms of depression. Relative risk of depressive symptoms for those classified
as inactive was 2.8–3.4 times higher than it was for the active group, and relative
risk of depressive symptoms was 1.3–2.4 times higher for children not playing
sports outside of school and 1.5–4.0 times higher for those not meeting health-
related fitness goals. Study findings attest to the potential role of physical activity in
various formats and being physically fit in the prevention of childhood depressive
symptoms. While the cross-sectional design excludes any information on causality
in this study, results from an 18-year longitudinal study suggest that physical
inactivity actually puts adults in normal populations at risk for depression
and that increasing one’s activity level may lower the risk of later depression
(Camacho et al. 1991).
Using an experimental design, Norris et al. (1992) examined the effects of
physical activity and exercise training on psychological stress and well-being in
a population of young people in England. A sample of young adolescents com-

pleted self-reports of exercise and psychological stress and well-being. Analysis
revealed that those who reported greater physical activity also reported less stress
and lower levels of depression. To investigate the effects of exercise training on
psychological well-being, participants were assigned to either high- or moderate-
intensity aerobic training, flexibility training, or a control group. The training
groups met twice per week for 25–30 min. Aerobic fitness levels, heart rate,
blood pressure, and self-report of stress and well-being were measured prior to
and following 10 weeks of training. Intervention effectiveness for the high-intensity
aerobic exercise group was observed in that those taking part in high-intensity
exercise reported significantly less stress than subjects in the remaining three
groups. The relationship between stress and anxiety/depression/hostility for the
high-intensity group was considerably weakened at the end of the training period
whereas the relationship was strengthened for the remaining ones. This experiment
provides evidence to suggest that in this population of young people, high-intensity
aerobic exercise has positive effects on mental/psychological well-being.
Grounded in a salutogenetic perspective (Antonovsky 1997), Schumacher
Dimech and Seiler (2011) examined the role of team-sport participation over two
consecutive years in alleviating symptoms of social anxiety in 7–8 year old Swiss
primary school children. The children participated in structured interviews,
whereas parents and teachers completed questionnaires regarding children’s
social anxiety symptoms and classroom behavior, respectively. Parents also pro-
vided information about their children’s extracurricular sport activities. The
same information was gathered a year later. The authors postulated that organized
sport outside school hours would act as a generalized resistance resource as
described in Antonovsky’s (1997) salutogenetic model, thus buffering against
social anxiety symptoms in primary school children. This would seem important
in that social anxiety symptoms may prevent children from approaching social
situations and peer networks, in turn negatively impacting on their psychological
well-being. Through social modeling team sport in particular may exert a positive
influence on children’s social anxiety symptoms and social behavior in class
(Bandura 1977).
Although most differences were not statistically significant, a consistent pattern
of results emerged: Children involved in team sports scored lower on social anxiety
instruments in both 2007 and 2008. The authors interpret their findings in reference
to a potential positive effect of team sport in helping young people to alleviate their
anxiety in social situations. As Bandura have argued, social settings may provide
positive social models enabling positive social skills and social behaviors on the
child’s part.
Also based on Antonovsky’s (1997) salutogenetic perspective, Løndal (2010b)
carried out a qualitative study among 8- and 9-year-olds doing recreational physical
activity in a Norwegian after-school program. Thirty-six children were observed
during several types of self-chosen and child-managed physical activities, among
others soccer playing. Additionally, a sample of the children was chosen for an
individual, qualitative research interview. The study suggests that the children’s
self-managed physical activities together with other children are experienced as

predictable. The children also enjoy a sufficient degree of participation in shaping
their own situation. This establishes important basic experiences for a positive
development of comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. According
to Antonovsky’s (1997) salutogenetic model, these components will promote
a sense of coherence and thus promote well-being. The results of the study are
not, however, unambiguous. Two alternative psychological profiles emerged. The
first of these profiles experiences much negative in life, and this contributes
to a reduced sense of coherence. Self-chosen recreational soccer playing during
after-school activities has a positive effect on this profile. It implies a breathing
space with pleasure and satisfaction, with participating in shaping outcomes. Soccer
playing in the after-school program represents a sphere in life which is experienced
as manageable and gives a meaning to existence. For this profile, this type of
activity has the potential of promoting the sense of coherence. The other profile
reflects the opposite tendency. Negative experiences of physical activity, especially
during soccer playing, with repetitive exclusion and unfriendly reports, result in
this profile experiences unpredictability and little participation in shaping
outcomes. This contributes negatively to the components of comprehensibility,
manageability, and meaningfulness, and thereby hindering a sense of coherence
and well-being (ibid.).
In a recent meta-analysis of the relationship between children’s physical activity
and mental health (Fedewa and Ahn 2011), the authors, besides focusing on
traditional well-being compromising factors (e.g., depression, anxiety, psycholog-
ical distress, and emotional disturbance) (Huppert 2009), also included examination
on self-esteem effects. Indeed, self-esteem has been forwarded as an indicator of
mental/psychological well-being (Kernis et al. 1993) and a buffer against the onset
of childhood mental disorder (Fedewa and Ahn 2011). The meta-analysis revealed
that increased levels of physical activity had significant effects in reducing anxiety,
depression, psychological distress, and emotional disturbance in children. The
effect was shown to be evident both in RCT studies and those not including
a randomized control trial. The positive effects found for self-esteem were even
stronger when considering RCT studies than those with a correlation design.
Moreover, the beneficial effect on self-esteem was shown to be equally strong for
obese/overweight children as those being normal weight. Moderating factors were
type of activity and activity intensity. The findings were that a combination of
aerobic and resistance training was most beneficial together with activities of high
physical intensity in enhancing self-esteem aspects of children’s psychological
well-being.
While this meta-analysis did not differ between generalized physical activity
and other formats of physical activity (e.g., moderate to vigorous physical
activity versus team-sport participation) as predictor, a recent review of studies
(Johnson and Taliaferro 2011) did so. These researchers obtained evidence of an
equally strong influence of both team-sport participation and moderate to vigorous
physical activity in alleviating the abovementioned indices of ill-being. The
question of why team sport may help alleviate depressive symptoms was more
closely examined in a study on young Canadian boys and girls (Boone and
Leadbeater 2006). The authors built on previous research showing that lack of social
acceptance and body dissatisfaction represent significant precursors of depressive
symptoms. Extending this research by setting up a model in which positive
team-sport involvement was hypothesized to alleviate these negative effects,
they found that taking part in team sport provided positive experiences in terms
of constructive coaching, skill development, and constructive peer support and
helped alleviate risk factors for depressive symptoms (e.g., low perceived social
acceptance and bodily dissatisfaction including disliking appearance and negative
body image).
In a recent review of studies on physical activity and mental health in children
and adolescents (Biddle and Asare 2011), several of the findings regarding self-
esteem effects were confirmed. Nevertheless, the effect size in several studies
included was not shown to be impressive. Hence, the authors point to the possible
need of including more domain-specific indices of self-esteem as outcome of
intervention trials aimed to enhance mental health effects such as self-esteem.
While domain-specific measures of self-esteem such as physical self-worth and
body image may show efficient to increase the effect size of outcomes, they should
be considered too narrow to represent valid indices of psychological well-being.
Rather, such measures may be treated as mechanism variables explaining under
which conditions physical activity influences general self-esteem and thus well-
being. Taking advantage of this approach, Haugen et al. (2011) examined mediating
effects of body areas satisfaction, appearance evaluation, and perceived athletic
competence in the relationship between physical activity and global self-esteem.
Results revealed that while all three mediators operated significantly, and nearly
equally strongly in the relationship for both genders, girls physical appearance
evaluation mediated this relationship slightly stronger than the two others than
among boys. Results attest to the role of an “outer sense of self ” in which
appearance aspects of the physical self and the perceived personal importance
attached to this part of the self take on added value for young girls and become
an important prerequisite for their well-being outcomes of physical activity.
Summing up the above studies, it seems that physical activity and specific
formats of sport such as organized team sport hold promise to alleviate symptoms
of psychological ill-being, while also being a positive source for the development of
children’s well-being in the format of positive self-esteem. The research evidence
in this respect seems quite strong in terms of study design in that randomized
control trials provide a strong part of the evidence. While mainly cross-sectional
ones, some studies provide evidence of intrapersonal psychological factors
operating as mechanisms helping explain why physical activity and team-sport
participation alleviate symptoms of ill-being and positively influence well-being in
terms of general self-esteem. These studies do better in terms of explaining under
which social/environmental circumstances physical activity and team-sport
participation play a role for young peoples’ psychological well-being. As such,
the two pieces of empirical evidence spelled out in this part of the chapter seem to
complement each other.
30.9 Future Directions in the Field of Sport, Children, and

Well-Being
We started by sketching a background of the origins and nature of sport for children
and youth and the concept of well-being as understood in the scholarly literature
and proceeded by giving an overview of relevant research in the field.
There is clear evidence that sports, in particular team sports, can enhance
well-being in children and youth. However, well-being outcomes of sport partici-
pation are conditional and require autonomy supportive and mastery-oriented
motivational climates allowing for children’s self-determination, competence
development and sense of being socially related. This would enhance a sense
of taking part for the intrinsic values of the activity; that is the activity’s character
of play. This does not contradict skill development and progress in terms of fitness.
On the contrary, mastery and autonomy supportive climates seem to be crucial not
only to sound skill and performance development but also for keeping children
involved in sport over time. As such, sound psychological conditions in children’s
sport may counteract the tendency to interpret organized, competitive sport as
requiring controlling, result-oriented, and instrumental motivational schemes,
which again are associated with an increase of dropouts. Research points to the
important role of the coach in these circumstances. Competent coaches open the
door to sport as an inclusive and valuable human practice in which individuals and
groups can flourish.
In a similar vein, research demonstrates the significant potential for well-being
of children’s informal physical activity outside of the organized sport setting.
Again, however, optimal well-being outcomes for all children depend upon careful
pedagogical approaches with the right balance of guidance and freedom.
How teachers, coaches, assistants, and other professional and nonprofessional
adults play their roles may have radically different consequences. Adult empathy
with and careful involvement in children’s informal activity are important to
enhance well-being. This requires comprehensive knowledge of children in the
respective ages coupled with a sound ability to make appropriate evaluations and
adaptations.
Modern, high-technological societies seem to stimulate a sedentary lifestyle
with problematic implications for health and well-being. If conducted with compe-
tence and pedagogical insights, organized sport and informal physical activity can
significantly enhance children’s well-being in a variety of ways. Children may
benefit in terms of physical fitness and motor skill learning as well as in terms of
general psychosocial and cognitive functioning. This may help children to
thrive and live well. Moreover, and as revealed by studies on tracking of
physical activity (Telema et al. 2006) and resilience (Masten and Reed 2002), if
practiced in sound and responsible ways, children’s sport and physical activity
can also lead to an active lifestyle on a longer term basis and increase well-being
into adulthood.
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Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being in
Early Schooling: Revisiting the Narratives 31
Jolyn Blank
31.1 Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being in Early Schooling:

Revisiting the Narratives
Well-being is a widely used term in the study of child development, typically used
to refer to a broad and diverse set of ideas surrounding the whole child, that is, the
physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and economic domains as they pertain to
developmental trajectories (Pollard and Lee 2003). There are some types of data
that serve to support efforts to make comparisons across groups and other kinds that
support understanding the nature of particular experiences rooted in personal,
social, and cultural contexts. A strand of the literature seeks to identify a shared
body of indicators in order to best “measure” well-being. Another strand of
literature situates well-being within social and cultural contexts, defining it as
“The ability to successfully, resiliently, and innovatively participate in the routines
and activities deemed significant by a cultural community. Well-being is also the
states of mind and feeling produced by participation in routines and activities”
(Weisner, as cited in Pollard and Lee, p. 65). From this perspective, child well-
being is situated within social and cultural contexts – often created for children by
adults – that children “grow into” as they engage in processes of participation in and
negotiation of these contexts (Rogoff 2003). Therefore, a growing line of research
situates well-being in context and seeks to emphasize focus on “children’s
strengths, assets, and abilities” rather than on the “study of disorders, deficits,
and disabilities” (Pollard and Lee 2003). Because of the complexity of defining
“well-being,” there is a need for greater conceptual clarity of the construct, for
understanding of how it is situated within various social and cultural contexts,
J. Blank
Department of Childhood Education & Literacy Studies, University of South Florida, Tampa,
FL, USA
e-mail: jblank@usf.edu

942 J. Blank
and for greater understanding of methodological approaches to the study of child

well-being (Moore et al. 2007).
The relationship between children’s artistic activities and their well-being is
framed within the larger areas of child health and safety, child educational achieve-
ment and cognitive attainment, and child social and emotional development (Moore
et al. 2007). The relationship is addressed across domains in various ways: the
cognitive domain (e.g., quality of school life, intellectual growth, academic
achievement), the economic domain (e.g., access to arts and “cultural capital”),
physical (e.g., views on the body and how it should be controlled in various
contexts, health and fitness), psychological (e.g., coping with frustration, anxiety,
emotion, experience of trauma, sense of self, positive affect, resilience), and social
(e.g., relationships in home and school, relationships with peers, pro-social behav-
iors, social skills) (Moore et al. 2007; Pollard and Lee 2003).
The Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) presented
a position paper on “The Child’s Right to Creative Thought and Expression”
(Jalongo 2003). According to the position paper, “The creative process, contrary
to popular opinion, is socially supported, culturally influenced, and collaboratively
achieved” (p. 218). As a well-being indicator, a child’s artistic activity relates to
areas of strength or capacity. ACEI cites evidence regarding imaginative capacities
that appear strong in early life. “Adults may have the advantage when it comes to
storing and retrieving information, [and] drawing upon experience. . . [while] the
creative assets of childhood include a tolerance for ambiguity, a propensity for
nonlinear thinking, and a receptivity to ideas that might be quickly discarded by an
adult as too fanciful to merit further consideration” (p. 219). Artistic experiences
are relevant across the areas and domains typically identified in the literature on
child well-being. Greater understanding of the complexity of those experiences and
the ways in which they are contextually and culturally situated is needed.
Increasing numbers of children around the world spend time in early preschool
contexts outside the home. This chapter will focus on the relationship between
children’s artistic activities and their well-being through the lens of artistic activity
as it is contextualized in these early school contexts. I explore underlying assump-
tions about early schooling as a social and cultural enterprise, images of children as
artists, and arts as pedagogy in order to situate a reconsideration of underlying
assumptions about the relationship between children’s artistic activities and child
well-being.
I begin by situating understandings of children’s artistic activities in the cultural-
historical context of US schools in order to illustrate the complexity of multiple
aims and purposes attributed to early schooling; these multiple interpretations and
squabbles about the purposes of early schooling result in the kinds of school
contexts and experiences adults create for children to negotiate. This is followed
by a discussion about the ways in which artistic activities are situated within school
cultures, highlighting notions about the ways artistic activities have been
constructed as supportive of academic learning, as enrichment or exposure, and
as free self-expression. I argue that artistic activity in early schooling is constrained
by the larger institutional values and by multiple, overlapping images of the
31 Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being 943
child artist. Ultimately, I suggest that these images of the child as artist underesti-
mate young children’s emotional and intellectual capacities and explore an
alternative emerging image that situates artistic activity as a kind of meaning-
making and creates possibilities for more authentic spaces for child voice.
31.2 Artistic Activities in Context: Early Schooling
“‘The beginning, as you know, is always the most important part (Plato, Republic)’.
Only if we get the first steps right, Plato argued, can we set the child on the proper
path to educated adulthood. . . The beginning, and each step of the journey, is
governed by our understanding of the proper aim of education” (Egan 1988, p. 1).
In contrast, Rousseau advocated a romantic view of the child and rejected the
imposition of an adult pedagogy. He wrote in Emile, “Leave childhood to ripen in
your children” (1911, p. 58). Plato’s and Rousseau’s viewpoints have so profoundly
influenced Western thinking about early childhood education that they have pro-
vided the terms, perhaps also the polarities, of major educational debates for over
a century (Egan 1988). The two perspectives reflect a central tension in constructing
children as both capable protagonists and as vulnerable and in need of adult
protection and guidance. Understandings of the child and artistic activities in
schools are situated within this larger tension.
The story of kindergarten expansion in the USA provides an example of the
tensions regarding multiple, at times seemingly contradictory, ideas about what
early schooling should be and do for children and the ways adult discourses
constructed a particular kind of child with particular kinds of capabilities, deficien-
cies, and perceived needs. A perennial tension has involved either placing focus on
early academic instruction in the subject matter areas or on developmental, play-
based approaches that begin with children’s lived experiences and connect to larger
concepts and ideas in the subject matter areas.
The roots of contemporary early childhood education in the USA can be traced,
in part, to the kindergarten expansion movement at the turn of the twentieth century.
The kindergarten was then a new and provocative idea on the educational landscape
in the United States, and Weber (1969) described the movement as an effort to
“transform educational thought in America.” The expansion of the kindergarten in
the USA began as a private service to children of the wealthy led by women who
had been influenced by German educator Froebel. Froebel saw learning as a process
of natural “unfoldment” (Weber 1969. p. 4). He believed “young children acquire
knowledge of physical nature by acting on it and using their senses, an activity he
called play” (Walsh et al. 2001).
Later, kindergarten proponents in the USA created a network of organizations to
make kindergarten available to more children. These associations, such as the Free
Kindergarten Association and International Kindergarten Union (IKU), sought
donations, held training for teachers, and lobbied policy makers (Weber 1969).
The kindergarten movement became tied to philanthropy, “a way to alleviate the
distress of young children” living in slums (p. 38). This early social reformist effort
944 J. Blank
to institutionalize early learning – shifting the locus of educating young children

from the home and family – constructed the child as vulnerable victim in need of
particular kinds of unique early education experiences.
While joining the larger current of educational thought, early childhood educa-
tors hoped to maintain a unique identity and to bring their evolving messages of
play and learning to primary grade instruction. Kindergarten proponents maintained
that unifying kindergarten and public school primary grade instruction would both
legitimize kindergarten and revolutionize primary grade instruction. Yet, despite
the institutional link between kindergarten and primary grades, an ideological
distinction between the play-oriented kindergarten and the academically focused
primary grades seemed to remain (Dombkowski 2001).
Walsh (1992) described this version of the academics or developmental dichot-
omy as an “us against them” orientation that situated early childhood education and
public elementary education at odds. The problem was that administrators, primary
teachers, and kindergarten teachers could not articulate kindergarten’s relationship
to the primary grades (Dombkowski 2001). Should the kindergarten emphasize
fostering creative and social/emotional growth or provide early direct instruction in
literacy and numeracy? Increasing young children’s academic achievement through
more didactic pedagogy and practice testing seems to be a central value in the
current social and cultural context of US early schooling (Jeynes 2006). Rather than
“transforming educational thought,” there is a sense that today’s US kindergarten is
more like yesterday’s first grade (e.g., see Hartigan 2009). In response to a concern
about the impact of a “drop-down” curriculum on children’s well-being, the
National Association for the Education of Young Children published the Guidelines
for Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) (see Copple and Bredekamp
2009 for the most recent version). Yet, the DAP was often misconstrued and used as
an “us versus them,” rather than a kind of “both/and.”
In addition to considering the relationship between prekindergarten, kindergar-
ten, and the primary grades, the developmental versus academics dichotomy also
reflected a set of assumptions about children and larger social and cultural values
related to the purposes of early schooling. Therefore, despite a long-standing value
placed upon notions of child self-expression and play, the place of artistic activities
within contemporary school discourses remains unclear. Is the educative value of
the arts in their potential to support academic learning? Or is it in potential to
support affective development via the opportunity to provide a child with time to
explore media and express ideas and feelings?
The complexity of defining art and its relationship to notions about childhood,
human development, and the purposes of schooling complicates understandings of
the child artist (Burnard and Hennessey 2006). While notions about arts and crea-
tivity in early schooling remain strongly linked to ideas about freedom and individ-
ual self-expression, increasing emphasis has been given to understanding the ways
adults create particular kinds of artistic worlds for children (Bresler and Thompson
2002). In sum, the embodiment of artistic activity in school is a reflection of larger
institutional and cultural values, that is, how adults interpret what it is that is “best”
for children and therefore should be prioritized in the school worlds created for them.
31.3 School Art as a Genre
According to Bresler (2002), school art is a genre in which artistic ideas have been
appropriated for purposes that fit the larger school values. Dominant school art
narratives are influenced by evolving images of children and related beliefs about
development. There are three very central and overlapping stories told about the
nature and purposes of school art for young children. The first has to do with the role
of the arts in supporting academic achievement and school “readiness”. The second
has to do with the role of the art in terms of fostering cultural awareness. The third
has to do with considering artistic activity as self-expression. In this section, I will
address each of these narratives, making them explicit in order to examine them
more carefully.
31.3.1 Mozart Makes You Smarter
One of the stories told about the value of school art prioritizes the potential of
artistic activities to support or enhance academic learning. Consider the recent
“Mozart makes you smarter” phenomenon. This was a result of a set of research
pertaining to the relationship between music, intelligence, and learning. The
linkage has a long and well-established lineage in the education literature,
particularly in terms of bodies of work that relate to critical or “higher-order”
thinking and the relationship between music and other domains such as mathemat-
ical thinking. One of the most well-known stories told about the Mozart effect is
that a US state governor proposed that every family having a child in his state
receive a Mozart CD. The Mozart effect had not only powerful social and political
implications but also became a powerful marketing tool.
I argue that this reflects the understandable need adults have for seeking
stability: What are the right and best learning activities we should provide for
children? What should they look like? If we can identify a formula or treatment
that is stable and good, we can then compare children, identify particular types or
attributes, and “train” adults how to deliver the treatment and achieve expected
outcomes. It would be like fixing a particular make of automobile. This notion of
seeking stability is evident in a line of research and scholarship that deals with
seeking to essentialize and measure the effectiveness of the arts as tools to support
academic learning.
For example, one of the ways artistic activity in school has been explored has
been to seek evidence of transfer from arts experiences to measurements of
academic performance in literacy and math (Gadson 2008). A central strand in
the research on the role of the arts in early learning situates the arts as instrumental
in supporting young children’s academic achievement or school “readiness”
(Russell and Zemblyas 2007). Recent studies have looked at whether art “as
a way of learning” improved literacy, school readiness, and achievement in
academic subject areas (e.g., Brown et al. 2010; Phillips et al. 2010; Zhbanova
et al. 2010). Souto-Manning and James (2010) referred to a “multi-arts” (visual,
946 J. Blank
performing, and language arts) approach to literacy learning as “meaning-making

activity” that involved the “ability to manipulate any set of codes and conventions –
whether it is the words of a language, the symbols in a mathematical system,
or image – to live healthy and productive lives” (p. 83). They suggested, “evidence-
based ‘discoveries’ are of the greatest value in convincing parents, administrators,
colleagues, and policy-makers to support employing a multi-arts approach for the
power and possibility of better learning experiences for every child” (p. 93).
Although discovering the relationship between the arts and academic achieve-
ment is a persistent theme, it is a controversial one. This argument supports
the inclusion of artistic activities in school on the basis that they enhance the
more valued academic subject matter areas. One concern about this argument is
the problem of showing transfer and the paucity of empirical research that supports
the belief that the arts increase academic achievement (Russell and Zemblyas
2007). Another problem is that efforts to show that the arts support academic
learning most often take an instrumental view, suggesting a technical-rational
stance on knowing the world, and “teaching about such a world can be precisely
planned, implemented, and assessed” (Pike 2004, p. 21). Bresler (1994) referred to
this as an imitative stance that perpetuates the academic goals and structures of the
school. To situate the arts as instruments for supporting academic learning may
constrain the expansive power of the arts as ways of meaning-making that build
upon children’s capabilities.
Russell and Zemblas argued, “The goal of this effort should not be to justify
arts integration by showing that student’s achievement is enhanced through arts-
integration programs. . . instead evaluators and researchers should seek to develop
a variety of ways to represent the multiple kinds of student growth in arts integration
programs. Further research should focus on how students’ arts-integrated learning
provides both cognitively and affectively different experiences” (p. 296). In this
light, understanding the value of the arts in children’s school lives has to do with
a drive to seek uncertainty rather than stability, that is, valuing innovation, problem
setting rather than solving, divergent thinking, etc.
31.3.2 Exposure and Enrichment
Another narrative about the role of the arts in early schooling has to do with
a value placed upon providing young children with “exposure” to multicultural
arts, evident in traditions that typify early schooling such as field trips to museums
and cultural centers and the celebration of cultural “heroes and holidays.” In this
narrative, the relationship between artistic activity and well-being has less to do
with achievement in academic subject matter areas and more to do with the
idea that children benefit from exposure to unfamiliar viewpoints and experiences
and from the consideration of multiple perspectives. A concern about the notion
of art as exposure is that educators may unintentionally situate the unfamiliar
as “other.” So-called tourist approaches, critiqued for their superficial and
stereotypical images and activities, remain evident in the life of early schooling
(Ramsey 2004).
Emphasizing school art as “exposure” moved the conversation toward consid-
eration of the ways in which children understand artworks and images, resulting
in dialogue about the kinds of artworks and images that are appropriate for young
children. In early childhood education in particular, this raised awareness about
children’s perceptive capabilities and the appreciation of fine art (Epstein 2008).
Still, the category Bresler called “art for children,” that is, picture books and
other kinds of images created by adults particularly for children, remained
predominant. The selection of images for children focused on evaluations
of those kinds of images considered developmentally appropriate, and this
often alluded to ideas about safe and familiar content, that is, adult-created and
adult-sanctioned imagery.
Visual culture emerged as a way of speaking that emphasized the ways images
are central to children’s representation of and formulation of knowledge of the
world (Alphers as cited in Duncum 2002, p. 15). Building upon the conversation
pertaining to the kinds of images that support child well-being, a line of scholarship
began to address the imagery prevalent in visual culture of children that has been
“excluded from, or seen less worthy of exploration than the traditional forms that
defined Western art” (Kindler 2003, p. 290). Wilson (2003) raised the question,
“Shouldn’t students be given the challenge to connect school art content to their
own interests, many of which come from popular visual culture?” (p. 227). This line
of inquiry explored the ways in which children interpreted the array of imagery
that they encounter in their day-to-day lives (e.g., paintings, drawings, sculpture,
architecture, films, popular images, toys, TV, internet, malls, video games)
(e.g., see Vasquez 2004). Beyond appreciation as exposure to a canon of fine art
or about a matter of selecting developmentally appropriate imagery or art for
children, this raised new questions for inquiry, shifting attention to young children’s
interpretative capabilities and highlighting the ways they create and make sense of
the images in their world. Thompson (2006a) asserted:
When children’s preferences manifest themselves, in the choice of characters to admire,
television programs to watch, toys to campaign for, many adults become uneasy. Much of
this discomfort emerges from our desire to see our children (and to have our children be
seen) doing something serious and worthwhile. . . There is, in this, a mixture of resistance to
adult standards of quality and propriety, assertion of control, and affirmation of children’s
own power to construct an autonomous culture in which they are the experts and guides. (p. 33)
In addition to considering ideas about imagery and what is “good” imagery for
children, considering artistic activity as “exposure” foregrounds young children’s
perceptive capabilities and their capacity for aesthetic response. This shift is critical
in terms of thinking about how adults shape children’s experiences, hear their
voices, and consider their capacities.
For much of the twentieth century, developmentalists attended “to those aspects
of development that can be explained in terms of biology and/or evolution”
(Walsh 2002, p. 102) and in doing so portrayed a universal child who progresses
948 J. Blank
through predictable universal stages. Considering children’s perceptive capabilities

presents challenges because it seems to conflict with powerful and deeply
embedded interpretations of developmental theory – this idea that human beings
develop in a linear fashion through stages (Canella 1997) – that situate children as
sequential learners who begin with the concrete and then move toward abstract
thinking across all domains. Constructing the child in this way constrains the
potential to see the child as capable of hypothesizing and theorizing about distant
and abstract concepts.
In contrast, Egan and Ling (2002) argued that development wasn’t domain
general but rather was domain specific and that the dominant developmental
discourses focus on children’s deficiencies (e.g. logico-mathematical capacities)
that emerge slowly throughout experiences in our early lives and have “largely
ignored those things children do best intellectually, and better typically than adults –
those imaginative skills attached to metaphor and image generation, and to narra-
tive and affective understanding” (p. 95). In terms of perception, Bresler
(1998) noted, “Even preschoolers can assume the stances of producer and per-
ceiver; artistic development occurs as a result of children’s ability to juggle their
activities as creators and viewers” (p. 6).
Foregrounding perception reframes the early childhood traditional emphasis on
making art in a way that heightens awareness of the relationship between producing
and perceiving that challenges “process over product” mantra so common in early
schooling discourses. Beyond treasuring the “process” understood as providing
opportunities to explore media with minimal adult interference, now questions
are raised related to multiple notions about what constitutes self-expression and
how is it part of a cycle of perception and representation.
31.3.3 Self-Expression
Adults cherish the products of children’s explorations with media, and there is
a sense that intervention will spoil the “natural” child aesthetic. For example, when
I spend time in early childhood classrooms, I frequently hear children’s artwork
referred to as “masterpieces,” as in, “Do you want to hang your masterpiece here to
dry?” or “That’s beautiful! Put your masterpiece in your cubby to take home”.
In this section I examine notions about well-being in relation to a “self-expression”
narrative. This is frequently interpreted and embodied in such a way that emphasis
is placed upon providing children opportunities to explore various artistic materials
and media with little adult intervention.
A long line of research has explored the nature of children’s drawing
as symbolic expression. Lowenfeld “delineated stages of artistic development,
moving in predictable order and at designated ages, from what he called the
scribbling stage of infancy to the crisis of adolescence” (Burton 2009, p. 326).
For example, the pre-schematic stage, emerging from a scribble stage, was a
step toward a “conscious creation of form” and the “beginning of graphic
communication” (Lowenfeld and Brittain 1987, p. 157). This derived from an
innate creativity, and therefore “required very modest environmental guidance”

(Burton 2009. p. 326). Children’s artistic activity, then, was “chiefly a means
of self-expression” (Lowenfeld and Brittain, p. 215). This way of construing
self-expression as inborn and individualistic indicated that the kinds of
artistic activities that best supported child well-being were those that involved
providing children with opportunities to experiment with a variety of media in
a variety of ways (Zimmerman 2009). Through this lens, it followed
that because children’s capabilities for visual representation unfolded naturally
along a linear trajectory, a noninterventionist stance should be taken
in terms of interacting with young children during art making (Thompson 2006b).
Stage theories have been widely challenged, yet they remain powerfully embed-
ded in the ways of speaking about children’s artistic experiences. Perhaps concerns
about an excess of adult dominance and providing “cookie-cutter” art activities that
involve following directions rather than individual creativity and expression of any
kind have contributed to the longevity of this notion (McLennan 2010). At the same
time, this interpretation has been challenged for perpetuating a laissez-faire
approach (MacArdle 2008). This notion of how much is the “right amount” and
“right kind” of interaction around artistic activity is a central issue. Alternative
interpretations of artistic development grew from concerns about the universalizing
and essentializing aspects of the stage theories and the tendency to portray children
as deficient adults (Thompson 2006b).
In contrast to stage theories, considering development to be a process of partic-
ipation in particular sociocultural activities (Rogoff 2003) made it possible to
consider the child’s agency in terms of actively selecting appropriate cultural
tools and symbols (Thompson 2007). From this perspective, the historical – rather
than the universal – child comes into greater focus (Walsh 2002). For example,
Wilson (1999) studied the influence of manga on Japanese children’s narrative
drawings and concluded that the manga-like graphic forms evident in the children’s
drawings indicated that children’s drawings were not constrained by developmental
stage. Instead, they drew upon “a pervasive elaborate system of shared images that
carry meaning, beliefs, values, and understanding” (p. 53). Children’s drawings
reflected the selection of strategies that a child considered appropriate for his or her
particular symbolic purpose (Kindler 2007). Therefore, children’s artistic activity
involves a “repertoire of graphic languages, as well as the wit to know when to call
on each” (Wolfe and Perry 1988, p. 18). From this perspective on children’s artistic
activity, the child’s agency in selecting cultural tools and symbol systems comes
into greater focus. Peer and teacher influence are not viewed as interventions that
can potentially damage an innate artistry. Rather, they are “the primary means by
which visual sign making abilities are expanded” (p. 11).
These overlapping narratives about development bring to light a question: What
is meant by “self-expression” in artistic activity in school contexts? Beyond
expressing personal feelings or ideas or demonstrating a particular skill or tech-
nique, artistic expression in school contexts is a complex negotiation of context,
values, and form – the child must interpret the more hidden messages about the
kinds of conventions that are appropriate for the context. Tobin (1995) argued that
950 J. Blank
rather than empowering children to express their ideas or feelings, self-expression

in schools is about socialization into particular kinds of conventional language
forms. In terms of symbolic communication, for example, certain kinds of subjects
are often considered troubling by adults in schools (e.g., the portrayal of death or
violent scenes). Therefore, the potential of symbolic representation as a way to
explore challenging or controversial realms in children’s lives is limited. Hamblen
(2002) put it like this: School art “may involve figuring out what is appropriate [in
the school context], not what one is literally capable of doing” (p. 19). In addition to
content, this set of conventions may also include preferred ways of working.
For example, according to Zimmerman (2009), “In some cultures, collaboration,
cooperation, conformity, and traditions may be valued more than completely novel
solutions to problems” (p. 391). Heightened awareness of “self-expression”
in school as a set of conventions raises a central question: “What can we do to
open ourselves to a multiplicity of perspectives on what constitutes appropriate
expression?” (Tobin, p. 254).
According to Thompson (2006a):

One of the basic tenets of the “creative self-expression” movement, early in the last century,
stipulated that art education should draw its content from children’s life experiences. This
dictum may have been more readily endorsed in theory than it was embodied in practice;
adults are notoriously inept judges of what is of interest to children, though children are
remarkably willing to play along much of the time. But, as Patricia Tarr insists, “Curricula
need to take up children’s questions rather than ignoring or glossing over their issues”
(2003, p. 7). That is, we need to find ways to understand more clearly how children’s life
experiences, including those derived from a commercial culture which we view with
skepticism, can enter and inform the pedagogical spaces we inhabit with them. (p. 41)
31.4 School Art and Well-Being
Another way of framing the relationship between children’s artistic activities

and their well-being is emerging. In this way of understanding artistic activity,
children’s composing events are viewed as contextual and multifaceted experiences
in which it is difficult to discern between process and product (Wright 2007).
The art “product” is then considered to be the multimodal enactment itself, with
any resulting artifacts serving to provide evidence that an artistic experience
may have occurred. This view reflects value placed upon imagining children as
emotionally and intellectually capable and as knowledgeable about their worlds.
Therefore, ideas about child voice and agency come across in the discourse
surrounding the arts as multimodal communication. The arts provide avenues –
multiple pathways a child may choose in order to explore, communicate, and revise
complex ideas and feelings – to make sense of and create meaning from their
experiences (Burton 2009). Rather than underestimating children’s “competence
and integrity,” this expanded definition of literary values the child’s culturally
acquired resources for making and communicating meaning to others.
Study of graphic representation in the schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, brought

attention to the idea of child as protagonist who has “a hundred languages” at his or
her disposal. Vecchi (2007) described it this way: “Visual language [is] a means of
inquiry and investigation of the world, to build bridges and relationships between
cognitive and expressive processes.” Narey (2009) describe artistic activity as
a kind of language “constructed in a variety of sensory/representational modalities,
not limited to human speech and writing” (p. 2). Dyson (1990) referred to children’s
symbol-weaving, that is, incorporating multiple modes (e.g., dramatic play and
marks on a page) in a composing event. Wright (2007) saw understanding chil-
dren’s multimodal texts to involve “seeing how young children move among sign
systems and invent connections between the different forms of symbolizing –
drawing, storytelling, dramatizing, using sound effects, gesturing, moving expres-
sively” (p. 2). According to Thompson (2006a), “As the work created by children in
Reggio Emilia and in other supportive contexts attests, children’s facility as inter-
preters and producers of visual imagery is far more sophisticated than we may
suspect, when demonstrated in contexts in which children themselves are seen as
‘rich, strong, and powerful’ [emphasis added].”
In this view, young children – even before they are inducted into the world of
adult reading and writing – engage in communication via a “semiotic process[es]
that occur in all interactive and sociocultural environments and result in a pluri-
media (graphic, vocal/verbal, gestural) manifestation” (Kindler & Darras as cited in
Richards 2007). Young children draw, build, paint, dramatize, play, dance, and sing
their understandings of the world (Gallas 1994). Further, multimodal perspectives
are concerned with children’s capacity to both create and interpret meaningful
“signs” (e.g., print, images, film) (Hilton 2006).
Yet, this view of children’s artistic activity as embodiment of their capacities
for understanding the world are devalued in a world of early schooling that increas-
ingly – as a result of misconceptions about and lack of understanding of how
to foster the relationship between artistic activity and child well-being across
domains – emphasizes logico-mathematical and linguistic skills like copy writing.
Although we know that young children may perform skills like counting and change
operations and copy writing, meaning is lost. What is the purpose of early schooling?
An emerging line of research focuses on multimodal meaning-making in early
schooling. Deans and Brown (2008) investigated a collaboration between teachers,
artists, and children engaging in multi-symbolic representation within an emergent
curriculum design. They documented a shift in the way the adults constructed
school art, moving from aesthetically pleasing activities toward including
a broader array of intellectual and interpretive processes.
Using literacy practices from the New Literacy Studies as a lens, Pahl (2007)
examined children’s composing events. She argued that this way of approaching
creativity focuses on looking at the ways children’s texts draw upon social practice,
taking ideas from school, home, and community contexts. Haggerty and Mitchell
(2010) investigated the nature of and meanings 3- and 4-year-old children in
a preschool classroom gave to multimodal communication and the roles of
people, places, and practices in mediating children’s use of multimodal literacy.
952 J. Blank
They argued that some semiotic modes were favored ways to communicate for
children and suggested that favored modes provided avenues for children to com-
municate, think, and theorize in ways that others do not; therefore, multimodal
literacies support early learning. Bhroin (2007) found that children intertwined art,
play, and personal life experiences. She argued that engaging in this kind of artistic
activity carried intense personal meaning for children.
Although much of the research pertaining to young children’s artistic growth has
involved looking at children’s completed drawings as objects of study, from
a multimodal perspective, it is important to look at the composing event
itself and the way it is situated in particular cultural contexts (Thompson 2006b).
Wright (2007) differentiated between the “synopsis versions of children’s
drawings-stories” that typically result when adults prompt children to talk about
their work and the “type of participation that actually occurs during the child’s
enactment” (p. 10). Seeing children’s composing events as contextual and multi-
faceted experiences makes it difficult to discern process and product (Wright 2007).
The art product can be considered to be the multimodal enactment, with any
resulting artifacts serving to provide evidence that an artistic experience may
have occurred. Genishi and Dyson (2009) argued that heightened awareness of
multimodal composing create a set of conditions in which it is possible to value and
build upon a broad array of capacities for meaning-making.
31.5 Concluding Thoughts
“Child well-being” and “school art” are complex, culturally situated concepts.
Therefore, well-being (or well-becoming) is part of a process of acquiring ways
of doing and being that are required in order to successfully participate in a cultural
community. In this chapter I focused on the school as a cultural community,
that is, a site created for children by adults that reflects larger cultural values
and goals that reflect evolving notions about childhood and development
embodied in sets of routines and conventions that children are expected to
learn to navigate.
According to New (1999), evolving and multilayered images of children “make
clear their remarkable capacity to learn what is expected of them, whether that
entails sleeping alone or with others, feeding and dressing one’s self or caring for
a younger sibling, crafting delicate origami or herding cattle, and learning to speak
sign language or to speak only when spoken to” (What Can Children Learn section).
Addressing the US National Goals Panel’s declaration, “All children shall come to
school ready to learn,” Katz (2007) posed the following question: “How should the
sentence ‘All children shall come to school ready to learn’ be completed? Ready to
learn what? Probably it could end ‘. . . ready to learn whatever the school wants
them to learn.’”
Early schooling is historically fraught with tensions and seemingly competing
values. One of the central tensions has to do with a complex set of beliefs and
practices surrounding the central purpose of early schooling as emphasizing
didactic acquisition of academic knowledge and skills or as emphasizing a devel-

opmental approach in which learning is situated in meaningful contexts and foster-
ing creative and affective social-emotional growth is central. I acknowledge that
positioning these two kinds of emphases as an either-or is an oversimplification, but
I do so for the purposes of contextualizing the discussion pertaining to
artistic activity in schools, an activity that is shaped by these kinds of larger
school discourses.
One of the central themes in the discussion pertaining to artistic activity in
school has been to advocate for artistic activities because they support academic
learning in powerful ways (Higgins 2008). Yet, despite efforts to show transfer
and measureable academic achievement as the result of the arts, this remains
questionable. Instead of focusing on what kinds of inputs we should deliver, Katz
(2007) suggests we pose the following questions: “What kind of experiences is each
child having much of the time?” and “What does it feel like to be a child in this
environment day after day after day?” Furthermore, Katz (2007) asserts:
A curriculum or teaching method focused on academic goals emphasizes the acquisition of
bits of knowledge and overlooks the centrality of understanding as an educational goal.
After all, literacy and numeracy skills are not ends in themselves but basic tools that
can and should be applied in the quest for understanding. In other words, children
should be helped to acquire academic skills in the service of their intellectual dispositions,
and not at their expense.
A second set of arguments alludes to the ways in which artistic activity offers
something unique and expansive to the school experience (Higgins 2008). Higgins
cautions that we too often reduce this second set of arguments to a group of clichés.
It follows, for me, that understanding the relationship between artistic activities
and well-being requires going beyond the clichés. It involves acknowledging that
we create contexts that constrain development in multiple complex ways – we
create possible worlds and impossible worlds for children in schools. In this
chapter I’ve suggested that some of these clichés – the arts make you smarter,
arts as exposure, and arts as “free” self-expression – do little to help us understand
the relationship between artistic activity and children’s well-being. Instead,
understanding and supporting the relationship can only begin with a closer look
at the stories we tell about children and the arts and the underlying values and
assumptions about childhood, development, and the arts that are deeply embedded
within them.
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Civic Engagement and Child and
Adolescent Well-Being 32
Daniel Hart, Kyle Matsuba, and Robert Atkins
32.1 Well-Being and Civic Life
32.1.1 Well-Being and the Individual
Human Flourishing. Civic participation often seems like an accessory in the everyday
lives of children and adolescents. Children and adolescents are generally given wide
personal discretion in choosing whether or not to participate in political discussions,
engage with community social institutions, and volunteer to advance the welfare of
those in their communities. There are exceptions of course; many schools have
mandatory classes intended to transmit civic knowledge, and occasionally schools
and youth organizations require an afternoon of public service. Nonetheless, in the
lives of children and adolescents, civic participation is perhaps like art or sports, in that
benefits are generally assumed to arise from participation, yet these benefits, at least
for the individual, are sufficiently minor that children and adolescents are accorded
some degree of choice in whether to engage in the activities or not.
The voluntary or near-voluntary nature of civic participation for children and
adolescents makes it a different sort of activity than attending school. Success in school
has well-known consequences for the life course; those who succeed in high school and
attend college are more likely than those who do not to earn high salaries, marry
successfully, and avoid social pathologies such as criminal activity and joblessness.
Because educational achievement is so important for individual success – true in many
cultures around the world – there is widespread appreciation for education in the
D. Hart (*)
Institute for Effective Education, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA
e-mail: hart@scarletmail.rutgers.edu
K. Matsuba
Kwantlen University, Richmond, Canada
R. Atkins
Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA

958 D. Hart et al.
development of well-being. There are no findings, to our knowledge, that indicate that
civic participation in childhood or in adolescence has such dramatic impacts on the life
course. Indeed, a hypothesis that we will examine in a later section is that civic
participation in adolescence may have adverse effects on well-being. There are reasons
for imagining that civic participation can be detrimental; for example, American men
voting for winning candidates may experience increases in testosterone, which in turn
may produce increased interest in pornography (Markey and Markey 2011).
But what if men who have just voted report pleasure in viewing pornography? Is
even this sort of pleasure sufficient to conclude that heightened interest in pornography
as a result of civic participation represents an increase in well-being? In our opinion,
the answer is no. Well-being, the focus of the handbook, is different from pleasure.
Well-being refers to the complex of virtues, reflection, and integration labeled
eudaimonia in ancient Greek philosophy, a notion vibrant in modern ethical philos-
ophy (Hursthouse 2012). Eudaimonia can best be understood as human flourishing
derived in part from rational cultivation of one’s propensities for virtuous life.
Aristotle was certainly one of the first influential proponents of the centrality of
civic participation for eudaimonia. Shields writes that Plato “advances a form of
political naturalism which treats human beings as by nature political animals, not
only in the weak sense of being gregariously disposed, nor even in the sense of their
merely benefiting from mutual commercial exchange, but in the strong sense of
their flourishing as human beings at all only within the framework of an organized
polis” (Shields 2012). By polis Aristotle meant a community of citizens with shared
interests working together to promote each individual’s striving toward virtue
and eudaimonia. Participation in government, working with others to promote
flourishing, Aristotle thought, allowed citizens to achieve eudaimonia.
Aristotle did not imagine that children and adolescents ought to participate in
government, however. Nor did he think that women could benefit, and he viewed as
just the exclusion of slaves and craftsmen from civic participation. In Aristotle’s
vision, citizenship was restricted to wealthy men who could devote hours a day to
political activity.
While Aristotle hoped for societies governed by wealthy men, the benefits he
imagined for the individual deriving from participation in the civic life of the
community do not seem necessarily restricted to only this population. More gener-
ally, participation in political life offers the opportunity for the individual to express
social virtues and bring these virtues into harmony with each other through reflec-
tion guided by social interaction with others. John Stuart Mill, the great political
philosopher, wrote that we should “recognize a potent instrument of mental
improvement in the exercise of political franchises,” and as a consequence one of
the “foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and
of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when
they are called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their
country” (Mill 1861). In other words, there is no reason that children and adolescents
cannot similarly benefit; the only condition, it would seem, is that political life be
populated with individuals sincere in their efforts to produce forms of social life
consonant with human flourishing (Duvall and Dotson 1998).
32 Civic Engagement and Child and Adolescent Well-Being 959
We can derive from this interpretation of Aristotle’s work the hypothesis that
civic participation can scaffold children and adolescents’ social activity to allow the
expression and integration of virtues. Phrased in terms more familiar to psycholo-
gists, the Aristotelian view leads to the expectation that civic participation can lead
to prosocial development and psychological integration.
Aptitude Development. Our Aristotelian notion that eudemonia can be fostered
by civic participation focuses on broad constructs of human functioning: virtues,
reflective coordination, integration, and the like. But effective participation in civic
life may rest on the acquisition of specific aptitudes such as knowledge of civic and
political matters, beliefs in the trustworthiness of others and the effectiveness of
participation, and the skills necessary to engage with political actors and societal
institutions. These are often studied by those interested in civic development, and
we shall review this research in a later section.
32.1.2 Well-Being and Institutions
Civic participation enhances the well-being of societies and institutions as well as

improving the lives of individuals. Aristotle clearly believed that the efforts of
many citizens were necessary to provide for societies supportive of eudaimonia.
Virtually every political theorist since has made the same point. Politicians and
government officials respond to the interests of groups that vote. Low rates of
voting oftentimes are associated with electorates that are unrepresentative of the
general population (Lijphart 1997). Moon and colleagues (Moon et al. 2006) have
demonstrated that the extent of civic participation among adults in a society is
associated with the democratic and economic success of a country. Countries in
which most adults vote are more stably democratic, egalitarian, and more success-
ful in cultivating human development (nutrition, education, and so on) than are
countries in which relatively few adults vote (Moon et al. 2006).
Voting is not the only kind of civic participation. Volunteering, for example,
is an important form of contributing to the welfare of a community. In the
United States, which is characterized by high levels of volunteering relative to
that observed in other countries, the value of donated labor in the form
of volunteering is estimated to be worth more than 280 billion dollars
(Independent Sector 2005). Children and adolescents volunteer at similarly
high levels, and, while their services probably are not as valuable monetarily
as those of adults, they make real and important contributions to their neigh-
bors and communities.
32.2 Identifying Civic Participation’s Developmental Influence
Philosophy and the social sciences converge in linking civic participation in

childhood and adolescence with flourishing. As we noted, philosophers have fairly
960 D. Hart et al.
divergent perspectives on what kinds of flourishing, or well-being, might result

from different types of civic engagement. Consistent with the broad Aristotelian
view described earlier, some theorists have argued that civic participation has
benefits for many facets of development. There is good reason for this view, as
the evidence generally indicates that civic participation in adolescence is associated
with a wide range of positive characteristics.
One source of evidence for this view can be drawn from the IEA Civic Education
Study (these data are available from http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR21661).
Participants in the study were 14-year-old students from 27 countries, who were
surveyed about their political attitudes, knowledge, and activities, and were asked
to report how many years of further education they expected to complete. We
interpret responses to this latter question as an indication of educational aspirations,
with aspirations higher among students reporting more years than among students
reporting fewer. Students were asked if they had participated in student council or
student government (“yes” or “no”) and in a group conducting voluntary activities
to help the community (“yes” or “no”). If civic participation is linked to flourishing,
then students who have experienced civic participation should have higher educa-
tional aspirations than those without civic engagement experiences.
Figure 32.1 displays average levels of expected years of further education for
students with and without student government experience in five randomly
selected countries. The pattern is quite clear: Students who have been members
of student governments in their schools have higher educational aspirations than
do students without student government experience. It is possible, of course, that
the association of student government participation and educational aspirations
is an artifact of the connection of each to school. However, Fig. 32.2 depicts
average levels of expected years of further education as a function of experience
in voluntary community service in five randomly selected countries, and the
same pattern emerges. There is a clear pattern across countries; students with
civic participation experiences have higher educational aspirations than do
students without these experiences.
The link of civic participation to well-being is not limited to educational aspirations.
To give some sense of the findings that emerge from studies of civic engagement and
developmental outcomes, we have drawn from the data collected in the National
Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS:88) from a representative sample
of American adolescents (this data set is described thoroughly by Hart, Donnelly,
Atkins, and Youniss 2007). Participants in this study were asked: “Did you volunteer in
a civic or community service organization in the past 12 months?” Respondents who
answered affirmatively were assigned to the community service group, while those who
said no were placed in the no service group. Participants also completed self-report
measures of self-esteem, internal locus of control, and delinquency, and took standard-
ized tests of reading and mathematics.
Figure 32.3 depicts average z-scores for each variable by community service
status. Those who reported having performed community service are characterized
by a much more positive profile of scores than those in the other category; in
comparison to the non-volunteers, volunteers were about .5 of a standard deviation
0.4
Variable
Achievement
Control
Delinquency
Self-Esteem
0.2
Z-Score
0.0
Community Service No Service
Fig. 32.1 Years of additional education expected by 14-year-olds with, and without, student council
participation experience in five countries (Data drawn from the IEA Civic Education Study)
higher on the measure of reading and mathematics, .3 of a standard deviation higher

internal locus of control, .2 of a standard deviation higher in self-esteem, and .2 of
a standard deviation lower in delinquency. In short, voluntary community service is
associated with a broad array of positive outcomes for the individual.
The civic participation of adolescents is also associated with societal well-being.
In the IEA Civic Education Study of 14-year-olds from 27 countries, described
earlier, adolescents were asked how frequently they participated in a range of
largely civic organizations (including student government, scouts, environmental
organizations, and so on) on a 4-point scale ranging from “never” to “daily.” We
computed the average for adolescents in each of the countries and have related these
averages to the extent to which each country is characterized by a respect for
the rule of law in 2002, one indicator of the quality of societal functioning.
This indicator and others are available from the World Bank (http://info.
worldbank.org/governance/wgi/resources.htm). The results are depicted in
Fig. 32.4. Countries (identified in Fig. 32.4 with their three letter ISO codes) in
which adolescents are regularly participating in civic organizations have societies
962 D. Hart et al.
7−8
Student Council
NO
YES
Years of Additional Education Expected
5−6
3−4
1−2
0
Bulgaria Colombia England Greece Latvia Portugal
Fig. 32.2 Years of additional education expected by 14-year-olds with, and without, experience
in community service in five countries (Data drawn from the IEA Civic Education Study)
higher in respect for law, on average, than do countries in which adolescents spend
less time involved in organizations. The relationship between adolescent participa-
tion and societal functioning depicted in Fig. 32.4 is not perfect; there are countries
with relatively high levels of participation in which citizens have little respect for
the rule of law (e.g., Russia) and others in which civic participation among
adolescents is relatively low (e.g., Hong Kong) yet respect for the law is
quite high.
32.3 Entry into Civic Engagement
The Aristotelian perspective and our presentation of associations in Figs. 32.1, 32.2,
32.3 and 32.4 suggest that civic participation promotes the well-being of indi-
viduals and social institutions. What leads adolescents into civic participation?
How can we encourage civic engagement? These are the questions that we
address in this section.
7−8
Community Service
NO
YES
5−6
Years of Additional Education Expected
3−4
1−2
0
Australia Chile Denmark Germany Italy Poland
Fig. 32.3 Mean levels by community service status for participants in the NELS:88
32.3.1 Individual Characteristics and Civic Participation
Atkins, Hart, and Donnelly (2005) proposed that one form of civic engagement,
volunteering, likely has roots in childhood personality. Specifically, they proposed
that children who could be characterized as resilient – whose personalities were
characterized by positive emotion, emotion regulation, and positive engagement
with the world – would be more likely to volunteer in adolescents than would
children less able to control their emotions and interact effectively with others. In
other words, they hypothesized that entry into community service in the form of
volunteering is a reflection of healthy functioning, not necessarily a cause of it.
To test this hypothesis, Atkins and colleagues made use of data from a large
national sample of children and adolescents in the United States who were followed
from early childhood into adulthood. When the children were either 5 or 6 years of
age, their mothers characterized their personalities. Based on the ratings provided
by mothers, children were assigned to one of three personality types: resilient,
964 D. Hart et al.
EIN CHE
2.0 SWE NOR DNK
ENG AUS
DEU USA
1.5 BFR
HKG PRT CHL
Respect for Law Among Citizens
SVN
1.0
HUN
CYP EST ITA GRC
CZE
POL
0.5 LTU LVA

SVK
BGR
0.0
ROM
−0.5
COL RUS
0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
Frequency of Adolescent Participation
Fig. 32.4 Respect for law in a country as a function of adolescent time commitment to civic
organizations
overcontrolled (characterized by high levels of shyness and anxiety), and under-

controlled (characterized by impulsiveness and aggression). Eight and ten years
later, the children, now adolescents, reported whether they had volunteered in their
communities in the previous year. The advantage of the longitudinal design is that
5- and 6-year-olds are unlikely to be active civically, and consequently the mea-
surement of personality is almost certainly years in advance of civic participation.
Atkins and colleagues found that children characterized as resilient at ages 5 and
6 were 30 % more likely than children assigned to the overcontrolled personality
type and 50 % more likely than children resembling the under-controlled type, to
volunteer in adolescence. These findings held even after statistically adjusting for
children’s IQ, maternal educational attainment, and family income (the latter two
factors were also associated with volunteering). These are among the strongest
findings indicating that flourishing, in this case in the form of a resilient personality,
can lead adolescents into civic participation.
Several other studies bolster the conclusion that entry into civic participation
in part reflects a healthy personality. Jack Block (Block and Block 2006) followed
a sample of California youth from very early childhood into early adulthood. When
the participants were in nursery school, their personalities were assessed by six
independent observers, each characterizing the child in terms of 100 personality
items. The ratings of the observers were averaged together. Block used these ratings
to characterize each child’s (a) ego-resiliency, as indicated by emotional regulation
and success in engaging others in social interaction, and (b) ego-control, or
behavioral restraint.
Twenty years later, the participants reported their political attitudes and partic-
ipation in three political activities: attendance at a political rally or demonstration,
written letters to express political views, and participation in a politically motivated
boycott of a company. Analyses indicated that participation in these three types of
political activity was correlated with liberal political views, and consequently
Block formed a summary variable composed of the measures of political attitudes
and political activity.
Block found that personality measured in nursery school predicted political
attitudes and civic participation in early adulthood. Specifically, Block found that
children at ages 3 and 4 who were judged to have high ego resilience had more
liberal attitudes and were more likely to have participated politically in early
adulthood than were those who were judged to have low ego resilience in child-
hood. These findings, like those of Atkins and his colleagues, demonstrate that entry
into civic and political class action is partly a reflection of personality tendencies
evident in childhood.
The findings indicating that personality tendencies evident in childhood facili-
tate entry into civic participation in adolescence and adulthood are important
theoretically, because they demonstrate that well-being is not only a product of
civic engagement but, to some extent, a precursor of it as well. However, civic
participation is multiply determined; indeed, personality influences play only
a small role in determining the extent of that stuff in civic life. Matsuba et al.
(2007) examined the relative contributions of personality, social institutions and
social relationships, and civic and moral attitudes to the prediction of volunteering
in adulthood. They found that the best predictor of this form of civic participation
was social capital in the form of relationships, friendships, and memberships in
social institutions. Smith (1999) studied a large nationally representative sample of
American adolescence followed from age 14 into early adulthood. As teenagers,
participants reported their memberships in clubs, teams, and religious institutions.
In addition, information about academic achievement, self-concept, and parental
social class was collected. In early adulthood, participants reported whether they
had recently voted and volunteered. Smith found that the best pictures of voting in
volunteering in early adulthood were the measures of adolescent social capital, that
is, memberships in clubs, teams, and religious institutions. Adolescents who
reported many memberships were much more likely to vote and to volunteer in
adulthood than were adolescents without social connections.
966 D. Hart et al.
32.3.2 Families
There is abundant evidence suggesting that families that are privileged and func-
tioning well facilitate adolescent entry into civic participation. Hart, Atkins,
Markey, and Youniss (2004) reported analyses of data from two nationally repre-
sentative surveys of families in the United States. They found in both surveys that
parental income and parental educational attainment were positively associated
with the likelihood that adolescents would volunteer in their communities. Simi-
larly, using a different national survey, Hart, Donnelly, Atkins, and Youniss
(2007) found that maternal educational attainment and family income assessed in
childhood predicted volunteering; adolescents with highly educated mothers and
living in wealthy families were more likely to volunteer than were adolescents
whose parents had relatively little formal education and money.
Privileged families may facilitate adolescent civic participation by connecting
youth to the institutions that provide opportunities for civic engagement. Matsuba
et al. (2007) demonstrated that among the many influences that lead to volunteering –
personality, social class, moral and civic attitudes – personal relationships and
memberships in social institutions are among the most important. This is because
volunteering often originates in a request for assistance made by churches, schools,
community groups, and civic organizations. When asked to help, many people
volunteer. This means that by connecting youth to social institutions, parents are
placing their children and teenagers in contexts in which they will be actively
recruited into community service.
The connection of social class to civic participation holds historically in the
United States. Wray-Lake and colleagues (Syvertsen et al. 2011; Wray-Lake and
Hart 2012) have examined the relation of social class to civic participation and
intentions to vote in samples of Americans from several decades, and the pattern is
quite regular. Whether social class is measured by educational aspirations
(Syvertsen et al. 2011) or by early adulthood educational attainment (Wray-Lake
and Hart 2012), those in, or aspiring to, higher social classes participate at higher
rates than adolescents or young adults with, or desiring, less education.
The relation of social class to civic development is not unique to the United
States. International studies of civics knowledge, education, and participation
regularly report associations between maternal educational attainment, one indica-
tor of social class, and markers of civic development in European and South
American countries (Amadeo et al. 2002). The association of social class with
civic and political knowledge is particularly robust in these international studies
and may be the route of influence through which social class affects civic partic-
ipation. Hart, Atkins, and Ford (1998) and Syvertsen and colleagues (2011) have
addressed the social policy implications of social class and civic development.
Positive family climates are also associated with adolescent civic participation.
Fletcher, Elder, and Mekos (2000) followed longitudinally a sample of families in
the American Midwest and found that adolescents whose families were high in
warmth were more likely to become civically engaged than were adolescents whose
families exhibited less positive involvement in the lives of their adolescents.
Parental warmth is positively associated with many good outcomes in childhood

and adolescence, including academic achievement, prosocial development, effec-
tive interpersonal functioning, and so on. Consequently, parental warmth probably
facilitates adolescent entry into civic participation through several paths, with these
paths all leading to personality resilience and social success.
A third route of influence of parents on their children is through modeling.
Analyses of national survey data demonstrate that children and adolescents whose
parents are civically engaged are more likely to volunteer in their communities than
are youth whose parents are not civically engaged. Hart, Atkins, Markey, and
Youniss (2004) found using logistic regression that parental volunteering increased
the odds of adolescents participating in voluntary community service by 30 %. This
relation held up even after statistical adjustments for academic achievement,
adolescent involvement in clubs and teams, social class, and a variety of neighbor-
hood characteristics.
32.3.3 Schools
Schools are the most frequently studied context for observing the consequences of
civic participation on child and adolescent well-being. There is ample evidence
s that classrooms characterized by open discussion, learning about ways to improve
one’s community, and meaningful consideration of political issues deepen com-
mitment to civic participation in students. Kahne and Sporte (2008) asked adoles-
cents in Chicago whether they imagined that in the next several years that they
would become involved in a variety of community activities such as improving
their communities and working with government agencies and demonstrated that
adolescents who were most likely to project future involvement in community
activities were those enrolled in classrooms featuring open discussion of political
and community activities. Torney-Purta et al. (2007) found that students in Chile,
Denmark, England, and the United States who discussed community problems in
school were higher in social trust and prosocial attitudes than were adolescents who
did not experience these kinds of conversations in their classrooms.
There is also evidence indicating that requiring civic participation of adolescents
in schools seems to facilitate later participation. Hart, Donnelly, Atkins, and
Youniss (2007) used data from the NELS:88 (described earlier) to estimate that
young adults who had been required by their high schools to participate in com-
munity service 8 years earlier were 15 % more likely to vote for president of the
United States than were adults who had no community service experience in high
school, suggesting a substantial benefit to mandatory community service. Hart and
colleagues reported that mandatory community service in high school seemed more
effective in increasing later voting than adding traditional civics courses to the
curriculum. Metz and Youniss (2003) found that students in a high school that
instituted a requirement that students volunteer 40 h in order to graduate were more
likely to volunteer after completion of the requirement than were students in the
same school prior to the implementation of the requirement.
968 D. Hart et al.
The combination of civic participation and classroom learning about how to

address community issues may provide the most potent combination for increasing
civic participation. Torney-Purta et al. (2007) found that students in countries in which
civic participation in classroom learning focused on addressing local issues reported
higher levels of internal political efficacy, school efficacy, support for norms of
conventional political participation, and likelihood of voting than students residing in
countries in which either or both of these classroom experiences were relatively absent.
32.3.4 Communities
Civic participation among adults varies substantially from community to commu-

nity within societies. Many of factors account for this variability, including the
educational levels of adults residing in the community, the socioeconomic vitality
of the area, and the racial and ethnic composition of the community, to name just
a few (Putnam 2007). These same factors likely affect the entry of children and
adolescents into civic participation, although little research is available on the topic.
One characteristic of communities that affects civic participation in adolescence
is child saturation, the percentage of the population under the age of 15 in
a community. Communities in which a large fraction of the population is under
the age of 15 are considered to be high in child saturation, while those in which
there are relatively few children and many adults are low in child saturation. Hart,
Atkins, Markey, and Youniss (2004) found that communities high in child satura-
tion generally facilitated entry into volunteering among adolescents. They argued
that adolescents in neighborhoods with lots of other children and adolescents are led
by the examples of their peers and through peer pressure into voluntary community
service. Hart and colleagues found that one exception to this general trend was in
communities both extremely high in child saturation and extremely high in poverty;
in these neighborhoods volunteering was very low. The authors hypothesized that
the combination of many children and adolescents in the neighborhood combined
with high levels of poverty resulted in few adults and few neighborhood institutions
to structure opportunities to enter into civic participation for adolescents.
One implication of this research is that to the extent that civic participation is
beneficial for children and adolescents, opportunities to gain civic participation
experience are unequally distributed in many societies. Families and schools can
create contexts in which children and adolescents can gain civic experiences, but
exhorting families and schools to inculcate civic habits in children and adolescents
will not ensure by itself equal opportunity to gain civic experience among youth
from living in communities divided by income, crime, and so on.
32.3.5 Countries
Countries vary substantially in the types and number of civic participation oppor-
tunities offered to children and adolescents. Figures 32.1, 32.2, and 32.4, presented
earlier in the chapter, illustrate this fact of civic life. These differences surely
matter. Unfortunately, however, how these differences matter for understanding
development in different countries is largely a mystery. As Torney-Purta et al.
(2007) point out, there is very little research on civic participation in adolescence
utilizing a transnational perspective. The consequence is that we know very little
about how different patterns of civic participation around the world influence the
development of adolescents.
32.4 Evidence: The Case of Service-Learning
Our chapter to this point has suggested that civic participation in childhood and
adolescence is good and ought to be facilitated. The patterns of findings in
Figs. 32.1, 32.2, 32.3 and 32.4 are broadly representative of the field and suggest
that civic participation is beneficial for the development of children and adolescents
as well as for the societies they live in. We also outlined the kinds of contexts in
which civic participation can be intentionally facilitated.
However, in our view, the evidence for the benefits of civic participation for
children and adolescents is weaker than generally recognized, and the limitations of
the knowledge base deserve some exploration. Our goal in examining the weak-
nesses of the extant research is to encourage better work on the topic. We focus our
review on service-learning, the most frequently studied intervention intended to
increase civic participation in children and youth, as the problems in this domain
characterize the field.
Service-learning has long been claimed to be of substantial benefit to children
and adolescents. Service-learning is a form of community service often embedded
in schools that usually has curricular and reflective components. Service-learning is
believed by its advocates to have substantial, broad, and uniformly positive effects
on the development of children and adolescents. For example, Billig (2000)
reported that in comparison to nonparticipants, adolescents enrolled in service-
learning activities gain social responsibility; develop higher self-esteem and greater
self-efficacy; report fewer behavioral problems; are less likely to become pregnant
or to cause pregnancies; display greater empathy; gain more political knowledge;
spend more time on task in school; and learn more mathematics, among many other
reported benefits.
However, the evidence for the effectiveness of service-learning is more equiv-
ocal than some of its advocates acknowledge. There are both methodological and
theoretical problems with much of the research on service-learning. Many of the
studies that offer findings supportive of the value of service-learning are flawed by
designs that cannot clearly address whether the service-learning experience is
a causal influence on development. Sometimes, this is a consequence of
a research design in which service-learning participants are tested prior to, and
following, their community service experiences. The problem with this design is
that change between the initial and second testing time might be attributable to any
number of factors (age, time of the school year) besides the service-learning
970 D. Hart et al.
experience. Other studies are flawed by comparing change observed in participants

in service-learning experiences to noncomparable children adolescents. For exam-
ple, students who volunteer to enroll in a class featuring service-learning are
probably different in many ways from those who choose another class (indeed, as
discussed earlier in the chapter, children high in resilience are more likely to
volunteer in adolescence than are children in resilience), and consequently change
over time may be a result of factors (like resilience) that influence decisions to
participate in service-learning rather than the service-learning experience itself.
Billig (2000) and others have noted these kinds of problems.
Some of the published work seems to assume as axiomatic that service-learning
is beneficial for children and adolescents and that the task of researchers is to count
the numerous benefits that arise. One problem with this kind of research is that it
often lacks a theory for how service-learning effects change. A theory of change can
help identify the social and psychological mechanisms that translate the experience
of service-learning into behavioral and psychological outcomes. For example, some
service-learning advocates have argued that discussion of a community service
experience focusing on the relation of the experience to both the intellectual goals
of the course and social responsibility is necessary in order for participants to derive
the benefits deriving from the linking of “the concrete to the abstract” (e.g., Hatcher
and Bringle 1997, p. 153). The advantage of specifying mechanisms (reflection, in
this instance) and outcomes (abstract thinking) is that interventions can be appro-
priately designed and desired outcomes identified. Moreover, theoretical mecha-
nisms allow for clarity in statistical testing, because outcomes that are expected
can be distinguished from those that are not. All too often, evaluations of
service-learning programs report results of statistical analyses indicating that dif-
ferences were obtained for some variables but not for others, with little rationale
offered for why this pattern should be expected.
In one of the best evaluations of service-learning programs, Melchior
(1998) studied model programs for middle and high schools in the United States.
A host of variables was assessed, including civic attitudes, volunteering apart from
that required by the service-learning course, pregnancy, academic achievement in
different courses, and delinquency. Melchior and colleagues found that students
who had enrolled in the service-learning courses were more likely to volunteer and
evidence positive civic attitudes, participate in their schools, and earn higher math
grades, but found no differences on measures of grades in other subjects (social
studies, science, and English), delinquency, communication skills, risky behavior,
or work orientation. In the absence of theory, it is difficult to assimilate this pattern
of findings: Why is there an increase in math grades but not in social studies? Why
does service-learning heighten civic attitudes but not reduce delinquency? These
questions cannot be satisfactorily answered in the absence of theoretical mecha-
nisms that connect service-learning experiences to outcomes.
Theory can also highlight the kinds of outcomes that ought to be expected from
service-learning and distinguish them from those outcomes that should not be
sensitive to the intervention. For example, theory can predict that service-learning
ought to increase volunteering but be unrelated to increases in height. Melchior’s
evaluation of service-learning described above, the theory about change, and the
facets of the individual that ought to be experienced by the service-learning
experience could allow an appropriate weighing of the evidence. It seems important
that facets of civic participation – volunteering, engagement in school, and civic
attitudes – are all affected by service-learning, while effects on qualities more
distant from civic engagement like delinquency, pregnancy, and English scores
are less regularly connected to the service-learning experience.
32.4.1 Causal Influence
Another lesson emerging from Melchior’s (1997) study is that adolescents who are
likely to participate in service-learning experiences are different from those who
are not. In one set of analyses, Melchior followed longitudinally adolescents who
were measured at the beginning of Year 1, at the end of Year 1, and then 12 months
later at the end of Year 2. Some adolescents in this sample participated in service-
learning experiences in Year 2, while others did not. Melchior found that adolescents
who would participate in service-learning in Year 2, in comparison to those who would
not, had better scores on the outcome variables at the beginning of Year 1 and showed
more positive change on many of these variables between the beginning of Year 1 and
the end of Year 1, prior to the service-learning experience in Year 2. This means that
adolescents who choose to enroll in service-learning courses are developing differently
from those who do not, even in advance of service-learning experiences.
As a consequence, it is often difficult to determine whether service-learning – indeed,
whether any civic participation experience – is a causal influence on development.
Random assignment to condition is one way to isolate causal influences. Rather
than allowing students to choose whether or not to enroll in service-learning
courses, they can be randomly assigned to either receive, or not to receive, ser-
vice-learning experiences. The benefit of random assignment is that it eliminates
preexisting differences among individuals as explanations for differences in out-
comes between those who receive service-learning experiences and those who do
not. Because of its great strengths in identifying causal influences, random assign-
ment is a highly desirable element in research designs.
However, random assignment has rarely been used in educational settings and
investigations of major curricular reforms (Slavin 2002). As a consequence, there
are few studies that feature random assignment to study the effects of civic
engagement on child and adolescent development. Allen and colleagues (Allen
et al. 1997) have reported results from one of the best of the random assignment
investigations. They studied the effects of adolescents’ participation in a program
called Teen Outreach. The program featured three elements over the course of
a school year: supervised community service experiences, discussion of those
experiences, and discussion of issues identified as central for adolescent develop-
ment. Students were randomly assigned to either the group participating in the
program or to the control group.
At the completion of the program, participants in Teen Outreach had lower
rates of school failure, pregnancy, and delinquency than did adolescents in the
972 D. Hart et al.
control group. Allen and colleagues suggested that the autonomy afforded Teen
Outreach participants in selecting the sites for their community service activities,
combined with the opportunities for meaningful relationships with the adults super-
vising these activities, may be the sources for the benefits arising from participation.
Yet even this study, an exemplar among those featuring random assignment for the
study of civic participation’s effects on children and adolescents, has limitations.
First of all, Allen reported that random assignment failed to eliminate differences
between participants and nonparticipants: On measures administered prior to partic-
ipation, those who would receive the service-learning experiences were advantaged
relative to those who would be in the control group. Moreover, Teen Outreach also
included discussion of developmental issues, and it is possible that it was this
program element, rather than the civic participation activities, that produced what-
ever changes occurred. Allen’s (Allen et al. 1997) research illustrates how difficult it
is to discern the causal influence of civic participation on the development of
adolescents even in research featuring random assignment.
32.4.2 Do No Harm
Well-meaning adults develop interventions to promote the development of children

and adolescents, not to damage or retard them. Yet harm can result; for example,
Dishion et al. (1999) reported that two well-designed, expensive programs intended
to reduce problem behavior in adolescents actually increased it. Can civic partic-
ipation similarly have harmful effects on children and adolescents?
Kahne and Westheimer (2006) studied ten programs in the United States
intended to impart democratic values to high school students through civic partic-
ipation and education. One goal of these programs was to increase political efficacy,
the sense of being effective civic participants, in teenaged students. Kahne and
Westheimer (2006) review research indicating that political efficacy facilitates
political participation in adults, demonstrating that political efficacy is an important
outcome. Many of the programs they studied succeeded; one program not only
failed to promote political efficacy but actually diminished it in its participants.
How can civic participation retard, rather than accelerate, the kinds of attitudes
that seem to sustain civic engagement? Kahne and Westheimer (2006) found that
the program that diminished political efficacy, named Youth Action, demanded that
its participants engage with a political system unprepared to reciprocate and
allowed participants to formulate unrealistic goals for their volunteer actions. For
example, one group of teenagers in Youth Action aimed to convince the city
supervisors to allocate funding for building a new women’s health center and to
pay for the staff needed to operate it. What makes this goal problematic is that
success probably demands political skills, political influence, and a time commit-
ment that exceed what teenagers could offer. The consequence was that teenagers
were encouraged to pursue a goal that they were unable to achieve, and as a result
this activity decreased the participants’ senses of themselves as effective citizens
and decreased their interest in future civic engagement.
Kahne and Westheimer (2006) argue that learning that political structures are
not easy to change – the lesson afforded to Youth Action participants who failed
to achieve their action goals – can serve citizens well. Perhaps in this sense,
Youth Action was not completely harmful; still, diminishing students’ interest in
civic participation and belief in themselves as effective civic actors probably are
undesirable outcomes.
Similarly mixed findings are reported by Simon and Wang (2002) who
studied young adult participants in the AmeriCorps program. Participants in
this program volunteered for a year in this national service program and worked
on “solving problems specific to particular neighborhoods, towns, cities, and
regions” (Simon and Wang 2002, p. 523). Surprisingly, participants in this year-
long community service experience did not change in uniformly positive direc-
tions. For example, following their AmeriCorps experiences, participants were
less likely to attend public meetings than prior to involvement with AmeriCorps,
and trust in public institutions did not appear to increase. While there were a few
positive outcomes associated with participation, including and increased likeli-
hood of joining community groups, taken as a whole the findings do not indicate
that this kind of service experience promotes well-being.
Our point is that it is possible for civic participation to have potentially negative
effects on children and adolescents; educators ought not assume that civic partic-
ipation can be prescribed as a universal prescription to whatever ills are perceived
in children, adolescents, and youth.
Our goal in this section of the chapter was to highlight the limitations on our
knowledge of the consequences of civic participation for the well-being of children
and adolescents. There are many articles reporting research on the issue, but, as we
have suggested, this research suffers from one or more of four types of limitations.
These include a lack of theoretical mechanisms that can account for the effects of civic
participation experiences on development; indiscriminate statistical testing that makes
difficult the identification of qualities that are, and are not, affected by civic partici-
pation; a lack of research utilizing random assignment; and, finally, inattentiveness to
the possibly negative consequences of civic participation experiences for children
and youth. The end result is that despite thousands of articles and books on the topic,
claims about benefits and costs of civic participation must be somewhat tentative.
32.5 Conclusions
Both theory and research are consistent with the premise that civic participation in
childhood and adolescence promotes the well-being of individuals and societies.
Aristotle’s claims seem borne out by the network of associations of adolescent civic
participation with desirable outcomes such as self-esteem, academic achievement,
political efficacy, and educational aspirations to name just a few. There are also
indications that civic participation of children and adolescents contribute to the
societies they live in. There are good reasons to promote civic engagement and
child and adolescents.
974 D. Hart et al.
A fair amount is now known about how to introduce children and adolescents
into civic engagement. Families play a role; by connecting children and adolescents
to social institutions, parents place their children in contexts which scaffold entry
into civic participation. Moreover, by participating themselves, parents model civic
participation, and the evidence suggests that children and adolescents emulate their
parents in this respect.
There is also good evidence to indicate that schools are important. Classrooms
characterized by open discussion of political issues and strategies to address
community problems increase the likelihood that adolescents will become civically
and politically engaged. The provision of opportunities to participate in the com-
munity, through required community service, also seems to be an effective strategy
for schools to employ.
While there are good reasons to recommend civic participation for children and
adolescents, there is an urgent need for better theory and better research to guide social
policy. There is very little known about the psychological mechanisms that connect
the experience of civic participation to the kinds of developmental outcomes discussed
throughout the chapter. The consequence is that we know far less than we should
about how to make civic participation as meaningful to and as beneficial for children
and adolescents as possible. As we noted earlier in the chapter, there is some evidence
to indicate that civic participation experiences can be useless and perhaps harmful to
children and adolescents. It is our hope that through improved research and theory, the
potential of civic participation for improving the well-being of children and adoles-
cents can be fully realized.
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State of the Field: Youth Community
Service in the USA 33
Edward Metz
33.1 Introduction
In the last two decades in the United States, the field of youth community service has
burgeoned. In K-12 schools and on college campuses, community service programs
are now commonplace and many classrooms use service-learning as an academic
intervention. On the national level, federal programs and nonprofit organizations lead
large-scale initiatives to engage youth in volunteerism. And in recent years, full-time
service programs for recent high school and college graduates are seeing record
numbers of applications and enrollments. Given this infrastructure and the willing-
ness of young people to get involved if asked to do so, it is not surprising that today’s
youth are serving at historically high rates (Volunteering in America 2012).
What are youth (This chapter primarily focuses on youth from middle school age
(12) to recent college graduates. While younger children do perform community
service through their schools and with their families, less research is available in
this area.) servers doing? As part of Global Youth Service Day, elementary school
children are making sandwiches for the homeless. As part of a service-learning
project in a middle school science class, students are collecting water from streams
and analyzing pollutant levels. With their church youth group, teenagers are
traveling to impoverished communities to build houses. Through a public policy
class, college students are organizing advocacy campaigns for worker rights. And,
college graduates are enlisting in full-time stipended service programs such as
AmeriCorps, Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and City Year. All told, these are just a few
of the many types of community service in which young people are engaged today.
Despite the promise, youth community service has yet to reach its potential.
Researchers and practitioners have highlighted a gap between what are known to be
the key elements of effective service – and how programs are actually carried out
E. Metz
US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: Edward.Metz@ed.gov

978 E. Metz
(Melchior 1999; Clemmit 2012). In this regard, there is great variability in how
schools implement key parts of service programs, from hiring service coordinators
to providing meaningful service opportunities with concrete reflection and to
instilling a culture where service is valued and thrives. This gap is especially
noticeable in schools with little or no budget to support community service or
where there is less buy-in from key stakeholders. On a national policy level, the
field has not gained traction in mainstream education circles (Levine 2008), par-
tially because findings from rigorous research studies of national service programs
have yielded inconsistent or null results (Melchior 1999; Spring et al. 2008). As
well, the recent economic and political environment has resulted in significant
funding reductions to national service programs and has left future funding for
service programs unclear.
This chapter in the Handbook of Child Well-Being describes the current land-
scape of youth community service in the United States. The chapter presents
a general overview of the field by defining the core elements that constitute the
concept community service and by detailing trends in the field. The chapter then
provides examples of several forms of institutionalized youth community service,
including national service programs, service organized by nonprofit organizations,
full-time service programs, and school-based service programs.
33.2 Defining Youth Community Service
Community service is a prosocial activity that is performed for the direct or indirect
benefit of a recipient without expectation of a material reward. There are many
variations in the forms of community service through which young people engage.
For example, community service can be performed as informal volunteerism (e.g.,
helping a neighbor who is sick on weekly basis) or formal or organized volunteerism
(e.g., church youth group or after-school school club), it can embedded as part of
a program (e.g., service-learning or year-long service programs), or it can be
required as part of mandate (e.g., school requirement). In recent years, opportunities
for community service have become increasingly institutionalized by schools,
nonprofit organizations, and by government-funded programs (Perry and Thompson
2003; Musick and Wilson 2008). While the above forms of service have unique
features and different modes of implementation, all share common elements. These
include an action by the server, a recipient of the service, an organized and formal
time commitment, and (in most cases) an auspice under which the service occurs:
• The action component of community service describes the specific nature of the
activity. Common actions through community service include assisting or help-
ing, visiting or entertaining, teaching or coaching, advocating, planting, main-
tenance, collecting or donating, administrative tasks, researching, or presenting
findings, among others.
• The recipient of the service may include persons or causes in need of assistance.
Common recipients of service include the elderly, homeless, children with
developmental disabilities, younger children or peers, or the environment, to
33 State of the Field: Youth Community Service in the USA 979
name a few. A recipient can also be a cause, such as homelessness or public

health. Community service activities can place youth in direct contact with
a recipient, such as a homeless person, or provide indirect assistance, such as
through a walkathon or doing administrative work in an office.
• Community service entails an organized and formal time commitment, more than
episodic helping or an incidental altruistic or prosocial act. Thus, helping an
elderly person or a child across a street is a kind act – but would not be considered
service unless done formally (e.g., volunteering as a crossing guard). While
a community service activity can be a one-time event, many forms or service
are performed weekly, monthly, or on a regular or full-time basis.
• While community service can be done by individuals without a sponsoring
organization, it is most often performed under the auspice or in conjunction
with an established entity, be it a school, religious organization, or a civic
organization.
Given the many possible actions and recipients, there are literally hundreds of
different types of community service. Each community service type is further
shaped by additional features, such as whether youth are offered training and
support; feel the service is meaningful, challenging, or interesting; feel they can
make a difference; have direct interaction with a recipient; perform service in
collaboration with peers or do it alone; prepare for the experience before and reflect
afterward; and are recognized for their accomplishments, among many others. Each
of these features is likely critical in determining the impact and the level of
satisfaction and fulfillment derived from the experience. Yet, research in the extent
literature often has not included such key features in studies examining the effects
of service.
33.3 Benefits from Youth Community Service
There is widespread agreement that the benefits from youth community service can
be substantial to recipients, organizations, society, and youth servers themselves.
Recipients, such as the elderly, benefit from the energy, enthusiasm, and pres-
ence of youth servers. Nonprofit and service provider organizations benefit when
youth complete tasks and projects that may not have been started or finished
otherwise, such as entertaining residents at a nursing home or providing manpower
to carry out a food drive. Society benefits when youth lead public health campaigns
to raise awareness for drunk driving or smoking cigarettes. Community service can
also foster democratic values when youth help citizens register for elections or
work to address social injustice and foster peace. For example, programs such as
City Year, which place servers in urban areas to turnaround the lowest performing
schools, promote greater tolerance, trust, and understanding, by bringing talented
youth together from distinct socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. There is
evidence in the literature to conclude that recipients and community organizations
are relatively satisfied with the work youth servers provide (see Perry and
Thompson 2003). However, the measurable impact of youth community service
980 E. Metz
projects on recipients, organizations, and society continues to be a largely an under-

researched area (Stoecker and Tyron 2009).
Most of the research in the extent literature focuses on how community service
and volunteerism can positively impact youth participants. Youniss and Yates
(1996) applied Erikson’s theory to a developmental framework for why service
can influence prosocial identity development in youth. Erikson (1968) theorized
that the period of adolescence is critical for constructing an identity so that
individuals feel they have a place in society. Erikson posed that this process is
a social one whereby youth seek to belong and contribute to a tradition, whether
positive or negative in nature. Applied to the current topic, community service
exposes youth to positive traditions new and different from themselves, with
organizations that espouse the values of a particular cause. Equipped with this
new rationale and a plan for action, youth address problems and begin to develop
a sense of themselves as active agents working for that cause in the betterment of
society. By engaging in service, youth come to see how they fit into the world in
a constructive, rewarding way. Youniss and Yates (1996) theorized that through
this process, a social or civic identity is formed, clarified, and strengthened in ways
that last through life. Once this process takes root, they are no longer the individuals
they were before service, because they have altered their identities.
Theorists including Larson (2000), Lerner (2004), and Levine (2008) also view
organized prosocial activities – such as community service – as a mechanism to
promote assets and foster what has been termed positive youth development. Rather
than focusing on risk factors, positive youth development is a framework which
emphasizes the importance of focusing on youths’ strengths to ensure that all youth
grow up to become contributing adults. This theory holds that all young people have
assets to contribute to society, such as energy, perseverance, ideas, creativity, and
knowledge. When provided organized activities to collaborate, discuss, serve,
create, belong, and address significant issues, youth can thrive. This theory flips
the prevailing view, which focuses youth being at risk for dropping out, abusing
drugs, being disengaged, and thus needing surveillance, prevention, remediation,
and discipline. In this regard, rather than providing programs that deliver services to
respond to young people’s deficits, organized community service programs can
empower young people to address critical issues in their communities and allow
them to develop transferable skills and competencies in the process.
Research shows that performing community service and volunteering does relate
to positive outcomes for youth participants. Young people who serve are less likely
to use drugs or engage in risky behaviors and are more likely to have positive
academic, psychological, and occupational well-being (Fiske 2001; Oesterie et al.
2004). Youth who serve are more likely to have a strong work ethic when they reach
adulthood and are more likely to volunteer and vote (Zaff and Michelsen 2002).
Service during youth is also related to greater respect of others, leadership skills,
and an understanding of citizenship that can carry forward to adulthood (Morrissey
and Werner-Wilson 2005).
Of course, the benefits to youth from performing service depend on the particular
experience, including factors such as the type of service, whether the service is
meaningful and challenging opportunities, or whether the program provides support

(Newmann and Rutter 1984; Stoecker and Tyron 2009). In this sense, not all service
experiences are worthwhile for youth servers. Picking up trash or filing papers to
fulfill a school requirement would seem less likely to benefit a young person than
types that have face-to-face interaction with a recipient, like tutoring a child or
serving at a soup kitchen. Or, when youth volunteers are placed in challenging
roles, such as building houses or answering phone lines at a crisis clinic, they likely
need ample training and frequent supervision to ensure that services are rendered
properly. Further, if a young person is bored by their role or task or an organization
does not value the service, it would be unlikely to be a beneficial experience for the
young person or the recipient. To this point (and perhaps the key point of this
chapter), a wide body of research now demonstrates that the benefits of youth
community service experiences typically depend on the quality of the program,
as well-designed and implemented programs lead to more positive outcomes
(Melchior 1999; Youniss and Yates 1996; Metz and Youniss 2005; Pickeral 2008).
33.4 Trends in the Field
The precise rate of youth involvement in community service or volunteerism is not

clear, as figures vary from study to study depending on factors such as how service
is defined (e.g., formal or informal volunteerism, school-based service-learning,
involvement through requirements), the frequency of the service (e.g., one-time vs.
regular participation), and that sample being assessed (e.g., children, teenagers, or
college students). A recent national study indicates that 35 % of 12th graders, 31 %
of 10th graders, and 27 % of 8th graders volunteered one time or more in the last
month prior to being surveyed (Child Trends 2011). When participation is defined
more broadly to include other forms of community service, such as school-based
required service or service-learning, or focuses on a specific sample of young
people, research shows that as many as 60 % or more of young people report
having served (Musick and Wilson 2008). When looking at specific schools with
a culture of community service and strong programs, rates of volunteerism can be
even higher.
Research also speaks to different rates of participation by age, as findings
consistently show that grade school students serve less than middle and high school
students (Child Trends 2011). This reflects a trend whereby service participation
earlier in life builds upon and leads to sustained involvement as young people get
older. High school students and grade school students are also engaged in different
types of service. Older servers are more likely to participate in types of service that
provide direct exposure to people in need, whereas younger children are more likely
to perform types of service such as contributing to a cause (Metz and Youniss
2004). In recent years, more and more grade school classrooms are engaging
younger students in activities that can be construed as service. For example,
many grade schools ask students to contribute to food drives by bringing in canned
goods as part of Global Citizenship Day or involve students in events such as walks
982 E. Metz
for the homeless. Future research is needed more closely to examine this trend and
to assess whether and how these experiences frame young children’s understanding
of social issues and their future involvement in service.
Individual differences and demographic factors are highlighted in the literature
as predictors in whether young people decide to perform voluntary community
service. Research demonstrates that prosocial personality dispositions of other-
oriented empathy and helpfulness (Penner et al. 1995) and altruism (Batson et al.
1978) positively relate to volunteer participation. Other researchers have studied
personal motivation and educational and career goals as determining factors
whether a young person volunteers (Omoto and Snyder 1995). For example,
along with strong academic performance and participation in extracurricular activ-
ities such as sports and clubs, community service participation is often an indis-
pensable component in many high school student’s applications for college and
college student’s applications for law and graduate school.
Studies also consistently show that female youth volunteer more than their male
counterparts, although gender differences even out in the early 1920s. Students with
higher GPAs are also more likely to perform voluntary community service. Extra-
curricular involvement, such as belonging to school clubs and government, and
attending religious services have all been shown to relate to greater youth involve-
ment in service (Nolin et al. 1997; Jennings 2002; Metz et al. 2003). Along with
ready-made opportunities for service at schools, youth learn about volunteer oppor-
tunities through their social network and family. Studies show that if a parent or
a friend volunteers, a young person him or herself is also more likely to volunteer.
Further, McLellan and Youniss (2003) reported that parents who were involved in
social service (e.g., direct interaction with a person in need) were more likely to
have children who did the same type of service as opposed to different forms of
service, such as tutoring or helping in administrative functions.
Indicators of socioeconomic status also have been shown to relate to youth
voluntary participation (Jennings 2002). Youth whose parents have a high level
of education are more likely to volunteer than parents with only a high school
degree or less (Nolin et al. 1997). Youth from higher socioeconomic backgrounds
have been found to serve more than those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
(Volunteering in America 2012). This is likely due to more opportunities being
available in higher-income neighborhoods and because youth from lower-income
neighborhoods have less time to serve due to work responsibilities. Rates of service
are significantly greater for college students than youth who do not attend (Child
Trends 2011). One study showed that 75 % of college freshmen had served in their
final year of high school (Sax et al. 1999). Conversely, rates of involvement in
service are dramatically lower in schools in lower socioeconomic areas (Kahne and
Middaugh 2008). These data all highlight a “service divide” where the family
background and the community in which a young person lives relate to the
prevalence of opportunities students are presented to serve.
Beyond personal characteristics and socioeconomic factors, a consistent body of
research shows an additional external factor motivates young people to partake in
community service and volunteerism. That is, an invitation to serve, or being asked,
overrides internal dispositions or background factors in statistical models and can

act as an equalizer in whether individuals actually volunteer (Verba et al. 1995).
The Independent Sector (2002) reported that 93 % of young people volunteered
after an invitation to do so, compared to only 24 % who volunteered without such an
impetus. More recent research echoes this finding, as being invited to serve was the
top reason motivating young people for volunteering (Kirby et al. 2011). Once
a young person gets involved, there are factors that predict whether they will stay
involved. Young people who discuss their volunteer experiences are twice as likely
to continue compared to volunteers who do not discuss their experience (Lopez
et al. 2006). The type of service experience also relates to whether a young person
continues serving. Metz et al. (2003) reported that high school students who
performed voluntary service that placed them in direct contact with a recipient
had greater and increased intentions to volunteer in the future compared to students
who did functional or administrative types of service that did not provide direct
contact with a recipient (e.g., filing papers or office work). Other researchers have
shown that more challenging, meaningful, and personally rewarding experiences
increased students’ likelihood to continue serving in the future (McLellan and
Youniss 2003). Lastly, in their study of a public high school, Metz et al. (2003)
reported that more than a quarter of students performed four or more different types
of service during their junior or senior year. Hence, for these students, service led to
more and different types of experiences.
33.5 Institutions and Youth Community Service
Since the 1970s when records were first tracked, the rate of youth volunteerism has
increased from 10 % to 33 % in 2005 (It should be noted that the slight decline in
community service participation from 2005 to present likely is the result of reduc-
tions to federal- and state-level policies that support systematic integration of
service into education) (Kirby et al. 2011). This increase over three decades is in
large part due to the institutionalization of community service, through national
service policies which fund programs around the country; through nonprofit orga-
nizations that provide service opportunities, in colleges and universities; through
full-time service programs; and through school-based service programs (Musick
and Wilson 2008; Perry and Thompson 2003). The remainder of this chapter
provides an overview of these forms of institutionalized service.
33.6 National Service
On a national level, the institutionalization of youth community service began in

1933 during President F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, with the creation the Civilian
Conservation Corps. This public works relief program enlisted more than three
million 18- to 24-year-old men to work on environmental projects in an effort to
curb the great depression. The program was groundbreaking as it was the first to use
984 E. Metz
federal tax dollars to pay for individuals to perform service, as funds paid for
program elements such as transportation to sites, housing, meals, and a small
stipend to be sent back to servers’ families. While the program ended before
World War II, it was generally viewed as a success as it provided opportunities
for meaningful activities where there were previously none. In 1961, President
Kennedy instituted the Peace Corps as a democratic nation building strategy
whereby men and eventually women serve in developing countries. Since then,
more than 200,000 young men and women have served in 132 countries. The
current budget for the program stands at around $375 million per year. Leveraging
the success of the Peace Corps, President Johnson established the Volunteers in
Service to America, otherwise known as VISTA, to improve the self-reliance of
local institutions to address issues of poverty by utilizing youth volunteers. Since its
inception, 140,000 young Americans have participated in VISTA, which remains to
this day. Support for national service waned in the early 1970s during the Nixon
administration and because of cynicism of US involvement in Vietnam. National
service was further decentralized and dissolved through the 1980s by the Reagan’s
administration in order to shrink the size and breadth of the federal government
(Perry and Thompson 2003).
In 1990, President G.H. Bush revived national focus on volunteerism by signing
the National and Community Service Act to engage more people in service to
address serious problems. In 1993, President Clinton established the Corporation
for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency that houses all
domestic service programs. Currently, the CNCS is charged with activities such as
designing and implementing a variety of programs and initiatives across the
country, supporting staff to manage the agency and liaisons at education agencies
to coordinate programs at the local level, and providing stipends and covering
expenses for service participants. Critics of national service have argued that it is
a “perversion of volunteerism” and an extension of big government into realms
previously handled by private nonprofits. Supporters agree with President Clinton’s
vision that community building occurs best when people and their government
work at the grass roots in genuine partnership (Perry and Thompson 2003). One
program in this agency, AmeriCorps, requires volunteers to commit 20–40 h a week,
typically in local education, social service, and environmental conversation programs.
Some members receive modest living stipends, and most are eligible for grants to help
pay for college or student loans. AmeriCorps is based on the premise that service to
one’s country not only improves society – but also the persons involved. To date, more
than 540,000 young people have served through AmeriCorps.
In 2009, President Obama signed into law the Kennedy Serve America Act,
which provided a sweeping expansion of national service to engage millions of
Americans in addressing local needs through volunteer service. However, in the
2000s, efforts to include service-learning in national education reform initiatives
were unsuccessful as service did not align to the No Child Left Behind Legislation
and the era of high stakes testing (Levine 2008). By 2011, because of the economic
recession and a deeply polarized political landscape, funding for the Learn and Serve
America program (the federal program that supports service-learning in schools)
was eliminated in the amount of $40 M, and funding for AmeriCorps was signifi-
cantly reduced. To date, while the crux of the CNCS’s annual budget remains, the
climate for future funding for national service is far from assured.
Research has provided rich descriptive accounts of the positive outcomes for
youth volunteers and communities where they serve through national service
(Melchior and Bailis 2002; CNCS 2008). A retrospective study demonstrated
a long-term impact on members’ rates of volunteerism and civic engagement
years after they serve (CNCS 2008). Research also shows that AmeriCorps partic-
ipation related to future careers in public service and aspects of civic leadership
(CNCS 2007). Other studies have provided evidence that there is variation in
outcomes depending on particular program. Melchior (1999) used a 3-year longi-
tudinal design to evaluate the Learn and Serve America programs, which were
initiated to support school- and community-based efforts to involve school-aged
youth in community service. Findings showed that well-designed and implemented
school-based service-learning programs had a positive impact on young people’s
civic and educational attitudes and school performance while also meeting impor-
tant community needs. Yet, outcomes depended on the quality of the program
through which students served, as poorly designed programs did not produce the
same outcomes as well-designed programs.
On the whole, there is a paucity of evaluations of national service programs,
mostly due to the enormous expense and complicated nature of conducting research
on the impact of community service programs on participants and recipients. Of the
national evaluations that have been conducted, few have been conducted with long-
term longitudinal and experimental designs, and few have adequately controlled for
self-selection effects and individual differences among participants. Further,
research has not adequately demonstrated that participation in national service
improves core academic outcomes. Hence, skeptics have continued to question
the worth of federally funded programs (see Clemmit 2012). As summarized by
Frumkin and Jastrzab (2011), despite the cost to tax payers, including a $1B annual
CNCS budget, it is still unclear who benefits from national service, under what
conditions these programs work best, and how exactly they contribute to the
strengthening of communities.
33.7 Nonprofit and Religious Organizations Support

of Community Service
The institutionalization of community service and volunteerism was born in non-

profit community and religious organizations around the start of the twentieth
century (Musick and Wilson 2008). During this time, influential thinkers such as
William James and Arthur Dunn extolled youth volunteer service as a means to
instill social responsibility and promote cohesion among diverse persons within the
democratic society. These progressive educators based their philosophy and prac-
tice in the belief that learning and human development are processes of living, not
simply preparation for a future life.
986 E. Metz
Examples of established organizations that have provided opportunities for

youth to participate in service include the Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCA, YWCA,
twenty-first Century Community Learning Centers, 4-H, Camp Fire, Boys/Girls
Scouts, and faith-based organizations, among others. Such organizations have
provided structured out-of-school and summer activities (including service) for
young people to learn and develop competencies and job skills that are normally
not practiced in schools (Mahoney et al. 2005). These activities have been and are
still especially important for youth in low-income areas, whose families and schools
often provide fewer opportunities for entry into service (Pedersen and Seidman
2005). Because young people are more likely to take up a volunteer role if they have
been socialized into playing the role, these organizations act as bridges to youth
involvement in society (Musick and Wilson 2008).
A large body of research demonstrates that volunteerism through community
and religious organizations during youth plants a seed and acts as an entry point for
further volunteerism and civic engagement in adulthood. Youniss et al. (1997), in
their review of a series of long-term studies, found strong support for this theory and
concluded that youth who took part in service as members of civic and political
organizations were more likely than nonparticipants to be engaged in community
organizations and voting 15 years later. Similarly, reviews by Verba et al. (1995),
Raskoff and Sundeen (1999), Niemi and Junn (1998), and Flanagan et al. (2001) all
show that service involvement with community and religious organizations during
youth leads to enduring patterns of engagement reflective of citizenship. In this
regard, at a time when young people are seeking to understand themselves in
relation to others, involvement in service provides one mechanism through which
youth can develop a sense of civic identity by connecting society, enhancing their
awareness of political and social issues, and stimulating a sense of social respon-
sibility and agency (Youniss et al. 1997).
In the last 20 years, a new crop of national organizations has emerged to provide
opportunities for youth to perform community service and to build additional
capacity for the field of youth service. Youth Service America (YSA) is
a privately funded nonprofit organization that leads nationwide efforts through
large-scale events that engage millions of young people in service such as National
Volunteer Week, Clean-Up America Day, Semester of Service, and Global Youth
Service Day. YSA also provides grants for students, programs, and community
partners; offers resources and trainings; and sponsors a weekly newsletter that
reaches 40,000 subscribers.
The National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) is a nationwide nonprofit
organization whose mission is to promote school-based service-learning. NYLC
is the host of the annual National Service-Learning Conference, the largest such
event in the country each year, and provides tools and technical assistance in
support of best practices in the field.
The Afterschool Alliance is a consortium of public, private, and nonprofit groups
committed to raising awareness and expanding resources for after-school programs.
A research study by this group found that more than a quarter of US children are
alone or unsupervised after school and that during this time, such children are
significantly more likely to partake in juvenile crime and experiment with risky
behaviors such as smoking, drinking, drugs, and unprotected sex (Afterschool
Alliance 2012). To address this void, the Afterschool Alliance supports more than
25,000 after-school program partners, and their publications reach more than
65,000 individuals every month. The Afterschool Alliance supports community
service as one positive activity to address this gap between school and time at home.
Another organization that promotes youth civic engagement through service is
Innovations in Civic Participation (ICP). ICP designed and implemented the Sum-
mer of Service (SOS) program to provide meaningful activities for middle school-
aged young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. SOS attempts to fill
a void where there are fewer opportunities for organized activities and to prevent
summer learning loss. The 2010 pilot program engaged 600 young people in 125 or
more hours of environmental conservation projects. Results from research demon-
strated the promise of this approach in supporting youth in areas of civic engage-
ment and academic enrichment while making a difference in local communities
(Tysvaer 2012).
An additional trend in the last decade is the increasing use of technology and
Web-based resources to support youth community service. For example, NYLC
now hosts a multimedia website with a multitude of free tools and resources for
practitioners (see http://lift.nylc.org), and an organization called GoToService-
Learning.org hosts a website to provide stakeholders key resources (see http://
www.gotoservicelearning.org/additional-resources). In the nonprofit voluntary
and philanthropic sector, Web-based platforms have emerged as a critical compo-
nent in addressing causes and needs. For example, national nonprofit organizations
such as GreatNonprofits (http://greatnonprofits.org/), Charity Navigator (www.
charitynavigator.org), DonorsChoose (www.Donorschoose.org), and Catchafire
(http://www.catchafire.org/) each use sophisticated multimedia and social network-
ing platforms to generate interest and raise engagement in the specific projects
being sponsored. Research is needed to determine in what ways and how well these
forms of technology mobilize youth volunteers.
33.8 Higher Education
In higher education, almost 90 % of colleges and universities offer structured

opportunities for service (Clemmit 2012). Similar to K-12, many colleges and
universities support service through placement offices and centers devoted to public
service and volunteerism. (For information on community service programs in
higher education, see http://evergreen.loyola.edu/rcrews/www/sl/academic.html)
Many professors in institutions of higher education institutions are incorporating
service-learning (also referred to as community-based or project-based learning)
into their classrooms as an education intervention. Other mechanisms have
emerged in support of service-learning in higher education. For example, Campus
Compact acts as the national coalition of 1,200 college and university presidents
representing some six million students. Initiated in 1985, Campus Compact
988 E. Metz
promotes community service that develops students’ citizenship skills, helps cam-
puses forge effective community partnerships, and provides resources and training
for faculty seeking to integrate civic and community-based learning into the
curriculum. Despite the fact that community service is thriving in institutions of
higher education, there is disturbing divide for young people who do not attend
college, as research shows these individuals are the least likely to become engaged
in service (Child Trends 2011).
33.9 Full-Time Service Programs
Full-time service programs are another example of the institutionalization of youth

community service. These programs are often 1 or 2 years in duration and place
recent high school or college graduates in full-time community service positions.
A key element of these programs is that youth are often placed in lower-income and
impoverished communities, where need is the greatest and where nonprofits and
schools benefit most from youths’ energy, perseverance, and skills. These programs
often provide servers housing, meals, and health insurance, and a small stipend for
additional living experiences. These programs also sometimes allow the deferment
of college loans. Full-time service programs are often of interest to recent college
graduates for several reasons, including an opportunity to serve for meaningful
causes, the opportunity to make a difference in working to remedy societal plights,
and the opportunity to gain marketable workplace skills or explore different career
options.
An example of a full-time service program is the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC).
JVC is a spiritually based organization the enlists youth volunteers who dedicate 1
year or more to service working with people in poverty, including the homeless,
abused women and children, immigrants and refugees, the mentally ill, and AIDs/
HIV patients, and in recent years, for environmental education and preservation.
Through retreats, local formation teams, and community living, volunteers are
immersed in the “four values” of JVC, including spirituality, community, simple
living, and social justice. While JVC incorporates Catholic teaching and spirituality
into their programs, it is open to volunteers of all faiths. Since 1955, more than
15,000 recent college graduates served through JVC.
33.10 School-Based Community Service Programs
Trend data in the past few decades have highlighted decreasing levels of civic
engagement and political knowledge among recent cohorts of youth (NAEP 2010;
Putnam 2000). To counteract this trend, policy makers and educators have initi-
ated school-based programs with the belief that service can socialize students as
active and participatory citizens (Boyte 1991; The Civic Mission of Schools
2003). Furthermore, many educators believe that service – especially when done
as service-learning – can be an effective pedagogy for students in learning
academic content and gaining important life and career skills (Fiske 2001). For
these reasons, data show that 80 % of schools now offer opportunities for
volunteer community service, often by arranging service projects through clubs,
after-school programs, and service trips (Spring et al. 2008). Schools also have
initiated more formal programs in recent years that require students to perform
community service as a prerequisite for graduation and as an education interven-
tion through service-learning. To arrange service opportunities and support
students’ experiences, many schools have hired part- or full-time coordinators
to manage these programs.
33.10.1 School-based Community Service Requirements
More than 40 % of middle and high schools in the USA require some or all students
to serve, including schools in Maryland; Washington, DC; Detroit; and Chicago
(Spring et al. 2008). The rationale for requirements is clear – because schools are
the one common institution to reach all young people, mandates ensure that even
the most disengaged students become involved in their community. Requirement
programs vary depending on how service is presented and opportunities that are
arranged. Some are framed to enhance citizenship, whereas others are more general
to impart helping-like virtues or to increase students’ own self-esteem (Walker
2002). While the benefits of service-learning may be more potent because service is
integrated within academic content and reflection is intentional, many schools opt
for “stand-alone service-only” programs. Such programs are easier to implement
and require few or no resources. Such variability sheds lights on the inconsistent
findings across outcome studies examining required service programs (Melchior
1999; Planty and Regnier 2003).
Despite the reasons for community service requirements, skeptics question the
logic of “mandating volunteerism,” which they state should emanate from free
choice rather than coercion (Finn and Vanourek 1995; Sobus 1995). Others ques-
tion requiring service without structured reflection or a connection to a curriculum.
Still others have voiced practical rationales for their opposition, stating that
required service hours can detract from more central aspects in students’ lives,
notably academics or employment (Martin 1996). Lastly, there are questions about
whether schools can provide enough satisfying and meaningful opportunities for all
students to serve in the community (Gallant et al. 2010). This is especially true in
larger schools with hundreds or thousands of students, where providing placements
and organizations through which to partner may be challenging.
A small but growing body of research has examined the requirement question
empirically. Lopez (2002) found that while 66 % high school students support civics
course requirements, yet only 43 % favored requiring service. Niemi and Junn
(1998) and Keeter et al. (2002) using a national data set found that having
a requirement did not predict students’ scores on an array of civic indices, whereas
schools providing volunteer placements were a predictor on the same measures.
Covitt (2002) reported that students under the Maryland state requirement were
990 E. Metz
less likely to benefit if they had negative attitudes toward the requirement and if their
program failed to foster autonomy, such as allowing students to choose when and
where to serve. As well, Helms (2006), using a large data set, reported that Maryland
students under the state-wide service requirement were no more likely to volunteer
following high school than a comparison group without the requirement.
A different set of studies reports that service requirements can promote students’
prosocial development and civic engagement. Metz and Youniss (2005), using
a longitudinal quasi-experimental design, reported that students who performed
required service who would not have otherwise volunteered had increased political
awareness and increased intentions to vote and volunteer after graduating high
school compared to a control group. Both Planty, Bozick, and Regnier (2006) and
Hartet al. (2007) analyzed national data sets and reported that students with
mandated service in high school volunteered at rates above the national average
after both 2- and 8-year periods. As well, Hart et al. (2007) reported that doing
a mix of required and voluntary service was positively related to measures of voting
and civic volunteering.
In summary, for administrators interested in service as a mechanism to enrich
citizenship or pedagogical learning, results from the research literature indicate that
it likely may not be enough to tack on a specified number of required service hours.
Rather, programs should be devised and implemented to provide meaningful
opportunities that address real issues within the community, for regular rather
than just one-time service involvement, for supportive environments while serving,
and for meaningful reflection afterward (Keeter et al. 2003). These elements point
to a conclusion that it is the structure and quality of the program that determines the
outcomes of the policy – rather than the whether or not service is required. Unless
programs promote thoughtful analysis of students’ experiences and issues involved
in the service, the programs effect would likely be nil.
33.10.2 School-based Service-Learning Programs
As of 2008, 35 % of middle and high schools in the USA offered service-learning as

an education intervention (Some proponents do not view service-learning as a form
of service but rather strictly as a pedagogical strategy) (CNCS 2008). This is
because many policy makers and educators believe that well-designed and
implemented service-learning projects provide opportunities for students to learn
standards-relevant content, to become civically engaged, and to address community
needs (Kahne et al. 2012; Civic Mission of Schools 2003). Examples of service-
learning projects include a grade school science class researching native plants and
designing public service announcements for helping the community to understand
the need for preservation or a middle school civics class researching local voting
procedures in class and then facilitating a voter registration campaign in their
community.
In the past two decades, the science related to developing effective service-
learning programs has improved significantly, as there is now a substantial research
base that identifies the key elements that are essential for effective practice (NYLC
2008). For instance, research shows that service-learning may be most potent when
students – guided by a teacher-facilitator – examine an issue that aligns to curricular
content; design a project and perform sustained service that provides exposure to
new and different points of view; reflect through writing, discussing, and analyzing
results; and celebrate what was accomplished. Further, schools often strengthen
programs by supporting a part or full-time service-learning coordinator, offering
professional development to teachers to integrate service-learning in existing
courses, and by establishing partnerships with community organizations who host
student servers. (The National Leadership Youth Council has produced a service-
learning cycle which depicts best practices in the field. See (http://www.nylc.org/
sites/nylc.org/files/SLCycle_2PgHandOut.pdf)).
While there are few studies that have tested service-learning from a national
perspective using rigorous research methods (e.g., randomized control trials with
longitudinal designs), there is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating the
promise of service-learning on a smaller program by program scale. This research
points to the notion that service-learning has benefits because it is more engaging
for some students than traditional instructional methods (Pickeral 2008). In assess-
ment of written essays comparing students who were and were not exposed to
service-learning, those with service-learning demonstrated greater increases in
cognitive complexity over time. In the social and emotional realm, studies
show increased student agency to address community issues, stronger interpersonal
skills coordinating with adults and others who are different, and better attendance
(Pickeral 2008). Furco (2002) found that youth who participated in service-learning
showed increased development of ethics compared to nonparticipating
students, and results from a study by Laird and Black (2002) revealed that
service-learning was related to social-moral awareness and social agency.
Melchior and Bailis 2002 reported that students who enrolled in service-learning
courses had a decline in factors that were associated with risk behaviors. In the area
of civic engagement, there is a strong relation between service-learning and
increases in leadership skills, connection to the community, and social capital
(Pickeral 2008).
Despite the potential of service-learning to support youth development and
while it has an established presence in schools, there are several reasons service-
learning is yet to be considered a mainstream education intervention (Levine 2008).
First, there is a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the impact of programs on
students’ academic learning. Second, in the past decade, the No Child Left Behind
policy has narrowed the curricular focus, and cause programs focused on whole-
child development – such as service-learning – to be expendable in many schools.
Third, schools shy away from service-learning because of the complexity, the time,
and the resources it takes to design and implement high-quality service-learning
programs. Further, there is also concern that schools do not have the capacity or
personnel to manage students serving at sites away from school nor can schools
protect students when engaging in certain types of service that may jeopardize
their safety. Fourth, there is a lack of understanding of the parameters of the
992 E. Metz
service-learning approach and the lack of adoption as a school-wide intervention.

Lastly, there is concern among some politicians, school boards, and other commen-
tators that some forms of service may be overtly used for partisan political purposes.
33.10.3 School-based Service and Civic Engagement
There is a growing body of research which demonstrates that well-designed and

implemented school-based community service programs foster aspects of citizen-
ship and help students gain new skills while learning academic content (Youniss
and Yates 1996; Metz and Youniss 2003; Flanagan and Faison 2001). Yet despite
research on specific programs and the increasing rates of service participation on
a national level, research continues to show that youth today are no more proficient
in civics or likely to vote than in previous years (NAEP 2010; Carnegie Corporation
2003). This “service/politics split,” as some commentators call it (Walker 2002),
has prompted speculation that today’s youth view service not as a means to but as
an alternative to civic and political engagement (Putnam 2000). Other commenta-
tors have shifted the debate away from servers themselves and instead placed the
onus on the ideological perspectives that underlie the service programs through
which youth are involved (Barber 1994; Kahne and Westheimer 1996). These
authors state that service programs that emphasize individualistic acts of altruism,
helping, or charity have little capacity to connect students’ everyday concerns to the
political process. Rather, the authors insist that programs must collectively engage
young people in service that addresses broader social and institutional issues and
can lead youth to become active and critical thinkers about the obligations and
responsibilities of democratic citizenship.
As Kahne and Westheimer (1996) note, programs that do not promote critical
thinking risk promoting “a thousand points of the status quo” or fostering the kind
of noblesse oblige, whereby the well-off learn to feel obligated to help the less
advantaged. Further, as stated by Barber (1994), young people need to learn and
understand that service is more than about helping or giving back to the less
fortunate but that free democratic communities depend on mutual responsibility
and that rights without obligations are ultimately not sustainable. Applying this
perspective to service, programs designed to link students’ experiences to aspects of
citizenship and to lead to critical reflection of social and political issues are the
forms of service that will enhance aspects of civic engagement (Kahne and
Middaugh 2008). In this regard, the answer may be that some types of service are
more likely to promote civic engagement than others, especially ones that prompt
youth to reflect on the political basis of social problems such as poverty, homeless-
ness, disparity in distribution in wealth, racism, the environment, and so on.
Research by Metzet al. (2003) demonstrated that different types of service were
related to gains in certain areas but not others. In a study of volunteers in a public
high school, students who performed direct service for a social issues, such as
serving meals at a homeless shelter or visiting the elderly, had increased concern for
homelessness and poverty compared to students who performed other forms of
service, such as tutoring or coaching, or administrative service.
33.10.4 Research on School-Based Programs
Similar to the literature on national service, there is agreement in the field that
there is a need for more rigorous research to determine the factors that contribute
to strong programs and to assess outcomes from school-based service programs
(Levine 2008). While evidence on whether and how youth benefit from service
continues to emerge, the existing body of prior research is largely missing
longitudinal designs, lacks comparison groups, had not handled issues related to
self-selection, has not controlled for variations in intensity of service, does not
assess the cost expended by schools, and lacks contextual data on program
philosophy. To this point, despite the widespread prevalence of school-based
community service programs, few research studies on school-based service
appear in top-tier and refereed education journals, and few research studies are
posted on the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, which
describes itself as the central and trusted source of scientific evidence on what
works in education. Such evidence is likely needed to advance service into
mainstream circles in education.
33.11 Conclusion
In many forms, youth service challenges portrayals of youth as problems in

society and highlights young people’s efforts as competent citizens who actively
participate and contribute to the betterment of society. Because of the perceived
benefits to participants and recipients, policies and programs have been
implemented to provide youth structured opportunities to play an active role in
their communities. Researchers see ample evidence that at least some forms of
service encourage students to participate in their communities later. Students who
serve have the chance to meet people unlike themselves which can lead to an
informed worldview. Service makes youth more likely to be civically oriented
later as adults.
As described throughout this chapter, more rigorous and focused research is
needed to examine the field of youth community service. Yet, after two decades of
research, we do know that community service in itself is not the solution, but rather,
the quality of the programs is what matters when it comes to benefiting youth
participants and recipients of service projects. Still in question, is how many pro-
grams are of high enough quality to support youth in developing and learning,
helping communities, and encouraging greater civic and social commitment as
youth grow into adults.
The potential of youth community service is real. One powerful example where
a well-designed and implemented project enriched student learning and affected
change in a community occurred in the state of Iowa. In his 7th grade science class
in 2008, Dr. Hector Ibarra’s students performed research on the pollutants that
untreated filters leached into the soil. Through their analyses, students estimated the
cost of treatment and projected that 351,000 gallons of usable oil could be
994 E. Metz
recovered with a small effort. The student’s research was presented to local political
leaders and led to passage of a bill by the Iowa legislature to control the disposal of
used oil filters. When Iowa Governor Culver signed bill, he was surrounded by the
7th grade team whose work was responsible. (For information on this project, see:
http://www.leadzero.org/Siemens.We.Can.Change.the.World.Challenge.html) In
what is often described as a growing era of consumerism, individualism, and
competition to get into college and to get the highest paying job, community service
offers opportunities for positive youth development.
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Time Use, Inequality, and Child Well-Being
34
Sara Raley
34.1 Introduction
A vast array of studies from various disciplines have examined the way in which
people’s time use has significant implications for their health, financial security,
and general well-being. Children’s time use, however, is a bit more complex
because children do not have the same autonomy over their time as adults do.
Although adults may feel as if they are at the mercy of their jobs and family
responsibilities when it comes to planning their daily activities, they typically
have more choices – even when those choices are constrained – than children,
particularly very young children, do. Evaluating the way in which time use has
implications for children, therefore, involves an examination of two strands of
research: (1) those that seek to understand how parents’ time spent with children
has implications for child outcomes and (2) those that examine children’s own time
use (with and without caregivers) in the context of various measures of children’s
well-being.
Measurement issues are also paramount in both the study of time use as well as
child well-being. In the case of time use, it is often a matter of how (i.e., how is time
spent in various activities calculated?), and in the case of well-being it is typically
a matter of what (i.e. what indicators of well-being will be assessed?). This chapter
first describes what is widely considered the highest quality measure of time use:
the time diary. Second, the chapter explores the activities that are most often linked
to children’s well-being, including both those activities that parents do with and for
their children as well as those activities that children do apart from their parents
using examples from children’s time diaries the 1997 Child Development Supple-
ment to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. These activities and their implica-
tions for child well-being, of course, vary by the age of the child, and time use
S. Raley
Department of Sociology, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD, USA
e-mail: sraley@mcdaniel.edu

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estimates are shown for preschool-aged children and children aged 6–12. Other
intervening factors such as social class and gender are also explored with particular
attention to parental education as a key indicator of social inequalities. Finally,
the chapter will conclude with an examination of some of the more recent studies
that have tried to tackle causality to better understand how very young children’s
time investments in some activities may have implications for their later
development.
34.2 Children’s Time Use: Methodologies
There are three primary ways to measure people’s time use: (1) asking respondents
to indicate on questionnaires how much time they spend in various activities,
(2) prompting respondents to recount their day in a time diary, and (3) contempo-
raneously. Some researchers, particularly anthropologists, also use observational
approaches to understand people’s time use behaviors. Over the last several
decades, the prevailing methodology for studying time use patterns in the USA
and nearly every country in Eastern and Western Europe has been the time diary.
The time diary is preferred largely because of its validity and cost-effectiveness
relative to alternative methods. Most research that has compared time diary meth-
odology with stylized survey questions has found time diaries to yield superior
estimates of time use (Bianchi et al. 2006; Robinson and Godbey 1999).
34.2.1 Stylized Questions on a Survey
Perhaps the simplest and most cost-effective strategy for collecting data about
children’s time use is to simply ask parents and/or children to respond to specific
questions about their time spent in various endeavors via a stylized question on
a survey. Questions usually take the form of “How often have you . . .?” or “How
much time over the past [time referent] did you spend . . . ______?” Although this
method is inexpensive and easy to administer, it is often wrought with error and
bias. First, the questions must be posed in a way that directly asks the respondent
about participation in specific activities. In the case of activities that are socially
desirable (or undesirable), respondents may over- or underestimate their time spent
in such activities. For example, Hofferth (2006) found that when parents are asked
about how much time they read to their children, much higher levels of “reading to
children” are reported than what is ascertained through other methodologies that do
not directly ask respondents to estimate time spent reading. A similar comparison
by Presser and Stinson (1998) found church attendance to be overreported when
data was based on stylized questions. Second, questions rely heavily on the ability
of respondents to accurately recall their daily activities. Even well-intentioned
respondents who do not intentionally exaggerate their time spent in socially desir-
able activities may have difficulty recalling how much time they spend in activities
that are not likely to be done in solid blocks of time throughout the day, week,
34 Time Use, Inequality, and Child Well-Being 1001
month, or year. Time spent sleeping, for example, may be easier to recall than other
more intermittent activities like talking on the phone. The recall period is critical
because it is obviously much easier to remember time spent in activities that are
more recent than those that took place a week or month ago. Surveys that ask
respondents to report on the amount of time spent doing activities last week tend
to have more error than those that ask respondents to report yesterday’s tasks
(Juster and Stafford 1985).
34.2.2 Time Diaries
Diary data collections are structured in a way that helps the respondent accurately
report activities and forces the respondent to adhere to a 24-h constraint so that
people cannot report implausible amounts of time use. Participation in many
routine activities, like time with family members and watching television, occurs
in short segments throughout the day that may be difficult for a respondent to
remember and properly calculate in response to a survey question. Time diary data
are an appealing alternative to other methods because they are collected in a way
that guides respondents through their day until the entire day’s activities are
recorded. Though there are different versions of time diaries (yesterday, tomorrow,
last week), the most common is the yesterday format. Respondents selected to
participate in the study are interviewed and asked to recount their previous day’s
activities sequentially (when interviewed with the yesterday format). Respondents
are first given a time referent, which is usually midnight of the previous day, and
asked what they were doing at that time in order to ease recall. Interviewers also ask
respondents about where they were at the time they engaged in the activity (e.g., at
home, work, school) and whom they were with (e.g., parent, sibling, friend) until
the full 24 h of the day is recorded.
Perhaps one of the most appealing features of the time diary is that it is not
clear to the respondents how the data will be used by researchers. Respondents are
self-reporting how they spend time and are not cued about what activities are of
most interest to the researchers. At the same time, time diaries are still subject to
social desirability bias because sexual activity and deviant behaviors tend to be
underreported (Robinson and Godbey 1999).
One dual strength and weakness of the diary is that it captures routine behavior
extremely well – particularly key behaviors that are linked to children’s well-being.
Spending time with children, for example, generally occurs in disjointed segments
throughout the day that a respondent might have difficulty recalling accurately if
simply asked to report how much time they spent with a child in a day. When they
are prompted to recount their daily activities sequentially by an interviewer, they
may remember their various interactions with parents more accurately and clearly.
The drawback of the diary is when the focus of the study is on regular but more
infrequent behavior, such as how often a child attends a club that meets only
once a month. The time diary may not be the ideal instrument to measure this
behavior because it does not occur often enough to be recorded in a 1-day or even
1002 S. Raley
weekly diary. Further, the methodology is expensive in that it requires much more
time spent interviewing respondents than a conventional survey questionnaire.
Historically, time diaries have been documented since the 1920s. The most
comprehensive historical time diary study, however, is the 1965 Multinational
Comparative Time-Budget Research Project involving 12 different countries. This
data collection became the standard for several subsequent international time diary
collections. Today, time diary studies have been administered in over 60 countries
spanning North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia.
In the USA, a series of cross-sectional time diary studies have been conducted
since the 1960s. In January 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics launched the
nationally representative American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which is now the
largest time use survey ever conducted in the world. Whereas most of diary
collections focus on the time use of adult men and women, smaller-scale studies
of US adolescents and children were administered in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1997, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) survey added time diaries
for 3,000 children aged 3–12 as part of the Child Development Supplement (CDS),
which also includes a substantial inventory of child well-being measures. Follow-
up data collections were conducted in 2003 and 2007, making this one of the few
longitudinal diary collections and the predominant source of data about children’s
time use and well-being. Each child’s primary caregiver was asked an array of
questions about their parenting in 1997 and 2002. These questions ranged from
estimates of how often parents engage in certain activities with their children to
how much parents encourage and value their children’s participation in specific
activities. The diaries, which were administered to either the parent or the parent
and child, assessed the child’s activities beginning at midnight of the previous day
as well as the individuals (e.g., family members, friends) who were present in the
various activities with the children on both a randomly selected weekend day and
weekday. The report of “with whom” data adds a rich level of detail to the measures
of children’s time use, namely, the examination of children’s time spent with
parents. Analyses (both from the author as well as elsewhere) from these data are
detailed later in this chapter.
34.2.3 Experiential Sampling Method
Although time diary data have many appealing features relative to stylized mea-
sures on traditional surveys, both methods typically suffer from some level of recall
bias (with the exception of the less commonly used non-retrospective diaries). Even
though the period of recall for retrospective time diaries is often only one day,
people are generally not reporting their behaviors while they are doing them. The
experiential sampling method (ESM) addresses this issue by random signaling
respondents throughout the day and week and prompting them to report their
activities as they experience them (typically within 10 min of receiving a signal).
Respondents carry a signaling device, often a beeper, and record what they are
doing as well as how they are feeling. As such, ESM offers more contemporaneous
insights into the subjective experiences of time use compared with other method-
ologies. Although much detail is offered for each “signaled” activity, the full 24-h
day is generally not assessed. Thus, some experiences are missed, and the subse-
quent data may not be as comprehensive as time diaries in that respect. Partially for
that reason as well as the expense of administering the study, time diaries continue
to be the predominate methodology used to assess children’s time use.
34.3 Parents’ Time with Children
The most basic category of parents’ time with children includes parents’ time
spent in direct interactions with their children. Historically, studies of parents’
time with children focused on mothers’ time given that mothers are typically the
primary caregivers of children while fathers generally focus on breadwinning
(Townsend 2002). Although it is still the case that mothers spend far more time
with their children, on average, than fathers do, fathers’ time with children has
increased dramatically since the 1960s (Bianchi et al. 2006). In light of this
change, fathers’ time with children is now a major area of study among social
scientists and policy makers. Much attention has been paid to the various factors
that are positively correlated with father involvement as well as the types of
activities that fathers tend to do with their children. For example, Bianchi et al.
(2006)’s examination of historical time diaries over the past five decades indicated
that fathers’ increased their time in routine activities (e.g., changing diapers) with
their children more dramatically than they increased their time in interactive
activities (e.g., playing games). In sum, some studies of parents’ time with
children focus solely on maternal involvement, whereas others focus on paternal
involvement, and still others focus on how both parents interact with their
children.
A small subset of studies have also examined the correlation between paternal
and maternal time in two-parent families. Indeed, the more time mothers invest in
child care, the more time fathers spend with their children (Aldous et al. 1998;
Bianchi et al. 2006). From the child’s perspective, children spent about 4.5 more
hours per week with their fathers in families with college-educated mothers
compared with families where mothers do not have a college degree
(Sandberg and Hofferth 2001). Thus, children may get a “boost” of parental time
by residing in a highly educated two-parent family.
It is important to keep in mind that time spent with family members varies
significantly by children’s age. For example, Larson et al.’s (1996) examination of
school-aged children found that older children, aged 16–17, spent about 14 % of
their waking hours with their family compared to 33 % for children aged 10–11.
Even though time with family decreases with age, the amount of time talking with
family members does not decline (Larson et al. 1996).
Several of these studies examining parents’ time with children have found areas
of inequality in that more highly-educated mothers spent more time in direct child
care activities than less-educated mothers (Hill and Stafford 1985; Zick and
1004 S. Raley
Bryant 1996; Bianchi et al. 2004). Moreover, one study reported that education was
not associated with father’s physical care of preschool-aged children (Aldous et al.
1998), whereas studies that examined the relationship between paternal education
and time with school-aged children found either no association (Barnett and Baruch
1987; Ishii-Kuntz and Coltrane 1992; Pleck 1981; Zick and Bryant 1996) or a slight
positive one (Aldous et al. 1998; Marsiglio 1991; Hofferth and Anderson 2003;
Yeung et al. 2001; Fisher et al. 1999).
Lareau (2003) describes how middle-class parents are heavily involved in their
children’s lives, closely monitoring their children’s activities, while working-class
parents are generally less attentive to their children’s time expenditures. Working-
class parents encourage their children to have more autonomy in unstructured
leisure pursuits and stress the value of extended kin ties beyond the nuclear family
bonds that middle-class families emphasize. Hence, Lareau’s (2003) work suggests
parent-child time may be lower in working-class and poor families, but time with
extended family may be greater.
Knowing the whereabouts and activities of children is an important way in which
parents invest in children, even when parents are not directly interacting with or
supervising their children. Parents may know a child’s whereabouts by spending
time with them, or they may do so by monitoring the child’s activities (Crouter et al.
1990). The former is a bit easier to assess directly, and therefore fewer studies
examine parental monitoring when compared with studies on direct parent-child
interactions (Hoff et al. 2002). Some developmental psychologists suggest, how-
ever, that parental monitoring is an important intrafamilial process linked to child
development, particularly among school-aged children (see Maccoby and Martin
(1983) for a comprehensive review). Specifically, higher levels of parental moni-
toring are associated with better school functioning (Brown et al. 1993; Dornbusch
et al. 1987; Jacobson and Crockett 2000), particularly among boys (Crouter et al.
1990). Boys, perhaps because of their relative biological immaturity and/or differ-
ential socialization, may require more structure and guidance from adults to achieve
the standard set by girls their age (Crouter et al. 1990).
Though many scholars are interested in parents’ overall time spent with children,
most studies focus on parents’ time spent in specific activities with children, as
some activities are more likely to cultivate family bonding (e.g., eating dinner
together, time with extended family) and others (e.g., reading to children, teaching
children) are more closely linked to developmental outcomes. The range of parental
childrearing activities that stimulate children’s development and academic
performance extend far beyond parents’ basic caretaking activities. In other
words, it is not simply how much time parents spend with children, but what they
do together.
Among preschool-aged children, the focus tends to be on activities like reading
and playing with parents, whereas among school-aged children, the focus tends to
be on parental investment in schooling and children’s time in extracurricular
activities. Literature in this area tends to be dominated by the work of family
sociologists and developmental psychologists. Developmental psychologists in
particular hone in on the verbal interaction of parents and children and the nature of
the interaction between parents and children. Parent-child interactions are analyzed
not only in the context of how much parents and children talk but also how parents
elicit conversations with children and the extent to which they offer warmth and
affection in such interactions.
34.3.1 Language Use
Paramount among such parent-child interactions is parental talk – providing

children with labels for objects, responding contingently to children’s speech, and
engaging children in conversation. This is a key component of Annette Lareau’s
(2003) conceptualization of “concerted cultivation” among middle-class families
who groom their children for middle-class careers in part through extensive use of
verbal faculties in the home at an early age. In their efforts to cultivate an
environment that maximizes their children’s cognitive development, middle-class
parents spend a great deal of time and effort talking with their children, asking their
children questions, and directly interacting with their children. Working-class
parents, on the other hand, are not as focused on engaging in frequent conversations
with their children and are generally less attentive to their children’s verbal
faculties.
Support for Lareau’s (2003) argument can be found in the work of developmen-
tal psychologists and educational sociologists who find parental (particularly mater-
nal) education influences the way parents interact with and teach their children.
First, well-educated parents are more likely to cultivate a stimulating home envi-
ronment with more reading materials and greater encouragement of skill-building
and cultural activities than less-educated parents (White 1982; Mayer 1997;
Bradley and Corwyn 2002; DeGarmo et al. 1999). Well-educated parents are also
more likely to read to their children (Bianchi and Robinson 1997; Hofferth 2006;
Sandberg and Hofferth 2001) and engage their children in conversations, conver-
sations which tend to be more complex and elicit their children’s feedback
(Hoff-Ginsberg 1991; Shonkoff and Phillips 2000) than less-educated parents.
Well-educated mothers are more likely to use inquiry (e.g., asking children ques-
tions) and praise as teaching strategies compared with less-educated mothers who
use more directives (e.g., commanding the child to pursue a given course of action),
modeling (e.g., the child observes the mother rather than participating in the
learning activity directly), and negative physical control (e.g., physical punishment)
(Laosa 1980).
34.3.2 Reading, Television Viewing, and Playing
A handful of time diary studies of children’s time use have shown children with
more highly-educated parents spend more time in reading activities and less time
1006 S. Raley
watching television than children with parents who are not highly-educated
(Bianchi and Robinson 1997; Hofferth and Sandberg 2001a; Timmer et al. 1985).
These studies generally focus on children’s time in these activities and do not assess
whether a parent is engaged in these activities with the children. In fact, much of the
research examining parents’ time with children in specific activities like reading is
ascertained through “stylized” estimates where parents are directly asked how
much time they spend reading to their children rather than from parent time diaries.
These estimates show that maternal education is positively correlated with reading
to children (Dye and Johnson 2006; Federal Interagency Forum on Child and
Family Statistics 1997; Hofferth 2006).
Recent work by Hofferth (2006) uses children’s time diaries from the 1997 Child
Development Supplement to examine children’s time spent reading with parents,
pointing out that estimates obtained from stylized questionnaires are misleading
because of the social and cultural desirability biases connected to questions about
reading. This is particularly problematic in studies examining the relationship
between maternal education and parents’ time spent reading to children because,
as Hofferth (2006) notes, even though most parents are aware that they should read
to children, “more educated parents are probably the most aware of the benefits of
and social pressures to read to children” (302). She finds that better-educated
parents are more likely to exaggerate the extent to which they read to children
when estimates from self-reports are compared with estimates obtained from time
diaries. It is important to reiterate that both types of estimates consistently show
better-educated parents read more often to their children than less-educated parents.
The difference, however, is not as large when the focus is on time diary estimates,
which tend to be more valid than stylized questions (Robinson 1985).
Another area of time use that is subject to social desirability bias and also varies
by maternal education is watching television. Children’s television viewing is
a nebulous topic that on the one hand elicits high levels of concern from social
observers but on the other hand is a pervasive activity in American homes (Brown
et al. 1990). As Lareau (2003) noted in her study, middle-class parents tended to
have more negative opinions about television viewing than working-class and
poor parents, but television viewing was pervasive across all family types she
observed. Time diary analyses of children under age 13 indicate that children of
better-educated parents watch less television than children of parents with less
education, but both groups of children spend large amounts of time in front of the
TV (about 12 h a week on average), and nearly all children (90 %) spend at least
some of their time watching television (Bianchi and Robinson 1997; Hofferth and
Sandberg 2001a).
Livingstone (2009) points out that there is a contradiction in the two popular
images of television viewing in the family context. The first is that the romanticized
image of television viewing is a family activity where all members of the family
convene happily in front of the television to relax together and discuss their favorite
program (Spigel 1992). Some parents may even see the television as a way to keep
their children at home and out of neighborhood trouble. Indeed, Larson et al. (1989)
showed a positive correlation between television viewing and time spent with
family – although there was a stronger positive association between children’s time
spent reading and time with family. The quality of the parent-child interactions
associated with television viewing, however, is questionable. As Himmelweit et al.
(1958:25) noted five decades ago:
Television does keep members of the family at home more. But it is doubtful whether it
binds the family together more than in this physical sense, except while the children are
young. As they grow older, their viewing becomes more silent and personal. Also, as
children grow into adolescence, the increased time spent with the family may set up strains,
since it runs counter to their need to make contacts outside (25).
The second, more pervasive image of television is that of “a solitary child

alone in front of the set, square-eyed and trance-like, while real life goes on
elsewhere” (Livingstone 2009:1). Increasingly, as more and more diverse channels
make their way into television programming, and the number of televisions in the
average American home remains high (3.4), family television viewing as a shared
family experience seems to be more of an idealistic notion than a reality (Brown
et al. 1990; Livingstone 2009). Moreover, the developmental effects of television
remain unclear. Research does not seem to indicate there is a strong link between
television viewing and achievement, but large quantities of time spent watching
television arguably takes time away from other activities that might be positively
linked to cognitive development (Hofferth and Sandberg 2001a; Larson and
Verma 1999).
Television viewing and reading are the parent-child activities most consistently
associated with variation by parental education. Lareau’s (2003) research suggests,
however, that better-educated parents may also be more willing to engage in play
activities with children as compared with less-educated parents who may be more
apt to encourage children to play on their own or with other neighborhood children.
Though there is no clear empirical evidence that maternal education is linked to the
time mothers spend in play activities with children, better-educated fathers spend
more time playing with, reading to, or going on outings with young children when
compared with their less-educated counterparts (Cooney et al. 1993). Fathers with
higher levels of education also stimulate, respond to, and provide more care to their
9-month-old infants than less-educated fathers (Volling and Belsky 1991).
34.3.3 Eating Meals Together
As one might expect, the bulk of the literature on family meals focuses on the
dietary and health aspects of such parent-child interactions. Yet, there is a smaller
body of literature that focuses on eating meals together as a time to build family
rituals that might be important for child development (Fulkerson et al. 2006). For
example, Fulkerson et al. (2006) suggest eating meals with family members can be
viewed as a “time for togetherness and socialization within the family” (338).
Hofferth and Sandberg (2001a) argue that children’s time spent in meals at home
reflects “a more stable, organized family life,” noting also that research directly
1008 S. Raley
assessing children’s time spent in family meals is limited (297). Further, a few
studies examining the frequency of family meals suggest that these activities may
be associated with outcomes for children beyond their physical health. Eisenberg
et al. (2004), analyzing school-based survey questionnaires, found inverse relation-
ships between the frequency of family meals and grade point averages. Addition-
ally, Hofferth and Sandberg’s (2001a) assessment of the time that children under
age 13 spent eating meals using children’s time diaries in the PSID-CDS indicated
that eating meals was positively and significantly associated with letter-word scores
in 1997. This analysis, however, did not directly assess the time children spent
eating meals with their parents.
34.3.4 Parental Warmth and Affection
A final aspect of parent-child interaction that is of interest to scholars examining the

relation between parental time with children and child well-being is the context of
parent-child interactions. The extent to which parents show their children warmth
and share their affection for their children are key components of providing
socioemotional support for children, which developmental psychologists empha-
size as important for “helping children cope with basic anxieties, fears, and feelings
of emotional insecurity” (Bradley and Corwyn 2004:11). Parents’ provision of
socioemotional support plays an important role in children’s development by
minimizing stress – encouraging their children to see how situations are manage-
able and continuing to validate their children’s worth.
Though these parental efforts may seem difficult to quantify, a commonly
used series of questions asking how often parents display various types of affection
and socioemotional support to children are often used to assess parental warmth
and affection. A recent Child Trends (2002) report analyzing such measures
indicated parents report very high levels of showing physical affection to children,
and a majority of parents reported telling their children they were loved on a daily
basis, though these outward displays of warmth decline moderately as children age
(Bradley et al. 2001). Few studies have investigated how levels of socioemotional
support vary by parental characteristics, though fathers generally tend to show less
warmth and affection to children than mothers.
In light of the forgoing findings that suggest parents’ time with children is
associated with various indicators of child well-being, this chapter presents ana-
lyses from children’s time diaries obtained from the 1997 Child Development
Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The PSID, which extends
back to 1968, is a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of US individuals
and their families. Therefore, the children in the CDS can be traced back to the
families in the PSID. The objective of the PSID-CDS was to collect comprehensive
and nationally representative information about children and their families that
would aid researchers examining the social and economic differences that are
associated with child development. With this goal, the PSID-CDS collected
(1) the cognitive, behavioral, and health assessments of the target child obtained
from the mother, a second parent or parent figure, teacher or child care provider,
and the child; (2) child time diaries; (3) teacher-reported time use in school pro-
grams; and (4) survey measures of other home, school, and neighborhood resources
devoted to the child.
Data were originally collected on up to two randomly selected 0- to 12-year-old
children of PSID respondents, both from the primary caregivers and from the
children themselves. The first wave of the study was conducted between March
1997 and December 1997 with a break in June through August, so only the school
year is covered. The overall response rate for 1997 is estimated at 88 % of those in
the PSID. Poststratification weights based on the 1997 Current Population Survey
were used to make the data nationally representative.
Given that the interest of this chapter is in parents’ time with children, the
42 children whose primary caregivers were either a legal guardian (32 children)
or another adult (10 children) in 1997 are omitted from these analyses. The sample
is also restricted to those children who completed both a weekend and weekday
diary. About 82 % of children aged 0–5 completed both a weekday and weekend
diary, and 82 % of children aged 6–12 completed both diaries in 1997. The final
analytic sample for this study is 2,325 children aged 0–12 in 1997 whose primary
caregivers were parents who were household heads or wives and who completed
both a weekend and weekday diary.
Table 34.1 describes several diary measures available in the 1997 PSID-CDS for
both very young children under age 6 as well as school-aged children aged 6–12.
Although nearly any aspect of a child’s day can be analyzed with time diaries, this
chapter focuses on those indicators that have historically been associated with
measures of child well-being. These include children’s time spent reading, playing
(including video games), watching television, eating meals/snacks, receiving
lessons, and participating in organized activities. Organized activities included
organized team and individual sports as well as “active sports,” which include
time in traditionally team-based sports like football, basketball, baseball, volley-
ball, tennis, and golf that the respondent does not clearly identify as being organized
or structured. Nonathletic organized activities include time spent in volunteer
and helping organizations; professional and union organizations; child, youth, or
family organizations; fraternal organizations; political and civic unions; special
interest organizations; before/after school clubs; and travel related to organizations.
Estimates for these measures are provided in Tables 34.1 and 34.2. Later in
the chapter, there is discussion as to how these measures are associated with
indicators associated with child well-being.
Table 34.1 shows time use estimates from the 1997 Child Development Supple-
ment to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for preschool-aged children (0–5). All
the figures in this table are ascertained from the children’s time diaries. Average
hours per week are shown for the selected activities of parents’ overall time with
mother, overall time with father, time spent reading, time spent playing, time spent
watching television, and family meal time. For some activities, it may be more
important for a child’s development that the child engages in the activity at all as
opposed to how often he or she participates in it or whether or not the child engages
1010 S. Raley
Table 34.1 Preschool-aged (0–5) children’s overall hours per week with parents and in selected
enrichment activities with parents
Mean/percentage (SE)
Time with parents
Hours per week spent with mother 32.4 (0.66)
Hours per week spent with father 15.7 (0.54)
Reading
Percent who read with parents 45.2 % –
Reading with parents among participants only 2.5 (0.13)
Overall hours per week child read with parents 1.1 (0.08)
Overall hours per week child read without parents 0.3 (0.05)
Playing
Percent who played with parents 77.5 % –
Playing with parents among participants only 9.6 (0.43)
Overall hours per week child played with parents 7.4 (0.37)
Overall hours per week child played without parents 13.5 (0.45)
Watching TV
Percent who watched TV with parents 55.1 % –
Watching TV with parents among participants only 6.2 (0.36)
Overall hours per week child watched TV with parents 3.4 (0.24)
Overall hours per week child watched TV without parents 6.7 (0.29)
Eating meals together
Percent eating meals with parents in diary 91.1 % –
Hours eating meals with parents in diary among participants 5.5 (0.16)
Overall hours eating meals with parents in diary 5.0 (0.17)
N 1,039
Source: 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
in the activity with a parent. As such, the table shows several estimates for each
measure: the percent who engaged in the activity on their diary day, the average
hours/week participants spent in the activity, and the overall averages for the
activity across participants and nonparticipants. For some activities, like reading,
the time spent in the activity in the presence of a parent is shown as well as time
spent without a parent present given that both indicators may be related to child
well-being.
As one might expect, young children spend large amounts of time with
their parents, especially their mothers. They spend about 32 h per week with their
mothers and about half of that amount of time with fathers – 16 h per week. The
second half of Table 34.1 focuses on specific activities that parents do with their
children – activities that may provide some sort of stimulation to children’s
cognitive development including reading and playing. Most parents (78 %) spend
some time playing with their children on diary days, whereas about half of parents
read to their children (45 %), and a little over half of parents (55 %) watch television
with their children. What is startling about the figures in this part of the table is the
Table 34.2 Children’s (aged 6–12) overall hours per week spent with parents and in selected
enrichment activities with parents
Time with parents
Hours per week spent with mother 18.7 (0.49)
Hours per week spent with father 11.1 (0.41)
Reading
Percent who read with parents 15.9 % –
Reading with parents among participants only 2.2 (0.13)
Overall hours per week child read with parents 0.3 (0.04)
Overall hours per week child read without parents 0.8 (0.08)
Playing
Percent who played with parents 32.5 % –
Playing with parents among participants only 4.2 (0.30)
Overall hours per week child played with parents 1.4 (0.13)
Overall hours per week child played without parents 10.1 (0.40)
Watching TV
Percent who watched TV with parents 60.9 % –
Watching TV with parents among participants only 6.3 (0.24)
Overall hours per week child watched TV with parents 3.8 (0.20)
Overall hours per week child watched TV without parents 9.0 (0.35)
Percent eating meals with parents in diary 80.5 % –
Hours eating meals with parents in diary among participants 3.5 (0.10)
Overall hours eating meals with parents in diary 2.9 (0.10)
N 1,286
Source: 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
high level of television viewing with parents, particularly in comparison to reading.

Young children spend about 3.4 h a week watching television with their parents and
6.7 h watching television without a parent present and are read to a little over an
hour (1.1) a week. When the universe is restricted to those who watched any
television with their parent on their diary day, the figures ratcheted up to nearly
an hour per day (6.2 h per week). It is somewhat surprising that such young children
spend so much time in front of the television – presumably very young
children cannot understand much. Though there are videos specifically designed
to be interactive tools for young children and their parents (e.g., baby Einstein),
the diaries do not assess the content of the television programming.
Although young children seem to watch a lot of television, parent-child play
activities trump television viewing by a two-to-one margin. Children spend about
7.4 h playing with parents, which is more than double the 3½ h spent watching
television with parents. Add to this figure the 13.5 h per week that children spend
playing when not with parents, and playing time consumes about 21 h of young
children’s weeks.
1012 S. Raley
The bottom of Table 34.1 shows children’s diary accounts of their time spent
eating meals with parents. This measure gets at the routine nature of parent-child
interactions and parents’ attempts to cultivate daily communication with their
children, although these tasks may be more difficult when children are very
young because their verbal abilities are limited, and also eating dinner together at
a table may be impractical for families with infants. Diary reports for this measure
are quite high, however, despite the young ages of the children. Over 91 % of
children eat meals with their parents. The measure of eating meals together is
somewhat limited, though, given that eating is often reported as a “secondary”
activity (indeed, some children report no eating on their diary days), and further, it
is not confined to dinner exclusively, which is the family meal on which most
researchers focus. Once again, however, the reported levels of parent-child meals in
the diary are high (keeping in mind that these children are very young and the way
in which parents eat together as a family is likely to be qualitatively different than
when children are older). Nearly all of children ate meals with their parents on the
diary day – an estimated 5 h a week.
Because children have very different needs when they are young and more
dependent compared to when they are older and more self-sufficient, parents are
involved with their children in different ways depending on the age of child
(Waldfogel 2006). For example, parents with younger children spend more
time reading and playing with their children than when they have older children
(Davis-Kean and Sexton 2005). Older children can presumably read on their own and
may be more likely to seek interaction with peers as opposed to parents. Given the
vast developmental differences between preschool-aged children and children aged
6–12, a separate table showing the same cluster of activities is shown in Table 34.2.
Developmental psychologists suggest that around age 6, children begin to
demonstrate skills (e.g., problem-solving) and behavior (e.g., forming social rela-
tionships) that differ dramatically from their early childhood (Kowaleski-Jones and
Duncan 1999). Specifically, children between the ages of 5 and 7 develop an ability
to comprehend and manage abstract ideas and objects. The period between 6 and
9 is marked by the development of more complex reasoning skills, and by ages
10–12, children demonstrate the ability to reason by testing alternative hypotheses
to physical and social problems (Collins 1984). In short, children learn the basic
skills to help them navigate adult life during this period of middle childhood
(Erikson 1963).
The bulk of studies on parents and children tend to focus on children under age
13, perhaps because adolescents are more self-sufficient and are less available to
spend time with parents. Middle adolescence in particular is a time when parental
controls loosen and, perhaps more importantly, access to automobiles opens up
opportunities for mobility. In most families, junior high-aged adolescents are not
allowed to go out on their own at night, but by high school parents tend to give their
children more freedom. Parents report 14 to be the age at which it is acceptable for
adolescents to begin going to boy-girl parties at night and 16 to be the appropriate
age for the start of dating (Feldman and Quatman 1988). Further, the amount of time
spent away from home increases as children enter high school (Larson et al. 1996).
Adolescence is a period when children do not require as much direct care from
their parents as younger children, but nevertheless still require parental care,
supervision, and intervention. Parent-child interactions at this age may be some-
what less frequent than younger children given the busy schedules of adolescents,
but such interactions may still be critical to their well-being and development.
In sum, by the time children are aged 13 and over, they are generally more
self-sufficient than younger children, are granted more autonomy over their time
by their parents, and spend large amounts of time socializing with their peers
(Larson and Richards 1994).
Children’s overall time with parents and time in selected enrichment activities
with parents are shown in Table 34.2 for children aged 6–12. On average, children
in middle childhood spend about 19 h a week with their mothers and 11 h a week
with their fathers. They spend only nominal amounts of time reading and playing
with parents at this age. Though the low time spent reading with parents is
understandable given that many of these children may be able to read on their
own without the help of an adult (only about 16 % of children spent any time
reading with their parents on the diary days), the levels of playing with parents seem
low when compared to the levels of television viewing with parents.
Only about a third of children played with their parents on the diary days,
whereas over 60 % of children watched television with their parents. Time spent
in TV viewing with parents also trumped time in play activities by a 3 to 1 margin –
children spent 4 h a week watching television with their parents and only 1.4 h per
week playing with parents. Though parents are busy and children have friends to
play with when they are school-aged – they spend about 10 h a week playing
without their parents present – parents and children still make large amounts of time
to watch TV together as opposed to more hands-on activities like playing games.
Further, children spent large amounts of time watching TV that was not accompa-
nied by a parent – an average of 9 h a week.
Eating meals together is a popular family activity when children are in middle
childhood. About 81 % of children reported eating a meal at any time of day with
the parent. Additionally, parents and children spent a fair amount of time eating
together during the week – around 3 h a week.
In addition to the overall estimates for parents’ time with children from the 1997
CDS-PSID, Tables 34.3 and 34.4 show the variation in children’s time with parents
by maternal education, an important indicator that prior studies (described earlier in
this chapter) have shown to be associated with both parents’ time with children and
child well-being outcomes. Table 34.3 shows differences between children whose
parents are college-educated and those whose parents have less than a college
degree in children’s time with parents as well as their time spent reading, playing,
and watching television with their parents. All of the estimates in the table are
predicted means and percentages adjusted for an array of demographic variables
that are known to affect both time use and parental education, including family
income, race, parental age, and number of children in the household. The predicted
values are obtained from OLS and logistic regression models (available upon
request).
1014 S. Raley
Table 34.3 Adjusted estimates of preschool-aged (0–5) children’s average hours per week with
parents and in selected activities with parents by maternal education
Mothers have Mothers have Mothers Mothers
less than high HS degree have some are college
school only college educated
Time with parents
Hours per week spent 33.5 31.5 32.2 32.9
with mother
b
with father
Reading
a,b
Percent who read with 29.0 % 35.9 % 49.1 % 54.9 %
parents
Reading with parents 3.5 3.8 4.4 4.3
among participants only
a,b
Overall hours per 0.6 0.8 1.4 1.5
week child read with
parents
week child read
without parents
Playing
b
Percent who played 82.7 % 72.1 % 80.4 % 87.0 %
with parents
Playing with parents 10.4 8.9 9.4 9.1
week child played with
parents
Overall hours per week 14.6 13.9 15.1 13.3
child played without parents
Watching TV
Percent who watched TV 61.9 % 55.0 % 53.6 % 54.3 %
with parents
a,b
Watching TV with 8.6 7.0 5.4 4.5
parents among
participants only
a,b
child watched TV with
parents
child watched TV
without parents
Percent eating meals with 90.7 % 93.5 % 92.1 % 94.9 %
parents in diary
Overall hours eating meals 5.3 5.2 4.6 5.3
with parents in diary
(continued)
Table 34.3 (continued)

Mothers have Mothers have Mothers Mothers
less than high HS degree have some are college
Hours eating meals with 6.0 5.6 5.1 5.7
parents in diary among
participants
N 187 310 326 216
Note: Predicted means based on OLS and logistic regression models that control for mother’s age,
sex of the child, race of the child, family income, family structure, maternal employment, number
of children in the family, and season of the time diary
a
Children of college-educated mothers different from children of mothers with less than high
school, p-value <0.05
b
Children of college-educated mothers different from children of mothers with only a high school
degree, p-value <0.05
Table 34.3 indicates that preschool-aged children’s time with parents seems
relatively similar regardless of how well educated their mothers are. Children’s
time with mothers does not seem to vary at all by maternal education, and time with
fathers shows some variation by maternal education, though the relationship does
not appear to be linear. Children whose mothers have a high school degree only
spend significantly less time with their fathers when compared with children of
college-educated mothers (13.8 h/week compared with 17.2, respectively). Chil-
dren whose mothers have less than a high school degree spend similar amounts of
time with their fathers (16.3 h per week) as children whose mothers have attained
a college degree.
In contrast to the findings for children’s overall time with parents, children’s
participation in specific activities with their parents shown in the bottom half of
Table 34.3 tend to vary as a function of maternal education, though the variation is
more substantial for some activities than others. The two most prominent gaps are
those in reading and television viewing – and the primary divide tends to be
between mothers who have at least some college or more and children of mothers
who have less than some college education. Children of highly-educated
mothers read with parents more often than children of less-educated mothers –
about 55 % of mothers with a college degree and 49 % of mothers with some
college read to their children on the diary days, whereas only 36 % of mothers with
only a high school degree and 29 % of mothers with a high school degree or less
read to their children. These differences amounted to a 26 % point gap between
children whose mothers were the most highly educated and those whose mothers
had the least education. Better-educated mothers also spent more time reading to
their children, on average, at an hour and a half per week compared with just over
half an hour per week (for children whose mothers had less than a high school
degree). Among those children who spent any time reading, levels were high:
children of mothers who had attained college spent almost 4 and a half hours
a week reading with their parents compared with children whose parents were
1016 S. Raley
Table 34.4 Adjusted estimates of children’s (aged 6–12) overall hours per week with parents and
in selected enrichment activities with parents by maternal education
Mothers have Mothers have Mothers Mothers are
less than high HS degree have some college
Time with parents
a
with mother
with father
Reading
a,b
Percent who read with 2.2 % 11.1 % 17.5 % 25.3 %
parents
Reading with parents 1.8 2.8 1.8 2.2
a
child read with parents
a
week child read
without parents
Playing
a,b
Percent who played 19.3 % 29.6 % 31.3 % 43.9 %
with parents
Playing with parents 4.5 3.8 5.0 3.1
week child played
with parents
week child played
without parents
Watching TV
c
Percent who watched TV 75.2 % 65.8 % 48.2 % 60.5 %
with parents
a,b
Watching TV with 7.3 6.9 5.5 5.2
parents among
participants only
a,b
child watched TV with
parents
a,c
child watched TV
without parents
Percent eating meals with 77.3 % 79.0 % 86.3 % 82.0 %
parents in diary
Overall hours eating meals 2.8 2.7 3.2 2.7
with parents in diary
(continued)

Hours eating meals with 3.6 3.5 3.7 3.4
parents in diary among
participants
N 224 435 396 231
Note: Predicted means based on OLS and logistic regression models that control for mother’s age,
a
b
c
Children of college-educated mothers different from children of mothers with some college,
p-value <0.05
less educated who spent around 3½ h a week reading, holding other family and
demographic characteristics constant. Children’s time spent reading on their own
(without parents present), which is arguably quite difficult for preschool-aged
children, was consistently low across educational groups and, if anything, tended
to be higher among children with less-educated mothers (though no differences
were statistically significant).
Playing games with children was a much more popular activity for parents and
children than reading, and this showed only slight variance by maternal education.
When adjusting for other demographic factors, 87 % of mothers who have gradu-
ated college played with their children on the diary days compared with 83 % of
parents who had less than a high school degree. The group with the lowest predicted
percentage of playing with their children on the diary days was high-school-
educated (only) mothers at 72 %. Children’s overall time spent in play activities
with and without parents also showed little variation by maternal education.
The bottom two panels of Table 34.3 focus on television viewing and eating
together. Although the frequency of family meals varies little by maternal educa-
tion among preschoolers, the trends in television viewing are a bit more complex.
On the one hand, there is not much difference by maternal education in the percent
of children who watch television with their parents. Just over half of all groups of
children reported watching television with their parents on their diary days. On the
other hand, major variation by maternal education was evident in the average hours
children spent watching television with their parents – children whose mothers have
acquired a college degree watched the least overall at about 2.5 h per week
compared with 5.2 h a week among children whose parents who had not attained
a high school degree. Children whose mothers had only a high school degree
watched about 3.9 h per week, and children whose mothers had some college
watched about 2.9 h per week with their parents.
1018 S. Raley
Quite surprisingly, there is less variation in the amount of time children spend
watching television without their parents present, even though TV time without
parents is generally greater than the TV viewing with parents. Children with better-
educated mothers still tend to watch less television when their parents are not with
them than children of less-educated mothers, holding other demographic factors
constant, but these differences are smaller and not statistically significant. If we
consider the proportion of television viewing that is accompanied by a parent, it is
actually lowest among the children with college-educated mothers (54 %) and some
college-educated mothers (54 %) and highest among children with mothers who
have less than a high school degree (62).
Table 34.4 shows the same selection of activities by maternal education for
children aged 6–12. Similar to Table 34.3, this table shows adjusted differences in
maternal education calculated from predicted values generated from multivariate
regression models that control for a host of child and family background controls
including parent’s sex and age; child’s sex, age, and race; family income; family
structure and parental employment; and season of the diary (full regression models
available upon request).
Overall, children with mothers who have a high school degree or more appear to
spend more time (about 6 h more) with their mothers than children of mothers who
have not completed high school. Father time, however, looks generally similar by
maternal education when adjusted for variables like family structure. The
major differences that persisted once demographic factors, particularly family
structure, had been accounted for were children’s time spent reading and watching
television with parents – the activities previous research suggests should differ
the most by maternal education. About 25 % of children aged 6–12 whose
mothers were college-educated read with their parents in 1997, compared
with only 2 % of children whose mothers were less-than-high-school educated.
When the universe was restricted to all children who did any reading on their
diary days, however, there was almost no variation by maternal education, and
children of mothers who had only a high school diploma reported the highest levels
of reading.
It is possible that the trends for reading with parents indicate that children
of better-educated mothers are more proficient at reading than children of
less-educated mothers and thus need less help from their parents. Indeed, the
amount of time children spent reading without the aid of a parent was around
1.2 h per week among those whose mothers were college-educated, 0.8 h per week
among children whose mothers had some college or a high school education, and
0.4 h per week among children whose mothers had less than a high school degree
(only differences between college-educated mothers and those with less than a high
school degree were statistically significant at p < 0.05). Though children’s time
spent reading without the assistance or direct oversight of a parent is not necessarily
a direct parental investment, the idea is that parents are likely encouraging or
instituting some sort of rules about how much time their children should spend
reading. This would not be captured in the measure of parent-child reading time,
and hence the examination of reading with and without parents.
In addition, children of college-educated mothers were more likely to engage in

play activities with their parents on the diary days when compared with children of
mothers who had not obtained a high school degree (44 % compared with 19 %). At
the same time, much less difference in children’s average hours per week in play
activities with and without parents was observed by maternal education once the
estimates were adjusted for other demographic factors like maternal employment.
Television, in contrast to reading and playing, was negatively related to maternal
education. Children of better-educated mothers were less likely to watch television
and watched significantly less television with their parents than children of less-
educated mothers. Additionally, the amount of time children of well-educated
mothers watched when parents were not with them was lower than that of children
with less-educated mothers. Again, the idea here is that well-educated mothers may
be more likely than less-educated mothers to limit their children’s television
viewing, even when they are not with their children. This may not be as direct an
investment in children’s well-being as parents’ direct oversight of children’s
television viewing, but it nonetheless reflects how the activities that better-educated
families orchestrate for their children may differ from those of less-educated
families. Finally, consistent with the findings for younger children, the level of
eating meals with parents showed little variation by maternal education.
34.4 Children’s Scholastic and Structured/Organized Activities
Parents rear their children not only through direct interactions but also through the
ways in which they encourage and manage their children’s involvement in activities
outside the home. Assessing the extent to which parents enroll and encourage their
children’s involvement in various organized and structured activities constitutes
another domain of parenting that is positively linked to child well-being, particu-
larly scholastic achievement (Astone and McLanahan 1991). This is an area that
primarily attracts the interest of educational sociologists as well as developmental
psychologists who specifically focus on children’s participation in extracurricular
activities and community programs. This is arguably the most expansive area of
research because many activities, including reading and talking with children as
well as involvement in extracurricular activities, can be (and often are) conceptu-
alized as activities that promote children’s success in educational endeavors. There
is another cluster of studies, however, that focus specifically on parents’ involve-
ment with teachers and school personnel, as well as other direct interventions
related to the child’s scholastic activities.
There are several ways in which parents can be and are involved with their
children’s schooling, including attending school activities, participating in parent-
teacher associations, and meeting with teachers and administrators. Studies typi-
cally focus on one of these activities as a measure of parental investment in
schooling (Grolnick and Slowiaczek 1994), and some forms of investment are
analyzed more extensively than others. As one might expect, social scientists
examining parental investment at all levels of schooling (elementary, middle,
1020 S. Raley
and high) have consistently found that better-educated parents tend to be more
actively involved in their children’s school than less-educated parents (Lareau
1987, 2003; Fehrmann et al. 1987). Specifically, better-educated parents are more
likely to have contact with teachers, be involved with school (e.g., attend events),
and be involved with children’s scholastic activities at home (e.g., help with
homework and reading assignments) (Kohl et al. 2000).
Similar to the findings for parental investment in children’s schooling, middle-
class parents are also more likely than working-class and poor parents to enroll their
school-aged children in extracurricular activities, such as team sports, music les-
sons, and community organizations (Lareau 1987, 2003). Data from the Survey of
Income and Program Participation (SIPP) child well-being topical module collected
in 2003 indicate a majority of all children participate in at least one club, sport, or
lesson. Gaps by parental education in activity participation are pervasive across the
three types of extracurricular activities and persist for both children in middle
childhood (those aged 6–11) as well as adolescents (those aged 12–17) (Dye and
Johnson 2006).
Children’s time diaries across the 1981–1997 period suggested that when the
focus was on sports activities in particular, maternal education was positively
associated with children’s sports participation when children were under age 13
(Hofferth and Sandberg 2001b). More recent time diary evidence, from the
2002–2003 PSID-CDS, suggests that maternal education is positively related to
the number of structured activities children (aged 9–12) do (Hofferth et al. 2009).
Children’s time diary evidence also suggests that although involvement in these
activities increased as children aged through middle childhood, the amount of
structured time still only accounted for 22 % of their discretionary time (Hofferth
and Sandberg 2001a), and participation may not be as excessive as other studies
might suggest (Hofferth et al. 2009).
Studies also indicate that participation in extracurricular activities promotes
educational attainment, including reduced propensities to drop out of high school,
high achievement, and high rates of postsecondary school attainment. Although
most analyses of extracurricular activities are conducted with adolescents, studies
suggest that the positive associations between participation in organized activities
and academic outcomes are similar for younger children and adolescents
(see Mahoney et al. 2005, for a review). Further, involvement in extracurricular
activities may have benefits that extend beyond childhood and adolescence – more
dated studies document positive relationships between extracurricular involvement
and adult income and occupation, even after controlling for other socioeconomic
indicators and ability (Landers and Landers 1978; Otto 1975, 1976).
Mahoney et al. (2005) argue that participation in extracurricular activities has
several features that promote positive development among children: physical and
psychological safety, appropriate structure, supportive relationships, opportunities
for belonging, positive social norms, support for efficacy and mattering, opportu-
nity for skill building, and integration of family, school, and community
efforts. Involvement in organized activities may influence scholastic outcomes by
promoting school attendance, encouraging high aspirations for the future, reducing
delinquent and criminal behavior, keeping children from developing drug and
alcohol problems, and staving off antisocial behavior. Lareau (2003) argues that
children’s involvement in extracurricular activities and parents’ active encourage-
ment of those activities teaches children how to interact with authority figures and
helps them to develop the kind of social skills necessary for succeeding in white-
collar occupations. Their participation in these activities prepares them for entering
the work world and effectively navigating bureaucracies. As Adler and Adler
(1994) note, children’s organized activities during the after-school time period
tend to “encourage professionalization and specialization, opposing children’s
unorganized tendencies toward recreation and generalism” (324). Children’s play-
time has therefore become an opportunity for adults to socialize children with adult
work values. Further, because extracurricular activities may promote children’s
academic socialization and development, those who do not participate may be at
a disadvantage in other scholastic venues (Adler and Adler 1994).
Table 34.5 details how parents invest in children’s educational and organized/
structured activities among families with children in middle childhood (aged 6–12),
as this is the group who are school-aged and most likely, partially because they are
at a point in their development where they have the ability, to be involved in several
organized/structured activities relative to younger children. The top of the panel
shows several measures obtained from questionnaires outside the diaries in the
1997 CDS-PSID about parents’ tendency to be involved with their children’s
school, including volunteering, meeting with teachers, attending school events,
and going to parent-teacher association meetings. These questions include: “During
the current school year, how often have you participated in any of the following
activities at (child’s) school? Would it be not in the current school year, once or
more than once?” The activities examined include: volunteered in the classroom,
school office, or library; had a conference with (child’s) teacher; attended a school
event in which (child) participated such as a play, sporting event, or concert; and
attended a meeting of the PTA or other such organization. Possible answers
included: not in the current school year, once, and more than once. The answers
were coded into two categories that separated parents who had ever engaged in the
activity from parents who had not done so in the current school year. The rest of the
table shows measures obtained from child time diaries encompassing structured
leisure activities including lessons, sports, and organizational activities. The bottom
of the table shows other sports activities that are not traditional team-based sports
that are organized and supervised by adults.
Of the various activities related to children’s schooling that parents report doing
in the stylized questionnaire, the most common is meeting with teachers. The vast
majority of parents (over 80 %) met with their children’s teachers at least once in
the past school year and most attended a school event for the child (66 %). Fewer
parents did more indirect activities related to their children’s education – less than
half of parents attended a PTA meeting (43 %) and a little over a third (36 %)
volunteered in some capacity for the school.
Children’s participation in extracurricular activities including lessons, sports,
and structured activities like girl scouts and after-school clubs was much lower than
1022 S. Raley
Table 34.5 Children’s (aged 6–12) participation in educational, organized, and structured
activities
Scholastic activities
Parent volunteered with school 35.6 % –
Parent met with teachers 82.6 % –
Parent attended school event for child 65.7 % –
Parent attended PTA 42.9 % –
Total structured leisure activitiesa
Percent participating in structured leisure activity on diary day 27.5 % –
Hours per week spent in structured leisure among participants 6.2 (0.43)
Hours per week spent in structured leisure activities 1.7 (0.16)
Lessons
Percent participating in lessons on diary day 5.6 % –
Hours per week spent in lessons among participants 5.3 (0.36)
Hours per week spent in lessons 0.3 (0.05)
Sports
Percent participating in organized sports on diary day 13.9 % –
Hours in sports among participants 7.7 (0.65)
Hours per week in meets, games, practices for sports 1.1 (0.13)
Organizational activities
Child participated in organizational activity on diary day 10.4 % –
Hours per week in organizations among participants 3.4 (0.64)
Hours per week in organizational activity 0.4 (0.08)
Other active sportsb
Percent participating in active sports activity on diary day 43.3 % –
Hours per week spent in active sports activity among participants 5.9 (0.28)
Hours per week spent in active sports 2.5 (0.17)
N 1,286
a
Total structured activities include lessons, sports, and organizational activities
b
Other active sports activities include traditional team-based sports like football that are not
necessarily organized/structured/supervised by an adult/coach
anticipated given all the attention given to children’s enrollment in these activities
in recent years. Only around 6 % of children did lessons on the diary day, 14 % had
a practice or meet for an organized sport, and around 10 % participated in organi-
zational activities like clubs. None of these activities characterized a majority of
children, yet what is notable about children’s participation in organizations is that
children spent large amounts of time in these activities when they were selected into
them – about 5–7 h a week. It is important to keep in mind, however, that these
estimates are taken from two 1-day diaries and multiplied to construct a weekly
measure. Hence, if a child only has a practice or meet once a week, the weekly
measure is grossly overstating the frequency with which children engage in these
kinds of activities. At the same time, the involvement in some organized sports
teams can be quite intensive with daily practices and meets during the week, and
hence this calculation may be appropriate for such activities. Regardless, the
estimate should be interpreted with caution.
In contrast to the activities that are clearly identified by the respondent as being
organized, the other active sports are shown at the bottom of Table 34.5. These
activities are traditional sports like football or tennis that are not necessarily
organized and structured through a school or community center (e.g., the family
goes to play tennis together at the park or neighborhood kids getting together to play
football). Participation in these kinds of active sports is much higher than the
individual and team-based sports at just over 43 % of children.
Table 34.6 shows the variation in educational and structured/organized activities
by maternal education, in light of the substantial evidence that children’s time in
such activities varies widely by parental educational attainment. Similar to
Tables 34.3 and 34.4, estimates are predicted means and percentages based on
OLS and logistic regression models that control for mother’s age, sex of the child,
race of the child, family income, family structure, maternal employment, number of
children in the family, and season of the time diary (full OLS and logistic regression
models available upon request).
Consistent with prior research and theories, Table 34.6 shows that children of
better-educated mothers were more likely to participate in some kind of structured
activity (including lessons, sports, or organizational activities) than children
of mothers who have attained only a high school degree or less. Around 31 % of
children with college-educated mothers spent any time in a structured activity
compared with 29 % of children with mothers who had some college, 25 % of
high-school-educated mothers, and about 9 % of children of parents with less than
a high school diploma. Children with better-educated mothers also spent about an
hour more a week in structured leisure activities than children with less-educated
mothers, though only the differences in overall participation (not length of partic-
ipation) between children with college-educated mothers and those with mothers
who have less than a high school education were statistically significant.
As noted earlier in the chapter, levels of participation in lessons, sports, and
organizations were still somewhat low for all groups. Only the adjusted gaps
between children of college-educated mothers and those with mothers who did
not have a high school diploma in participation in lessons and organizational
activities were statistically significant. The percentage of children aged 6–12
participating in active sports that were not necessarily structured looked similar at
around 41–45 %, regardless of maternal education.
34.5 Time Use and Achievement
A handful of studies have explored the explanatory power of parent-child time

use patterns for understanding child outcomes and, in particular, for understand-
ing the socioeconomic status-achievement link. For example, the greater vocab-
ulary breadth and sentence complexity of mothers’ speech patterns with their
children fully accounted for the positive relationship between parental education
1024 S. Raley
Table 34.6 Adjusted estimates of children’s (aged 6–12) participation in educational, organized,
and structured activities by maternal education
Scholastic activities
b
Parent volunteered with 29.4 % 26.9 % 37.9 % 44.6 %
school
a,b
Parent met with teachers 79.6 % 77.1 % 86.8 % 90.4 %
Parent attended school 24.7 % 38.9 % 49.3 % 54.8 %
event for child
a,b
Parent attended PTA 24.7 % 31.2 % 35.3 % 40.6 %
Total structured leisure activitiesc
a,b
Percent participating in 8.8 % 24.8 % 29.4 % 30.8 %
structured leisure activity
on diary day
Hours per week 1.0 1.7 2.2 1.8
spent in structured
leisure activities
in structured leisure
among participants
Lessons
a
Percent participating 0.6 % 3.9 % 3.7 % 5.9 %
in lessons on diary day
in lessons
Hours per week spent in 7.1 5.7 4.9 4.9
lessons among participants
Sports
Percent participating 4.1 % 9.9 % 9.9 % 10.5 %
in organized sports on
diary day
Hours per week in 0.8 1.1 1.3 0.9
meets, games, practices
for sports
Hours in sports among 6.0 7.6 8.5 6.5
participants
Organizational activities
a
Child participated in 2.5 % 6.4 % 9.9 % 10.5 %
organizational activity
on diary day
organizational activity
organizations among
participants
(continued)

Other active sportsd
Percent participating in 44.8 % 44.1 % 41.0 % 41.9 %
structured leisure activity
on diary day
structured leisure among
participants
structured leisure activities
N 224 435 396 231
Note. Predicted means based on OLS and logistic regression models that control for mother’s age,
a
b
c
Total structured activities include lessons, sports, and organizational activities
d
Other active sports activities include traditional team-based sports like football that are not
necessarily organized/structured/supervised by an adult/coach
(and occupational prestige) and early vocabulary development among a sample of

2-year-olds (Hoff 2003). Children who experience longer and more complex
verbal interactions with their parents may therefore be able to build their vocab-
ularies at faster rates than other children. Using cross-sectional data, Davis-Kean
(2005) found that the positive association between reading and parental education
helped to explain children’s academic achievement, while playing with
children and parental warmth were not clear mediating variables. These findings
suggest parents’ time in an array of stimulating activities beyond basic childcare
are key to promoting children’s cognitive development.
As noted earlier, one of the appealing analyses of the children’s time diaries
from the CDS-PSID include the high-quality child well-being indicators available
in the data. As such, it is one of the few data sets that can link time use with well-
being. Such correlations must be examined with caution, however, as even carefully
collected, representative longitudinal data cannot establish causality. It is simply
not possible to account for all of the things happening in the children’s home
environment, the genetic variation in children, or the external events and actors
outside the family that influence children’s development. At best, the data offer
circumstantial evidence on how children’s time use may be linked to various
achievement and behavior outcomes.
At the same time, Cowan and Cowan (2002) point out that dismissing the
findings derived from correlational studies that do not conclusively determine the
1026 S. Raley
direction of parenting effects is unwarranted. In other words, “Ambiguity

concerning the direction of effects does not rule out the utility of all concurrent
correlational designs” (77). Even if the extent to which time use patterns “cause”
various behaviors and outcomes in children cannot be proven, these correlations
can still offer insight into the nature of time use, inequality, and well-being.
In a series of OLS regression analyses not shown, children’s verbal abilities were
examined in the context of their time use patterns both at the cross section in 1997
and over time (using the second wave of data collected in 2002). Analyses exam-
ined the extent to which the activities that varied by maternal education were
significantly associated with children’s verbal achievement and also examined the
extent to which children’s time use patterns explained the relationship between
maternal education and children’s verbal scores. Among young children, reading
with parents was a critical difference between highly and less-educated families
that was linked to children’s verbal abilities. In addition, preschool-aged children’s
television viewing with parents was also negatively and significantly associated
with children’s verbal scores.
By the time children reach school age, however, reading is negatively and
significantly associated with verbal achievement. At this age, reading with parents
seems to be some sort of assistance to children who are struggling, rather than
a general investment that may enhance children’s verbal development. Children of
highly educated mothers get this kind of help at rates much higher than children of
less-educated mothers (almost no children whose mothers are less-than-high-
school educated receive reading help from their mothers). This means children
of well-educated mothers are more likely to get a kind of protective assistance
from parents at a time when they may need it the most. There is a general tendency
to think of the advantages conferred by highly educated parents as some sort of
fast-tracking that helps their already advantaged children pull even further ahead.
This finding suggests that the children of educated mothers may also be
advantaged in that their parents may be more likely to intervene when they fall
behind. In sum, highly educated parents are not only likely to read to their children
during the critical formative years of brain development, but these parents may
also be better able to provide the kind of assistance their school-aged children need
when they are having problems with their verbal abilities.
The analysis of children’s participation in structured activities, particularly time
in organizational activities like after-school clubs, suggests a consistent connection
with current and later verbal aptitude, offering support for the contention that
involvement in structured activities enhances children’s skills that help them
succeed academically. While this analysis cannot fully account for selection effects
into structured activities – perhaps those with greater genetic verbal ability and
reasoning skills are the children who most seek out involvement in community and
scholastic organizations – it is a finding nonetheless consistent with the literature
suggesting that children’s participation in such activities offers a host of benefits to
children that enhance their academic success and general well-being. Greater
attention to what components of the organized activities that might be associated
with development is needed as well as more creative study designs that better
control for selection effects. Further, it is possible and indeed probable that these
kinds of parental investments may have implications for other areas of children’s
lives beyond verbal scores, which future research should explore more fully.
Finally, the array of time use measures assessed in this chapter only marginally
explain the positive relationship between maternal education and children’s verbal
achievement. Other family resources, including income and maternal ability, seem
to play larger roles in understanding how and why children of better-educated
mothers are more likely to have high-achieving children than less-educated
mothers. At the same time, when children’s activities are considered in bundles –
when children’s reading and TV viewing and structured activities are included in
the regression model together – children’s time use patterns rival family income in
their ability to explain the relationship between maternal education and children’s
verbal achievement scores. In this sense it is the many things that better-educated
mothers do for their children – not just one activity in particular – that helps to
explain why their children are advantaged relative to youth whose mothers have
less education. In particular, this chapter highlighted the importance of reading,
limiting television viewing, and encouraging participation in structured activities.
34.6 Future Directions: Subjective Experiences of Time
Time diaries allow for rich insight into objective experiences of people’s time. The
way in which people and, in particular, children feel about their participation in
various activities is a much more nebulous area of investigation. The potential
stress or enjoyment of engaging in many organized activities cannot be ascertained
with traditional time diary methodology. As such, innovative approaches to under-
standing the subjective dimensions of time use that can be attached to the traditional
diary are underway. In 2010, for example, a Well-Being (WB) Module was fielded
as part of the American Time Use Survey. The WB Module gathered information
about how people felt during various activities and included general health
indicators.
34.7 Summary
This chapter began with a description of time diary methodology, the most widely
used approach to measuring time use in the world. Drawing on previous literature as
well as author calculations from the 1997 Child Development Supplement to the
Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the chapter then detailed the activities that
children do, both with their parents and on their own, that tend to be associated
with children’s well-being. The discussion focused on parental education as a key
indicator of social inequalities. Lastly, the chapter discussed efforts to understand
subjective dimensions of time use as well as recent study designs that have sought
to better understand how children’s time use patterns may have implications for
their verbal development.
1028 S. Raley
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Section V
Arts, Creativity and Child Well-Being
Images of Child Well-Being in the Arts
35
Ellen Handler Spitz
35.1 Learning from the Arts
What can we learn about child well-being and parenting from attending to imagery
created by artists? Let us start from the premise that just as a theorist instructs by
means of lectures and formal treatises; just as a therapist teaches by reference to the
treatment of patients; an anthropologist, by means of experienced and recorded field
work; a teacher, by citing lessons from the classroom; likewise, an artist – a gifted
painter, writer, or filmmaker – parlays psychological truth by means of his or her
chosen medium. The arts, however, are rarely considered primary sources of
knowledge about childhood; yet, they should be, for the arts offer multilayered
insights of enduring value.
The intuitive sensitivity that comes into play when children articulate their needs
and their percepts nonverbally cannot be imparted by intellectual means alone.
Children, for example, understand far more than they verbalize. Precept and theory
are not the only royal roads to understanding. Sensibility may also be cultivated
through mindful attentiveness, careful observation, and, eventually, by creative
emulation. These are ways of learning privileged in the arts. A senior Dalcroze
expert, Ruth Alperson of New York (Alperson Ruth, (2012), personal communica-
tion, 26 May 2012) who works with toddlers, describes a pertinent aspect of her
method: she sits at the piano and simply watches as 2- and 3-year-olds walk
unselfconsciously about the room. Gradually, intuitively, as she falls in with
a particular child’s natural rhythms, she starts to improvise on the keyboard, playing
music that matches that child’s unique body language, following the child
around the room with sound. As she does this, the child begins to listen ever
more attentively, and the music becomes an integral part of his movement
E.H. Spitz
Honors College and the Department of Visual Arts, University of Maryland (UMBC), Baltimore,
MD, USA
e-mail: spitz@umbc.edu

1036 E.H. Spitz
through space. A child’s unreflective walk, Alperson explains, tells us much about
him, but this is knowledge we would have great difficulty imprisoning in the
straightjacket of verbiage.
Works of art – paintings, novels, films, plays, sculptures, dance, and music –
offer countless opportunities for experiential, observational, and imaginative
learning. As members of the audience for them, whether optically, auditorily, or
in our mind’s eye, we are invited to participate vicariously. Fictional characters
gesture and interact; paying close attention to them in paint, or on screen or stage, or
in the pages of a literary text, we notice how they meet or miss each other’s subtle
cues. In her classic Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller (1981) points out that
social norms often prevent us from experiencing genuine feelings: we turn away
from “jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, impotence, anxiety” (p. 9). Through the
arts, however, we may safely and with minimal risk permit ourselves to feel
intensely what is not permitted to us elsewhere.
Although we have made astonishing strides in science and technology,
we remain stagnant in the realm of relationships among ourselves. The most
fundamental of these is that between parents and children, for this bond precedes
and prefigures the rest. In religion, in politics, in education, and in the arts, the
parent-child relationship forms an ineluctable paradigm. To evolve, we must search
for insight outside the usual designated channels. Within and beyond the university,
the study of human relations belongs, however, to the social sciences, where
problems are identified and labeled, statistical and empirical proofs offered, and
solutions proposed. The arts and literature operate differently: they invite us to
explore aesthetic and imaginary worlds, to suspend disbelief, and to enter unreal
realms that often entail powerful feelings with rippling effects; the arts press us into
searches for emotional meaning; they open horizons but do not close gates;
they ask, but they leave us alone to answer. The arts give us opportunities to live
out their scenarios with minimal risk to life and limb. As such, they constitute
a proving ground for life.
35.2 Historicity and the Notion of Child Well-Being
As preface to this brief essay on child well-being reflected in the arts, it may be
helpful to take a bow in the direction of a landmark work of scholarship, Centuries
of Childhood, by the French scholar Philippe Ariès (1960). The purpose of such an
obeisance would be to remind ourselves with humility that contemporary notions
regarding childhood need to be understood as historically contingent. Ariès’s work,
to be sure, has not been immune from criticism; yet it provides significant evidence
that watershed changes in societal attitudes toward youth arose in Europe and
America in response to the industrialization that swept across these geographic
regions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern family as we know
it (a configuration that appears in our time to be undergoing seismic change, at
least in the United States and Europe) came into being only recently, and the work
of Ariès serves as a corrective for assumptions that contemporary ideas about
35 Images of Child Well-Being in the Arts 1037
childhood and parenting are universal or transhistorical or that they can, without
skepticism, supplant all ideas that precede or parallel them.
Archaeology and anthropology remind us that the upbringing of children occurs
within particular cultures that exist for a limited duration and that both subtly and
overtly determine the values that will be passed on from one generation to the next,
values that differ significantly. We recall Clifford Geertz’s (1973) indispensable
notion of “thick description.” Even if one were to argue for the superficiality of
cultural differences, it would be hard to deny that, superficial or not, these dissim-
ilarities mandate conflicting practices concerning the upbringing and education of
youth, all of which function within given sociopolitical communities. It may be true
that all societies value youth to some extent and seek to provide for the well-being
of children; however, that goal itself entails, and has entailed, models that range
from top-down highly controlled environments dictated by supposedly wise adults
to models that, by contrast, privilege measures of freedom and choice for children
and foster children’s burgeoning independence rather than unquestioning
obedience to authority. In both scenarios, the well-being of youth is at least
nominally asserted, but behavior toward the young differs dramatically.
From our vantage point in contemporary Western societies, let us broach the
limiting and extremely disquieting example of adult sexual relations with minor
children. Undoubtedly, we deem such behavior not only reprehensible and morally
indefensible but damaging to the psyches of children. Moral, legal, and medical
authorities all prohibit it. Yet, as classical scholarship reveals (Dover 1987; Laes
2006; Dasen and Spaeth 2010), this attitude of opprobrium was not held throughout
the history of Western civilization. In ancient Greece, older men engaged in sexual
practices with boys as a matter of routine, and in Augustan Roman society, among
the elites, male children of the servant class engaged in sexual acts with adult men
as a matter of common practice, one sanctioned as normal and acceptable. Romans
felt, apparently, little if any concern about consequent psychic trauma on the part of
children so involved. Rather than import our contemporary values, might we not
reflect whether we can be certain that – under the particular, given, social circum-
stances described – psychic trauma was suffered by the involved children, as we
would define the terms today? How independent, in other words, is the childhood
experience of psychic pain from culturally sanctioned mores? This seems a moot
question with far-reaching implications.
Likewise, elite Roman patrician girls of 12 or 13 were married to spouses chosen
by their fathers and sent away from their homes of birth without parental concern
over their anxiety beforehand or depression afterward. Again, we might hesitate
before presuming we know the feelings of girl-brides of antiquity. Rather, we
might pose our difficult question anew: Could it be that sensations of anxiety,
loss, and abandonment are mitigated or even absent under conditions of practice
that – whether we today would deem them inhumane or not – are widely accepted in
a given sociocultural group? The arts offer us, incidentally, a wealth of imagery
pertinent to this theme albeit with no definitive answers (Keuls 1985).
Our undismayed attention to unsettling questions such as these may help place
our own inquiry into its historical framework. To recognize the contingency of
1038 E.H. Spitz
behavioral norms is to wonder whether what we take irrefutably as “child

well-being” may in fact prove a constellation of practices and notions that work
best just within our own circumscribed contexts.
Until very recent history, in keeping with dominant, power-perpetuating
constructs of “human beings” as adult white heterosexual males, children were
regarded as undersized, imperfect, and unfinished beings. When the default for
“human being” is an adult Caucasian male specimen, every other incarnation falls
short: a child, a woman, a person of color, or a foreigner of any alternative
description. Thanks to the unrelenting impact of social activism, worldwide
political upheaval, twenty-first century globalism, and major shifts in population,
this construct is waning, and yet it clings like a species of tenacious ivy and remains
both sluggish to wither and difficult to root out. To study the images of childhood, it
is essential to hold it in abeyance, lest it overrun our consciousness all unawares.
35.3 Mother-Child Imagery in Italian Renaissance Painting
For centuries in Europe, the principal – and virtually the only – child depicted in
visual art, that is to say, in painting, sculpture, mosaic, illuminated manuscript, and
stained glass, was the Holy Child birthed within Christianity, that religion being all
powerful on the continent. The Christ child was ubiquitously portrayed as an infant,
almost always with his mother, in a massive outpouring of canonical images that we
refer to as the “Madonna and Child” (Warner 1983). To study the progression of
these images iconographically, from late Roman antiquity through the Byzantine
period to the Italian High Renaissance and beyond, is to learn how children (in the
guise of the infant Christ) were depicted as miniature adults with corresponding
bodily proportions and then how, little by little, they were accorded a separate
and more lifelike physiognomic status of their own in these representations
(Adams 1985). Giotto di Bondone, painting his tender, luminous frescoes in
Florence and in Padua, reveals himself to us as not only an early artistic genius
but a brilliant psychologist, who looked sensitively at babies and who understood,
for example, that an infant being handed over to a strange bearded man would not
go willingly but would reach back instinctively and longingly toward his mother
(Presentation in the Temple, c. 1320, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston).
In Giotto’s picture, the tiny infant Christ pushes away the face of the high priest and
leans toward his mother’s outstretched hands.
Even earlier, the glorious Duccio di Buoninsegna, painting masterfully in Siena
during the waning years of the dugento, recorded images of babies fingering their
mothers’ mantels exploratively, as babies are wont to do, when they conduct their
indispensable research projects to learn what comes off the body and what does not
(the Stoclet Madonna, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). In other maternal
dyads from this period by Duccio, notably panels in London and Siena, the
baby often gazes directly into his mother’s eyes so we can feel the rapport that
unites them.
It is not, however, until after the Black Plague, not till the quattrocento proper,
that artists can be found who study small children with sufficient attention to remark
their salient physical differences from grown-ups and draw them accordingly, with
characteristically large heads and chubby limbs. Masaccio’s sumptuous Madonna
with Angels of 1426 in London’s National Gallery is a prime example. A plump,
naked baby boy perches contentedly on his mother’s knee and sucks the first two
fingers of his left hand while she cradles his well-padded thigh. Here, we no longer
find a diminutive adult but an actual child, round, heavy, and massive. Undraped,
unlike earlier images where the Christ child is robed and fully covered, this baby’s
nudity allows the artist to show us the essential elements of a child’s actual body.
By Raphael’s time, we encounter an even richer understanding and further
psychological sophistication. Take his beloved Madonna della Seggiola of 1514
in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, where, in a tondo composition, the master brings us
close to a baby just under 1 year of age, who has attained the developmental stage
when infants tend to shrink from strangers because it is clear to them that whereas
some people are well-known, others are not, and this difference needs to be
signaled. The baby’s mother, a beautiful young Italian woman, turbaned and
tasseled in refulgent oriental splendor, protects him with both arms as she looks
cautiously out at us, and he clings warily to her. In images such as these, we discern
a growing sensitivity to the feelings of children. The artist Raphael, in his empathic
feeling for his subject, perceives in embryo the notion that babies are not mere
objects to be manipulated but sensible creatures in their own right who experience
fears, pleasures, and moods.
Rarely, in all this vast assembly of images of the Madonna and Child do we
come upon pregnancy. Yet, arguably, child well-being begins before the moment of
parturition. Tolstoy (1868), in War and Peace, describes to perfection how his
character Elizaveta, Andrei Bolkonsky’s wife, perhaps in her third trimester, with
her husband away at war against Napoleon, “looked at Princess Marya [her sister-
in-law] with that special expression of an inward and happily serene gaze that only
pregnant women have. It was clear that she did not see Princess Marya, but was
looking deep inside herself – into something happy and mysterious that was being
accomplished in her.” Thus, in 1868, a consummate Russian literary genius delin-
eates in imaginative prose what a British psychoanalyst christens 100 years later:
“primary maternal preoccupation.” This felicitous phrase, coined by Donald W.
Winnicott (1956), came to him when he too noticed how a woman in the months
preceding childbirth exhibits tendencies to withdraw deep within and allow the
external world – if possible – to fall away. This turning of the mother-to-be toward
her as-yet-unborn child may betoken a preliminary indicator of that child’s future
well-being. But we must return to the Madonna.
Frescoed on the wall of a parish church in Tuscany for over five and half
centuries, there was a glorious but insufficiently well-known masterpiece by the
enigmatic Italian Renaissance painter, Piero della Francesca. This painting is a rare
pregnant Madonna, the Madonna del Parto. It was made, according to Vasari’s
sixteenth-century Lives of the Artists, when the celebrated master returned from
1040 E.H. Spitz
Rome on the occasion of his mother’s death to his birthplace of Borgo San Sepolcro
in Tuscany. Vasari (1550), whose account has been discredited for its mythic and
embroidered qualities (Vasari was born decades after Piero died), possesses many
evocative overtones, however, and scholars still read it gratefully in the lacuna
made by a dearth of contemporary sources. Vasari says that Piero was called “della
Francesca” after his mother because she was still pregnant with him when his
father died and because she continuously nurtured and encouraged him. Even
if only partly true, Vasari’s story adds resonance and pathos to what may be the
most contemplative image in all of Western art on the subject of expectant
motherhood.
The Madonna del Parto, in 1992, was moved from its original site to the wall of
a local museum. In its own village church in the middle of the small cemetery of the
Comune di Monterchi, pregnant women flocked to it for centuries to pray at its feet.
They came asking the Madonna to grant them safe childbirth and an easy delivery.
The painting’s controversial removal inspired noted Soviet film director Andrei
Tarkovsky to go to Italy and shoot images of it for his 1983 film Nostalghia.
Tarkovsky’s (1991) diaries report that when the authorities announced that the
fresco would be taken away (presumably for conservation purposes), local women
protested bitterly and pleaded for its continuing presence among them. Their
fervent appeals were denied.
Imagine climbing, on a hot summer morning, a hill in Tuscany (Spitz 2001). The
weathered gravestones lie strewn around us. We enter the small chapel that contains
the Madonna del Parto. In the gloom, a large image appears – a pensive young
woman robed in iridescent blue flanked by two angels. It is she: Piero’s Madonna
with Child. Time and circumstance are swept away. Nothing captures the uncanny
quality of pregnancy like this painting. Restless waiting. That sense of hovering on
the precipice of destiny. Inhabiting an alien time-space. Being utterly alone while
joined to an as-yet-unknown being. Feeling supremely important while at the same
time insignificant, a mere vehicle, about to be changed irrevocably, separated
forever from one’s former body-self, knowing that one momentous uncontrollable
rupture is about to occur to one’s body despite one’s will one knows not when.
The American poet Jorie Graham (1983) evokes sensations of this Tuscan scene
with its heat, its fatigue, its amazement, its faint nausea, and its vertigo in her poem
“San Sepolcro.” She recalls the pregnant Madonna’s blue dress and abstracted gaze,
her delicate, quivering fingers as they hover over the buttons on her bulging belly.
And although the artistic beauty is of a different kind in this second, poetic incarna-
tion, it is equally palpable and real. Reflecting on both of these artistic
representations – the visual and the verbal – we accede to their demand for complete
absorption – absorption, which is, of course, the quintessential state that pregnancy
itself requires: a turning inward, away from the world. This is a state parallel to what
happens when we are caught up in the intense contemplation of a work of art. It
recalls, in fact, an often overlooked moment in Freud’s (1905) famous “Dora case,”
when, as he reports, his susceptible young woman patient “went alone to the painting
gallery in Dresden, and stopped in front of the pictures that appealed to her.
She remained two hours in front of the Sistine Madonna, rapt in silent admiration.”
The learned doctor writes: “When I asked her what had pleased her so much about the
picture she could find no clear answer to make. At last she said: ‘The Madonna.’”
Puzzled by these simple words, Freud fails to grasp their import. We may feel a rush
of warmth for Dora, however, and comprehend how, enthralled before this mother
and child in all its wonder and presence, the girl could find no verbal equivalent for
what she saw. We speak, after all, of such moments themselves as pregnant. And
William Butler Yeats’ (1928) poem “Among School Children” refers explicitly to
pregnancy: “Both nuns and mothers worship images,” he writes.
Piero’s Madonna asks to be dealt with gently. She wants to be recognized,
registered, and acknowledged. Not necessarily understood. Lush and ornamental,
she lures us into her golden curtained space. We find ourselves within a dome where
buttons are coming undone and momentous events are about to occur. Bewitched,
like the Madonna herself, we stand in a parallel trance. And we feel a pang of
responsibility for all this beauty – for the blue and the gold, the richness of
the drapery and the Madonna’s distracted face, the skin and bones, and the body;
for the painting’s crust, texture; and for the web of cracks that waffle its face. Can
we restyle them as birthmarks? Traces of false starts in some long-past process of
creation, residue of moments when Piero’s hand and brush may have trembled or
his mind lost and regained concentration. What about the scars of afterpains? How
did it happen, anyway, this birth? Fast? Or did it come slowly? With anguish? With
joy? Was it a good labor, or did this object make its entry agonized and protracted
into the world that was awaiting it? And what kind of a world was that? Did anyone
weep or sigh? Did Piero simply wonder whether it crystallized his dreams and what
his mother might have thought of it (for no one would ever love him again, after her
death, as much as she)?
However vibrant, a painting – like a child – is vulnerable, even in a holy chapel
or in a museum, where it is given clean air to breathe and its temperature controlled
and where it is protected from excessive moisture and light and provided with
round-the-clock guards to protect it from harm. It can be hurt. Bombs explode.
Slashers break in. Like a child, it is composed of perishable matter. Sharing space
with it is to cultivate a special empathy and pity. It teaches us that worth comes from
cherishing. Just as do living beings in the world of earth, human, animal, and plant,
it merits an ethos of care, an ethos we undermine daily in a culture debased with
debris from neglected and abandoned objects. Unmothered. Stillborn.
35.4 Imagery in Film: A Child Mourns the Death of a Parent
Let us switch centuries now and shift to the art of film and to the subject of
a vulnerable child. War, terrorism, natural catastrophe, accident, fatal illness, or
personal savagery: any of these violations may cause the death of a parent. Can
the arts help us address a child’s well-being when one parent dies suddenly and
the surviving parent must manage his own grief while continuing to perform his
ongoing role solo? What happens psychically to a child in this situation? How can
a newly single parent handle a confused, bereaved child when his own heart, like
1042 E.H. Spitz
hers, is torn by grief? By adulthood, most people have developed viable strategies
for self-protection at times of loss. Not so children.
Addressed by many eminent writers in the mental health professions over the
decades (inter alia, Wolfenstein 1966, 1969, 1973; Spitz 1998), this theme ani-
mates a 1996 film by Jacques Doillon, the French artist and director. Ponette
teaches in ways that differ from psychological case studies and theoretical treatises.
Written and directed by an auteur who was born in Paris during the Second World
War, it won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for the Best Foreign Film of its
year, and it stars a prodigious 4-year-old child actress, Victoire Thivisol, who was
selected as the youngest winner of the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice
Film Festival. Ponette recounts the story of a small girl who loses her mother in a car
accident. Its luminous perspectives on childhood mourning demonstrate the value of
studying works of art for their psychological insight. Doillon’s masterful portrayal of
suffering and resiliency in the face of devastating loss also foregrounds parenting
issues that surround bereavement when one of the survivors is a child. His imagery
offers countless opportunities to reflect on child well-being in this context.
Briefly, the story begins with the image of a little girl, Ponette, whose left arm is
set in a cast. Her father is taking her by car to visit an aunt and cousins in the
country. It is clear that the aunt is her father’s sister Claire. We learn, bit by bit, that
the child has been in an automobile accident. On the present car trip with her father,
Ponette finds out that her mother, who had been driving on the day her arm was
injured, was herself gravely injured and has not recovered. Ponette’s father tells her
this, and then, arranging for her to stay with her aunt and cousins in the country,
he leaves her to go back to Lyon to work (and, presumably, to mourn alone). Thus,
the child is now deprived of both parents. We are given a glimpse, in a brief but
significant scene, of the mother’s funeral, where Ponette is urged repeatedly by one
of her cousins to cast her favorite doll Yoyotte into the coffin with her mother.
With bated breath we watch her as she waveringly, agonizingly refuses to do so:
how can she part also with this not-me object (Winnicott 1953), which condenses so
much of what she has already lost?
We shadow Ponette at her aunt’s home with her two young cousins. Finally, we
see her at her cousins’ school among other children. Her father returns several times
for visits. During this period, Ponette shows that she can, on one level, understand
and say the words that mean her mother is dead (“Maman est morte”) but, on
another level, she does not understand them at all. She is unable to accept
the emotional reality of her extreme deprivation, and she believes the loss can
be reversed and magically undone. In her efforts to retrieve her absent mother,
she demonstrates a young child’s powerful fantasy life under duress, particularly
under circumstances of catastrophic loss.
Jacques Doillon offers such an exquisitely realized vision on screen that we are
allowed to observe minute details, such as the inventions concocted by its 4-year-
old protagonist in order to enact her split consciousness of death. The medium of
film portrays in wrenching imagery her heroic attempts to lure and summon back
a lost parent from the grave. At one point, Ponette playacts the accident uncon-
sciously with her rag doll in a brief but stunning vignette during which she and the
doll enact multiple roles until the trauma is reversed and undone. A camera follows
her young father as he likewise deals, first ineptly and then gradually more
knowingly, with his daughter in the wake of his own trouble. We observe him
holding fast to their shattered life trying not to abandon his daughter emotionally.
He gives her his watch to keep when he goes off to Lyon, an unspoken symbol of his
beating heart.
Through its delicately wrought scenes and its use of piano and violin music, the
film reveals a complex process involving both fragmentary testing of reality as well
as fleeing from reality and withdrawal from the world. Ponette tries out various
magical and religious strategies. She makes gifts and offerings and endures fruitless
periods of solitary waiting, incantations, trials, and prayers. She shares her hopes
with her cousins and the other children in her orbit but soon learns to keep her
deepest feelings secret from them so as to protect herself when they, also frightened
by the death of a mother, make fun of her and torment her even as they pity her. She
proves able to relate both well and poorly to her surviving parent. She suffers
various minor physical ailments that stand in symbolically for mental ones. She
experiences abject human helplessness.
Constraints of space prevent our moving step by step through the film’s remark-
able narration, but we may linger on one or two essential scenes. It is crucial to
point out that, despite a temporary role reversal forced on the child by her initially
shaken parent who asks her (sic) whether she thinks he can take care of her, and
despite the ongoing incongruity between their mental states and the occasional
severity of her father’s tone and language, the small girl and her youthful
papa betray a mutual love that triumphs over all their transient negativity. Partly,
as Doillon’s imagery makes clear, the reason Ponette’s father does not for most of
the duration understand what his child is feeling is that he cannot afford emotionally
to do so. This is an important point and one readily comprehensible to us
the moment we make the effort to experience the situation from his viewpoint.
Precisely because, as audience, we are situated outside (even though we are,
of course, also very much drawn in), we can, as it were, grasp and sympathize
with a variety of viewpoints and emotional possibilities and not be caught in a parti
pris, hence another feature of this medium as a vehicle for learning in the psycho-
logical arena.
After Ponette’s father leaves her at her aunt’s, he returns a second time from his
work in Lyon. He is recalled to visit her at her aunt’s in the country because her
behavior has become worrisome. She is spending much of her time alone with her
doll Yoyotte; she waits for her mother daily for hours on a hillside, and she refuses
to join in the cousins’ games. Most of the remaining scenes after this visit take
place in a Catholic boarding school to which Ponette is sent with her cousins and
a group of other young children. Here, as previously, Ponette tries repeatedly to
find some way to reconnect with her mother. As background for her efforts, we are
shown, in a series of scenes replete with empathy, pathos, and humor, all the
confusions of young children over a variety of momentous themes: religion,
sexuality, and divorce, as well as death. In preparation for filming their colloquies,
Doillon traveled throughout France, listened to children in diverse milieus, and
1044 E.H. Spitz
recorded their impromptu conversations. Ponette, believing unshakeably in her

power to alter her unwelcome reality as the child of a dead mother, bypasses no
chance to resurrect her. The other children, both comprehending and not
comprehending, seek to abet, assist, and thwart her. At one point, as a “test” of
her worthiness, they lead her to a foul-smelling covered garbage can in the woods,
order her to climb into it, and leave her there piteously crying, an act that eerily
replicates the sealing up of her mother in the tomb. Eventually, they rescue her and
tell her she passed the test. We watch as her blotchy tear-soaked face emerges from
the nasty receptacle and wince as its lid descends painfully on her hand while she
climbs out.
Finally, a pivotal moment comes on the playground when a blond boy named
Antoine enters with a toy gun. In this scene, a key fantasy about the fatal accident is
enacted. Up to this point, Ponette has experienced the entire gamut of emotions
concerning the loss of a loved one, but with the single exception of anger. “Who
wants to kill me?” Antoine challenges the other children, as he brandishes his
weapon. He goes up to Ponette and offers it to her. “You can kill me,” he dares her.
She draws back: “I don’t want to,” she murmurs.
But Antoine pressures her until, reluctantly, she takes the gun from him and
complies: “I’ll shoot you in the head,” she says and pretends to do so. Antoine cries
out in make-believe agony, falls to the ground, and then lies there on his back inert.
Ponette steps on him at that point and then runs off with his gun. Antoine, furious at
her now for having exceeded the terms of his offer and for extending the game he
had proposed, gets up, chases her, and tries to wrest the gun out of her hands.
Ponette holds on fiercely and will not let go of the toy weapon. Exasperated,
Antoine tells her that she cannot kill anyone else with it because it is his gun.
Then, when she continues to refuse to give it up, he hits her, and they scuffle with
one another on the cold playground. At this point, Antoine, in rage and frustration,
pronounces in a loud voice some terrible words – words that articulate the most
deeply buried level of the little girl’s fantasy:
“You killed your mother!” he accuses. Relentlessly, he continues: “She died
because you were mean. When someone’s mommy dies, it is because they were
mean. My mommy isn’t dead because I am not mean.”
Shocked and terrorized by these damning sentences, Ponette cannot maintain
herself intact. She breaks down. With tears smarting in her eyes, she stands alone on
the playground. The image is devastating: “If my mommy were here,” she sobs,
“You never would have said that.”
Shortly afterward, she tells her cousin Matthias that she wants to die.
In pondering this exchange, we may want to try to understand the meaning of the
gun and of the “killing” to Ponette. Up to this time, she has expressed sorrow, grief,
longing, determination and resourcefulness, but never aggression. And yet, there is
anger when a parent dies. There is anger even when it is kept out of conscious
awareness. Anger, because the child, endowing the parent with superhuman
powers, may fantasize that if the parent vanishes, that must surely happen because
the parent chose it to be so. Doillon shows us how anger, at the beginning, even
takes possession of Ponette’s father. Fantasizing irrationally that the doomed car
was entirely under his wife’s control during the accident and the outcome entirely in
her power, he asks bitterly why his wife died in the car crash: “What was she
thinking of?” he demands.
Ponette, having been given a gun and asked to perform the act of “shooting”
another child, gains, in so doing, the unexpected power to experience a certain kind
of relief. In the exchange with Antoine, she is reluctant at first, but at last she is able
to express her own latent aggression at the death of her mother and also the
previously unfelt pleasure of turning passive into active. When the opportunity
initially presents itself to her, she declines because it is too scary and because she is
not aggressive by nature. But then, after acquiescing, she becomes, suddenly, in this
new game – not of her making – a perpetrator instead of a victim. And she holds on
to the gun for such a long time because, tasting power after so much helplessness,
she does not want to give up the sensation it magically affords her. Death is under
her control now.
As always, however, the price for aggression is dear. The price here is
catastrophic. Ponette’s response to hearing that she is her mother’s killer is to
retreat into total passivity and to wish to die. Of course, this wish too is complex
and overdetermined, because to die would be a way both to rejoin her mother and to
identify with her. When in the scene that follows, Ponette’s cousin Matthias (who
was not present on the playground) gets it out of her that it was Antoine who upset
her so much, he suggests that, instead of Ponette killing herself or Matthias killing
her (which Ponette proposes), they should both seek out and kill Antoine! Thus, we
witness the proliferation of aggression in the wake of loss: the primitive solution of
“kicking someone else,” of passing on one’s suffering to another person or persons –
wanton violence as an antidote for the unbearable passivity of grief.
Now, at the end of this extraordinary film, after trying in every way she can to
reestablish her connection with her lost mother, including the performance of
aggression and the expression of a wish to die, Ponette is seen trudging along
a country road with her backpack heading toward the cemetery. Followed at
a distance by the camera, only the music of the violin accompanies her. We see
her from the back, climbing a hillock. Her stocky childish figure on its sturdy legs
shod in thick shoes approaches her mother’s grave. Ponette lowers herself and sits
down on the ground with her head resting against the gravestone. The earth beneath
her smells rich and moist (we can tell); no grass has yet begun to sprout over the
freshly dug plot. All is silent. The cast on her arm has turned scruffy. Bending over
the dirt now – at first slowly but then faster and more frantically – Ponette begins to
rake the soil with her fingers, pulling the dark earth toward her in desperate
rhythmic gestures as if trying to dig down under it to what lies beneath.
“Maman!” she cries out, “Je suis là” (“Mama, I am here.”), until, brokenhearted,
she lies exhausted on her tummy on the gravesite.
Suddenly, a figure appears, a lively, graceful, and spirited woman dressed
warmly in a winter coat and scarf. Smiling at Ponette, she asks: “Do I smell like
candy?” This apparition takes Ponette by the hand and kisses her; they walk briskly
together. Her mother tells her a little about how the accident occurred but in
a way that resonates with a child’s fantasies and needs: “When I realized I was
1046 E.H. Spitz
dying I let go,” she says, “I didn’t think of you. I was mean. But, as I went under,
I heard you calling me.. . . Last night you held me.”
Speechless at first, Ponette gradually begins to respond with incredulity, then
wonder, and then utter joy. They run and laugh holding hands. “Tomorrow papa
will take you and you’ll laugh all day,” her mother says. And then she adds:
“Nobody likes a neglectful child. What is a neglectful child?” to which Ponette
answers, “A child who forgets to laugh?” And, her mother asks jauntily, “Why are
you alive?” Then she answers her own question: “To try everything!” She goes on:
“Try everything, and then you can die.” And later, “Happy spirits like your mother
never die.”
Ponette, seeking maternal comfort as well as playfulness, complains she is cold.
The apparition immediately gives her a red sweater. Her lip beginning to tremble,
Ponette asks whether she will stay, but the apparition answers sternly: “You know
that I am dead. My head hit the steering wheel. Everything was broken.” Now,
Ponette begins to fight back her tears. Again, the apparition reminds her of her
father: “Go and be happy with him. I am sad when you are not happy with him.
Don’t forget I love you.” With this, she explains that she must leave and refuses
Ponette’s pleas to hide and stay. She tells Ponette to turn around now and go to greet
her Papa. But the little girl, trying to be brave, cannot refrain from asking just one
more time: “Do you love me for real?”
“Oh, yes!” the apparition answers passionately, standing in silhouette on the path
with the wind blowing in her hair and in her scarf: “Go find Papa.” Ponette turns
back, takes a few steps away, and then, like Orpheus, cannot help turning her head
around. But, this time, all is emptiness.
Suddenly, a car appears, and her father is kneeling on the path beside her asking
what she is doing. She tells him that her mother has come back and has talked to her
and that she wasn’t scared and that she gave her a red sweater. This time, in an
exquisite moment of brilliantly empathic parenting, her father valorizes her fantasy:
“She was right to,” he says. Ponette tells him, “But she is never coming back.”
“Well,” he replies, philosophically, “she can’t keep making these round trips.”
Holding Ponette’s hand, he walks with her as, with her eyes shining, she utters the
final words of the film: “She told me to learn to be happy.”
Thus, we glimpse how a work of art depicts a child’s mourning and fantasy life.
By studying it in detail, we see as under a microscope the difficulties and complex-
ities of parent-child relations at such a time. We are able, by the end, to observe the
gradual transfer of trust, love, and dependency from a deceased to a surviving
parent, so that the child, believing in the living parent, need not consume so much
mental energy trying in vain to hold desperately to images of the one who has died.
We witness also an illustration of the notion that, at the end of a successful
mourning process, what must occur is the partial severing of memory from hope.
The child, in other words, has become able to live and to go forward with loving
recollections of her lost parent but without the burdensome need to conjure her back
and without the corresponding withdrawal from the world that such a project
requires. These goals, of course, are never fully realized, either in this film or in
any child’s real life. But, here, in art, we see, feel, and imagine them.
As a final note, the cast on Ponette’s arm is never removed throughout the film.
This directorial choice gives us clues as to the duration of time meant to be
represented, for the cast on the broken arm of a 4-year-old would not remain in
place more than 3–4 months, a period far too short for all that we have witnessed,
were it to have occurred in real time. Thus, it is critical to be aware that, in dealing
with works of art, we must always allow for the encapsulation and abridgement of
time. Instead of the traditional epigram, “ars longa, vita brevis” (“art is long, and
time is fleeting,” initially written by Hippocrates, in ancient Greece), we must,
when we are dealing with the psychological processes of childhood and their
transformations in art, emend that saying and substitute its corollary, namely,
“vita longa, ars brevis” (“life is long, but works of art are brief”).
35.5 Images of Child Well-Being in Theater, Fiction, and Film
The following paragraphs sketch out representations of childhood in several other

works of art in different media. These sketches are meant as a spur to further
exploration.
The African-American writer Lorraine Hansberry lived only to the age of 34,
when cancer tragically deprived the world of her remarkable gifts. She will never be
forgotten, however, because, when she was 28 years old, in 1958, she wrote
a brilliant play that became the first by a woman of color to be produced on
Broadway. This masterpiece, A Raisin in the Sun (1959), has been continuously
revived for well over a half century and made into at least three film versions (1961,
1989, 2008). It deals, beyond its sociopolitical themes, with the nuanced ways in
which three generations within a family interact among themselves in a setting
awash with American racism and potential violence. This now classic drama, A
Raisin in the Sun, paints an absorbing portrait of adult children (and of one little boy
called Travis) who long for what their surviving parent can neither comprehend nor
give to them, for she, a strong widow, is caught in the coils of her own history,
having been displaced from the South to Chicago in hopes of finding a better life
there but then losing her beloved husband. Hansberry, through her stunning ability
to imagine the most intense scenic configurations and trenchant, often witty as well
as heartbreaking dialogues, introduces us to the Younger family: Mama (Lena
Younger), her grown children Beneatha and Walter Lee, Walter Lee’s pregnant
wife Ruth, and their little boy Travis. All of these richly conceived characters find
themselves at cross-purposes throughout the story, not only on account of their
personalities and predilections, but also as a result of external social forces that
propel them in dramatically different directions. Love among them never fails, but
sympathy and identification wax and wane across the divides of gender and
generation. We are made to wonder whether parental love must inevitably feel
coercive. As we watch and the plot unfolds onstage, this gripping and – in the end
unresolved – play makes us ask ourselves what children really mean when they say
the often hurtful and accusatory words: “You don’t understand.” These are words
often spoken to parents but also to spouses, and Hansberry inserts them in a gamut
1048 E.H. Spitz
of scenes that explore their varied meanings and outcomes. Even well-loved
children want and need also to be “understood,” but, as we learn here
from Hansberry, parents – even with all the will in the world – may be trapped
in their own historical moment and thus be able only partially to transition to
their children’s new universes, with their new ways of speaking, of thinking, and
of living.
The Nobel Prize winning novelist Doris Lessing (1988) uses her considerable
literary gifts to ask us to consider what happens when a child is born who seems to
be an alien and a misfit and when all attempts to love him fail. Her eerie and
unsettling 1988 novel, The Fifth Child, explores how the birth of a strangely silent
and aggressive troll-like child called Ben alters the dynamics of his immediate and
extended family. Lessing challenges our myths about the sanctity of childbirth; she
traces parental attitudes, cultural imagery, and persistent ideals that cast long
shadows that shape the destiny of families. Her novel asks us to consider the
well-being of children who seem to fail their parents’ and society’s expectations:
how shall we accommodate and nurture them when to do so will necessarily harm
other children who also need our care?
Mothers and daughters rarely experience a savage rupture in their often close-
knit dyad at puberty; in most cases, the gradual process of necessary psychic
separation is muted and contained; in some cases, it is barely felt at all. However,
in the 1985 novel, Annie John, by celebrated writer Jamaica Kincaid, we are given
the opportunity to look with fascination as every layer of defense that masks this
process is mercilessly peeled away. Mother and daughter, so intimate and loving at
first, become radically alienated and mutually distrustful though pages of vibrant,
glowing imagery that illuminate a coming of age story on the lush Caribbean island
of Antigua. Step by step, we witness the slow death of a girl’s idyllic childhood.
Twinned at first with her stately, admirable mother, we see this child emerge finally
as a wary and ambivalent young woman. We learn how what cannot be directly
expressed between parent and child may assume strange new forms in visions,
dreams, and in transitory liaisons with others as well as in physical symptoms and
withdrawal into illness and depression. Watching through the child’s eyes and
hearing her voice in our ears as she catapults from attachment to estrangement
from her mother, we marvel at Kincaid’s unsparing revelation of the fierceness of
this couple’s struggles through falsehood and betrayal toward a mutual goal of
uneasy separation. Vivid recurrent metaphors involving water and hands and
marbles and a snake in a basket encode sequences in their intricate dance: one
sensitive child tangling with her formidable parent. Kincaid’s novel raises questions
about the well-being of preadolescent and adolescent girls as they work
through their conflicting desires to stay faithful to their mothers while establishing
themselves in their own right.
Gender roles constitute the bedrock of societal and linguistic distinctions, right
up there with day and night, alive and dead, water and dry land, edible and inedible.
They are, in most cultures, not to be tampered with. Yet, buried deep within the
psyche, there may be wishes – rarely acted upon except in accepted countercultural
venues such as carnival, comedy, masquerade, festival, circus, or theater – to
explore and even be the gender one is not. Children are socialized slowly, however,
and occasionally the strength of their cross-gender wishes bumps up against an
unyielding, uncomprehending milieu. Ma Vie en Rose, a beautifully realized 1997
film by Alain Berliner, portrays a 7-year-old French boy, Ludovic, who believes he
is a girl. His belief causes ever-widening ripples that, little by little, engulf his
bewildered family, his neighborhood, and his school. No one around him can
fathom the cause of his perseverating feminine identification, even a psychologist
who is engaged to treat him, but we are taken inside his vivid rose-colored
daydreams and witness his brave attempts to evade the role assigned him by
the social order. Image after image draws us close, and we experience firsthand
the potency of a child’s desire, its stamina, its defiance, and its challenge to the
demands of a world outside. As we watch, we can question how well or poorly we
adults function to assure the well-being of children whose dreams do not match
those of the surrounding community.
Conflict between duty to one’s country and duty to one’s family may arise in
both a child’s and a parent’s life. Jean-Paul Sartre speaks of the human condition as
entailing what he calls “the condemnation to be free,” and he gives his famous
example of a young man who asks whether he should join the French Resistance
during World War II or stay at home with his ailing mother. Likewise, how do
parents’ moral choices impact their children’s lives? A World Apart, an award-
winning 1988 film by Shawn Slovo, daughter of the murdered South African
journalist Ruth First and her activist husband Joe Slovo, both of whom fought
bravely for years against apartheid, is a fictionalized account of the filmmaker and
her mother. Shawn Slovo, called “Molly” in the film, is the eldest of the three
daughters. Entering adolescence, she craves attention from her mother at this
crucial time of her life when her body, her interests, and her emotions are all
undergoing change. Molly, in order to be protected in case of a raid, cannot be
told anything significant about what is going on, and, consequently, she cannot
fathom her parents’ unavailability, which seems neglectful and cruel to her.
Her father, at the start of the story, has been threatened and must disappear
“underground,” never to be seen again for the remainder of the film, and no one
in the family is permitted to express anxiety over his unknown whereabouts.
Molly’s mother, suddenly and cruelly, is removed from the family as well by
the South African Special Branch police, who take her to jail under the notorious
90-day detention act. In jail, she is at one point derided with being a bad mother.
Thus, the children are temporarily orphaned. Their parents, struggling to create
a better environment for them to grow up in, abandon them in the short run, as it
seems through the eyes of their adolescent daughter, whose perspective mirrors
that of the now adult filmmaker and becomes ours too, as we watch. Unfolding
against that brutal, violent epoch in South African history when the Bantu people
were segregated, disenfranchised, and murdered, this film details the plights of
three mothers and daughters in that fractured chaotic time. Once again, we have
here an example of a work of art that opens upon horizons which bear importantly,
and in a timely manner, on the theme of child well-being in a world of political
upheaval.
1050 E.H. Spitz
Parents and children often keep secrets from one another. Toxic secrecy and its
fallout form the theme of Mendel (1997), a film by Alexander Rosler, set in Norway
after World War II. In this story, the parents of a little boy called Mendel cannot talk
with him about the events of the Holocaust that occurred just before his birth and
during his infancy when the family was incarcerated in a concentration camp in
Germany. They cannot tell him about the atrocities and family losses, not only
because they wish to protect him but also because they themselves have been so
traumatized that near-total avoidance is all they can manage. When, however, do
concealments become dangerous for children, and why and how do children intuit
them anyway and try to cope with them? Rosler’s film traces the far-reaching
effects of family secrets. If a child defies his parents, breaks rules, and puts himself
into situations of danger in order to find out what happened in the past, must we not
ask ourselves whether protecting him from that past – no matter how horrifying it
was – may turn out to be more destructive than revealing it to him in some way?
Parents who have endured trauma themselves, however, may be incapable of doing
so, and this is not a factor that can be willed away. In this circumstance, as we see
while watching the imagery of this film – which includes a scene in which Mendel,
who, in abject ignorance, taunts his older brother about the war and is then
subjected by his brother to a terrifying moment of torture (held outside an open
window by the legs) – aggression may be replicated and spread in the wake of
silence and terrified concealment.
35.6 Defamiliarization as a Tool for Study
Aristotle, in his Poetics, speaks of the catharsis of pity and fear. In reflecting on the
foregoing chapter in this light, it may be well to suggest that, if we confront
circumstances of birth and death and life in between with all the emotions that
surround them in their representations in the arts and literature, as the ancient
philosopher counsels us, we may find ourselves better equipped to grapple more
wisely and gracefully with eruptions in our real lives, and vice versa, for we bring
ourselves and our histories with us whenever we visit works of art. A special tool to
work with when we consider the arts in this context may be borrowed from the
Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovskij (1925/1990), namely, his notion of
defamiliarization. This term refers to the idea that the arts often render ordinary
life more intense than otherwise and transform the usual into the exceptional. By
means of exaggeration and recontextualization, the arts often highlight and estrange
human acts, events, and settings. Showing them to us in zoom or in panorama, at
oblique angles, or from other perspectives unavailable to us during our normal
lives, they disorient us enough to make us pay attention. Lifting us out of our
perceptual lethargy, the arts refuse to let us blink.
Astonished, delighted, or dismayed, we find ourselves arrested by what we had
previously taken for granted or failed to notice altogether. Precariously balanced,
like a child on tiptoe, we stand amazed as newly apparent truths dangle before our
eyes, spin, and flip over so as to bare aspects previously concealed. By means
of defamiliarization, art not only redirects our gaze; it engages us with our spines
(as Vladimir Nabokov once put it) and invites us to take in what daily life rarely
grants. Art helps us to expand our notions of child well-being by asking us to
wonder, as we did when we were children, and to reimagine what could be if only.
In this, our own twenty-first century moment, when the possibilities for destruction
of life are greater than ever before, the arts remind us of our potential and of our
children’s even greater potential, to create and to preserve.
35.7 Note
Sections 35.3–35.6 of the foregoing chapter draw upon Spitz (2011).
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Role of Art and Creativity in Child Culture
and Socialization 36
Khin Yee Lo and Koji Matsunobu
The role of the arts has been recognized to be essential in helping to foster
children’s well-being. Symbolic self-expression through the arts allows children
to express complex feelings and hybrid identities. It supports validating individual
and collective identities. It not only empowers children but also helps to improve
their health and well-being. Literature on art and music therapy reports that song-
writing and music-listening activities contribute to children’s physiological and
psychological well-being (Longhi and Pickett 2008). The arts have powerful
bonding qualities and rich potential for group cohesion. Drawing on the socializing
and integrative functions of the arts, social workers have researched on the various
social impacts that the arts can have, such as on employment, crime rates, self-
esteem, educational performance and participation, and social inclusion (Lyons
2001; Barraket 2005; Mazza 2009). Engaging in artistic activities in a community
context reduces many of the factors of social exclusion through creative and
participatory processes. With its performative forms, the arts also help children to
understand essential knowledge about life. For example, Haner, Pepler, Cummings,
and Rubin-Vaughan (2010) report that designing a children’s opera about bullying
helped children to gain mastery of bullying knowledge and contributed to
a significant decline in self-reported victimization. Engaging in the arts cultivates
students’ imagination and allows them to see the world from others’ perspectives
(Greene 1995). For this reason, the arts have been used by social workers, thera-
pists, and educators for its socializing, healing, and spiritual values. Yet, how it
happens and how it influences children is largely unknown.
K.Y. Lo (*)
Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
e-mail: kylo@umail.iu.edu
K. Matsunobu
School of Music, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia
e-mail: k.matsunobu@uq.edu.au

1054 K.Y. Lo and K. Matsunobu
In education literature, the discussion of children’s well-being in relation to the

arts is often placed on the opposite end of the continuum of schooling and academic
achievement, creating an “either/or” debate (Brunker 2007; Durlak et al. 2011).
Engaging in artistic activities is often viewed as having a direct link with children’s
well-being. A typical image of the arts shared by the general public is that its pursuit
is self-directed, joyous, fulfilling, irrelevant to academic achievement, and thus
excluded from schooling. Within the art domains, well-being is often discussed as
a matter of community engagements and individual leisure activities rather than
a matter of schooling. Educational research, albeit implicitly, indicates that not all
participatory activities of the arts naturally lead to fostering children’s well-being.
Learning that is consistently prescriptive or definitive, with priorities focused on the
curriculum rather than on the learner, can be antithetical to the spirit of creative play
of the arts.
Another commonly held assumption about the arts is that artistic processes are
creative, and creativity is directly linked to well-being. Creativity here needs to be
understood broadly beyond the traditional view of creativity as “product” creativity
(Weiner 2000) to include the creativity of inner experience (Matsunobu 2011). For
children and youth, satisfaction can arise from a variety of sources. It may be gained
through repetitive movements rather than a series of new stimuli (Matsunobu
2007b). For some, the latter may generate anxiety, whereas the former may lead
to a sense of continuation within an experience. Indeed, this has been experienced
by adults seeking ethereal, hypnotic feeling; for instance, those who love trance
dance, Zen arts, and meditation music, including minimalist, electronic music
characterized by repetitive patterns of melody and rhythm.
Csikszentmihalyi (1997) contends that creativity leads to individual well-being
and happiness. Experience of the arts can be a flow experience. Flow is a highly
focused state of consciousness in which the individual is effortlessly involved in the
action. In general, the more one’s daily life is filled with flow activities, the more
likely one is to be happy. However, he observes that the connection between flow
and happiness depends on “whether the flow-producing activity is complex,
whether it leads to new challenges and hence to personal and cultural growth”
(p. 11). The arts often provide a platform for such experiences. In contrast, instant
pleasure gained from such activities as gambling and drugs does not add up to
a sense of satisfaction or happiness over time. “Pleasure does not lead to creativity,
but soon turns into addiction” (p. 11). It is suggested here that the level of children’s
well-being through the arts is influenced not only by what they do but also how they
do: the level of their involvement in the activities.
Children’s culture is multifarious and pluralistic, displaying layers of subcul-
tures, meanings, and adult influences, extending from infancy through pubescence.
It is far too complex to pin down and define it as a single culture. To avoid
simplification, the following literature review examines extensive sources on the
role of art and creativity in child culture and socialization. Much of the literature is
written by arts educators, therapists, and scholars in psychology and sociology.
Each of these disciplines adopts a standpoint to discuss children’s well-being and
happiness, sometimes at variance with each other. In order to provide a basis for
36 Role of Art and Creativity in Child Culture and Socialization 1055
discussion, we first offer an overview of child well-being and the arts in the Western
history. Then, the themes of our focus include the arts and play in child culture.
Finally, we present literature to highlight the spiritual benefits of the arts. The
conclusion of this chapter enumerates the key points from research findings, offers
a critique of some current views of children and the arts, reveals gaps in existing
literature, and outlines suggestions for future research directions for child
well-being in the arts from a holistic perspective.
36.1 The Changing Views of Childhood and the Arts
Historically, adults’ image of children has been pliable and varied (Koops and
Zuckerman 2003). While differing views regarding children and childhood have
persisted through the centuries, many of the early views positioned children at the
margins of the society. A dominant Western perspective depicted children as imma-
ture adults, without their own culture. Being thought of as developmentally inadequate
in multiple ways and incapable of making informed decisions, children came to be
seen as needing adults to take charge of them, to rule them (Jenks 2005; Branscombe
et al. 2000). Additionally, there has been a long-standing zeitgeist, appearing as early
as the writings of Aristotle and perpetuated during the Enlightenment in the seven-
teenth century by theorists including John Locke, that characterized children as “blank
slates,” who lack knowledge, skills, or community-oriented attitudes and who pas-
sively learn by copying adults (Cunningham 2006; Kassem et al. 2010).
Reflecting on these social discourses, artists’ portrayal of children was less
a celebration of childhood with unique life stages than an attempt to show how
children were molded into miniature adults early in life, through a strict upbringing
(Lavalette and Cunningham 2002). A large number of adult portraitures in com-
parison to those focused on children suggest that less interest was shown toward
children in terms of who they were than who they would become (Ariès 1962;
Heywood 2001; Koops and Zuckerman 2003; Cunningham 2006; Corsaro 2011).
Paintings generally presented children in an unchildlike manner – dressed in the
same style of clothes as adults, holding stiff, upright postures with sober facial
expression, and giving an air of dignity and self-assurance (Connolly et al. 2006).
Ariès’ work (1962), in particular, analyzed European paintings and portraitures as
reflecting a continual shift in perspective on children – from the emergence of child
portraiture on existing models rather than imaginary, idealized symbols, the focus
on children in family portraitures, to the change in children’s attire from exact
copies of adults’ clothes to those unique to children.
Building on the ideas set forth by John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers,
Jean Jacques Rousseau is widely acknowledged for creating the modern notion of
childhood, which emphasizes the innate goodness of the child. In some cultures,
this reconstruction of the child’s image partly gave rise to the separation of
childhood and adulthood which, in turn, had a positive impact on enhancing the
status, and hence treatment, of children in contemporary society (Jenks 2005). In
his great revolutionary novel, E´mile (1762/1979), Rousseau posited that true
education is not so much about imparting knowledge to children, but more about
drawing knowledge from their own lived experiences. His view accentuates the
importance of nurturing children’s native abilities without letting them be stifled by
social conditions. In his words,
In general, little more is thought of in the education of a child than to preserve his being:
this is not enough: he ought to learn how to preserve himself when he is grown up to
manhood; to support the shocks of fortune, to bear riches or poverty; and to live. . .. To live
is not merely to breathe; it is to act, to make a proper use of our organs, our senses, our
faculties, and of all those parts of the human frame which contribute to the consciousness of
our existence. The man who has lived most, is not he who hath survived the greatest number
of years, but he who has experienced most of life.
(Rousseau, quoted in Ulich 1982, pp. 387–388)
The idea of learning and expressing through the senses, as described above, is no
doubt progressive for its time, turned against the traditional ideals where factual,
rote learning preceded over experiential learning. For Rousseau, music and the arts
form an important element in the education and well-being of the child, for artistic
activities help them to explore the full range of human emotions and expression. He
saw drawing as a means through which children, who he viewed as naturally
creative and imaginative, draw what they see and make sense of the world around
them. He went so far as to lay out the whole content of the child’s music education,
presented according to appropriate developmental stages (Rainbow 1967). This
child-centered, multisensory pedagogy, exemplified by Rousseau, had a profound
influence on the educational practice of the next 200 years, culminating in the
works of educational thinkers such as Johann Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel, and
later, progressive educators like Maria Montessori and John Dewey.
Notwithstanding the popularity of the child-centered theme during the nineteenth
century in favor of the cultivation of the innate creative abilities and personal interests
of the child, this view was largely confined to the privileged new middle and
aristocratic upper classes. In harsh reality, the majority of the children’s lives through-
out Western Europe were beset by widespread poverty, hard labor, exploitation, and
neglect. The conflict between opposing forces of good and evil – the Romantic ideal of
childhood innocence and the unforgiving day-to-day struggle of children associated
with Puritan “child depravity” views – was featured prominently in the writing about
childhood for much of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century (Kassem
et al. 2010). As an example, this contradiction was constantly brought to the fore in
Charles Dickens’ works such as Oliver Twist, in which he described the brutality of
child labor in the streets of London (Malkovich 2012).
It was in the progressive era, emerging in the 1920s and possessing a powerful
drive throughout the 1960s, that children were released from the narrow vision of
childhood. The innate creativity as well as personal experiences and desires of the
child were finally acknowledged and promoted in public spheres. John Dewey
articulated in his early work the need for the scientific method in education,
effectively calling for reflective intelligence in the process of learning. This method
encouraged students to solve problems in original ways, inquire and question
knowledge claims that have not been personally tested, and actively construct
their own knowledge (Miller 1996). Although Dewey’s focus seems to have shifted
in his later works, many progressive educators continued to emphasize the exis-
tence of autonomous self, the child’s natural “self-expression,” and the so-called
“child-centered” approach, the values of which supported personal learning and
spontaneity with minimal intervention. The role of the adult was to release the
child’s inherent creativity through acts of self-discovery and self-expression. Abbs
(2003) observes that the arts became a medium by which children expressed their
desires, interests, and inner realities, to the extent that it also promoted the vision of
arts education as self-expression and self-discovery rather than understanding and
exploring the processes and products of the arts. This point of demarcation was
prevalent in the aesthetic theory of the time. For example, Herbert Read (1967, in
Abbs 2003) puts forth his argument that children should be discouraged from
engaging in painting or drawing as an aesthetic discipline:
But in so far as by appreciation we mean a response to other people’s modes of expression,
then the faculty is likely to develop only as one aspect of social adaptation, and cannot be
expected to show itself much before the age of adolescence. Until then the real problem is
to preserve the original intensity of the child’s reactions to the sensuous qualities of
experience - to colours, surfaces, shapes and rhythms. These are apt to be so infallibly
‘right’ that the teacher can only stand over them in a kind of protective awe.
(via Abbs 2003)
While acknowledging the innate creativity, motivations, and abilities of children

to express themselves, many still held the view that adults were guardians of
children’s vision and any participation in the arts was perceived to be potentially
harmful.
The thrust of the progressive and modern paradigm and the promotion of general
creativity were derived from psychology and, to a lesser extent, sociology. The latter
emerged largely through the work of the Reggio Emilia movement in Italy and the
“new sociology of childhood” approach (James and Prout 1990; in Corsaro 1997). The
image of the child is that of a capable and competent agent who appropriates and
reproduces aspects of their culture through interaction with others (Corsaro 1997). The
approach reconceptualizes childhood as a period of active participation in, and
meaning-making of, new experiences. The child is seen as a perceptive agent
possessing capabilities and competencies to meet new challenges with curiosity and
motivation, not unlike those of older children or adults. In this framework, adults
(including teachers, parents, researchers, carers, and others) are constructed as
colearners who facilitate, negotiate, and challenge through reflection of their own
experiences, attitudes, and practices, and who share power with children (Woodrow
1999).
It is in the last several decades that the value of the arts has been seen to lie,
not in the purview of psychology or sociology, but in the aesthetic embodiment of
meaning and its aesthetic cognition. More and more the arts were recognized as
offering a compelling vehicle for human understanding – cognitive, sensuous,
spiritual, social, cultural, and physical sense-making (Abbs 2003). It was in this
paradigm that the study of childhood and the arts was considered worthy of focal
attention and vital to understanding culture and society. Instead of treating
children’s art as immature expressions, adults today acknowledge it as one genre

of art with its own history and culture, providing myriad ways to be incorporated
into educational activities. Bresler (1998) distinguishes among “child art,” “fine
art,” and “art for children” and describes the manner in which each is
implemented in schools by different agencies such as art specialists, curators,
and classroom teachers in a variety of contexts (see also Bresler 2002a, b).
A parallel shift in perspective is also evident in ethnomusicology and anthropol-
ogy. Until recently, with the rare exceptions, children’s musical expressions have
been excluded from the central concern among researchers in these disciplines.
Campbell (2007) notes the revival of singing games in nineteenth-century England
as well as through Iona and Peter Opie’s work beginning in the 1950s. She observes
that collections of singing games and song texts are filled with indications of
“children’s poetic sensibilities, their playful interactions and social networks, and
their linkages to their community” (p. 884). John Blacking’s (1967) work investi-
gating the songs of Venda children constitutes a seminal contribution to the under-
standing of children’s musical cultures. Identifying Venda children’s songs that
were distinct from the music of the adult Venda, he concludes that Venda children’s
songs are neither simplified versions of adult songs nor a set of fixed repertoire
taught by adults, but the result of constant meaning-making and dynamic interaction
between children’s creativity and adult influences. Music has always played an
important role in the socialization, aesthetic expression, and cultural learning of
children. Reflecting on a body of research following Blacking, Campbell proposes
that “a refocusing of the ethnomusicological lens may allow for children to become
central rather than marginal to understanding musical cultures” (p. 885).
A quick review shows that Western history has witnessed a shift of emphasis in
the discussion of childhood. Children are now considered social actors in forming
their own cultures colored by the arts. A steady growth of attention has been given
to forging a revitalized framework for understanding children in their own right,
recognizing them as individuals with unique lives and artistic engagements that are
worthy of study. Further, scholars are learning that knowledge of children and
youth offers a more integrated view of human life (Schwartzman 2001).
36.2 Play Culture, Child Culture in the Arts
36.2.1 Art as Play
The boundary of play culture is not always clear-cut. Increasingly, it has been seen
by adults as a valuable activity contributing to a more holistic learning environment
for children. Like the concept of childhood, the concept of child culture is not
a natural phenomenon, but socially constructed. These concepts, along with
research on child culture and childhood, have evolved and taken on new meanings
as definitions, points of view, and lifestyles continue to change. The culture of the
child is as old as childhood, yet the former concept did not exist in material form
until recent decades (Holloway and Valentine 2000; Thomas and O’Kane 2000;
Connolly et al. 2006; Sanders 2009). It has been said that child culture, originated as
part of what has been called the educational project with children, was intended to
supplement school education by orienting itself more toward informal contexts
such as leisure and the family with an emphasis on promoting psychological and
moral development of children (Mouritsen 1998). Following the Second World
War, however, the concept of child culture shifted from the perspectives of the adult
to those of the child, favoring the standpoint of reform pedagogy and the arts.
Mouritsen (1998, p. 13) distinguishes between the two contrasting yet interrelated
concepts: child culture and play culture:
While child culture is channelled through formal structures, apparatuses and institutions in
the form of products, specialized and specifically oriented activities and learning processes,
play culture is channelled through informal social networks, through traditional transmis-
sion from child to child (and in some cases from adult to child). It is fundamentally
dependent on the children’s participation and activity and is predicated on their acquisition
of skills in terms of expressive forms, aesthetic techniques, forms of organization, mises-
en-scène and performance.
Mouritsen (1998) further observes, “the angle of approach” or plurality of

viewpoints of child culture has not been well-grounded in the field (p. 22). More
precisely, play – in modern Western society – constitutes an expression of a kind of
activity that is highly differentiated from the real society and has thus become
marginalized (Strandell 2000). In this scenario, adults tend to view children’s play
activities through “the pedagogical lens” (i.e., whether or not such activities carry
educative value) and are inclined to impose their interpretation and understanding
on children and their activities (Mouritsen 1998, p. 23). In fact, much of the
investigation on children’s play and artistic engagement has been conducted by
educators whose primary concern is to identify the kinds of activities that are most
worthwhile for children and meaningful from an educational perspective. Such
attitudes toward children’s play arise from a particular view that
put phenomena and children into fixed categories of meaning: to know what a child is and
what he or she needs, to know what is good and what is bad and to offer explanations for
why things are as they are.
(Strandell 2000, p. 153)
Equipped with pedagogical lenses, arts educators have addressed distinctive

features of formal and informal learning environments, contrasting not only the
learning contents in different localities, but also the ways the subjects are learned
(Green 2001; Veblen and Olsson 2002; Folkestad 2006). For example, music
researchers Lamont, Hargreaves, Marshall, and Tarrant (2003) illustrate the gap
between children’s experiences of school-music activities and music activities
during leisure time. The differences in attitudes, values, and activities between
the two environments have been expressed through such binary forms as teacher-
oriented/self-directed, goal-oriented/flow, individual learning/peer learning, exter-
nal motivation/internal motivation, step-by-step learning/peripheral participation,
and intentional learning/incidental learning (Green 2001; Szego 2002). Folkestad
(2006) points out that in the formal learning setting, attention is given to learning
“how to play music,” whereas in the informal learning practice it is directed

towards playing music itself (p. 138). From a pedagogical stance, socialization is
a form of education. To give an example, Jorgensen (1997) discerns and refines the
concept of education by proposing five subcategories: schooling, training, educa-
tion, socialization, and enculturation.
In contrast, children see their play simply through “the lens of play” (Mouritsen
1998, p. 23), shaped by their views of the action, which is natural and understandable
to them. Play leads to an enjoyable experience, or the moment of “flow,” in which its
characteristics are identical to what humans experience in the arts. Such characteristics
can be described as follows: (a) There is a balance between challenges and skills; (b)
action and awareness are merged; (c) distractions are excluded from consciousness;
(d) there is no fear of failure; (e) self-consciousness disappears; and (f) the activity
becomes an end in itself (Csikszentmihalyi 1997). According to Mouritsen (1998),
child culture manifests itself in three different ways: culture for children, culture with
children, and culture of children. While the first two types involve adult intervention
and control, albeit the first to a greater extent than the second, the third type denotes
the expressions of culture that children produce in their own networks, that is, the
children’s informal culture, or what is known as play culture.
Different gazes between adults and children bring forth different preconcep-
tions, interpretations, senses, perspectives, and (mis)understanding of the same
action. While adults may be willing or reluctant to integrate children’s spontane-
ous play activities into predetermined pedagogical contexts, children’s play
culture is often a form of resistance against adults’ culture (Hanna 1986;
Ronnberg 2005) and their role as agents of pedagogical initiatives (Mouritsen
1998). It is thus important to understand that children’s play is culturally, socially,
and politically constructed.
36.2.2 School Art and Local Art
Child culture is of the children’s own making, but it gets its material from the
culture of the society, which the children encounter in the home, in day care, in the
media, and elsewhere and then create their own culture. To put it another way, child
culture is constantly negotiated between children and adults in schools, homes, and
communities.
Hamblen (2002) outlines the characteristics of school art and local art. The word
“local” here refers to the informal, noninstitutional context of art-making. To
summarize her argument, while children’s art-making in the school is ritualistic
and rule-governed, displaying themes and products that are often predictable, the
artistic strategies and themes of their art-making outside school vary to include, for
instance, cartoon figures, dolls, scatological images, sexual fantasies, violence, and
gross subjects (Duncum 1989; Wilson 2002). Whereas adults tend to emphasize
technical skills and formal qualities of art as learning content in schools, children in
local contexts depend on imitation and copying as a common form of learning.
They readily learn from one another, from the imagery of the popular media.
Comic books provide a rich source of artistic expressions (Wilson 2002). Chil-
dren’s depictions of heroes, monsters, dolls, animals, and so forth are used to create
and tell stories to themselves and to their friends and parents. They draw on scrap
papers, their own bodies, and on walls. On the other hand, copying is usually
discouraged in school contexts. Materials, tools, and techniques that they freely
use at home are often restricted in school art. The classroom artworks produced
must be visually pleasing (and thus acceptable) and easily stored. Hamblen notes,
“In local contexts, children produce art that is personal, autobiographical, and
fanciful, and sometimes socially irreverent” (p. 23). This stands in stark contrast
to school art, Thompson (2007) remarks, that “tends to focus on form and technique
to the virtual exclusion of content meaningful to children; [it] tends to divide
children’s interests into official and unofficial spheres” (p. 904). Hence, local art
expressions and values are often considered inappropriate in school art contexts.
Many educators are cognizant of the gap between school art and local art and the
need to overcome institutional barriers. To cite an example, recognizing children as
skillful, resourceful, and active agents in constructing their own meanings and
culture, Anttila (2007) offers implications of a holistic view of children’s world
that holds potential in bringing about a shift in educational practices. Generally,
play culture is seldom incorporated in formal educational settings (Hirsh-Pasek and
Golinkoff 2008), with the exception of some instances (Lillemyr 2009). By and
large, it is perceived by educators as a series of nonserious, nonstructured activities,
which emerges mostly through unsupervised interaction.
Rather than observing children’s artistic activities outside the institutional con-
texts, educators have explored yet another site where the school culture and play
culture meet – the playground. Marsh (2008) explicates that children’s musical
interactions in the playground encompass many different forms, including singing,
dancing, speech, movement, characterization, and rhythmic elements. These orally
transmitted forms are stimuli drawn from their environment for the purpose of both
emulating them and spontaneously improvising them to create multiple variants of
the things that concern children. Sawyer (1997, 2001) argues that improvisation is
an essential skill for everyday social life. Play is important for children because it
allows them to practice improvisation in conversations with others. Nilsson (2002,
in Olsson 2007) provides further insight on the notion of “invitation” in play games.
Children participate in musical play through acceptance and blocking of invitations
while exchanging a variation of interpretations and actions during play. This
suggests that the arts, like other social activities, can be a site for rejection, breach,
and emotional hurt.
The use of computer technology in educational contexts also serves as a medium
to connecting the school culture and play culture. Computer programs enable
children to engage in hands-on music composition activities at both school and
home. Innovative school-based projects promoting real-life, ubiquitous arts learn-
ing have been among many of the recent developments in educational programs
(Ruthmann and Dillon 2012).
In light of the aforementioned research on child culture and play, it is crucial to
bear in mind that children’s artistic expressions in informal contexts are often
holistic, combining multiple media for their creative expressions, and exceeding the
level of their performances in the school. Young children typically copy sophisti-
cated artistic conventions of cartoon characters (Hamblen 2002; Wilson 2002) and
master complicated rhythmic, melodic, and dancing patterns of singing games
(Harwood 1998a). By the same token, they quickly learn in school contexts how
to produce work that conforms to the expectations of adults as well as of child art
developmental levels (Hamblen 2002). Efforts to connect the two have been
undertaken, not simply to motivate students, but to enrich their artistic engagement
and develop their artistic selves. Among the many hindrances and obstacles are
a lack of awareness of the limited application of school art contents and methods to
local experiences of art and a lack of practice in forming linkages to art-making in
a variety of contexts (Hamblen 2002).
36.2.3 Social and Creative Processes of Play
Because play forms the basis of children’s creativity (Vygotsky 1966, 2004;
Smolucha 1992), art forms integrating play can give children new dimensions in
their ability to create meanings, characters, actions, and emotions in their imagina-
tive worlds. Through the aesthetics of play, children carry out social experimenta-
tion with peers and actively engage in dramatizing real-life situations.
Paradoxically, this process of exaggerating, distorting, and transforming the reality
helps them to gain a deeper insight into their real-life contexts by shifting their
perspectives of the relationship between objects and meanings (Vygotsky 1966,
1971; Smolucha and Smolucha 1986). In her study investigating the relationship
between dance and play of children ages 6–8 years, Lindqvist (2001) observes that
dance linked to children’s play helps them to create “dramatic meaning” in their
dance (p. 51). She supports Vygotsky’s argument that children’s creativity is
spontaneous in nature (syncretistic as he calls it) and does not differentiate between
singing and dancing, playing and acting, or drawing and storytelling. In other
words, children carry out these acts of creativity more or less simultaneously. As
Vygotsky (1995) aptly states, “children’s play is a preliminary step to artistic
creation” (in Lindqvist 2001, p. 42). Rich experiences of artistic play thus become
a vital source of creating new meanings.
Children live in a social world. They learn from other social agents, including
adults and peers. Play involves the transfer of traditions of child culture from older
to younger children. Through play, children become members of a society.
Vygotsky’s concept of zone of proximal development suggests that children are
able to achieve a higher level of internalization of understanding by filling the gap
between the actual developmental level of the child, as determined by independent
problem-solving, and the level of potential development, as determined by prob-
lem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers
(Vygotsky 1978). For Vygotsky, competence is defined in terms of what children
can do with support as opposed to what they can do on their own. His view
resonates with Keith Sawyer’s (2003, 2007) recent observation that creativity is
invariably collaborative in nature. In a similar vein, the affordance theory under-

scores the mediating role of the arts in relation to social action and experience
(DeNora 2000, 2002), as certain types of artistic media allow for certain types of
actions more easily than others.
Relationships and friendships influence the ways children engage in artistic and
play activities. Children learn to negotiate with others over leadership, control, and
decision-making. Burland and Davidson (2001) observe that the impact of social
support on individual confidence and creativity has been widely noted. In their study,
the authors report that although gender and friendship relationships did not influence
the qualities of children’s musical compositions, it did affect their personal sense of
achievement and enjoyment. This finding concurs with that of Zillman and Gan
(1997) who suggest that music is among the key factors in determining and charac-
terizing friendship between young people by means of inclusion and exclusion.
Christensen and James (2000, p. 169) shed light on this social process:
A sense of sameness is important for children, providing them a feeling of belonging, a way
in which to smooth over the potential which any personal diversity or deviation might have
to rupture the social relations that exist between one child and another.
It is perhaps not surprising that musical taste is strongly related to social class and
group formation. Green (1999) summarizes the findings of research on music and social
grouping of children as follows: Middle-class children are more likely than working-
class children to play an orchestral instrument in schools, pursue music options at
school, choose to study music at university or conservatoire, and respond positively to
the delineations of classical music. While girls are more enthusiastic about singing in
choirs and playing classical music on keyboards, guitars, and orchestral instruments,
boys tend to display more interest in technology and popular music (p. 165). Green
further elaborates that “classical music in schools to a large extent delineates feminin-
ity, and more radically, effeminacy. By the same token, popular music, and practices
such as playing the drums and electric guitar, delineate masculinity, and beyond that,
machismo” (p. 167). Similarly, the Zillman and Gan (1997) study indicates that women
are believed to gain attraction and sophistication by expressing preferences and inter-
ests in classical music, while the same is not the case for men.
Taken together, these studies suggest that music is closely linked to issues of
individual and collective identities: How people see themselves is reflected in how
they approach music. That is to say, music functions both as a way of being and
a catalyst for action. To illustrate this point, DeNora (2003) highlights Willis’s (1978)
compelling ethnographic work documenting a group of bikeboys. The kind of music
these boys preferred was akin to their preferred mode of being: They listened to songs
that were short and fast-paced and characterized by a definite pulse. In their behav-
iors, there was a clear relationship between musical and extramusical phenomena. As
DeNora puts it, “Music ‘is like’. . . some other thing; and, conversely, some other
thing (say conduct style during an evening) is ‘like’ music” (p. 170). Thus, there may
be some truth in the axiom that “the music you listen to is who you are.” It is no
wonder that since the age of Antiquity, music has been thought of as a powerful force
capable of shaping children’s moral character and social behavior.
The role of play in children’s life and socialization varies from one culture to
another. Merrill-Mirsky (1988) analyzes the ways in which school-aged children of
Euro-American, Asian, African American, and Latino backgrounds perform musi-
cal and rhythmic plays. Differences are observed in terms of musical patterns
(melodic, rhythmic), physical movements (gesture, posture), and gender roles in
organizing plays. In another study, Dzansi (2004) describes the participatory,
informal nature of children’s singing, clapping, and dancing games in Ghana. She
draws on the playground pedagogy in which children themselves serve as their own
teachers with a strict sense of good behavior and rules.
Yet it appears that play features prominently in most children’s lives across
different parts of the world (Hyder 2005). Research studies on childhood have
shown that play and the arts have much in common in the way they contribute to the
overall well-being of children (Lark-Horovitz et al. 1973; Hanna 1986; Lindqvist
2001; Bresler and Thompson 2002; Anttila 2007; Marsh 2008). For example,
artistic play serves as a means to gain access to inner resources and enhance
children’s participation in an enculturation process through which they learn
about their cultures and social structures. Dance educator Hanna (1982) argues
that “dance/play is a ‘serious business’ in dramatizing concepts and patterns of and
for social life” (p. 66). Hanna (1987) further posits that dance resembles and
influences patterns of social organizations and interpersonal relationships. In the
context of African societies, Mans (2002, p. 72) writes:
Apart from being used as a means of socializing young persons, music and dance have long
provided the context within which socializing education could take place. Philosophy and
moral systems of the society are built into the music and dance-making itself.
Viewed in this light, artistic play – whether informally passed on from adult to
child or from child to child – not only provides a medium for imparting social
values and morals, it also is an important means for children to relate their inner
selves to the outer world. They create culture together: Through observing the
social phenomena around them, they develop interesting dramas and
conventions for their mutual life, dialogues, and sense of shared interdependence
(Thyssen 2003).
In sum, the play culture of children is a gateway to understanding the multifac-
eted processes of children’s socialization. Scholarly work on children’s play culture
has documented that play, artistic activities, and creativity are phenomena that are
closely intertwined (e.g., Campbell 1991, 1998; Harwood 1993a, 1994b, 1998a, b;
Mans 2002; Marsh 2008). Through musical play, drawing, and dancing, children
learn and master a complex set of artistic and social skills that enable them to affirm
group solidarity and help them to gain acceptance, or even individual popularity,
within social groups. Anthropological work on play, such as the one by Mans (see
also Campbell 2007), suggests that children’s play is seen mostly as a preparation
for adult play (Mans 2002). It concerns not only learning a particular music-dance,
but also serving as the process of socialization, a medium through which living
folklore in the form of legends, rituals, creations, and narratives is transmitted from
one generation to the next.
36.3 Spiritual Well-being and the Arts
36.3.1 Spirituality and the Arts
Experiencing spirituality through the arts is commonly observed in children’s

everyday life. Spirituality refers to the depth dimension of human experience in
which body and mind, self and world, merge into aliveness. Artistic activities are an
essential part of what it is to live well. Experience of the arts can enhance children’s
spiritual awareness of inner and outer worlds by providing opportunities for
engagement with their senses and emotions. It enables children to develop their
affective responses to their inner and outer selves. As discussed earlier, artistic
activities afford a certain kind of emotional sharing and self-understanding that
binds us, unites us, with other human beings in shared experience – what Goldie
(2007) sees as the virtues of art. When children are engaged in the arts, it often
seems as if they are involved into the activity itself, a state of flow
(Csikszentmihalyi 1992), as if the activity itself manages the experience and
governs the flow of consciousness, not the result. It is so intense and focused that
it is experienced as worth doing for its own sake.
The arts have been the most powerful media for human beings to express
and experience their reflections on spirituality. Often, the distinction between
aesthetic and spiritual experiences is blurred, as suggested by Bloomfield (2000,
p. 135):
For some this can be likened to a spiritual experience; for others it is a personal experience
of the ‘inner-self’, a feeling of great joy or of a deeper meditative nature that is secular
rather than religious. The metaphysical aspect of arts education is of immeasurable value.
Some observe that aesthetics is a modern rendition of spirituality. For example,

British music educationist June Boyce-Tillman (2000) argues that music is the last
remaining ubiquitous spiritual experience in many secularized Western cultures.
Experience with the arts is largely seen as the only venue in the public domain in
which the exploration of spirituality is accepted. Often, with this connection to the
arts, the word “spirituality” is used in a more “innocuous” way (Hay and Nye 1998,
p. 8). Given that the arts are reduced to being a commodity providing diversion or
entertainment in modern society, the role of the arts in children’s spiritual
development is ever increasing. In their everyday lives, the spiritual power of the
arts is vivid.
Among many forms of spiritual experiences, Hay and Nye suggest “relational
consciousness” as one of them. Conversing with ordinary school children before
their mastery of religious language, Nye concludes that relational consciousness is
a common thread that puts together their experiences of spirituality (Hay and Nye
1998). Relational consciousness encompasses child–God consciousness, child–
people consciousness, child–world consciousness, and child–self consciousness.
Hay (2001) highlights that contrary to the common cultural belief that spirituality is
solitary in nature, spirituality is relational; and relational consciousness of the other
is often the precursor of spirituality. Although solitude is characteristic of much
prayer and meditation, it is merely a setting for, rather than the content of, the
here-and-now immediacy that constitutes spiritual awareness. Hay and Nye surmise
that humans have a biological need for being holistically related to the other.
Children have the potential to be much more deeply in tune with themselves and
their relationship with others and the world.
It is suggested that despite the close relationship between religious and spiritual
experiences, it is not necessarily religious contents that lead children to spirituality.
Examining children’s choral-reading experiences, Trousdale, Bach, and Willis
(2010) report that communal oral reading and discussions of poetry provided an
opportunity to express their experiences of spirituality, such as relationships with
self and others, with the natural world, and with a reality beyond the material world.
However, it was not the content of the poems, they argue, that brought about such
experiences, but the process of engagement: “freedom in interpretation, physicality
in interpretation; a sense of friendship, of a safe, interpretive community; and the
opportunity to express their ‘feelings’, their emotions” (Trousdale et al. 2010,
p. 317). Ashley (2002) proffers that in the context of chorister singing, spirituality
may have less to do with religious commitment than social and cultural interactions.
Fisher (1999) asserts that spirituality is manifested by the quality of relationships in
four domains: personal, communal, environmental, and transcendental (pp. 30–31).
Because the process of music-making – performing, composing, and listening –
involves activity within all four domains, the direct relationship between music
engagement and spiritual well-being is often evident (Wills 2011).
Spirituality is an essential constituent of the development of a whole person. It is
an extended project of life integration, which involves both temporal and long-term
dimensions of human growth (Rodger 1996). Spiritual experiences may induce
short-term responses, highlighted by such awareness sensing as tuning and focusing
(Hay and Nye 1998). They may also lead to a long-term commitment, urging
a person to take actions and form a way of life along with the experiences.
Rodger (1996) states, “a spiritual way of life is a transformation of the person,
affecting the whole of life and all the person’s relationships” (p. 53). This view is
further supported by Van Ness (1996) who argues that spirituality is a series of lived
experiences of self-transformation and subsequent gradual development. It tran-
scends the separation of mind and body, self and world, process and product,
manifesting itself in an integrated synthesis of growth and development. The
transformative power of the arts has been noted by educators and child care givers
(Jackson 2000) and is believed to cultivate children’s spirituality and enrich their
well-being.
Transformation takes place within everyday occurrences, not necessarily within
the religious realm. Noddings (2003) suggests that to focus only on children’s
religious experiences is to ignore the depth and width of their spiritual experiences.
Spirituality does not necessarily come with a grand epiphany but develops in
everyday contexts. Children are reported to have experienced everyday activities
as spiritual. Wilson (2004, in Nash 2009) observes that “talking with friends,
listening to music and watching the stars . . . contribute to a young person’s sense
of well-being and wholeness, a sense of transcendence and oneness with the world
and others” (p. 243). Wills (2011) confirms that singing in school can be spiritual,
as it transforms children and induces changes in their behaviors and senses of self-
esteem as well as in other areas of school life. Her study highlights the transfor-
mational nature of musical processes and aspects of spirituality and well-being in
music-making: transcendence, connectedness, and flow. Wilson (2004) posits that
children should be guided to see the spirituality in their lives through ordinary
events that are essentially spiritual. What is necessary, according to Noddings, is
a vision of everyday spirituality that leads to happiness that can be pursued directly
without resorting to esoteric pathways. The arts provide an ideal format because, as
discussed above, the separation between the religious and the secular becomes
blurred in the experiences of spirituality through the arts. Promoting children’s
engagement in the arts and their understanding of the spiritual facets of everyday
experience plays a central role in cultivating their spiritual well-being.
36.3.2 Well-being and Art Forms
Children experience spirituality through a variety of art forms, such as painting

(London 2003), dance (Broadbent 2004), drama (Winston 2002), poetry (Trousdale
et al. 2010), and music (Boyce-Tillman 2007). Drawing, painting, and playing with
space and color engage children in communicating their spirits and senses.
Coleman (1998) reasons that “we turn to art not only to gain insight into life, but
in order to become fully human” (p. 75). Art helps children to understand the world
and their situations, especially those that are not easily comprehensible, because art
invites them to look inward through an embodied experience. In particular, Coles
(1992) elucidates that children “seek out its beauties and mysteries and terrors, give
them substance of shape and form, of color, of suggestive or symbolic significance”
(pp. 16, 20). Matsunobu (2012) argues that art can serve as a mirror of one’s mind:
Art is not only about beauty, or an art of “stained glass,” but also about relationship;
relationship to the world and relationship to the self, an art of “mirror,” thus serving
as a way of self-realization and self-understanding. Likewise, drawing on the
metaphor of art as a mirror, Franklin (1999) points out that art reflects children’s
hopes, joys, and fears. As an art therapist, he aptly states, “As our efforts are
reflected back to us, we simultaneously witness our separateness from and connec-
tion to the work. . .. The creative experience in art leads one inward, toward the
Self” (p. 6). Art serves not only to reflect the self but to engage the sacred in life
(Abbs 2003; London 2003; Campbell 2006). Sacred objects, religious symbols, and
places are often sanctioned through the arts across cultures, and they can be
a source of spirituality for children. Children can use a variety of materials –
paint, clay, wood, and sand – to enshrine their experiences of divinity through the
tools of art.
Dance is a form of focusing on the bodily felt sense of an experience and the
wisdom of the body. Physical movements heighten children’s awareness of
bodily felt senses and encourage them to be open to sensory and visceral
experiences. Broadbent (2004) stresses that learning through the medium of
creative dance enables children to embody abstract ideas and concepts, such as
the Creation story, in a concrete form and inspires them to create their own
expressions and interpretations. She argues that dance facilitates children’s
kinesthetic intelligence and that engaging in dance supports their development
as whole persons.
Poetry is a way for self-expression and self-understanding (Bhagwan 2009). It
helps children to face themselves and develop a sense of self. Trousdale, Bach,
and Wills (2010) uncover the way in which reading and discussing poetry with
spiritual themes can play a major role in children’s spiritual development. Poetry-
therapy exercises, proposed by Gustavson (2000), encourage children to draw on
individual situations and initiate possible changes and outcomes through a poetry
format; the exercises help them to engage in their inner feelings and self-discov-
ery. Like art and music media, poetry can be used as a method of healing,
developing self-awareness, self-esteem and resilience in children in need
(Coholic 2010).
Music, when approached as an empowering agent perspective, is most effective
among the many forms of art, and its effects can be realized immediately. Music
transports humans to other realms of consciousness. It renders the most direct and
intensified experience of the aesthetic and the transcendent (Adorno 2002, p. 117).
Music contributes to children’s awareness of spirituality in a unique way. “Tuning”
is a mode of human connection realized by a musical engagement. It is an
experience of a complete “resonance” or “being in tune” with something outside
of oneself. Schutz (1971) proposes the notion of “mutual tuning-in” as a kind of
heightened awareness of connectedness that arises when fully involved in musical
acts. It is founded upon a common experience of music in which participants
reciprocally share with each other the flux of time as a direct inner experience.
This is what children experience in collective music-making (Ashley 1999; Boyce-
Tillman 2007). Schutz argues that sharing the same flux of time brings an emergent
sense that the participants “grow older together while the musical process lasts”
(p. 175). Schutz’s discussion addresses not only the importance of time as gener-
ating a sense of mutuality, but also that of physical space and community, in which
bodily movements are interpreted as a field of expression. The result of such an
interaction is a shared sense of mutual connection.
Children naturally sing and hum. They often invent songs and create their own
musical expressions using existing songs (Barrett 2006). The genesis of musical
expression can be traced to the preverbal rhythms and modes of infancy.
Dissanayake (2000) substantiates a view that all humans share the biological
make-up of aesthetic expressions. Homo-aesthetics is the concept she uses to
underscore the protomusical operations of human interactions based on such pro-
cesses as formalization, repetition, exaggeration, dynamic variation, and manipu-
lation of expression (Dissanayake 2008). She posits that humans inherit and
develop these operational behaviors through ritualization, and this process, she
believes, is both cultural and biological.
Spiritual experience customarily derives from one’s interactions with and
immersion in nature (Matsunobu 2007a). Hay and Nye (1998) relate that feeling
“at one” with nature is an illumination of tuning into the world of the sacred, which
is often reported as a form of childhood spiritual experience. Peter London argues
that children learn a great deal by drawing in nature because “the only authentic
source of art . . . is firsthand conversation between the self and the world” (London
2003, pp. 76). London believes that “Nature speaks. The pivotal act of drawing
closer to Nature is to learn how to listen” (p. 86). If we fail to listen, nature becomes
silent. This view is supported by Rudolf Steiner (1961/1994), whose idea of
education generally serves as the basis of holistic, spiritually sensitive approaches
to education. He states (Steiner 1994, pp. 45–46):
As we learn to do so, a new faculty takes root in the world of feeling and thought. All of
nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously
incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature. Where
we had heard only noise in the sounds produced by inanimate objects, we now learn
a new language of the soul. As this cultivation of our feelings continues, we become
aware that we can hear things we never conceived of before; indeed, we begin to hear
with our souls.
From the viewpoints expressed above, the history of human development is seen
as a process of excluding nature and eliminating awe, wonder, and beauty from
humans’ lives. London (1989) contends that children’s experiences of art have been
devalued by three notions, namely, that art is about beauty, that technique and
a dexterous eye are necessary to be artists, and that there are certain cannons of
good form that bring about beautiful things (p. 14). To emphasize the connection
among art, nature, and spirituality is a reminder of the origin of human inspirations.
Nature is a site or source of spiritual experience, and aesthetic expression is usually
a manifestation of one’s encounter with, immersion in, and experience of nature.
London argues that children should not be deprived of spiritual experience such as
strolling through the woods, admiring a constellation of stars, or listening to the
silence of the night.
Education philosopher Noddings (2003) emphasizes the role of arts in children’s
lives. She sees spirituality as a significant constituent of happiness – happiness not
in the sense of financial success or salvation but as subjective well-being. Acknowl-
edging that we do so little in schools to promote spiritual well-being, Noddings
questions why: (a) “Do we suggest to our students that the soul rises with the sun,
that it is worth the effort to drag one’s weary body out occasionally to lift the
soul?”; (b) “Do we invite students to look at their houses and ask how many objects
have been ‘registered officially’ as members of the human household?”; (c) “Do we
encourage reflection on interspecies affection as we pursue politically correct
lessons on environmentalism?”; (d) “Do we acknowledge the uneasiness and fear
that often arise at night?”; and (e) “Do we help students to memorize poetry, not for
official performances or grades, but to build a repertoire of spiritual exercises? If we
do not, why don’t we?” (pp. 172–173). Noddings finds spiritual experiences in
everyday life, at home and in nature, in a way similar to McCreery (1996).
McCreery identifies events for spiritual awareness, such as in the home (birth,
death, love, trust, joy, sadness, special occasions, religion), at the school (nature
studies, stories, danger, failure, reward, companionship, success; also activities
such as painting, drawing, sorting, matching, playing, storytelling, singing), and on

television (cultural differences, violence, death, social taboos, nobility, despicable
behavior, suffering, charity). Artists and educators promoting spirituality in the
public domain see spirituality as entailing the potential to bring about a realization
of the most profound realities of one’s world and a consciousness of the self in the
fullest sense. London (2003), Noddings (2003), and Miller (2000) believe that
educators should not devalue spirituality’s potential to enrich children’s lives in
favor of objective, detached, public matters of teaching. Education is to lead
youngsters to an awakening of the holistic nature of existence and the integrative
dynamics of body-mind-spirit.
Experiences of the arts can help them to transcend the boundaries of everyday
life, heal emotional hurts (Aldridge 1995; Lipe 2002), and enable individuals to
fulfill their inner spiritual potential. Hall (2004) contends that children develop
spirituality through art by “learning to value themselves; learning to value relation-
ships; learning to value society; and learning to value the environment” (p. 135).
What matters is how children engage in activities rather than the activities them-
selves, as any subject can be tedious and mechanistic (Eaude 2009b). When it is
experienced and pursued as playful and creative, it can be a source of great pleasure
and soul enriching. Although spirituality and well-being can be pursued through any
media, opportunities within the arts are more obvious than in other areas.
As explored in Eaude (2009a), the arts offer a creative context in which children
are free to experiment, change, and fail without the risks being too great. The role
of adults includes creating an accepting, creative, and nurturing environment in
which children can overcome adversity and grow as whole persons in positive ways.
36.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, we focused our attention on the role of the arts in children’s culture
and play as well as in their social and spiritual well-being as manifested through
various artistic forms and processes. In conclusion, we propose several key sug-
gestions based on the literature review.
First, understanding children’s well-being requires both short-term and long-
term perspectives. As Csikszentmihalyi posits, happiness is not something neces-
sarily experienced unless one gets out of the state of flow. In light of this view,
children may not derive a sense of satisfaction or fulfillment during the activity.
They may even experience frustration in the process. However, a rewarding feeling
may emanate much later, particularly when the meaning of the process is realized in
terms of the result or by reflection. Much of the experience gained through the arts
may be attributed to such an enduring process. Research on spirituality has pro-
vided insights into the myriad ways children’s transformation through the arts
occurs by analyzing children’s short-term and long-term responses to artistic
experiences. Both perspectives are essential to further research in arts education,
therapy, and social work, as investigation in these fields tends to focus merely on
the outcomes of children’s short-term engagement in the arts.
Second, young children enjoy some form of artistic engagement, regardless of

their skills or levels of expression. Yet it is the adults who usually judge the values
of children’s commitment from a dichotomous view of art, one for leisure and one
for serious study. The distinction between local art and school art, informal
learning and formal learning, play culture and school culture is aligned with
such a demarcation. One of the factors contributing to these divisions, according
to Walsh (2002), is how adults see talent. Adults tend to think of the arts as
a worthwhile pursuit for only the talented few, and this is typically the case in
schooling. What is troubling about this view is that even when children’s involve-
ment in the art is creative, playful, and self-content, it can be simply dismissed or
ignored by adults whose orientation toward art is hereditarian in outlook. This
standpoint keeps children from long-term participation in the arts. Importantly,
Csikszentmihalyi’s theory propounds that children’s well-being is attained by
means of prolonged engagement in challenging tasks, irrespective of their talent
or ability. Acknowledging the role of the arts in shaping children’s socialization
and well-being, adults need to determine when and how it is most beneficial
to each child, not in terms of the level of external expression, but in terms of
the depth of internal experience. We concur with Walsh’s (2002) statement
that “the goal is not a society of artists, any more than a society of athletes or
physicists, but a society of people with many well developed selves, one or more
of which is artistic” (p. 108).
Third, we noted the extant research on the role of the arts in the intellectual
development of children, the positive link of which is often reiterated in arts
education discussion. The current discourse tends to justify and secure the
positioning of the arts in schools by underscoring a collection of studies that
allude to the transferability of arts learning in the development of cognitive
competencies (Catterall et al. 1999; Burton et al. 1999, 2000; Moga et al.
2000). However, whether or not the experience of the arts results in improvement
of academic performance remains questionable (Eisner 1998; Winner and
Hetland 2000; Bresler 2002b). Research studies have indicated that there may
be a weak association, not a causal relationship, between arts learning and
academic achievement. Yet, this discourse, with its corresponding practices, is
not kept to the confines of the scholarly sphere but has the capacity to influence
how people conceive of the role of the arts in schools and homes. Many parents
today send their children to music lessons with the firm belief that music learning
will make them smarter. As evidenced by the literature, active participation in
and exposure to the arts have positive impacts on children’s emotional, social,
creative, and spiritual well-being. However, to legitimize the value of multiple
forms of artistic engagement solely in terms of children’s academic performance
is to negate its wealth of possibilities in advancing child well-being.
Finally, further research is warranted to incorporate a more holistic perspective
of child well-being in the arts. Notwithstanding a wide range of research being
undertaken on the artistic pursuit of children, the majority of these studies remain
largely within the boundary of a certain discipline. Children’s everyday life
activities are extensive and diverse, and the elements of art permeate almost
every process and expression of their play and social activities. Research on the
arts and child well-being suggests that adults need to center their efforts and
continually strive to understand the holistic nature of children’s experiences
beyond each individual context of school, home, and community.
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Imagination, Play, and the Role of
Performing Arts in the Well-Being of 37
Children
Philip E. Silvey
37.1 Introduction
Children require more than just the fundamental means for survival. To develop
a sense of personal significance and fulfillment, children warrant more. In this
chapter, I will explore the potential that lies in the arts, specifically the performing
arts, as engagements that enable children to achieve and maintain a sense of
well-being. Campbell (2002) suggests, “For children, music is a natural inclination,
and it often appears to be as essential to their well-being as it is for them to be warm,
fed, and well-rested” (p. 57). I aim to identify the characteristics of music and other
performing arts that could render them “essential” to the lives of children. I intend to
show how fostering such inclinations might significantly enhance the quality of life
experienced by children.
People from cultures around the world have demonstrated an interest and
investment in the performing arts through their participation and patronage of
these arts. Although this in itself suggests the acceptance of artistic endeavors as
worthwhile pursuits, it may be difficult to articulate exactly why they are valued
and whether or not this involvement contributes to health and happiness in any
measureable way. With this in mind, I will pursue the following questions: How
might participation in performing arts such a music, dance, and theater contribute to
a child’s state of wellness? Are these kinds of benefits achievable by other means?
What contributions toward health and peace of mind can be gained through
participation in artistic endeavors?
I will begin by examining the phenomenon of play in the lives of children and its
connection to the work of performing artists (Wennerstrand 1998). I will focus on
imaginative forms of play as they naturally lead to artistic play. Furthermore, I will
explore the link between imagination, imaginative play, and the performing arts.
P.E. Silvey
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
e-mail: psilvey@esm.rochester.edu

1080 P.E. Silvey
I will note how free and informal artistic play may progress to more formal and
focused study in the performing arts. I will then consider each of three main
performing art forms, how they are similar, what distinguishes them, and what
research shows regarding their impact on a child’s well-being. I will conclude by
proposing four purposes that arts participation might serve in meeting important
needs of growing children. These four functions can be characterized as (1) activity,
(2) belonging, (3) identity, and (4) ownership.
Children may live their lives without any engagement in the performing arts.
Children can and do survive this way. Realistically, in conditions of extreme
hardship where basic needs go unmet, activities in the arts are likely to be of
secondary or little value. Yet despite this, the arts as a cultural phenomenon
persists, sometimes even among those facing the most challenging of circum-
stances (Colijn 1995). The practice of some form of music-making, for example,
occurs in every known culture, which has prompted philosophers and sociologists
alike to puzzle over its purpose. Some even suggest that the key to understanding
the human condition may lie in examining the pervasiveness of such arts when
these acts are not necessary for survival (Gardner 1983). An exploration of why
humans value arts activities may provide some insight into what influences the
quality of a child’s life; that is, a child’s need to do more than simply remain alive,
but to thrive.
37.2 Play and Culture in the Lives of Children
When basic needs are assured, children play. French philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1762/2003) described the healthy child as “impetuous, sprightly,
animated, without corroding care, without long and painful foresight, wholly
absorbed in his actual existence, and enjoying a plentitude of life which seems
bent on reaching out beyond him” (p. 122). According to this characterization,
children are filled with a natural sense of curiosity which stems from an
unfulfilled yet “innate desire for well-being” (p. 135). Children explore their
surroundings, run fingers over surfaces, and balance on rocks. They survey what
is before them and react to sounds behind them. As Eisner (2002) notes, children
find satisfaction and delight in exploring the sensory world. The inclination to
play allows for important sensory experiences to occur in the lives of children.
Play is a way they willfully engage with the world, generally on their own terms.
When given freedom and time, they are inclined to participate in a wide range of
play activities. Howard Gardner (1973) identifies a child’s play activity as
crucial to his or her development, remarking that “. . . through play, the child
is able to make manageable and comprehensible the overwhelming and
perplexing aspects of the world” (p. 164). Kennedy (2004) provides an
overview of scholarship supporting the importance and value of play in the
healthy development of children. Despite the potential for numerous factors
that may discourage informal play, under optimal conditions, children play
(Guddemi et al. 1998).
37 Imagination, Play, and the Role of Performing Arts in the Well-Being of Children 1081
The role and importance of play is common for children from various cultures.
Much has been written about play and its many forms. Historically, Huizinga
(1949) defined play through identifying its formal characteristics. First, play is
a voluntary act. Secondly, it has a quality of being removed or outside of
the ordinary, “. . . a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity
with a disposition all its own” (p. 8). Thirdly, play occurs within the limits of time
and space. Fourth, it creates a sense of order. And lastly, play is not motivated
by a desire for material gain (a quality which distinguishes it from “work”).
These attributes correlate with the conditions of the performing arts. Arts
activities are an assertion of the will, set apart from the everyday, occurring
within the limits of time and space, organized to express or communicate. When
children are granted freedom, space, and time, they will use forms of play
to create order or to exercise power over their surroundings. They will generally
do so for the sake of creating an experience rather than as a means to gain
a specific outcome or profit.
As growing children encounter the world over time, they begin to test
boundaries, exercise their abilities, and expand their sensibilities through play.
As language skills develop, they may pretend to be a creature, or someone else,
or even experiment with being another version of themselves. In order for a child to
develop in a healthy, timely manner, this learning process must somehow unfold at
a pace in keeping with the maturing child’s needs. I suggest that in part, children
maintain their sense of well-being through those engagements that foster their
growth at an appropriate pace. We neither want children to grow up too fast, nor
do we want them to postpone this development. Rather, children must be given the
opportunity to mature in an unhurried manner (Elkind 1988).
The conditions of this growth process are contingent on the environment,
relationships, and the child’s accumulating experiences. As Eisner notes, the term
culture can refer to a shared way of life, but also in biological terms, a culture serves
as a “medium for growing things” (Eisner 2002, p. 3). Children are nested in
overlapping rings of cultural groups and identify with multiple cultural units or
macrocultures, microcultures, supercultures, and subcultures (Campbell 2002).
They are learning not only to absorb and assimilate these cultures but also to
shape and transform them. Anttila (2007) notes that children create their own
play culture during unsupervised interaction with peers and that this time is
important as children seek power, meaning, and identity.
An important earmark of any culture is reflected and captured in its arts. Art
forms portray and embody facets of a community of people and serve to crystallize
“cultural patterns of expression” (Blacking 1973, p. 73). Often we learn to under-
stand and value cultures outside our own through observing and participating in that
culture’s arts. We experience these cultures through our perception and experience
of their arts. A child’s participation in the arts of her own culture is an important
means for her to see herself in relation to that culture, both as a recipient of shared
understandings and also as a contributing member.
In more recent examinations of the phenomenon of play, the diversity of
play forms and the way they are discussed across disciplines contribute to what
1082 P.E. Silvey
Sutton-Smith (1997) characterizes as the ambiguity of play. He lists nine categories

of play forms or play activities that range from those activities which are mostly
private (such as daydreaming) to those that are often more public (such as playing
the piano). Among this list are three categories that are most relevant to the ways
play relates to the performing arts. These are solitary play, informal social play, and
performance play.
37.2.1 Solitary Play
An active child released into open space is likely to engage in numerous forms of
solo play. These may include running, jumping, and repeating movements with
arms, legs, and hands. A child may also yell, shout, speak softly, hum, or sing.
A child may engage in play acting, that is, pretending to be (or control) something
that in the child’s imagination becomes more than what it literally is. A child might
create a role or voice for a plaything (which could be a toy or perhaps a found object
reimagined). These are exploratory actions, ways for children to assert themselves
(or “try out things”) in their worlds. A disengaged child who does not participate in
these kinds of actions appears to be removed from the world or protecting herself
from the world.
A child’s solo play may be exploratory, spontaneous, and undirected. It may also
take on a more directed form, as when a child runs across a field in order to arrive
at a destination or see how fast she can run. This kind of play is goal-oriented.
The child seeks an end (at least temporarily), and this shapes or drives the actions.
These two distinctions are important for understanding the ways children play and
how that relates to artistic interests and development. In contrast to goal-directed
play, exploratory play is the investigation of options with unknown ends. It is the
act of trial. These kinds of spontaneous actions yield information that the child may
use to inform future kinds of play.
37.2.2 Informal Social Play
Children play together. Frequently during play, their actions foster or spring from
their engagement with others. A child’s social interactions with adults and peers
often take place in the context of play activities. Engagement in play with one
or more others can be considered communal play. In some cases, play actions are
aligned, repeated, or coordinated. Two or more children attempt to move or sing
or enact a story in a similar way. Children may produce mirror images of
a playmate’s movements or echo a playmate’s (or parent’s) sounds or actions.
But often, play involving more than one child results in interactions and responses
that are not simultaneous or aligned. In this case, children’s play activities are
individualized and create a sort of counterpoint of activity. Play may also be
cooperative, such as when children choose to play different characters in an
imagined story they pretend to enact. Children act and react, initiate and
respond. A child’s behaviors are impacted by the presence of others and their
watchful eyes. Even when playing alone, children may simulate this social aspect
of play. The act of singing or humming can be a means to perform for self to keep
from feeling alone. As Burrows (1990) proposes, “Hearing the sound of their own
voices returns vocalizers to themselves in a new form . . .. [w]hen we hum to
ourselves, we divide ourselves in two, into sound producers and listeners, and
two is company” (p. 34).
It is important to note that this kind of social play can also result in comparisons
and competition. Competitive play includes the many games and challenges that
students pose to one another in order to determine a winner (Huizinga 1949).
Whether cooperative or competitive, children use play as a means to relate to
others.
37.2.3 Performance Play: Improvisatory Play and Audience
For young children, play is often exploratory and improvisatory. Children pretend
and engage in imaginative scenarios that evolve in the moment. Sawyer (1997)
describes the pretend play of children as improvisational performance, like that
practiced by small ensemble Jazz musicians or improvisational theater groups. This
comparison raises a potential link between these play activities and the more
purposeful pursuit of various performing arts. Wennerstrand (1998) cites the ability
to improvise as being a central aspect of play and also central to performing artists
as they seek to generate new material. She further notes four key dimensions of
play: spatial, temporal, physical, and social. As I will demonstrate more fully, each
of these dimensions correlates with play as an activity that corresponds with
involvement in performing arts.
Children who play can often be seen as children who perform. They may act as
their own audience, perform for their playmates, or perhaps perform for an adult
they wish to impress. Children engaged in solitary play often change their behavior
when they become aware that someone is watching. They may minimize sounds
and movements due to feelings of vulnerability, or they may enlarge and amplify
actions in order to encourage a response from onlookers. These changes in behavior
are readily visible to those who have the opportunity to observe children at play.
When others are present (such as siblings, peers, family, or other adults), these
outsiders become observers of the child and what the child is doing. They constitute
what might be identified as an audience. Those behaviors that qualify as forms of
the performing arts take place when a child is given space and time and the will to
express or communicate, that is, to impact or move an audience. To perform is to
carry out a task, to do something. These arts are time-bound and require physical
engagement and therefore hold significant potential as forms of embodied learning
(Davidson 2004; Bowman 2004). When I utter sounds, make movements, or
emulate characters as a means to express, I am performing.
express or communicate in a more specified way. Free play or exploratory play does
not have this stipulation.
In keeping with this more differentiated definition of artistic play, Gardner
(1973) suggests a hierarchy with play serving as a necessary precursor to the
aesthetic process, distinguishing art as a “goal-directed form of play” (p. 166).
What sets apart the arts from play, Gardner maintains, is that they require a child to
connect the impulse to create with a desire to communicate. But this desire to create
or make, that is, fashion a product, may not be all that could motivate a child to be
artistic. The desire to express in itself may also serve as motivation.
The will to express is linked to a need to expel or release emotions, but it is more
than a pure discharge of emotion. It is one thing for a child to move his body to
expel energy but quite another for him to move about as a means to show joy or
frustration in an expressive manner. Yet expression does not merely mean a release
of emotion, as Dewey (1934/1989) establishes:
[E]motional discharge is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of expression . . .. there is

no expression, unless there is urge from within outwards, the welling up must be clarified
and ordered by taking into itself the values of prior experiences before it can be an act of
expression. (p. 67)
Thus, artistic play may be seen as the clarification and ordering of unbridled
emotions. Dewey recalls English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy (1912)
and his definition of art: “Art is that imaginative expression of human energy,
which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile
the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion” (p. 255).
In this case, the word impersonal is used to “signify momentary forgetfulness of
one’s own personality and its active wants” (p. 256). This definition underscores
tenets held in more contemporary views of art. Art entails the expression of
emotions that is somehow detached by means of “technical concretion” or arrange-
ments of various media (sound, body, language). The outcome, according to
Galsworthy, carries an internal resonance with the outside world. The child having
a tantrum is discharging emotion, whereas the child drumming aggressively to
express the qualities of strong emotion may be engaging in a form of artistic play.
Dewey (1934/1989) validates the child’s accumulation of experiences as
a source for expressive, artistic play:
I do not think that the dancing and singing of even little children can be explained wholly on
the basis of unlearned and unformed responses to then existing objective occasions . . .. the
act is expressive only as there is in it a unison of something stored from past experience,
something therefore generalized, with present conditions. (p. 78)
In other words, children make sense of their accumulating experiences, or

personal history, by the expressive ways they respond to the influences of the
world around them. Dewey proposes that imagination develops through the phys-
ical and sensory process, meaning that the actual engagement and experimentation
with a medium (sound, body, character/story) are what develops imagination:
1084 P.E. Silvey
37.3 Imagination and Artistic Play
37.3.1 Imaginative Play
Historically, child psychologists have devoted much attention to studying the play
behaviors of children (Fein 1981). In particular, those studies examining imagina-
tive play have yielded informative yet inconclusive findings. Despite this uncer-
tainty, there is support that playfulness is related to creativity and inclines
youngsters toward divergent thinking.
Among the many forms of play, imaginative play is an important and common
type of play that has immediate relevance to the performing arts. During this type of
play action, children create a fantasy version of reality where they generate
characters that do not really exist and stories that are not, in actuality, happening.
This kind of play creates something set apart from the real world, set apart in a way
that protects the actor yet allows him or her to safely “try on” identities and
attitudes.
Imaginative play is an exercise of imagination. Vygotsky argued that “imagina-
tion develops in connection with the development of play and other forms of
socially organized action and interaction” (Minick 1996, p. 44). In other words,
the act of play itself can enable imagination to develop. According to Vygotsky
(1966), the child advances developmentally or progresses most evidently through
play activities or enacted imagination. Imaginative play in itself is not necessarily
art-making, but imaginative play may result in artistic actions or performances.
For my purposes, imaginative play will serve as a broader category of activities that
may lead to types of play that can be characterized as artistic play.
37.3.2 Artistic Play
Artistic play, or play that results in artistic creations, has elements of both play and
the arts. Sutton-Smith (1997) points out the historical pairing of play and art in what
he calls their “conflation,” resulting from the fact that they both involve “the
freedom, the autonomy, and the originality of the individual” (p. 133):
What develops in the twentieth century is a complex of ideas in which the child’s play and
art are brought together with ideas about the imagination, about the child as a primitive, an
innocent, an original, and, in effect, the true romantic, because he or she is untouched by the
world and still capable of representing things in terms of an unfettered imagination. (p. 133)
This romanticized fusion of play and art further obscures distinctions. Sutton-Smith
indicates a recent shift away from this view toward more discrete definitions. In this
revised model, play is conceptualized as a diffusive act of exploration, while art is
a particular and specific form of exploration that ultimately seeks to develop
sensuous forms. In other words, artistic play seeks to manipulate a medium (in
the case of dance, music, and theater, voice and body serve as medium) in order to
1086 P.E. Silvey
The imagination, by means of art, makes a concession to sense in employing its materials, but
nevertheless uses sense to suggest underlying ideal truth. Art is thus a way of having the
substantial cake of reason while also enjoying the sensuous pleasure of eating it too. (p. 263)
In this way, the arts serve an important function in bringing together mind and body.
In keeping with Dewey’s sentiment, Sutton-Smith (1997) summarizes the views of
Kant who believed that imagination serves as a means to mediate between sensory
knowledge and formal reason. A child experiences the world through her senses and
by doing so begins to make sense of the world.
Eisner (2002) makes less of a distinction between art and play, viewing the two
as having a close kinship. He states:
[T]he arts provide a kind of permission to pursue qualitative experience in a particularly

focused way and to engage in the constructive exploration of what the imaginative process may
engender. In this sense, the arts, in all their manifestations, are close in attitude to play. (p. 4)
Each of these conceptualizations of play in relation to art suggests that a playful

child may develop into a young artist, provided the child has opportunities to
develop the necessary skills for these pursuits. The impact of the artistic outcome
depends on the tools that the child intentionally develops and refines over years of
practice. According to Gardner (1973), a young person achieves the status of an
artist or performer when these systems of communication effectively work together
for purposes of expression:
When he is capable of expressing with a symbolic medium those ideas, feelings, or
experiences that have affected him, he has realized the essential function of the artist.
When he is able to contemplate the work of another person, and to perceive fundamental
aspects of this work, then communicate it through his own actions to other persons, he has
achieved the essentials of the performer. (p. 168)
It is important to note that in Gardner’s description of performing artists, he

assumes they will perform someone else’s creation (composition, choreography, or
script). In improvisatory performance, individuals generate the work as they create
it. Artistic play is goal-directed and may be either generative (seeking originality or
novelty) or mimetic (imitative). Imitating the world (singing melodies learned
elsewhere, moving like an animal, pretending to be a parent speaking to a child)
offers an accessible structure for children to explore their capabilities and mirror
what they have sensed around them. The intent is to emulate what has been
observed or heard and perhaps begin to create a newly conceived version or
variation of this. But initially, the child most often desires to mimic, repeat, or
echo. As Campbell (1998) notes, the musical expressions children create “may
appear spontaneous, but many of them are a blend of bits of songs, rhythms, and
music they have known before” (p. 193).
As children engage with the sensory world, they begin to explore forms of
representation through manipulating various media. For the performing arts, this
means making sounds, attempting movements, and trying out characters and voices.
All these actions are intended to transform conscious understandings through
manipulating “material” or, in this case, the body and voice as a performance
medium. Through the process of endeavoring to represent, a child essentially

engages in a dialogue or conversation with her surroundings. This engagement
allows for surprises and discoveries that emerge through acts of exploration. As
Eisner (2002) notes, “The arts invite children to pay attention to the environment’s
expressive features and to the products of their imagination and to craft a material
so that it expresses or evokes an emotional or feelingful response to it” (p. 23).
The nature and value of play and its artistic forms can be summarized in
the following way. Play serves as a natural and important means through which
a child develops. Imaginative play offers a unique and valuable way for a child to test
and respond to the world. Artistic play, as a form of imaginative play, provides
particularly important ways for children to develop their expressive capacities and
make sense of the world in which they live. This particular kind of sensemaking is
part of what children require in order to experience a greater sense of well-being.
37.3.3 Imagination and the Well-Being of Children
In the previous section, I have shown that the arts can serve as a cultivated and
refined manifestation of imaginative play. If this is the nature of what children
experience, imagination and the capacity for it can be seen as important for their
well-being. In fact, the exercise of the imagination in overt ways (i.e., artistic play
or performance) may be an outgrowth of a defining aspect of our well-being.
Winnicott (1971) proposes:
The creative impulse is therefore something that can be looked at as a thing in itself,
something that of course is necessary if an artist is to produce a work of art, but also as
something that is present when anyone – baby, child, adolescent, adult, old man or
woman – looks in a healthy way at anything or does anything deliberately . . .. (p. 69)
Thus, creativity is a way of seeing and doing that proves essential to a person’s health.
Many others have developed these ideas further. Participation in the arts, says
Maxine Greene (1995), “can release imagination to open new perspectives, to
identify alternatives . . .. encounters with the world become newly informed”
(p. 18). She adds, “To call for imaginative capacity is to work for the ability to
look at things as if they could be otherwise” (p. 19). According to Greene, “[t]he role
of the imagination . . .. is to awaken, to disclose the ordinarily unseen, unheard, and
unexpected” (p. 28). The child who engages in imaginative play begins to entertain
possibilities for how anything encountered might be viewed differently.
In a discussion of the generative possibilities of theater and dramatic arts,
Woodson (2007) notes:
Art allows us to see how the world is made and remade. Through deliberative thought and
carefully considered action, artists posit what-ifs, juxtapose disparate elements to present
alternative emotional states, and engage perceivers in imaginative conversations of emo-
tion, intellect, and form and context. Through the generative possibilities of art-making—in
all its forms—young people rapidly see the consequences of their actions, and how their
choices impact the work as a whole. (p. 931)
1088 P.E. Silvey
The process of artistic performance provides a means for children to negotiate their
impact on a medium. This allows them to entertain possibilities that did not exist
prior to their own experiences of working within this medium.
To elaborate further, Eisner (2002) notes an important function of imagination as
a tool for exploration:
Imagination, that form of thinking that engenders images of the possible, also has
a critically important cognitive function to perform aside from the creation of possible
worlds. Imagination also enables us to try things out—again in the mind’s eye—without the
consequences we might encounter if we had to act upon them empirically. It provides
a safety net for experiment and rehearsal. (p. 5)
In other words, imagination is a safe way for children to test the waters of the
unknown without the threat of any harmful consequences. A child who is emerging
into more fully developed stages requires this zone of safety to be able to investi-
gate that which is outside his current realm of experience. A healthy state of growth
is dependent upon this kind of venturing out.
Egan (1992) further characterizes imagination in terms of its social virtues:
“By imaginatively feeling what it would be like to be other than oneself, one
begins to develop a prerequisite for treating others with as much respect as
one treats oneself” (p. 55). Thus, imagination can serve as a tool of empathy and
may help create a more tolerant and compassionate view of others. This sense of living
in the shoes of another can provide insights that allow us to experience a kind of
harmony with others that impacts our own state of well-being. There is nothing quite
so unsettling as the unknown. When we empathize, as imagination allows us to do, we
begin to relate to and “know” the other, making it more familiar and less foreign.
I would add that the instability or uncertainty of a child’s immediate circumstance
can be quieted or answered by the reassurance felt from a sense of possibility.
Winnicott (1971) suggests that it is “creative apperception more than anything else
that makes the individual feel that life is worth living” (p. 65). Our ability to visualize
or sustain the potential for realizing a desired future for ourselves (or our capacity to,
as Emily Dickinson aptly wrote, “dwell in possibility”) can provide us with the
purpose or drive to endure the current state of incompletion, or delayed gratification,
or unpleasant yet temporary circumstance.
37.4 Formal Instruction in Performing Arts
Artistic play is experimental and often informal. When children reach the age of
schooling, they may have the opportunity to participate in more formalized study in
the performing arts. Others have noted the value of this kind of structured participation
in the arts. During the act of creating (or recreating, as when a child learns to perform
an existing work), a child experiences self-realizations. Fowler (1996) notes: “It is
precisely because the creative act flows from the inside out rather than the outside in
that it helps youngsters discover their own resources, develop their own attributes, and
realize their own personal potential” (p. 57). He goes on to provide seven reasons he
believes every child needs the arts. These include self-definition, seeing themselves as
part of the larger culture, broadening perceptions, expanding abilities to communicate,
escaping the mundane, and developing imagination. He explains how developing the
imagination contributes to the betterment of mankind:
By exercising imagination, humans have been able to transform and reinvent the world in
infinite arrangements. Our evolving adaptations, adjustments, recyclings, and inventions enable
us to cope and to survive. By using our capacity to imagine, we reinvent our lives every day,
and we invent our future as well. Imagination enables us to burst the confines of the ordinary.
It allows us to rise up to meet new challenges and to improve the human condition. (p. 63)
Fowler goes on to say that the play of very young children is abundant with
invention, but this trait seems to wane as children mature. Participation in the
performing arts provides a way for children to continue to cultivate and sustain
this propensity for inventiveness.
Although the performing arts are pursued in many ways, it would be difficult to
consider these arts in children’s lives without including a discussion of their
occurrence in schooling and education. Many adults choose to engage or enroll
their children in more purposeful instruction in one or more of the performing
art disciplines through means that are formal or informal, public or private,
home-based or community-based. Although these decisions are sometimes contingent
on the ability to pay for such services, programs exist that provide ways for less-
advantaged children to receive arts instruction. An extensive body of scholarship
addresses and examines the role of the arts in education. For my purposes here, it is
sufficient to note that the arts play an important role in those settings.
As Fowler (1996) notes, a child engaged in the performing arts moves, acts, or
vocalizes as a means to amplify what is inside or to express a response to what is felt
or thought. These activities have significant educational value for developing
children. Eisner (2002) concurs:
Education . . . is the process of learning to create ourselves, and it is what the arts, both as
a process and the fruits of that process, promote. Work in the arts is not only a way of
creating performances and products; it is a way of creating our lives by expanding our
consciousness, shaping our dispositions, satisfying our quest for meaning, establishing
contact with others, and sharing a culture. (p. 3)
According to Egan (1992), “Education . . . is a process that awakens individuals

to a kind of thought that enables them to imagine conditions other than those that
exist or that have existed” (p. 47). By engaging with aspects of the world within the
structure and limits provided by the arts, young learners can begin to shape their
own views and intentions regarding how they will operate within this world.
I have established that play, and in particular imaginative play, occurs as a natural
part of a child’s developmental process. As children mature past the years of
exploratory play toward more disciplined pursuits, they may discover interests or
propensities for one or more of the performing arts disciplines. Each child has the
potential to benefit from exploration in any arts medium, but with the limits of time,
a child may need to choose which of these to pursue intentionally. Often during early
1090 P.E. Silvey
years of schooling, a child participates in an exploratory curriculum at school.

This provides opportunities for that child to experience activities in all of the art
forms. At this time, the child may recognize an art form that is more appealing, often
based on success or her own demonstrated ability to excel in that art form.
Each performing art form provides a unique experience with a different sensory
medium. Musical performance provides the opportunity for making expressive use of
sounds. These may be vocalized sounds or sounds produced through a musical
instrument. A child and parent may need to make choices regarding what kind of
music-making to pursue. This is also true for progressing from exploratory dance play
to more formalized dance instruction. Likewise, children may find formal opportu-
nities in theater. Of these three performing arts, music appears most often as a regular
curricular offering through schools. Opportunities to study dance or participate in
theater may be found in settings outside of school, such as community theater
organizations, theater arts programs after school or in the summer, dance companies
and independent dance schools, or church or faith-based performance opportunities.
I want to reiterate that improvisatory and exploratory forms of performing exist
in many informal settings and contribute to the development of young people as an
important kind of play. They are likely to continue to occur in numerous ways, even
if a child is pursuing one or more art forms in a formal setting. Providing children
with space, time, and safety can encourage improvisatory forms of artistic play.
That is, creating a sense that they are free to experiment, to explore, and to invent
within their surroundings.
37.4.1 Common Traits of Performing Arts
The performing arts share important similarities. As noted earlier, Wennerstrand

(1998) identifies four such dimensions as spatial, temporal, physical, and social.
First of all, the performing arts require the occupation and use of space. The act of
performing implies movement, which requires spatial parameters that allow for
such action. Secondly, the performing arts are temporal. That is, they unfold over
time and are constrained by time. Because of this, they lend themselves to the
development of form through repetition. In many cases, their form may follow
a narrative that unfolds over time. Because they are time-bound, they require
rehearsal, that is, repetition and cycling back through elements in order to develop
and refine efforts to manage and manipulate the various media. Thirdly, a performer
engages his body in the production of sound, the organization of movement, or the
development of character through the combination of sound, movement, and
language. This use of the body is fundamental to the performing arts and represents
an important form of knowledge. Lastly, the performing arts are social. Frequently,
these art forms are learned and studied in group settings or ensembles. Private study
occurs, as well as solo performance, but the intention is to communicate with others
(the audience), and therefore even solo performance has a social dimension.
Of these four dimensions, time plays a particularly important role. Performing
arts occur in real time. They cannot be stored or viewed in any kind of static way.
Even preserving these forms through audio or video recording devices does not
eliminate the fact that they are confined by time. To listen or view a performance
requires the passage of time. This also means that for the performer, repetition
becomes a critical tool for remembering and recreating more sophisticated and
structured performances. Because time is a finite and limited resource, children and
parents must make choices about how to allocate their waking hours. Perhaps the
most challenging consideration regarding the role that performing arts might play in
the life of a child is how these pursuits (or the opportunity for practice and
exploration) might fit into the schedule of activities that make up each day. With
these four parameters in mind, I will briefly examine what each of these performing
arts offers children in terms of their state of well-being.
37.4.2 Music
To make music, young performers use the artistic medium of sound. Because sound
is immediate and pervasive, it is already communicative in helping us orient
ourselves in the world. According to Dewey (1934/1989), “. . . sound itself is
near, intimate,” and it is “. . . the conveyor of what impends, of what is happening
as an indication of what is likely to happen . . .. [i]t is sounds that make us jump”
(p. 242). This relationship between sound and our orientation to our surrounding, as
well as its influence on our perception of time, contributes to its potency. Using
sounds as a means of artistic expression has an immediacy and can create an audible
reference point for the originator, even if the sound is coming from within.
Much could be written about music and the important role it plays in the lives of
children. Campbell (2002) underscores this value, saying, “music contributes in
positive ways in children’s lives, and many recognize—even in their youth and
inexperience—that they could not live without it” (p. 61). O’Neill (2006) situates
musical development in the context of recent child development scholarship which
embraces the universal potential and capacity for healthy development in all young
people. Rather than music being viewed as a domain for the talented few, “every
young person has the potential and capacity for positive musical development” and
notes “engagement in musical activities should be associated with positive or
healthy outcomes for all young people” (p. 463). Since young people generally
exercise autonomy over the way they engage with music, the promotion of musical
activities by the community can foster a child’s sense of self through opportunities
for self-governed expression, direction, and responsibility (O’Neill 2006).
37.4.3 Dance
In dance, the human body itself serves a medium, and in that sense, it is potentially
the most embodied form of art-making. Humans move to get themselves from place
to place and to accommodate their needs. People dance at social gatherings as
a means to interact and celebrate, generally in conjunction with music. But humans
1092 P.E. Silvey
also move to express emotions and ideas and to communicate these in direct and
indirect ways. It is the intentional shaping of movements, or what Dewey (1934/
1989) calls the “organization of energies” (p. 176), that constitutes dance.
Stinson (1997) examined adolescent engagement in school-sponsored dance
instruction. She proposes the possibility of an experience that falls between the
realms of work and play, two categories of action that are customarily kept separate
in school settings. She argues that students be given opportunities to become deeply
engaged in activities that are nondestructive, those that allow choice, freedom, and
control. Well-structured arts experiences can achieve this. Stinson and Bond (2001)
found that for many young people, dance created both a heightened sense of self
(feeling fully alive) and a sense of self-forgetfulness (getting lost in the moment,
becoming other). Of particular importance was the value young people placed on
the freedom they felt and needed when dancing.
37.4.4 Theater
The theatrical arts are prevalent in film, television, and on stage, but they may also
occur as part of cultural celebrations and rituals. They constitute a “playing out” of
story through the interactions (spoken and enacted) of characters and plot. For
Schonmann (2002), the body is the tool of theater. In theater, the play (as a noun) is
literally a structure for actual play (as a verb). She notes that “when a person plays,
he or she wittingly leaves the everyday world” (p. 140). This sense of temporary
displacement creates an opportunity for imagining possibilities, portraying others,
and vicariously experiencing what was or what might be. This takes place in
a removed yet protected manner.
Involvement in theatrical arts can fulfill important needs for young people.
Caillier (2006) identifies the need to attend to the ways young people choose to
engage in the arts outside of formal instruction and why they choose to do so. She
studied one young man’s engagement with theater arts and the role it played in his
life. She notes that the arts are not simply a means to another external end, but they
themselves serve primary purposes such as “the expression of identity and the
production of cultural symbols” (p. 2), as was evident in her case study.
Holloway and LeCompte (2001) studied the effects of the involvement of middle
school girls in a theater arts program for 2 years. They argue that this involvement
contributed to positive identity and self-worth:
[T]he arts have these effects because they make it possible for children to imagine
themselves out of their current identities and to try on new ways of being . . .. the arts let
children express themselves in healthful ways, permitting them to try on a variety of
alternative identities in relatively risk-free environments. (p. 388)
This is accomplished through the encouragement of “symbolic action” to create

alternatives to the accepted socialized norms and to disrupt expectations and trans-
form them. Participation in dramatic arts resulted in transformed identities due to
three learned practices: “centering, open-mindedness, and self-expression” (p. 401).
All three performing arts mediums often utilize existing works that are learned
and performed by young artists. Sometimes, as in the practice of musical theater, all
three of these art forms are integrated into a larger whole. A young person who is
dancing, singing, and acting in a musical theater role is learning to perform in all
three realms within the specific framework of a script, songs, and choreographed
movements. Although the act of staging such a work is a form of reenactment and
does not require the generation of original art, the parameters of such a work are
open in many ways, and the child performer has the opportunity to inhabit the work
and make it his or her own. In choral singing, students often become aware of their
contribution to the final version or interpretation of a composition (Silvey 2005).
They are part of something bigger than themselves while making valid and unique
contributions to it, and often they become cognizant of this.
37.5 What Participation in the Performing Arts Can Provide
I have established that for young children, the act of playing occurs naturally and
takes on various forms, one of which is imaginative play. Children appear to benefit
from having the opportunity to play in this manner. More methodical instruction in
the performing arts can and does begin at any age, even very young ages.
As children grow, they often enter some form of structured or formal schooling.
It is at this point that arts activities can be and often are pursued through recurring
instruction. A parent may enroll his child in music lessons on a particular instru-
ment or have the child participate in dance classes for beginners. A child may
audition to be part of a school play. These activities may not be available in every
community and in every culture. Perhaps a skill is passed on through parents or
relatives in an informal but more culturally traditional manner. Regardless of the
mode of transmission, arts activities seem to become more formalized or are
transmitted in an intentional manner as children mature.
Formal training in the performing arts has long been associated with schooling
and the formalized curriculum. With proper guidance, children are capable of
performing with great expertise, yet there are limits to the sophistication of their
performances. It is understood by parents and community members that these are
young artists in the making. When these young artists perform, the expectations are
modified and adults use a different standard than they would for a professional
performance. Parents attend these performances not because they expect
a professional level of artistry but because “. . . the products [of a performance]
are signs that our children have acquired something, and at the same time, have
made something of themselves” (Menck 2000, p. 78). This “something” is precisely
what I would like to explore for the remainder of this chapter.
I propose that engagement in the performing arts contributes to the well-being of
young children by giving them four important occupations or identities. These are
(1) something to do, (2) somewhere to be, (3) someone to be, (4) and something of
their own. These could also be labeled as activity, belonging, identity, and
1094 P.E. Silvey
ownership. At first read, these offerings may seem nondescript undertakings that
could be fulfilled by nonarts activities. However, I maintain that pursuits in the
performing arts offer unique and important ways to provide these opportunities for
children and will yield the developmental and culturally rich benefits that I have
outlined earlier. Let me briefly summarize what I mean by each.
Participation in the performing arts gives children something valuable and
important to do. They may be faced with numerous options regarding how they
will spend their time. Children can find ways to pass time that may have little or no
lasting value. “Doing” arts means doing something that is potentially charged with
meaning and cultural value. In addition, the doing typically results in outcomes that
can be sensed by others, often as formal or informal performances. An activity that
is focused toward a goal can supply a rich opportunity for the productive use of
time. The temporal dimension of the performing arts provides a meaningful way for
children to structure and utilize their time. More importantly, the end result is
culturally valued in ways that reinforce that this was time well spent.
The spatial dimension of the performing arts means there must be a designated
place for their pursuit. A child who participates in the performing arts has some-
where to be. This means they associate an activity with a place that welcomes them
and allows them to feel a sense of belonging. When a child knows that, on a regular
basis, s/he will be an expected participant fully included in an activity, this provides
a sense of safety and belonging. Providing a location where a child can safely
explore and cultivate her artistic capabilities allows the child the needed means to
devote energy and time to such pursuits.
A child can also find a sense of self in pursuing a skills-based performing art
form. A child who plays the piano is a pianist. The child who acts is an actor. These
titles contribute to how a child views himself or herself. The roles children occupy
begin to help them form personal identities. Because these pursuits are culturally
valued, they enable the child, by association, to also feel culturally valued and see
herself as a contributing member of the culture. It is true that we are human beings
rather than human doings, but the actions we take (especially those that
are purposeful and role-based) help clarify and define who we are. The social
dimension of the performing arts means the child also learns to see herself in
relation to others. The arts provide a structured way for children to relate to one
another and to adults. The act of collaborating as a performing artist provides
a purpose that brings children together. This shared pursuit serves as the joint
activity that allows children to build and cultivate relationships.
Finally, children who engage in performing arts have something to call their
own. The adult world may not allow them many things they can possess in this
manner. The art I generate through movement, singing, or dancing is my own
creation. I possess control over it, and it comes from me. Because the art I create or
recreate comes from me, it is a unique expression of me. In that way, it is my own.
This link between output and identity results in a potential sense of vulnerability
and therefore requires a safe, protected environment. The way a child’s artistic
creation is received reflects upon the child’s self-worth.
As stated before, the four functions I have suggested that the arts fulfill can be
filled by other pursuits. Perhaps the important difference in artistic pursuits is
the potential they have to reflect and contribute to cultural values as they can only
be expressed through these artistic mediums. That is, the kinds of activities,
locations, identities, and possessions that result from engagement with the arts
are important and unique in their contributions to the well-being of children
involved.
37.6 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have demonstrated that the actions of a playing child embody the
genesis of many forms of creative performing that may follow. These kinds of
pursuits, even when undertaken on the smallest scale, provide an important means
for children to feel secure, happy, and guided by a sense of purpose.
Philosophers and scholars in the fields of philosophy, child psychology, cogni-
tive science, arts, and education support the premise that artistic endeavors offer an
important avenue for children to safely venture beyond themselves. This begins
with imaginative play, which in turn may develop into artistic play. This kind of
expressive and communicative play offers rich rewards for the growing child and
often leads to sustained study in one or more of the performing arts. Music, dance,
and theater each offer unique opportunities and means for sensory responsiveness
and forms of self-expression. The child who is engaged in a performing art has
found a meaningful and stylized way to engage with the world and make sense of it,
on her own terms, through her own voice. She makes productive use of time in
a venue where she feels safe and accepted. She discovers who she is through the
practice of her art, and she creates artistic works that only she could create. These
rich rewards can be found only in such pursuits.
The old adage that “children must play” may be more than just an aphorism. If
a growing child is to move in an outward direction, that is, to express and expand
the realm of perception and understanding beyond the immediate and the literal,
that child must engage in forms of play. Imaginative, improvisational, and artistic
forms of play have the potential to blossom into full-blown artistic pursuits and
performances. The value of these endeavors is rich in potential, waiting to be
discovered by all who are given the chance to play. As Winnicott (1971) notes,
“It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be
creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the
individual discovers self” (p. 54). The child who plays artistically and pursues one
or more of the performing arts has enriched opportunities for activity, belonging,
identity, and ownership. Each of these opportunities contributes to the well-being of
the child and ultimately to the quality of that child’s life.
Acknowledgments I wish to express my sincere thanks to Liora Bresler, Donna Brink Fox, Marie
McCarthy, and Andrew Wall for their thoughtful comments and contributions to this chapter.
1096 P.E. Silvey
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Section VI
Spirituality and Religion
Relation of Spiritual Development to
Youth Health and Well-Being: Evidence 38
from a Global Study
Peter C. Scales, Amy K. Syvertsen, Peter L. Benson,

Eugene C. Roehlkepartain, and Arturo Sesma, Jr.
38.1 Introduction
The extant research suggests that religiosity and spirituality are linked to numerous
indicators of youth well-being, including lower rates of adolescent delinquency,
substance use, pregnancy, violence, depression, and suicide, and higher rates of
exercise, healthy eating habits, and seat belt use, among other outcomes (e.g.,
Kim and Esquivel 2011; Yonker et al. 2012; Mahoney et al. 2006; King and Benson
2006; Oman and Thoresen 2006; Cotton et al. 2006; Jones et al. 2005). However,
the research is not always consistent. For example, Cotton and colleagues (2005)
found a positive association between the importance of religion and depressive
symptoms (which the researchers attributed to depressed youth seeking support in
religious communities), and Sallquist et al. (2010) reported a similar
positive association between spirituality and loneliness in their sample of Indone-
sian adolescents. Despite some inconsistencies (which can often be explained with
further examination), the great majority of the research clearly demonstrates
a positive linkage between religiosity, spirituality, and youth health and well-being.
For example, Scales (2007b) analyzed data collected from over 148,000 US
teens that examined their values and involvement in youth development activities,
Peter L. Benson: deceased

P.C. Scales (*)
Search Institute, Manchester, MO, USA
e-mail: scalespc@search-institute.org
A.K. Syvertsen • E.C. Roehlkepartain
Search Institute, Minneapolis, MN, USA
e-mail: amys@search-institute.org; gener@search-institute.org
P.L. Benson
A. Sesma, Jr.
St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN, USA
e-mail: agsesma@stkate.edu

1102 P.C. Scales et al.
including religious participation (time spent weekly in a church, synagogue,

mosque, or other religious or spiritual place) and the importance of being religious
or spiritual. In this sample, 58 % of youth reported weekly participation in religious
activities and 50 % indicated that being religious or spiritual is “quite” or
“extremely” important to them. Young people’s religious and spiritual commit-
ments were linked to lower levels of a wide range of high-risk behaviors and to
higher levels of thriving behaviors (Scales 2007b). Actively religious young people
were, on average, 39 % less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, including: use
of tobacco, illicit drugs, and alcohol, problems in school, demonstrations of anti-
social behavior, and drinking alcohol and driving. Furthermore, actively religious
youth were, on average, 26 % more likely to exhibit thriving behaviors, including:
being high academic achievers, using nonviolent means to resolve conflicts, rating
themselves as being in good health, and being leaders (Scales 2007b).
These findings echo similar conclusions reached in examining the importance of
religion and frequency of attending religious services on well-being outcomes among
a different sample of 216,000 American youth (Benson et al. 2005). The results
similarly revealed that religious youth scored lower on risk behaviors and higher on
thriving behaviors with these associations generalizing across gender and racial-
ethnic subgroups. Additional analysis showed that the two religiosity indicators
(importance; service participation) appeared to be more strongly related to the
thriving outcomes than the risk outcomes. Moreover, the religiosity indicators
appeared to have an additive affect, such that youth who were high on both religious
importance and service attendance were consistently better off than youth who were
high on just one of the religiosity indicators, who in turn were better off than youth
who were low on both. A longitudinal extension of this research (see Scales 2007a)
found that young people who were religiously active in middle school were less likely
to engage in high-risk behaviors 3 years later when they were in high school.
Thus, these data from quite large and diverse samples of US middle and high
school students suggest that both formal participation in a religious community and
valuing spirituality may have important causal relationships with youth well-being,
as reflected in positive outcomes such as delay of sexual intercourse, prevention of
school problems, and development of leadership skills, resistance skills, and the
ability to overcome adversity. Religious involvement in middle school, more so
than being spiritual, may have a positive effect on later alcohol, tobacco, and illicit
drug use, and on informal helping of others, as well as youths’ valuing of diversity.
And being spiritual in middle school may have more of an impact than being
involved in a religious community on antisocial behavior, gambling, and engage-
ment in violence, and school success later on in high school (see Scales 2007a).
Still, it is important not to overstate the possible influence of religiosity and
spirituality. Regression analyses show that when considered alone, apart from any
other influences in a young person’s world, religious community and spirituality each
explained only about 3–5 % of the variation in indexes of risk and thriving
(see Benson et al. 2005; Scales 2007a). Similarly, in a meta-analysis of 75 studies,
Yonker et al. (2012) reported that spiritual-religious measures had relatively small
effect sizes of roughly .11– .17 on various psychosocial and risk behavior outcomes.
38 Relation of Spiritual Development to Youth Health and Well-Being 1103
In contrast, the Developmental Assets (relationships, opportunities, values, skills, and

self-perceptions that promote adolescent well-being; see Benson et al. 1998, 2011;
Benson and Scales 2011; Scales 2012, ▶ Chap. 56, “Developmental Assets and the
Promotion of Well-Being in Middle Childhood”, this volume) explain about 57 % of
the variance in the risk index (Leffert et al. 1998), and 47–54 % of the variance in
the thriving index, across six different racial-ethnic groups of young people
(Scales et al. 2000).
Many other studies support the conclusion that single factors alone do not explain
much of young person’s well-being. Rather, multiple influences operate in multiple
parts of a young person’s world, and over multiple points in time, to promote positive
youth development (Benson et al. 2006). Additionally, it is important to note that
the associations between religious community and spirituality on risk behaviors and
thriving indicators weaken or disappear when previous levels of risk and thriving are
included in the models (see Scales 2007a). It is quite likely that the religious
community and spirituality variables as defined in these studies exert their impact
through their contribution to concurrent levels of risk and thriving, which in turn
are the key predictors of later levels of risk and thriving. But even when so qualified,
religiosity and spirituality clearly play an important role in youth well-being.
38.1.1 How Might Religious and Spiritual Factors Influence Youth

Well-Being?
A variety of mechanisms have been discussed as possible contributors to the

relationship between youth spiritual development and well-being. Callaghan
(2005) explained the connection between adolescents’ religious involvement and
healthy behaviors in terms of the influence spiritual growth has on youths’ building
a capacity to take care of themselves, an element of self-regulation. Josephson and
Dell (2004) attributed the link between religiosity and lower levels of premarital
sex to religious youths’ negative attitudes toward sex before marriage. Nooney
(2005) and many others have discussed how religious involvement helps create
social support networks which serve as a source of protection for young people.
Similarly, Barrett (2010) reported that the Black church in particular may provide
for urban African-American youth a source of cultural capital that helps them
navigate the educational system, as well as moral directives that sustain in youth
a religious motivation for doing well in school. More religious families also have
been described as creating more cohesive family environments in which effective
parental monitoring is more likely (Manlove et al. 2006). Religious or spiritual
families may also influence their children through positive communication, as in
Desrosiers et al. (2010), who reported that the effect of youths’ personal relation-
ship with God on a variety of measures of psychopathology appeared to be
influenced by maternal openness to discussing spirituality and religion. Studying
another contextual influence, French and colleagues (2011) found that religiosity
protected both boys and girls against antisocial behavior, but only for males did the
religiosity of friends and peer networks add to that protection.
Johnson’s (2008) expansive review of more than 500 academic articles on the
impact of “organic religion” (as distinguished from “institutional religion”) on
people’s lives (primarily adults) gives a sense of the mechanisms by which the
positive effects of religion and spirituality may be occurring. Taken together, the
research shows that components of “organic religion” that protect against health
risks such as injury, hypertension, depression, suicide, unsafe sexual behaviors,
alcohol and other drug use, and delinquency are also associated with a variety of
prosocial factors, such as longevity, civic engagement, well-being, hope, purpose,
meaning in life, self-esteem, and educational attainment. Johnson (2008) concluded
that “the beneficial relationship between religion and health behaviors and outcomes
is not simply a result of religion’s constraining function or what it discourages . . .
but also of what it encourages, namely, behaviors that can enhance hope, well-being,
or educational attainment” (p. 198). Thus, a thorough understanding of how spiritual
development may influence adolescent health requires examining spirituality’s
relation to indicators of positive youth development beyond the basic avoidance
of risk behaviors.
Olson-Ritt and colleagues (2004) theorized that spirituality leads to prosocial
coping skills, which in turn lead to reductions in risky behavior, such as Knight
et al.’s (2007) finding that forgiveness (feeling forgiven by God and forgiving
others) had a strong relationship to lower alcohol use among adolescents. Similarly,
in Scales’ (2007b) study of racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse
youth, levels of religious participation and importance were meaningfully corre-
lated with other important developmental resources and strengths—relationships,
opportunities, values, skills, and self-perceptions—known as Developmental
Assets ® (Benson 2006). For example, religiously active and spiritual youth were
at least 60 % more likely to experience the assets of “community values youth,”
“youth as resources,” “service to others,” “creative activities,” and the value of
“restraint.” And they were 50–59 % more likely to experience the assets of “positive
family communication,” “a caring neighborhood,” “a caring school climate,” “parent
involvement in schooling,” and time spent in “youth programs” (Scales 2007b).
These associations lend support to the hypothesis that religiosity and spirituality may
affect adolescent health and well-being through a variety of processes that influence
attitudes, values, skills, constructive use of time, and social relationships.
A fairly recent line of inquiry supports the hypothesis that developmental assets
(in particular, religious contexts that function as asset-building resources) mediate
the influence of religion (Benson et al. 2012a). A recent analysis provides strong
evidence that religious engagement does enhance the developmental asset land-
scape (Wagener et al. 2003). The authors argue that religious engagement, then,
wields its influence via building developmental strengths. A related study, using
a national sample of 614 adolescents (ages 12–17), provides strong evidence that
frequency of attendance at worship services enhances positive engagement with
adults outside of one’s family (Scales et al. 2003). Such networks of adult relation-
ships can be powerful influences on both risk behaviors and thriving (Scales and
Leffert 2004). Consistent with this reasoning, Kerestes et al. (2004) suggest that
religious engagement promotes social integration into adult relationships and
prosocial values. Tracking four religious development trajectories during the high
school years, they found that stable or upward trajectories were associated with
greater civic participation and less alcohol and other drug use in comparison to
peers on low or downward trajectories.
38.1.2 Adequacy of the Youth Spiritual Development and

Well-Being Literature
Within the social sciences generally, there is a paucity of research on youth spiritual
development. Several years ago, Search Institute researchers quantified this over-
sight (Benson et al. 2003). Searches were conducted on two broad social
science databases, Social Science Abstracts and Psych-INFO, to determine the
extent to which spirituality and religion in childhood and adolescence were being
addressed by the research community. Less than 1 % of the child and adolescent
articles cataloged in the two databases (from 1990 to 2002) addressed issues of
spirit or religion. Furthermore, when the search was limited to six premier
developmental journals, the attention to spiritual development drops still further.
Only one article in 13 years (1990–2002) addressed this dimension in childhood
or adolescence. An unpublished update we conducted through Academic
Search Premier in 2010, the world’s largest academic multidisciplinary database,
found that this dearth of research on youth spiritual development persists: From
2002 to 2010, only.07 % of peer-reviewed journal articles (4,000 out of 5.47
million) contained the keywords spirit, spirituality, or religion, and child/children
or adolescents. Published accounts confirm that the limited attention to youth
spiritual development continues in top tier developmental psychology journals.
King and Roeser (2009) replicated the Benson et al. (2003) search, for the years
2002–2008, and found that only 1.3 % of peer-reviewed papers in the top
six developmental psychology journals in that period focused on religion or
spirituality, much less referencing “adolescence” or “youth” religious or spiritual
development.
Obviously, studies addressing youth spirituality and well-being are only
a percentage of this tiny foundational database. Similarly, an examination of the
Duke University Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health web pages yielded
more than 300 abstracts of studies linking various aspects of religiosity or spiritu-
ality to health outcomes, but less than 10 of the cited studies included adolescents
and young adults in the samples. Oser et al. (2006) noted that more than 350 studies
had been done on the relationship between religiosity and physical health, and more
than 850 between religiosity and mental health, but as suggested above, only
a small percentage of these involved samples of youth. Oman and Thoresen
(2006) also concluded that the evidence is now “persuasive” that religious partic-
ipation is related to lower all-cause mortality among large population samples of
adults, but that “there is strikingly little empirical research” (p. 402) on direct
links to morbidity and mortality among preadult samples. Although, as Kim and
Esquivel (2011) note, there has been a more recent upswing of interest in
spirituality and religious influences on adolescent well-being, the evidence con-

tinues to suggest that the great majority of studies still have investigated these
dynamics among older adults more so than among young people.
A second problem with extant research linking youth spirituality and well-being
is that, in the existing research, religiosity and spirituality are often assumed to be
interchangeable and/or used as synonyms, when what is typically measured is
religiosity. Some studies have broadened the operational definitions to include
spirituality variables (such as the UCLA study of the nation’s entering college
freshmen, Calderone (2005), or Kim and Esquivel (2011), who specifically note the
distinction between the influence of spirituality and that of religion on well-being
outcomes in their review of the research), but these remain the exception. More
typical examples are Sinha et al. (2007), and Smith and Denton (2005). Sinha and
colleagues used a telephone poll to survey a national sample of adolescents about
risk behaviors, but used typical measures of religiosity as the independent variables:
importance of religion, and attendance at religious organizations. Sinha and
colleagues improved the measure of attendance by separately investigating worship
service attendance from participation in other programs offered by religious
organizations (such as recreational sports leagues), but no measures of spirituality
as a construct distinct from religiosity were used. Indeed, a recent extensive study
of religion and family life flatly stated that spirituality is a “function of religion”
(Mahoney 2010, p. 810, emphasis added).
Similarly, Smith and Denton’s (2005) National Study of Youth and Religion on
the spiritual lives of adolescents is a landmark study in its sampling and breadth, but
it is focused on religious life, not on spirituality. Substantively, even though 81 % of
adolescents said that their faith was “important” or “very important,” these over-
arching patterns should not be interpreted as evidence that religious and spiritual
commitments are deeply and intentionally embedded in the lives of US children.
Smith and Denton argue that “what appears to be the actual dominant religion
among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace”
(p. 164). Hence, one might conclude that the USA is a culture that is imbued with an
overall religious milieu that forms overall beliefs and attitudes, but that does not
necessarily translate into deep personal commitments among young people.
Although many of those 81 % who said their religious faith was “important” to
them doubtless do consider their religious beliefs meaningful, Smith concludes that
a far fewer proportion, only about 8 % of US teenagers, are truly “the devoted” for
whom religious participation and commitment are central to life. It is no wonder
then, that using traditional religiosity measures as predictors usually yields quite
limited variance explained in youth well-being outcomes. More recently, Yonker
et al. (2012) discussed a meta-analysis of studies on the influence of “spiritual-
religious” variables on youth and young adult outcomes, but all but one of the
measures (what they called “searching”) focused on the religious aspects of spiri-
tual development. In fact, they recommended that researchers limit their “spiritual-
religious” measures to the traditional ones of church attendance and the salience of
religious belief, in part because they argued that “non-religious spirituality is rare”
(p. 308). And yet, we have found (Benson et al. 2012b) that the majority of youth in
a global sample from eight countries pursued their spiritual development without
recourse to deep engagement in religious or spiritual practices.
A final measurement weakness in the youth spiritual and religious development
literature is noted by Hill and Hood (1999), who identified numerous religiosity
scales used in previous research (mostly with adults), but also noted that most had
been used once or only a few times, leaving judgments about “their validity in terms
of meaningful coherence within a systematic theoretical framework” to be “inferred
at best” (p. 7). They also observed that the great majority of existing measures
reflect Christian faith traditions and that the field as a whole reflects largely
American Protestant traditions. Some recent studies have found positive relation-
ships among religiosity and happiness and life satisfaction among Muslim youth in
Kuwait (Abdel-Khalek 2010), and between religiosity and prosocial behavior
among Muslim adolescents in Indonesia (Sallquist et al. 2010). One review (Kim
and Esquivel 2011) concluded that spirituality, as distinct from religion, had shown
a “universal” link with life satisfaction across ethnic groups, but the number of
studies reviewed to support that statement was still only a couple dozen. Mahoney
too (2010), reviewing 184 studies on religion and family life in the period from
1999 to 2009, concluded that most samples were Christian, and only 9 % were
outside the USA. Thus, although representation of diverse faith traditions and
spirituality, as distinct from religion, is increasing, the vast majority of what is
known about youth “spiritual” development and well-being is in fact known only
about the relation of Protestant religiosity to well-being, a fairly limited sampling
even of religious development, much less spiritual development more broadly
conceived.
38.1.3 Recent Definitions and New Theoretical Explorations
Finally, even when spiritual development is expressly considered as a concept

distinct from religion, a plethora of definitions of spirituality have been put forth
(Shek 2012, reported that more than 70 such definitions have been published).
The challenge, of course, is that spirituality and spiritual development are
intrinsically difficult to define. There have been many distinct and useful attempts
to grapple with the terms in the scientific literature (see overview in Benson et al.
2012b). Some of these tie spirituality to the concept of the “sacred” (e.g., Hill et al.
2000; Miller and Thoresen 2003; Pargament 1999), while others focus on
spirituality as a set of human qualities (insight and understanding; an awareness
of the interconnections among and between persons and other life forms;
an experience of mystery and awe; and a posture of generosity and gratitude)
without explicit reference to a sacred or transcendent realm (e.g., Beck 1992;
Roof 1993). A definition is needed that encompasses both of these traditions
in the literature.
The lack of a strong theoretical framework is at the root of much of this previous
definitional confusion. Wong et al. (2006) analysis of literature on the relationship
between spirituality and adolescent health attitudes and behaviors concluded
that the research in this field is “neither conceptually clear nor firmly grounded
in theory” (p. 438). Indeed, of the 43 studies analyzed (most about health
attitudes rather than behavior), 26 were not based on any explicit theoretical or
conceptual model. The study we discuss later in this chapter is based on a new
definition of youth spiritual development that synthesizes and then moves beyond
this previous thinking. A variety of related conceptual and empirical activities have
led us to define spiritual development as a set of core developmental processes that
have not been fully articulated by other streams of development (e.g., cognitive,
social, emotional, moral, and physical). This work continues to evolve. In 2003, for
example, we offered this working definition:
Spiritual development is the process of growing the intrinsic human capacity for self-
transcendence, in which the self is embedded in something greater than the self, including
the sacred. It is the developmental “engine” that propels the search for connectedness,
meaning, purpose and contribution. It is shaped both within and outside of religious
traditions, beliefs and practices. (Benson et al. 2003, pp. 205–206)
This definition stands solidly on the idea that spiritual development is a universal
domain of development that can be informed by ideas and practices that are
theological and/or religious. But, explicit in the definition is the possibility that
spiritual development can also occur independent of religion and/or conceptions of
sacred, ultimate, or alternative forms of reality.
To broaden and continue this theoretical exploration, we engaged a network of
120 advisors (A complete list of the advisors is available from the authors.) from
around the world in a modified, online Delphi process (Roehlkepartain et al. 2008)
to build consensus around the dimensions of spiritual development. The advisors
were spiritual development scholars, theologians, and practitioners, who
represented a great worldwide diversity of faith traditions and cultural contexts.
Through four iterations of the Delphi process in 2007–2008, advisors critiqued and
recommended criteria to shape a definition of spiritual development, ranked poten-
tial dimensions of spiritual development, and offered copious open-ended dis-
courses about spiritual development and the challenges of measuring and defining
the concept.
Emerging from this process was an innovative theoretical framework that
views youth spiritual development as the dynamic interplay of several underlying
developmental processes (see also Benson et al. 2012b; Benson and Roehlkepartain
2008):
(a) Awareness of Self and the World: Developing an awareness of one’s inherent
strength. In some traditions, this process has to do with “awakening” to one’s
true essence or spirit. A variant on this theme is Search Institute’s new work on
“sparks”—the apprehension of what about oneself is “good, beautiful, and
useful” (Benson and Roehlkepartain 2008; Benson and Scales 2009, 2011;
Scales et al. 2011). Other metaphors are commonplace throughout the world for
this phenomenon. This also encompasses developing an awareness of the
beauty, majesty, and wonder of the universe. The experience of awe is forma-
tive here. Though other perceptions of the world are possible, the lens of
a hospitable and benevolent world is instrumental for animating a life toward

strength.
(b) Connecting/Belonging: Developing the perspective that life is interconnected
and interdependent. This idea has deep roots in most of the metaphysical
traditions of the world. It is not lost on us how central the idea has also become
in the biological and physical sciences. Indeed, arguments increasingly
are made that spirituality has a biochemical basis in the neuropeptides
that regulate the human capacity to affiliate or connect (see, for example,
Grigorenko 2012).
(c) Life of Meaning and Contribution: Developing a life orientation grounded
in hope, purpose, and gratitude. These are common and widespread human
aspirations that are simultaneously grounded in the great philosophical,
spiritual, cultural, and religious traditions of the world.
These processes are reflected in other aspects of development (e.g., physical,
social, cognitive, emotional, moral), and draw their content from personal, family,
and community beliefs, values, and practices; culture (language, customs, norms,
symbols) and sociopolitical realities; meta-narratives, traditions, myths, and inter-
pretive frameworks; and other significant life events, experiences, and changes.
These processes may result in cognitive, affective, physical, and social outcomes
that become manifested in either healthy or unhealthy ways.
We have proposed (Benson et al. 2012a) that, although all persons and cultures
engage with each of these processes, they do so in many different ways with
different emphases. Sometimes these dynamics are grounded in an understanding
or experience of transcendence, including an understanding of God, a higher
power, or other transcendent forces. These processes may be active, intentional,
or passive, and each may be emphasized more or less in different stages of
development, different cultures, traditions, and worldviews. Furthermore, consis-
tent with current developmental theories, the use of the term “development”
emphasizes change across time. It does not imply a linear, invariant progression
of universal stages; rather, it suggests a set of core processes that vary in how they
occur. This is consistent with Sroufe’s (1997) “branching pathway” metaphor that
views development as a “succession of branchings” that enable individuals
on different pathways to nevertheless “converge toward similar patterns of
adaptation” (p. 254).
Thus, we propose that spiritual development is potentially a combination of
processes that are relatively more universal (awareness, connecting, living a life of
contribution), which we heuristically term “developmental,” and for many persons,
processes that are more explicitly spiritual or religious, including spiritual
or religious experiences, practices, and identity, processes we describe as
“spiritual-religious engagement.” Some persons develop spiritually without
recourse to specifically spiritual or religious experiences, practices, or sense of
identity, while, for others, spiritual development is a complex interplay of
these developmental and spiritual-religious engagement constructs. Throughout
these processes, we speculate that people engage with mysteries, beauty,
the sacred, or other intangibles of life, including ultimate questions of life
and death, of the nature of the universe, and how they think about God, higher
powers, or the divine.
Extensive input from the international advisors over the Delphi process
suggests that this innovative theoretical approach has face validity across
an extraordinarily broad spectrum of faith traditions and cultures among
those key scholars across five continents (see Roehlkepartain et al. 2008). To our
knowledge, no other theoretical framework has these collective features:
(a) articulates a conception of youth spiritual development that is rooted in
foundational developmental processes; (b) incorporates and allows notions of
a sacred or transcendent force without being dependent upon such concepts;
(c) is developmental without being yoked to traditional “stage” theories of spiritual
development; and, (d) reflects a broad construct validity inherent in its components
being named as consensus elements of youth spiritual development by a large
and culturally diverse group of international experts. Initial descriptive
analyses of the data we report on in this chapter have provided empirical
support for this conceptual framework. For example, the youth spiritual
development processes hypothesized to be more universal—i.e., the developmental
ones—are indeed notably more common among youth in our worldwide
sample than the youth spiritual development processes explicitly involving
engagement with religious or spiritual practices (Benson et al. 2012b).
In addition, latent class analysis showed that the majority of youth in this interna-
tional study engaged in spiritual development without deep connection to religious
or spiritual practices.
38.1.4 The Current Study
The current study uses the same international data set referenced above to investigate
the degree to which this broader conceptualization of youth spiritual development,
that is, a concept that goes beyond religion, provides a significant value-add to
predicting youth well-being outcomes across varied cultural contexts. If spiritual
development constructs beyond traditional religious variables do help to signifi-
cantly explain youth well-being, then additional targets are identified for policy and
programmatic interventions to enhance youth well-being. For example, if aspects of
living one’s life in alignment with one’s spiritual principles and experiences is an
important predictor, actions to help adolescents incorporate those principles
and experiences into their everyday decision making can be suggested for
school health curricula, out-of-school time programs and classes, and mentor
programs in schools, religious organizations, and youth organizations. The more
points of intervention there are to promote positive health and well-being, the
more likely those outcomes become, from lessened likelihood of unsafe sexual
behaviors and alcohol abuse to increased likelihood of civic engagement.
In the rest of this chapter, we examine the degree to which our proposed model
of youth spiritual development—consisting both of developmental processes
and spiritual-religious engagement that neither requires nor precludes religious
influence—relates to youth health and well-being. We use the theoretical approach

of Positive Youth Development (PYD), a developmental systems approach that
emphasizes the bidirectional influence of person and context (Benson et al. 2006),
to frame the investigation. Our focus is on nearly two-dozen indicators of
well-being, including several measures of health risk behaviors (e.g., alcohol
and other drug use, engaging in violence), psychosocial well-being (e.g., purpose,
positive emotionality), civic engagement (e.g., volunteering), and academic
well-being (e.g., school engagement).
38.1.5 Specific Research Questions and Hypotheses
In this chapter, we explore four basic research questions: First, how do

unique developmental and spiritual-religious engagement aspects of youth spiritual
development relate to a range of concurrent psychosocial, physical, civic, and
academic outcomes reflecting youth well-being? Second, do these associations vary
by nation or religious affiliation? Third, how do differences in levels of
the comprehensive Youth Spiritual Development Index relate to youth health
and well-being outcomes? And, finally, what is the relative contribution of the YSD
Index to youth health and well-being over and above demographic characteristics?
38.2 Method
38.2.1 Sample
Young people ages 12–25 were recruited, with the ages in a particular context being
those appropriate for local culture understanding of “youth.” We targeted a roughly
equal distribution of young people ages 12–14, 15–17, and 18–25. Youth from
England and Wales (hereafter referred to as the UK), Cameroon, Canada, India,
Thailand, Australia, and Ukraine completed surveys, in addition to young people
from across the USA. A diverse range of religious traditions (including youth who
do not self-identify as religious), with especially large samples of Christians,
Hindus, and Muslims, were represented. Finally, we obtained a broad range of
socioeconomic and educational backgrounds within each country’s sample. Based
on the advice of our international advisory panel, we attempted to restrict the
sample to young people who were literate in English. Nevertheless, in the case of
two countries, Ukraine and Thailand, significant proportions of the sample were not
proficient in English, and so were given surveys that had been translated into
Russian, Ukrainian, or Thai. After data cleaning, a total of 6,725 youth ages
12–25 participated in the survey. About half the sample was ages 12–17 and half
18–25, and 53 % were females. Table 38.1 displays salient demographic charac-
teristics of the aggregate sample, and by country.
Although representative studies always have particular value, the logistical and
financial challenges of drawing representative samples in multiple countries made
Table 38.1 Sample description, by religion, age, and gender percentages

Country
Australia Cameroon Canada India Thailand Ukraine UK USA Total n Total %
Sample n 661 848 383 1,896 1,027 974 569 367 6,725 –
Religious affiliation
Buddhist 29 9 7 29 0 9 10 8 139 2
Christian 11 19 9 6 18 25 7 7 3,303 49
Hindu 1 <1 <1 90 8 <1 1 0 1,017 15
Muslim 1 22 1 16 57 1 3 <1 600 9
Other 22 4 2 35 0 13 7 18 135 2
religiona
Noneb 17 4 4 39 0 8 21 7 1,192 18
Missing 7 2 7 45 8 10 10 10 339 5
Genderc
Female 10 11 3 26 16 18 10 7 3,496 53
Male 10 14 9 31 15 11 6 4 3,156 47
Aged
12–14 15 16 6 28 19 8 5 4 1,803 29
15–17 14 13 11 21 16 13 6 5 1,377 22
18–21 4 11 2 29 13 21 15 5 1,840 30
22–25 5 9 1 39 11 18 9 8 1,161 19
a
Includes Judaism, Paganism, Sikhism, native or traditional spirituality, and other
b
Combines atheism and agnosticism
c
Total gender percentages based on the 6,652 respondents
d
Total age group percentages based on the 6,181 respondents
them financially and logistically impossible for this study. Thus, we sought diverse
samples within the selected countries, which allowed us to confirm and refine the
theoretical framework and its relationship with well-being outcomes. Furthermore,
because our main interest in this initial study was to look at patterns of relationships
among the components of spiritual development (see Benson et al. 2012b), diverse
but not representative samples were scientifically acceptable.
The survey was administered primarily in a web-based format. This online
method was selected for a variety of reasons, including cost and efficiency in data
collection and sharing; ability to efficiently include open-ended items and skip
patterns; ability to compare sampling across countries; and ability to customize
components of the survey for particular cultural contexts. Because of lack of online
access or infrastructure, paper surveys also were utilized when necessary in several
locations, most notably in Ukraine and Thailand. Questions on sexual behavior are
common in US surveys assessing youths’ risk behaviors, so these items were
included in the US samples, but not in the surveys for other countries. These
parameters yielded an aggregate sample biased toward more educated, affluent,
and urban youth. However, these parameters were in place in an effort to make this
initial survey more feasible within the time and budget available. Despite the
potential limitation of the sample, the large size and diversity of the global sample
allowed for analysis to refine our theoretical framework and offered a unique
dataset linking youth spiritual development and well-being cross-culturally.
38.2.2 Measures
In addition to the already-mentioned Delphi study among international advisors,

several other efforts informed the survey development, adding to its likely construct
validity as a measure of youth spiritual development.
Literature review. We systematically reviewed more than 1,500 articles, chap-
ters, and books relevant to the spiritual development of children and adolescents.
Five sources served as the foundational references for survey development, collec-
tively including the research of scores of leading spiritual development scholars, as
well as international and multi-faith perspectives on spirituality, including Dowling
and Scarlett 2006; King et al. 2005; Oser et al. 2006; Roehlkepartain et al. 2006;
and, Yust et al. 2006. In addition, an initial bibliography of more than 800 other
articles, chapters, and books on childhood and adolescent spiritual development
was generated, and a number of seminal sources among those were reviewed (e.g.,
Hill and Pargament 2003; MacDonald 2000; Piedmont 1999; Smith 2003). Using
the Benson et al. (2003) definition of spiritual development as a guide, we carefully
reviewed these sources to catalog the descriptions they contained of spiritual
development constructs (as well as to identify existing spiritual development
instruments). Our review of this literature suggests that spiritual development has
elements of an integrative process all along in development, and that aspects of
spiritual development are present in the other domains of development as well.
That is, spiritual development is affected by cognitive development, emotional
development, personality/identity development, social development, and
moral development, inasmuch as these dimensions of development are also
informed by spiritual development. However, it is also our hypothesis that
spiritual development is not reducible to other domains of development; that is,
our model of spiritual development adds value to a developmental understanding
not already informed by more widely developmental processes such as social
development.
In our approach, the “value-add” of spiritual development to understanding
of human development is its integrative role from the beginning of life, and then,
its unique role as the domain of development involving engagement with
the transcendent. Exposure to religious belief and ritual/practices can speed up
and in other ways shape this process, but because spiritual development is grounded
in the other common domains of human development, it can occur without
exposure to religion/faith traditions, or can continue without continued connection
to a faith tradition.
Focus groups. We conducted a series of more than 80 focus groups involving
455 youth ages 12–19 in 13 countries on multiple continents that explored how
young people, parents/guardians, and adults who work with youth understand
spiritual development. The countries represented were Australia, Canada, China,

India, Israel, Kenya, Malta, Nigeria, Peru, South Africa, Syria, the UK, and the
USA. The participants also self-identified with a broad range of religious traditions:
Buddhism, Christianity (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Reform),
Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, and no religious affiliation.
Review of existing scales. We collected and reviewed more than 100 previous
measures of dimensions of spiritual development, and drew from those instruments
items that had integrity with our comprehensive theoretical framework of youth
spiritual development. These include well-known measures such as Underwood’s
Daily Spiritual Experiences scale (Underwood and Teresi 2002), Paloutzian
and Ellison’s Spiritual Well-Being scale (Ellison 1983), the Fetzer Institute
series of brief measures (John E. Fetzer Institute 2003), Allport and Ross’s
Religious Orientation Scale (Allport and Ross 1967), MacDonald’s Expression
of Spirituality Inventory (MacDonald 2000), and items from Smith’s national
study of youth and religion (Smith and Denton 2005). Additionally, numerous
items were identified from previous Search Institute surveys such as the Faith
Formation Survey (Search Institute 1992) and Survey of Congregational Life
(Search Institute 1990).
Spiritual exemplar interviews. We conducted in-depth interviews with about
20 youth in multiple countries who have been nominated as “exemplars” of spiritual
thriving (based on criteria derived from the theory and in dialogue with advisors
and informants). Interviews were conducted with the selected exemplar nominees
in the USA, India, Kenya, Peru, Jordan, and the UK. This sample includes multiple
religious traditions as well as young people who do not consider themselves to be
religious (King et al. 2008).
Secondary analyses. We engaged in an extensive secondary analysis of the
database from the World Values Study (Iglehart et al. 2004). Although adolescents
were not included in this global research, young adults over age 18 were. The
differences in response patterns across culture and geography helped illuminate
directions to take in our international survey design to increase the likelihood of it
being cross-culturally valid. As well, several questions from the World Values
Study were used in the Youth Spiritual Development Survey to provide useful
contextual information for interpreting findings.
Measure of youth spiritual development. As yielded through the modified
Delphi process, the consensus of our international advisors was that the following
were the most important and potentially universal, developmental elements of
youth spiritual development:
• Experiencing a sense of empathy, responsibility, and/or love for others, for
humanity, and for the world
• Finding significance in relationships to others, the world, or one’s sense of the
transcendent
• Finding, accepting, or creating deeper significance and meaning in everyday
experiences and relationships
• Accepting, seeking, creating, or experiencing a reason for being or a sense of
meaning or purpose
• Being present to oneself, others, the world, and/or one’s sense of transcendent
reality
• Living in awareness of something beyond the immediate everyday of life
• Forming a worldview regarding major life questions, such as the purpose of
existence, life and death, and the existence or nonexistence of the divine or God
• Engaging in relationships, activities, and/or practices that shape bonds with
oneself, family, community, humanity, the world, and/or that which one believes
to be transcendent
• Living out one’s beliefs, values, and commitments in daily life
• Experiencing or cultivating hope, meaning, or resilience in the face of hardship,
conflict, confusion, or suffering
If these truly are essential to an understanding of spiritual development
(and some advisors in some faith or cultural traditions disagreed with some of
these being so critical, and rated other possible elements as more important),
then the survey needed to contain a sufficient number of items so that each of
these elements could be reliably and validly measured across contexts, cultures,
and traditions. We tried to achieve this aim in developing the Youth Spiritual
Development survey.
These activities and the development of new items stimulated by the new theory
of youth spiritual development collectively generated more than 500 potential items
measuring the constructs named in our preliminary dynamic model of spiritual
development. Existing items generally were selected for the pool if they measured
a named construct in our model, comprised a scale of acceptable reliability, and/or
were usable as is or with slight modification in an international, multi-faith context.
Unless they could be readily revised for more general application, items specific to
particular religious traditions generally were not included in this initial pool.
The final survey contained approximately 150 items measuring spiritual
development constructs that fit under the categories of Awareness of Self and the
World, Connecting/Belonging, and Life of Meaning and Contribution, as well as
items tapping the “spiritual-religious engagement” processes. Additional items
included demographic and contextual questions and questions on the health and
well-being outcomes. About half of the items were taken in whole or revised from
our deep exposure to the spiritual development literature, thereby substantially
representing previous work, and about half of the items were newly created to
reflect our new theoretical framework of youth spiritual development, thereby
substantially building on and expanding previous scientific work.
Preliminary factor analyses. Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis
(MGCFA) was conducted to test the fit of the Youth Spiritual Development
model overall and for each of the eight countries. The MGCFA results never met
criterion-level goodness of fit indices (CFIs above at least.80 and RMSEAs below
at least.08). A number of explanations could contribute to such a result, including
wide divergence in country sample sizes, the work of contextual moderators such as
the differing religious affiliations reflected, and the multiple different kinds of items
pulled together in the survey (e.g., attitudes and behaviors, experiences and beliefs,
clearly religious items, and clearly nonreligious items). Over time, our conclusion is
that perhaps the overriding issue contributing to lack of MGCFA model confirma-
tion was that the theory was simply not well developed enough to be subjected to
the CFA goodness of fit requirements. Although much rhetorical work has been
done on the theories of youth spiritual development, the item development did not
adequately reflect the theory, because the theory advanced here took firmer shape
only well after the data had been collected. Thus, we began analysis anew by using
an exploratory approach.
The items used in the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) included those that the
research team had previously identified, a priori, as appropriate measures of the
emerging theoretical youth spiritual development constructs (these heuristic mea-
sures had acceptable alpha reliabilities across various moderators, such as country
and religious affiliation), plus items that the various rounds of MGCFA had most
consistently suggested cluster in factors relatively well aligned with those theoret-
ical constructs. We separated the analysis into two EFAs, one for the developmental
process items reflecting aspects of youth spiritual development hypothesized to be
more “universal,” and the other for the spiritual-religious engagement items that
more explicitly measured “spiritual” or “religious” content. Eight developmental
factors were identified, accounting for 55 % of the variance, and nine spiritual-
religious engagement factors were identified, accounting for 54 % of the variance in
that set of items. However, some of the empirically constituted factors were quite
difficult to conceptually interpret. We then examined each factor more carefully at
the item level.
Diagnostics (the KMO measure of sampling adequacy) showed that the items
were sufficiently independent of each other to justify conducting the EFA. The
KMO statistic for each of the two EFAs was >.90, well above the typical KMO
criterion of .60. Despite the favorable diagnostics, however, there was
a considerable amount of cross-loading of items on multiple factors. Therefore,
where cross-loading occurred, we reassigned certain items to other factors where
they appeared to make more conceptual sense, and dropped items that were more
weakly loaded (i.e., <.40 loading on the factor). This process yielded a more
interpretable and coherent set of 10 developmental and spiritual-religious engage-
ment scales. Alphas were calculated for the total sample, as well as by gender, six
categories of religious affiliation (including “none”), the eight countries, and two
age groups (12–17 and 18–25; there were no alpha differences by the four original
age groups—12–14, 15–17, 18–21, and 22–25—so the four were combined for ease
of analysis).
Collectively, the scales worked least well with Muslim youth, and youth from
Cameroon.
However, the majority of the scales had acceptable to excellent internal consis-
tency across nearly all categories of gender, age, religious affiliation, and country.
The developmental processes we label Connecting with Others through Prosocial
Beliefs and Actions, Discovering Meaning, and Mindfulness had alphas mostly in
the.70s–.80s across all groups. Alignment of Values with Action is a partially
promising scale, with most alphas in the.60s (but <.60, and not promising, for
Muslims, or for youth in Cameroon and India). The spiritual-religious engagement
scales we label Apprehension of God/Force, Spiritual-Religious Practices, and

Spiritual Experiences hold together as scales quite well across nearly all categories
of youth. Spirituality in Action had promising to acceptable reliabilities for all
groups but Muslim youth. And Spiritual-Religious Identity was a promising or
acceptably reliable measure for all youth but Buddhists, Muslims, and those from
Cameroon. It is conceptually important to disentangle “spirituality” and “religion,”
and because our theory does so, it was somewhat surprising that Spiritual-Religious
Practice, and Spiritual-Religious Identity, were scales comprised of items that
collectively measured both spirituality and religion. Empirically, at least in the
way we have measured these concepts among youth, spirituality and religion,
apparently, are at least moderately correlated and not so readily disentangled.
Nevertheless, in order to investigate further whether measuring “spirituality” brings
an empirical value-add to traditional measures of religious engagement and iden-
tity, we separated those two scales into their spiritual and religious components for
selected analyses. We also include two additional single-item measures in the
model to gauge young people’s self-perception of change in their religiosity and
spirituality over the past 2–3 years.
Youth Spiritual Development Index. To comprehensively capture the devel-
opmental and spiritual-religious engagement aspects of our model, we created
a Youth Spiritual Development (YSD) Index. To construct the YSD Index scores,
we applied algorithms for creating high, medium, and low groups for each of
the individual 13 developmental and spiritual-religious engagement constructs.
For each construct on which a participant got a “high” score (representing roughly
the top third of possible scores for that individual construct), we assigned them 3
Index points; for a medium score, we gave them 2 Index points; and for each low
score, youth were given 1 Index point. We then summed the points for each case
across his/her 13 constructs to obtain the individual’s YSDI score, which could then
range from 13 to 39. We divided the resulting distribution of YSD Index scores into
high, medium, and low thirds.
Youth health and well-being outcomes. We employed a tripartite measurement
of youth health and well-being that includes risk reduction and prevention, self-
perceptions of health status, and thriving and other positive indicators of well-
being. We examined the linkage of youth spiritual development to outcomes in four
domains: (a) academic (school engagement; achieving high grades); (b) physical
well-being (positive feelings about own health; avoiding substance use and vio-
lence; resolving conflicts peacefully); (c) psychosocial well-being (thriving; not
depressed; positive emotionality; feel emotionally safe—i.e., not picked on due to
their religion); and, (d) civic engagement (hours volunteer/week; environmental
stewardship). Together, these served as core indicators of youths’ well-being. Two
of these indicators of positive youth development, civic engagement and positive
emotionality, have been linked to a variety of other indicators of well-being (Post
2007). For example, civic engagement and volunteerism have been related to
a variety of positive health outcomes, including reduced substance use, engagement
in delinquency and violence, and less involvement in teen pregnancy, as well as
increased self-esteem, increased social competence, and increased problem-solving
skills among those who volunteer, compared to those who do not volunteer (see
reviews in Scales and Leffert 2004, and Benson et al. 2006). Positive emotionality
has been found to be a key factor distinguishing individuals who are psychosocially
thriving or flourishing (Fredrickson and Losada 2005), and is related to better
physical health as well, at least in part because positive emotions reduce stress
and stress-related effects on the immune system (Marques and Sternberg 2007).
Because the principal focus of our international study of youth spiritual devel-
opment was on the development of theoretically grounded and psychometrically
sound measures, our health and well-being outcome measures were kept brief.
Although they are largely single-item measures, each has been shown to be
moderately predicted by ecological assets such as caring adults, safe places, and
civic opportunities that reflect some of the mechanisms by which YSD may
influence youth well-being (see Benson and Scales 2009, 2011; Scales et al.
2008, 2011). Single-item measures of spiritual well-being, coping, happiness,
empathy, self-awareness, forgiveness, and gratitude were developed specifically
for use in this study. Tables 38.2 (youth spiritual development measures) and 38.3
(outcomes) provide a summary of study measures.
38.2.2.1 Analysis Plan

We first examined the associations between the developmental process and
spiritual-religious engagement measures of youth spiritual development and the
outcomes, for the entire sample, and then by gender, age group, religious affiliation,
and country, in order to determine whether the pattern of zero-order associations
was comparable across these subgroups. Next, we conducted a series of ANOVAs
comparing outcome means for those youth with high, medium, and low YSD Index
scores, and then ANCOVAs controlling for country and religious affiliation (for the
purposes of brevity, we report only the ANCOVA results here). The three YSD Index
groups were then compared on their mean scores (standardized to a mean of 0 and
a standard deviation of 1) on each of the health and well-being outcomes. Due to the
large number of outcomes, a Bonferonni correction was applied to the ANCOVAs to
control for Type I errors, setting the p value for significance at .002 rather than .05.
Finally, we conducted regressions predicting each of the 21 outcomes with the
continuous YSD Index scores, after first entering religion and country as controls.
38.3 Results
38.3.1 Correlations Among Youth Spiritual Development

Constructs and Well-Being
Tables 38.4 and 38.5 show the correlations among the developmental process and
spiritual-religious engagement constructs and the 21 well-being outcomes. Two
conclusions may be drawn from the patterns across these associations. First, the
vast majority of the coefficients are in the direction predicted, i.e., the more youth
report spiritual development, as reflected by these constructs, the better their
Table 38.2 Youth spiritual development measures

a range across
# of nations
Measures items (total a) Example item
Developmental processes
Connecting with others 6 .72–.86 (.80) How true of you is the following?
through prosocial beliefs I help people who are in need.
and actions
Discovering meaning 10 .67–.88 (.84) How true of you is the following?
Try to understand life’s big questions,
like why we are here, or
what happens to us after we die
Mindfulness 3 .60–.83 (.72) How true of you is the following?
I pay attention to what is happening in the
present moment
Alignment of values with 2 .43–.80 (.64) In last 12 months, how often have you done
action or experienced the following?
Been guided in how I think and act in
everyday life by my beliefs or philosophy of
life.
Spiritual-religious engagement
Apprehension of God/Force 7 .52–.94 (.85) How often have you experienced the
following?
Felt very close to a powerful spiritual
force (such as God,
Allah, Great Spirit, etc.)
Spiritual practices 5 .81–.94 (.78) In last 12 months, how often have you done
or experienced the following?
Regularly prayed, meditated, studied, or
done other things to deepen my life
Religious practices 6 (.81–.94) (.84) In last 12 months, how often have you done
Attended religious worship or prayer
services
Spiritual experiences 6 .52–.84 (.76) Do you believe that you . . .
Have experienced God or some other
mysterious presence
Spirituality in action 4 .54–.88 (.70) In last 12 months, how often have you done
Set goals in life based on my beliefs or
my philosophy of life
Spiritual identity 1 – In general, I consider myself to be . . .
– Not a spiritual person.
– Sort of a non-spiritual person.
– Sort of a spiritual person.
– A pretty spiritual person.
– A very spiritual person.
(continued)

a range across
# of nations
Measures items (total a) Example item
Religious identity 1 – In general, I consider myself to be . . .
– Not a religious person
– Sort of a nonreligious person
– Sort of a religious person
– A pretty religious person
– A very religious person
Change in spiritual identity 1 – During the PAST 2–3 YEARS, have the
following experiences increased, decreased,
or stayed about the same in your life?
The importance of my spiritual life
Change in religious identity 1 – During the PAST 2–3 YEARS, have the
following experiences increased, decreased,
or stayed about the same in your life?
Your religious beliefs and conviction
Note. For all developmental process and spiritual-religious engagement measures, the lowest a
was in the Cameroon sample
concurrent outcomes. But second, although the large sample size leads to quite
small associations being statistically significant, the vast majority of the coefficients
reflect small associations, in the teens or below, with only a modest proportion of
the coefficients (34/260, or 13 %) being moderate correlations .20.
Based on the proportion of coefficients in the.10s or higher, the outcomes
appearing to have the strongest linkages to spiritual development (i.e., having
correlations with 11 or more of the 13 youth spiritual development constructs at
.10) were: forgiveness (13), gratitude (13), thriving (13), volunteering (12), coping
(12), positive emotionality (12), self-awareness (12), and sense of purpose (11).
Using the same criterion, the youth spiritual development constructs most
commonly associated with these 21 well-being outcomes were all four of
the developmental processes—i.e., connecting with others (15), values in action (14),
mindfulness (14), and discovering meaning (12)—and two of the spiritual-religious
engagement constructs—i.e., spirituality in action (14) and spiritual identity (13).
Correlation matrices also were created for gender, age, religious affiliation, and
country groups, and the coefficients examined across demographic groups (not
shown here). Results for males and females, and for the four age groups, with one
or two exceptions, were largely similar to the results above. Females and those ages
22–25 had a greater number of.10 or higher correlations with spiritual identity than
did males or the other age groups, and connecting with others was linked to more
outcomes for 22–25-year-olds than for the other age groups. But generally, the
same outcomes, and the same youth spiritual development constructs as listed
above, had the strongest relative linkage with each other across gender and age
groups as for the overall sample.
Table 38.3 Health and well-being outcome measures

# of a across
Measures items nations Example item
Psychosocial well-being
Spiritual well- 1 How are you doing on your journey to find meaning,
being purpose, connection, peace, and joy in your life? Not doing
Very well (1) to Doing Great (5)
Purpose and 3 .60 I have a sense that life has meaning and purpose.
meaning
Self-awareness 1 – I know who I am and why I am here.
Empathy 2 .60 I feel sad when one of my friends is unhappy.
Forgiveness 2 .39 I forgive those who hurt me.
Gratitude 1 – During the past week, how much did you feel grateful? Not
at all (1) to Great deal (4)
Positive 4 .80 I am an optimistic person.
emotionality
Happiness 1 – In general, I consider myself to be: Not a happy person
(1) to A very happy person (5)
Hopeful future 1 – I feel good about my future.
Coping 1 – Even when I experience problems, I can find peace within
me.
Thriving 7 .68 I have a special talent, interest, or quality—a “spark”—that
I am passionate about and regularly spend time on. This
“spark” gives me joy and energy, and is an important part of
who I am as a person.
Physical well-being
Nonviolent 1 – Over the past 12 months, have you gotten into a physical
behavior fight or hit someone?
Peaceful conflict 1 – You try to resolve conflicts calmly with family or friends.
resolution
Substance abuse 3 .76 In the last 30 DAYS, how many times, if any, have you:
Had alcohol to drink, other than at religious services?
No religious 1 – How often do you get picked on or made fun of because of
discrimination your religion? Very Often, Often, Sometimes, Never
Feels healthy 1 – In general, how would you describe your health? Excellent,
Very Good, Good, Fair or Poor
No depression 1 – Did you ever feel so sad or hopeless that you stopped doing
some usual activities for two weeks or more in a row?
Yes, No
Civic engagement
Volunteering 1 – In an average week, including weekends, about how many
hours do you volunteer, without getting paid, to help others
or to make your community better?
Environmental 1 – About how often do you do something to protect our land,
stewardship air, and natural resources, such as recycling, using less
water, or using less electricity?
(continued)

# of a across
Measures items nations Example item
Academic success
School 1 – How often do you work up to your ability at school?
engagement
Grades 1 – Counting ALL the classes you take, what grades do you
earn in school? (If you are not in school, respond based on
what you remember from when you were in school.)
Table 38.4 Correlations among the developmental process constructs and well-being outcomes
Connecting with others Discovering Alignment of
Outcomes through prosocial beliefs meaning Mindfulness values with action
Spiritual well- .132 .076 .149 .104
being
Purpose and .253 .218 .269 .166
meaning
Self-awareness .142 .179 .201 .136
Empathy .224 .051 .206 .036
Forgiveness .279 .220 .278 .138
Gratitude .229 .211 .165 .143
Positive .205 .180 .178 .189
emotionality
Happiness .147 –- .175 –
Hopeful future .194 .109 .159 .102
Coping .154 .211 .148 .164
Thriving .137 .176 .112 .152
Physical well-being
Nonviolent .078 – .115 –
behavior
Peaceful conflict .091 .047 .015 .089
resolution
No substance .158 – .079 .046
abuse
No religious – .237 .071 .144
Discrimination
Feels healthy .078 .028* .050 .075
No depression – .133 .029* .068
Civic engagement
Volunteering .195 .267 .069 .199
Environmental .181 .085 .096 .124
stewardship
(continued)

Connecting with others Discovering Alignment of
Outcomes through prosocial beliefs meaning Mindfulness values with action
Academic success
School .105 .099 .081 .107
engagement
Grades .056 .025* .103 .114
Notes. All correlations significant at p .0001, except those marked with a single asterisks (*),
these are significant at p .05. Associations that were not significant are marked with a dash (–)
However, the patterns varied more widely by religious affiliation and by country.
For example, spiritual identity was correlated at .10 with 18 outcomes among
Christians, but just 8 among Muslims, and with 19 outcomes for the US sample,
versus just 8 for the Cameroon sample and 9 outcomes for the India sample.
Moreover, for Muslims, religious practices was one of the stronger youth spiritual
development constructs in terms of correlation with outcomes, and religious prac-
tices as well as spiritual practices were linked to a dozen or more outcomes for
Christians. These results suggested the need to control for religious affiliation and
country in subsequent analyses.
38.3.2 Mean Outcome Differences by Levels on the Youth Spiritual

Development Index
Initial ANOVAs showed that higher levels of youth spiritual development, as

reflected in the YSD Index scores, were broadly associated with better concurrent
developmental outcomes in the academic, physical, psychosocial, and civic domains.
Because the bivariate correlations of youth spiritual development scores and
outcomes suggested considerable variability by country and religious affiliation, we
then conducted ANCOVAs that controlled for country and religious group. The
results displayed in Table 38.6 show that youth spiritual development was a signif-
icant predictor of all 21 health and well-being outcomes. The results controlling for
country and religious group affiliation yielded even more consistent associations
between higher levels of the YSD Index and better outcomes than in the analyses
without the country and religious group covariates: For 19 of the 21 outcomes
(90 %), youth in highest third of YSD Index were better off than those in the lowest
third (versus that result in 16 of 21 outcomes in the uncontrolled ANOVAs), and for
13 of the 21 outcomes (62 %), each successive increase in the level of the YSD
Index (i.e., from low to medium, and from medium to high), with country and
religious affiliation controlled, was significantly associated with successively better
levels of the outcome. This strongly linear improvement in well-being at each
successively higher level of the YSD Index was seen for these outcomes: purpose
and meaning, self-awareness, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, positive emotional-
ity, sense of having a hopeful future, coping, and thriving, as well as with no
1124
Table 38.5 Correlations among the spiritual-religious engagement constructs and well-being outcomes
Apprehension Spiritual Religious Spiritual Spirituality Spiritual Change in Religious Change in
Outcomes of God/force practices practices experiences in action identity spirituality identity religiosity
Spiritual .035 .048 – .073 .101 .175 .093 .095 .055
well-being
Purpose and .133 .077 – .125 .205 .277 .195 .148 .113
meaning
Self-awareness .108 .101 .068 .104 .157 .219 .141 .151 .134
Empathy – .025* .060 – .097 .117 .104 .045 .054
Forgiveness .183 .168 .152 .130 .188 .167 .146 .164 .172
Gratitude .169 .191 .162 .136 .193 .190 .115 .179 .130
Positive .128 .135 .108 .165 .205 .121 .137 .054 .102
emotionality
Happiness – – .068 – .054 .271 .089 .170 .036
Hopeful future .091 .095 .051 .086 .131 .085 .083 .068 .077
Coping .165 .143 .118 .179 .179 .136 .146 .074 .100
Thriving .145 .167 .136 .161 .195 .114 .138 .087 .083
Physical well-being
Nonviolent .043 .087 .103 .064 – .108 .088 – .058
Behavior
P.C. Scales et al.
Peaceful conflict – .069 .083 .039 –
38
.054 .038 .046 .030*

resolution
No substance .094 .099 .046 – .048 .144 .106 .206 .131
abuse
No religious .277 .350 .413 .263 .205 .040 .078 .172 .140
discrimination
Feels healthy .038 .066 .067 .062 .063 .039 – – –
No depression .106 .121 .143 .115 .100 .065 – – –
Civic engagement
Volunteering .258 .289 .325 .224 .298 .140 .144 .213 .174
Environmental .038 .083 .059 .049 .126 .087 .098 .044 .072
stewardship
Academic success
School .086 .083 .072 .077 .110 .049 .042 .051 .057
engagement
Grades .046 .044 .037 – .061 .053 – .044 –
Notes. All correlations significant at p .0001, except those marked with a single asterisks (*), which are significant at p .05. Associations that were not
significant are marked with a dash (–)
Relation of Spiritual Development to Youth Health and Well-Being
1125
Table 38.6 Analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) differences in outcome means among youth
spiritual development index groups, controlling for country and religious affiliation
F values Means
Covariates YSD index groups
Religious
Outcome Country affiliation Overall Low Medium High
Spiritual well- 59.12*** .28 (2,6336) ¼ 27.78*** .11b .04b .13a
being
Purpose and 41.35*** 14.63*** (2,6381) ¼ 302.18*** .33 .04 .23
meaning
Self-awareness 40.53*** .00 (2,6319) ¼ 147.16*** .27 .03 .28
Empathy 27.21*** 15.76*** (2,6366) ¼ 75.84*** .15 .04 .18
Forgiveness 3.40 .04 (2,6295) ¼ 342.96*** .35 .00 .31
Gratitude .74 10.67*** (2,6315) ¼ 192.41*** .33 .04 .29
Positive .25 4.01 (2,6317) ¼ 212.50*** .27 .03 .25
emotionality
Happiness 22.20*** .87 (2,6345) ¼ 43.01*** .12b .06b .17a
Hopeful future 8.46 12.97*** (2,6323) ¼ 115.96*** .23 .04 .26
Coping 8.04 2.90 (2,6335) ¼ 242.62*** .33 .02 .36
Thriving 35.27*** 6.48 (2,6323) ¼ 461.81*** .56 .17 .13
Physical well-being
Nonviolent 180.37*** 4.37 (2,6287) ¼ 8.70*** .06b .01a,b .07a
behavior
Peaceful conflict 81.98*** .99 (2,6291) ¼ 11.11 .07b .03b .08a
resolution
No substance abuse 135.16*** 10.22*** (2,6298) ¼ 65.98*** .16 .04 .13
No religious 231.20*** 3.46 (2,6301) ¼ 202.17*** .33 .04 .30
discrimination
Feels healthy 19.87 .22 (2,6325) ¼ 20.64*** .07b .04b .13a
No depression 76.11*** 13.13*** (2,6236) ¼ 31.68*** .13 .01 .13
Civic engagement
Volunteering 12.38*** .29 (2,6285) ¼ 304.03*** .38 .00 .40
Environmental 16.11*** 22.63*** (2,6309) ¼ 97.63*** .23 .01 .22
stewardship
Academic
School engagement .85 .23 (2,5799) ¼ 69.07*** .19 .00 .21
Grades 199.49*** 2.83 (2,6227) ¼ 11.54*** .06b .04b .09a
Notes. Unless otherwise noted, the YSD Index means for each outcome are all significantly
different from each other. For outcomes where the differences between these means were more
nuanced, differing superscripts were used across the row to indicate those means that were
significantly different. Bonferroni-corrected p level required for significance was .002 (.05/21)
***p .001
substance abuse, volunteering, environmental stewardship, and being highly

engaged at school.
Further, those having the highest third of YSD Index scores were less likely to
engage in violence than the lowest third (but not than the middle third), and more
likely to resolve conflicts peacefully, feel healthy, be happier, and have better grades
in school, than all other youth. On the other hand, those with the highest YSD Index
scores experienced the most religious discrimination, and the most frequent reports
of being depressed. Although the link between high spiritual development and
higher levels of depression is not necessarily intuitive, it is not surprising that
those who were more spiritually and religiously involved might experience more
religious discrimination than those who got low scores on the YSD Index.
When the same analyses controlling for country and religious affiliation were
run by demographic subsamples, there were relatively few notable differences in
how youth spiritual development affected outcomes across gender and age groups
(Note 1). Higher levels on the YSD Index were associated with nonviolence for
males, but not females, and with peaceful conflict resolution and better grades for
females but not males. Higher levels of youth spiritual development were linked to
less substance abuse and more reports of feeling healthy for all age groups but
12–14, to better grades only among 22–25-year-olds, and to greater reported
depression for all age groups except 22–25. The rest of the outcomes reflected
either exactly or substantially the patterns linking levels on the YSD Index to
outcomes as discussed above for the entire sample.
Table 38.6 also shows that country was a significant predictor for over half of the
well-being outcomes: spiritual well-being, happiness, purpose and meaning, empa-
thy, self-awareness, volunteering, environmental stewardship, nonviolence, peace-
ful conflict resolution, religious discrimination, no depression, grades, no substance
abuse, and thriving. Post hoc comparisons (not displayed here) using Tukey HSD
showed that the USA and the UK had the highest means (alone or together with
others) for 13 of the 21 outcomes, while Cameroon and Ukraine had the worst
means (alone or together with others) for 14 of the outcomes.
Similarly, Table 38.6 shows that religious affiliation was a significant predictor
for seven outcomes: empathy, gratitude, environmental stewardship, no depression,
purpose and meaning, no substance abuse, and hopeful future. However, post hoc
comparisons (not displayed here) using Tukey HSD showed differences by reli-
gious affiliation only for two of the outcomes. Hindus and Muslims had less
substance abuse than all other religious groups. Muslims were the most grateful
group, and those with no religious affiliation (including atheists and agnostics) were
the least grateful. There were no other religious group differences in outcomes.
Relative contribution of youth spiritual development and demographics.
A series of stepwise regression analyses were run to assess the relative contribution
of the YSD Index and demographic characteristics in predicting youth health and
well-being outcomes. In Step 1, the health and well-being outcomes were regressed
on religious affiliation and country. In Step 2, the continuous YSD Index was
entered into the model (results are not shown but are available from the authors).
A clear pattern emerged across the results: Even when country and/or religious
affiliation were significant outcome predictors, the YSD Index was typically a more
important predictor, with larger bs, often substantially larger. For example, the bs
were at least two to three times larger for YSD Index scores than religion or country
for the outcomes of coping, hopeful future, empathy, self-awareness, forgiveness,
school engagement, positive emotionality, sense of purpose, spark, gratitude,
volunteering, and environmental stewardship. Only for four of the 21 outcomes
(i.e., depression, engaging in violence, peaceful conflict resolution, and grades)
were country and/or religious affiliation stronger predictors than were levels of
youth spiritual development.
38.4 Summary
Our major research question was: How much is a comprehensive measure of youth
spiritual development associated across diversities of gender, age, religion, and
country with numerous health and well-being outcomes? We found that youth with
higher levels on the YSD Index enjoyed broadly better well-being. Those with the
highest third of YSD Index scores reported better physical health, feeling healthier,
and a decreased likelihood of substance abuse than all other youth, and less
engagement in violence than those with the lowest third of YSD Index scores.
They were psychosocially better off and generally enjoyed better mental health, as
well as more civic engagement and greater academic success, reporting more
coping skills, happiness, self-awareness, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, positiv-
ity, purpose and meaning, overall satisfaction with their life’s journey so far
(spiritual well-being), a sense of having a hopeful future, thriving (having sparks
and support to pursue them), peaceful conflict resolution, taking care of the
environment, volunteering in their schools and communities, and being engaged
in school more often than all other youth. For most of these outcomes, youth in the
middle third of the YSD Index also were better than those in the lowest third,
offering consistent evidence that increases in youth spiritual development were
linked to increases in well-being, relationships that were observed whether country
and religious affiliation were controlled or not.
The stark exception in these findings showing youth spiritual development and
well-being to be positively related is that the reported experience of religious
discrimination increased as YSD Index levels increased, as did the reported
frequency of youth feeling depressed. Not surprisingly, the more young people
had spiritual experiences, engaged in explicitly spiritual or religious practices, and
put their values and spirituality into action, the more they reported being discriminated
against because of their beliefs. These data cannot clarify whether this increase is due
to an actual rise in discrimination as their spirituality becomes more visible to others,
or whether it is youths’ ability and willingness to define particular incidents as
religiously discriminatory that has sharpened. Importantly, however, despite rising
discrimination accompanying rising youth spiritual development as defined in this

study, the effects of that discrimination do not appear especially negative, since the
youth highest on their spiritual development scores also were the happiest, most
positive, hopeful, and purposeful youth of all.
On the other hand, higher YSD Index scores also predicted a higher frequency of
depression, a seemingly contradictory finding to the results showing more spiritu-
ally “developed” youth to be happier, more positive, and more purposeful and
hopeful. This finding echoes the report of Cotton et al. (2005) that the more
religious youth in their study were more depressed, and that of Sallquist et al.
(2010) that spirituality and loneliness were positively correlated among Indonesian
youth. Although Cotton et al. suggested that depressed youth may have sought
comfort in religious congregations, another mechanism also may be at work. The
active pursuit of answers to life’s mysteries, which may be answerable only through
faith rather than through worldly evidence, may leave a certain portion of young
people unsatisfied and dispirited that even spiritual and religious practice might
bring, not concrete answers, but perhaps even more essentially unanswerable
questions. Perhaps such spiritual and religious involvement becomes a source of
comfort, or at least ceases to be an unsettling influence to as many, only as young
people become older and more accepting of the limits of human knowledge.
Although this study is only cross-sectional and therefore can yield only speculations
about such developmental patterns, the association between high levels of spiritual
development and more self-reported depression was observed for 12–21-year-olds,
but not for 22–25-year-olds, which may suggest that the possible developmental
link between youth spiritual development and self-reported depression could
weaken with time.
We also found that youth spiritual development was more important than
country and religious affiliation in contributing to the outcomes, as reflected by
much larger bs observed for 81 % of the outcomes. This result is quite similar to the
findings we reported in two national studies in the USA. In one, a national study of
15-year-olds, the relative contribution of demographics to outcomes was far less
than was the contribution of sparks, relational opportunities, and youth voice
(Scales et al. 2010). In the other study of a nationally representative sample of
12–17-year-olds, demographics predicted outcomes far less than youth experiences
of the nurturing developmental “promises” of caring adults, safe places, a healthy
start, effective education, and opportunities to make a difference (Scales et al.
2008). In each case, youths’ experience of various developmental strengths, just
as found with youth spiritual development in the current study, contributed far more
than demographics to youth well-being. It is, of course, necessary to culturally
contextualize the theory and measurement of positive youth development in gen-
eral, and youth spiritual development specifically, in order to better understand
what positive development means in various cultures, and how it can best be
promoted. Nevertheless, these results suggest that the influence of this combination
of more universal developmental elements and more explicitly spiritual or religious
elements of youth spiritual development has considerably more application across
cultural diversity than might have been imagined.
The special contributions of the current study are several. Although youth
spiritual development previously has been linked to positive health outcomes, no
previous study has investigated as broad a range of well-being indicators among
youth across academic, physical, psychosocial, and civic domains. This study
provides solid evidence that high levels of spiritual development in youth consis-
tently are related to their doing better academically, physically, psychologically,
socially, and civically. Most previous studies also have had quite homogeneous
samples, typically a narrow age group from Western countries, and largely
comprised of Christian youth. In this study, we included a broad age range from
12 to 25, youth from industrialized, transitioning, and developing countries, and
youth affiliated with not only Christianity, but Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, other
traditions such as Judaism, and those who professed no affiliation or who described
themselves as agnostic or atheist. That we found such consistent and broad
associations between youth spiritual development and well-being among such an
extraordinarily diverse global youth sample argues for the relative universality of
the link between spiritual development and well-being among young people,
and underscores the likely generalizability of these findings beyond the limitations
of this study’s purposive and nonrepresentative samples. Finally, most previous
studies of youth “spiritual” development have used only indicators reflecting
religious importance and/or involvement. In another analysis of these data, we
reported (Benson et al. 2012b) that the majority of youth in these eight countries
pursued spiritual development without deep engagement in specifically spiritual or
religious practices. Therefore, measures that define “spiritual development” only
by recourse to “religious” indicators may fail to accurately represent the develop-
ment of the majority of young people. By showing that the inclusion of “develop-
mental” processes in the definition of spiritual development yields consistent
meaningful linkages with youth well-being, this study provides a framework
for understanding youth spiritual development that applies to all youth, regardless
of their religious affiliation or religiosity, and thus attains a greater measure of
validity than traditional approaches to studying youth spiritual development and
well-being.
Note 1. Nine of the 21 outcomes had exactly the same post hoc group difference
patterns (High YSD Index score group > Medium score group > Lowest score
group on their outcome means) for both genders and three of the four age groups
as found in the uncontrolled overall sample analyses. Another five outcomes had
H > L or H > M, L for both genders and three of four age groups, so 14 of 21 (67 %)
exactly or substantially mirrored the YSD-outcome patterns across gender and age.
Two additional outcomes showed H, M > L for one gender and two age groups,
moderately mirroring the overall results in another 10 % of outcomes. The two
results showing higher levels of YSD related to worse outcomes (more
religious discrimination and more depression) also were mirrored by age and
gender. Higher YSD levels were not significantly related to better outcomes by
gender or age only for three outcomes. For nonviolence, YSD was significant
only for males, and for peaceful conflict resolution and school grades, YSD was
significant only for ages 22–25 and females. Thus, in only a minority of outcomes
(three to four outcomes or 14–19 %) did gender or age patterns in YSD-outcome
relationships differ meaningfully from the overall findings.
Acknowledgments Angela Hackel, former Research Assistant at Search Institute, contributed

significantly to the early development of this chapter and her contribution is gratefully acknowl-
edged. Funding from the John Templeton Foundation supported the research described in this
chapter.
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Religion and Child Well-Being
39
George W. Holden and Paul Alan Williamson
39.1 Introduction
Religion is a powerful force in many people’s lives. It can motivate terrorists, cause
wars, justify intolerance and prejudicial beliefs, promote antiscience ideologies,
and be a regressive social influence. For most people, fortunately, religion serves as
a force for decency and good. Broadly speaking, the world’s religions resemble
each other in that they uphold behavioral ethics of not lying, stealing, committing
adultery, or murdering. Further, religions in general promote virtues of humility,
charity, and honesty (Smith 2009). One reflection of these teachings can be found in
the fact that religious adults contribute to charities more and in more generous
amounts than nonreligious people (Nemeth and Luidens 2003).
It is estimated that up to 86 % of the world’s people consider themselves to be
religious (Barrett et al. 2001). When adults become parents, many fathers turn to
religion to provide a positive moral and social context for rearing their children,
a change that has previously been observed in new mothers (Knoester et al. 2007).
Evidently, religious parents believe that rearing children within their belief system
will enhance children’s well-being. But what is the evidence for such a connection?
If the data were limited to newspaper accounts in the United States, the associ-
ation appears to be negative. Headlines highlight sexual abuse by Catholic priests
and others, physical child abuse in the name of religion, medical neglect as
consequence of faith healing, and other forms of child maltreatment. News stories
of child fatalities periodically appear that document the sad consequences of
parents who adopt an extreme religious authoritarian orientation in their child-
rearing or reject medical care for sick children.
As this chapter will show, the evidence is at odds with the newspaper accounts
and in support of parents who raise their children in a religious tradition. In fact,
G.W. Holden (*) • P.A. Williamson

Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA
e-mail: gholden@smu.edu; pwilliamso@smu.edu

1138 G.W. Holden and P.A. Williamson
there is increasing evidence that religion is indeed associated with many different
manifestations of well-being in children and youth.
What is meant by “well-being”? It is a concept that can be operationalized in
diverse ways that reflect the many developmental trajectories of children and youth
(Holden 2010a). For example, all children are on physical, social, and cognitive
trajectories, but they may simultaneously be on athletic, artistic, and spiritual ones
as well. Each trajectory could be assessed with different measures of well-being.
For example, Child Trends, a nonprofit nonpartisan research center that publishes
annual reports on the well-being of children and youth, utilizes over 100 variables
to monitor the status of children in the USA (see Annie E. Casey Foundation
2010). Major indicators of well-being can be grouped into physical health
(e.g., premature births, infant mortality), behavioral (e.g., aggression, prosocial
behavior), mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety), and academic success
(e.g., high school dropout rates).
To systematically examine the relation between religion and child well-being,
we first turn to some ancient sacred texts and interpreters of those texts. We briefly
examine what those texts have to say about child well-being. Next, after defining
the terms, we then review the history of research on the topic after identifying three
pioneering studies. The main corpus of this chapter focuses on recent findings
linking religion to children’s well-being. Then we address the potential mecha-
nisms by which religion may be affecting children’s well-being. The chapter ends
with some suggestions for future investigations.
39.2 Sacred Texts Linking Religion and Child Well-Being
To what extent do sacred texts address children’s well-being and provide a guide
for child-rearing? To address that question, we will consider the sacred texts of the
most prominent global religions, Christianity and Islam. Christians and Muslims
comprise 33 % and 22 % of the world’s population, respectively (Prothero 2010).
That is not to say other religions do not have large numbers of followers: The
Yoruba religion of West Africa claims 100 million adherents! However, it is
estimated that there are 2.1 billion Christians and 1.5 billion Muslims, making
these two religions by far the most widespread (Adherents.com 2011).
We begin with the Christian Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments.
Despite being over 1,000 pages long and containing more than 31,000 verses, there
is little explicit attention to children and child-rearing. In the Old Testament,
children are viewed as a divine gift, a great source of joy, and a blessing from God
(e.g., Genesis 1:27–28; Psalms 127:3–5). In terms of behavioral practices, parents
are instructed to circumcise their newborn sons (Genesis 17:10–14). The verses that
most directly refer to how children should behave or child-rearing consist of one
commandant (“Honor your father and your mother,” Exodus 20:12, New Interna-
tional Version), along with less than ten verses in the rest of the Old Testament
(Gundry-Volf 2001). Almost all of those are found in The Book of Proverbs which
calls for parental guidance, strict discipline (3:11–12, 19:18, 20:30), and the “rod” or
39 Religion and Child Well-Being 1139
“rod of discipline” (13:24, 22:15, and 23:13–14; 1 Corinthians 4:21). The importance
of having a righteous child is also declared (Proverbs, 23:24).
Children are referred to very differently in the New Testament (Gundry-Volf 2001).
Rather than being in need of discipline, they become models for adults who seek to
enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:1–5). At least three epistles from Paul directly
concern child-rearing or child behavior. In Ephesians (6:1–3) and Colossians (3:30),
children are reminded to obey their parents. But then Paul goes on to instruct fathers not
to “exasperate” (Ephesians 6:4) or “embitter” (Colossians 3:21) children but to rear
them spiritually. In a third epistle, Paul instructs fathers to manage their families to see
that children obey but in a manner worthy of respect (1 Timothy 3: 4–5).
With regard to Islam, there are three sacred texts that contain passages about
children and child-rearing. The Quran is the most important text because it is
regarded as the perfect, unchanged, and verbatim word of God. It contains general
teachings of Islam and thereby represents a guidebook to lead people to the
righteous path and eventually to paradise. The sayings of Prophet Muhammad or
reports about what he did are found in a collection of writings called the Hadith. It
contains information about the Sunnah, or the lived example of Muhammad. Thus,
the Hadith can be turned to for the teachings of the Quran that are applied to
specific areas of daily living.
In the Quran, God instructs his followers to procreate (the purpose of marriage)
and then to protect their families. It encourages having children, celebrating them,
and rearing them properly. Consequently, this meant abandoning the ancient
practice of infanticide. “Slay not your children, fearing a fall to poverty, We shall
provide for them and for you. Lo! the slaying of them is great sin” (Quran, 17:31;
retrieved from http://Quran.com). There are also passages about breast-feeding,
children’s rights, fatherless children, adoption, foster care, and marriage.
It is parents’ duty to teach their children the Islamic way of life and put them on
the path to paradise. The Prophet treated children with kindness, respect, mercy,
and love. He said, “He is not of us who does not have mercy on young children, nor
honor the elderly” (retrieved from http://etori.tripod.com/on-children.html). He
instructed people to value their children and raise them to be good Muslims.
After all, Prophet Muhammad told his followers that one of the three things that
continues to benefit people after death is the prayers of their righteous children. He
also encouraged people to end the traditional practice of favoring sons: “If anyone
has a female child, and does not bury her alive, or slight her, or prefer his children
[i.e., the male ones] to her, Allah will bring him into Paradise” (retrieved from
http://etori.tripod.com/on-children.html).
39.3 Interpretations of Sacred Writing
Clearly, neither the Bible nor the Quran can be considered a comprehensive or
detailed child-rearing manual. Consequently, applying the principles and sayings of
the sacred texts to child-rearing and promoting children’s well-being was left to
followers to flesh out. To illustrate that point, we next consider how interpreters of
the Bible viewed children and the parental role in their development. As described
in the edited volume by Bunge (2001), the interpretations vary widely and are
evolving. However, child-rearing practices were widely regarded by theologians
(e.g., Augustine, John Calvin, John Wesley) as very important because children are
tainted by original sin, and it is incumbent upon parents, teachers, and others to
eliminate that sinful disposition.
One of the first detailed child-rearing interpretations of the Bible was written by
Horace Bushnell. A Congregational pastor, he published Christian Nurture in 1861.
In more than 400 pages, he discusses his views about how parents should rear their
children. His thesis is that it is important to begin training a child in the Christian
spirit early in life, so a child does not go astray (Bendroth 2001). Although his book
was published when Sigmund Freud was just 5 years old, he recognized the power
of the unconscious in the developing child: “What they do not remember still
remembers them, and now claims a right in them. What was before unconscious,
flames out into consciousness. . .” (p. 211). With regard to discipline, he argued:
There are, too, I must warn you, many who talk much of the rod as the orthodox symbol of
parental duty, but who might really as well be heathens as Christians; who only storm about
their house with heathenish ferocity who lecture, and threaten, and castigate, and bruise,
and call this family government. . . So much easier is it to be violent than to be holy, that
they substitute force for goodness and grace, and are wholly unconscious of the imposture.
It is frightful to think how they batter and bruise the delicate, tender souls of their children,
extinguishing in them what they ought to cultivate, crushing that sensibility which is the
hope of their being, and all in the sacred name of Christ Jesus. (pp. 56–57)
Since Bushnell’s book appeared, many others – ministers and laypersons – have
published their views about how Christian parents need to rear their children in
order to promote well-being. The single most popular Christian child-rearing guide,
based on number of sales, is Dare to Discipline (1970) and its sequel The New Dare
to Discipline (1992) by James Dobson. More than 3.5 million Dare to Discipline
books have been sold. He takes a very different position from Bushnell on what the
Bible instructs about parental discipline. As an evangelical Christian, he advocates
using corporal punishment to establish parental authority over the child. In the more
recent book, he makes no qualms about the veracity of his Biblical interpretations:
“The inspired concepts in Scripture have been handed down generation after
generation and are just as valid for the twenty-first century as they were for our
ancestors” (p. 4).
However, it is not difficult to find other Christian interpretations of the Bible that
take very different perspectives than Dobson. Webb (2011) evaluates the verses
referring to the “rod of correction” from a historical context and argues that
spanking children is not in line with the spirit of the biblical text. An interpretation
of Biblical discipline even more at odds with Dobson can be found in a volume
concerning a Quaker approach to parenting (Heath 2009). Discipline in not even
indexed in that book. Rather, the Quaker approach, as described, involves
a respectful, loving, and caring orientation that precludes discipline and instead
utilizes calm, creative, and nonviolent ways to resolve conflict.
The difference between Dobson’s and the Quaker approach to parenting could
hardly be more stark. However, both are Christian approaches to child-rearing with
the ultimate goal of promoting child well-being! That disparity illustrates both the
variability and potential pitfalls inherent in this topic. It is hazardous to group
together all religious beliefs and assume they have an equal influence on child well-
being. To this point, Bartkowski and Ellison (1995) found that Conservative
Protestants, in contrast to traditional mainline denominations such as the United
Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA), hold very different beliefs
with regard to parenting goals, the structure of parent–child relations, views about
parenting roles, and orientations toward child discipline and punishment. Evidently,
caution must be exerted when researchers group together individuals of faith who
may hold different child-rearing beliefs because how they affect children could be
very different.
39.4 History of Research into Religion and Child Well-Being
Religion and child development have been linked since almost the beginning
of psychology. For instance, one of the fathers of developmental psychology,
G. Stanley Hall, published an essay in 1891 entitled “The Moral and Religious
Training of Children and Adolescents”. In it he argued about the importance of
and the proper approach to providing religious training to children. He also
considered religion to be an essential socializing influence for preadolescents
(Hall 1891).
Subsequently, many prominent psychologists have also theorized about the role
of religion in development. William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred
Adler, Gordon Allport, and Abraham Maslow all contributed articles or books on
the topic. The most direct theoretical statement regarding religion and child well-
being was by the influential theorist Erik Erikson. In Identity: Youth and Crisis,
Erikson (1968) maintained that religion was a central influence on psychosocial
development because religious beliefs provide a vehicle through which culture
promotes positive development in youth. Still, not everyone believed that religion
was a positive influence on youth. The influential founder of Rational Emotive
Behavior Therapy, Albert Ellis (1980) pronounced “Religiosity, therefore, is in
many respects equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance” (p. 637).
Since the 1950s, researchers have investigated how religion is related to family
functioning and children’s development. This work developed out of prior studies
linking religion to adult well-being. The first empirical article that addressed
religion and well-being in youth was by Brown and Lowe (1951) who explored
the role of religion in college students’ beliefs, personality, and related variables.
They found that students who were religious reported higher morale and better
family relations, than did nonbelievers.
By the early 1980s, there were 24 studies addressing the relation of religion to
mental health problems in college students and older individuals. In a meta-analytic
review, Bergin (1983) concluded that, in contrast to Albert Ellis’ disparaging

comments about religion, there was no support that religion was correlated with
psychopathology; in fact, when there were significant findings, it indicated that the
more religious someone was, the better mental health he or she enjoyed.
Three other studies merit special attention in this area as groundbreaking con-
tributions. The first journal article directly attempting to link religion and well-
being in adolescents was published by Smith et al. (1979). Using a cross-cultural
sample of Catholic students, they found that religiosity was positively related to
adolescent self-esteem in 75 % of the 12 samples of youth they collected.
Eleven years later, the second pioneering study in the area was published. This
study, of 201 low-income families, was the first study to systematically begin to
examine the links between religion and child well-being. Researchers asked a group
of mostly mothers attending a preschool intervention project to fill out surveys
about their religiosity, their mental health (e.g., depression) and related issues (e.g.,
social support), and their children’s behavior (e.g., aggression, anxiety, and hyper-
activity). Parenting behavior was coded from a 25-min videotaped interaction. They
determined that self-reported religiousness in parents was related to better func-
tioning in both the parent and in the parents’ child-rearing behaviors. However,
child behavior, as assessed through both parent reports and observed behavior, was
unrelated to religiosity. Those two studies helped set the stage for the increased
attention to religion and child well-being.
The third pioneering study is a recent contribution to the literature and by far the
strongest empirical effort to date on the topic. It focused explicitly on how religion
is related to children’s development in multiple domains, using multiple informants
and a very large dataset. Bartkowski et al. (2008) analyzed a nationally represen-
tative, longitudinal dataset (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten
Class) of more than 15,000 participants to examine whether religious attendance
by parents was related to child functioning. They determined that more religious
attendance by parents, both individually and together as couples, was associated
with better child functioning in three domains: behavior problems, social interac-
tions, and cognitive performance. For example, children whose parent or parents
went to church showed greater self-control, better interpersonal skills, and fewer
internalizing problems as well as externalizing problems at school. These results
were based on parent and teacher reports and controlled for a number of variables
(e.g., child gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, region of country). One
exception to the positive links with religion was found. When religion provided
a source of conflict between parents, it was related to an increase in problems and
may have undermined children’s positive development.
Those three landmark studies on the topic of religion and children’s well-being
fit into the larger body of literature on psychology, religion, and development,
a research area that has seen dramatic growth in the past quarter century. There are
now handbooks on psychology and religion (e.g., Paloutzian and Park 2005), on
positive youth development and spirituality (Lerner et al. 2008; Roehlkepartain
et al. 2006), and numerous reviews, as will be mentioned.
39.5 Current Research on Religion and Child Well-Being
We next focus on the empirical evidence about children and well-being with
a concentration on publications that have appeared in the past decade. Besides
conducting a literature search on the web using keywords such as “religion,”
“religiosity,” “spirituality,” “children,” “adolescents,” and “positive development,”
to identify relevant books and research articles, we also reviewed 15 journals that
were likely to publish such articles, including the Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion, Journal of Religion and Health, and the Journal of Psychology of Religion
and Spirituality. In addition, we identified seven summaries of the empirical
evidence concerning the relation of religiosity and youth development (Cotton
et al. 2006; Dew et al. 2008; King et al. 2011; King and Roeser 2009; Regnerus
2003; Regnerus et al. 2003; Wong et al. 2006). Each of these reviews focused on
adolescence – presumably because there were not enough investigations of younger
children. In addition, reviews of religion and the family by Mahoney and her
colleagues (Mahoney 2010; Mahoney et al. 2001) identified other pertinent studies.
This section provides a representative summary of the work we found on the topic,
rather than an exhaustive review.
Religion has been operationalized in the research in multiple ways, ranging from
a single question concerning religious affiliations to frequency of various religious
practices (e.g., church attendance, prayer) and to detailed assessments of the
individual’s faith and spirituality. Given the limited research available, we did
not attempt to distinguish between these different ways of characterizing someone’s
religion or religious beliefs. Nor do we make distinctions between religion, religi-
osity, or spirituality. Those terms, although they have specific meanings, will not be
differentiated in this chapter. Due to the limited research on younger children, we
also rarely distinguish between children, youth, or adolescents. “Children,” if not
otherwise specified, refer to anyone 18 years of age or younger.
To organize the recent literature on child well-being, we separate the evidence
into five domains: (1) physical health, (2) healthy behavior, (3) mental and emo-
tional health, (4) delinquency and other externalizing behavior problems, and
(5) academic and cognitive functioning. These domains reflect different ways of
assessing whether a child or youth is developing on a healthy, positive trajectory
(Holden 2010a).
39.5.1 Physical Health
In contrast to the large number of studies that have, since the 1980s, linked religion
with various indices of adult physical health (Matthews et al. 1998), relatively few
studies have investigated the link between religion and physical health in children.
That is not to say there is no association. In fact, the evidence is that religious
beliefs have a mixed record as they relate to physical well-being of children and
youth (Oman and Thoresen 2006).
On the positive side, organized religion has been a force for respecting each
individual life. Religious beliefs against infanticide, in both Islam and Christianity,
were important influences on changing the prevailing widespread practice of
killing, or at least leaving to the mercy of the elements, undesired newborns or
those with disabilities. Another example of promoting child’s physical health can
be seen in those individuals who oppose abortion, a movement prominently asso-
ciated in the USA with Conservative Protestants (Martin 2005).
In contrast, children’s physical health can be compromised by certain religious
beliefs that are characterized as authoritarian, rigid, and dogmatic. Certain funda-
mentalist Christian groups as well as other denominations or churches (Church of
Scientology, the Christian Science Church, and Jehovah’s Witnesses) believe in
using spiritual practices such as prayer and faith healing to combat illness and
physical ailments rather than using conventional medicine. Some of these groups
eschew all medical treatment. In fact, each year, there are new cases of religion-
motivated medical neglect that result in child fatalities. Asser and Swan (1998)
documented more than 170 cases over a 20-year period in which the practice of
prayer and faith healing resulted in child fatalities. Some religious groups do not use
or accept any blood products, based on two verses in the New Testament (Acts
15:20 and 29).
Religious exemption from standard health care for children is another concern.
In the United States, 48 states have religious exemptions from immunizations. The
majority of states also have religious exemptions for metabolic testing of newborns.
Some states also have exemptions for prophylactic eyedrops for newborns, testing
lead levels in newborn blood, and hearing tests (see www.childrenshealthcare.org;
CHILD Inc 2012, March 3).
One religious-based practice that is increasingly controversial is that of male
circumcision. An elective and widespread surgical procedure, it has a strong reli-
gious foundation. Worldwide, it is estimated that 30 % of all males are circumcised
and is required for faithful Jews. Many Muslims and Christians also follow the
tradition (WHO 2007). Although there are potential medical benefits from newborn
circumcision, including reduced risk of HIV infections, on balance the benefits are
modest if any (American Academy of Pediatrics 1999). The surgical procedure has
a low rate of complications, but infections and more serious complications can
occur, including deaths in 1 in every 500,000 cases in the USA. This rate of injury is
dramatically higher in developing countries where a variety of health complications
result from the surgery. Some people argue the practice is medically unjustifiable or
even risky, painful, violent, and can cause negative emotion or even posttraumatic
stress (Boyle et al. 2002; Fox and Thomson 2005).
Another partially religious-based practice that has become more of a cultural
norm in some parts of the world is female genital mutilation. Also euphemistically
called “genital cutting on girls” or “female circumcision,” it is practiced on girls
from infancy to 15 years in 28 countries, most prevalently in African countries
(WHO 2010). The major adherents are Muslims in Africa and the Middle East. It is
used for nonmedical reasons – to alter or injure female genitals – and there are
no health benefits. Rather, the practice is intended to promote sexual purity.
The practice is so widespread in some localities that it has become a social

convention. Although there are no religious scriptures that advocate the practice,
some practitioners of Islam believe it is a religious necessity. At the same time, it
should be remembered that many Muslims condemn the practice. For example,
in 2010, Mauritanian imams issued a fatwa against the practice (retrieved from
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/).
39.5.2 Health Behaviors
Health behaviors refer to actions intended to help achieve, maintain, or restore good
health as well as prevent illness. Religiosity has been linked to positive health
behaviors in youth in a number of studies. We identified three reviews on the topic:
a comprehensive review of 43 studies by Rew and Wong (2006); a review by Dew
et al. (2008) that contains a summary of 61 articles evaluating the relation of
religion and substance abuse; and a chapter by King and Roeser (2009) which
included 25 studies on the topic.
All three reviews found that religion or spirituality was strongly related to
positive health behaviors. Rew and Wong (2006) determined that 77 % of the
studies found exclusively positive relations between religion and positive health
behaviors such as exercise, good sleep hygiene, seat belt use, use of birth control,
and maintenance of healthy diets. This was still the case after controlling for
covariates, mainly demographic variables known to be associated with health
attitudes and behaviors. Six of the studies (14 %) demonstrated mixed results,
and four of the studies (9 %) indicated there were no statistically significant
relations.
King and Roeser (2009) similarly found a positive association of religion and
a variety of salutary health behaviors. They determined that youth participation in
religion was associated with less risky sexual behaviors, including being older at
sexual debut and having fewer sexual partners than their less religious peers.
Furthermore, the results, typically found in Caucasian youth, were replicated in
samples of Hispanic and African American adolescents.
One noteworthy exception to the positive associations between religion and
beneficial health behaviors was identified in the area of sexual behavior. Adolescent
females who identified themselves as highly religious were less likely to use
contraceptives at sexual debut. Although these individuals are generally older
before having sex and have fewer sexual partners than their less pious peers, due
to their lack of birth control use, they are at increased risk for unexpected pregnan-
cies when they do engage in sexual activity (Meier 2003).
The implication of a failure to use birth control in sexually active youth can be
life changing given the well-being of youth is typically severely compromised by
early parenthood. Adolescent parenthood poses a variety of problems and hard-
ships, especially for mothers. Some of the problems include premature birth,
economic disadvantage, academic difficulties, and instability in family life (Holden
2010b). Early parenthood also interferes with adolescents’ own phase of
development. Consequently, two generations of children can potentially be

subjected to developmental disadvantages.
With regard to substance use, greater religiosity and spirituality is consistently
related, in most studies, to less adolescent drug or alcohol use. However, there are
exceptions. Dew et al. (2008) found that some studies report mixed results (i.e.,
positive as well as nonsignificant associations). Furthermore, five percent of studies
in that review found religion to be associated with more substance use. Some
denominational effects were also found in a few studies (e.g., conservative and
fundamentalist religious affiliates used fewer substances than others; Jewish ado-
lescents used less alcohol than Christians). Despite these occasional discrepancies,
overall the results were so consistent that the authors concluded “although religion
has not been conventionally seen as part of preventive health, the public may
ethically need to be made aware of this consistent relationship” (Dew et al. 2008,
p. 388).
Mental Health. Several dozen empirical studies demonstrate positive associa-
tions between religiosity and child or youth mental health or emotional well-
being. Reviews by King and Roeser (2009), Dew et al. (2008), and Wong et al.
(2006) each provide comprehensive assessments of the topic based on a total of
more than 50 studies. Relations between religion and depression, suicidality, and
anxiety, in addition to other behaviors, were examined. All three reviews con-
cluded that religion was indeed associated with better mental health in adoles-
cents, including depression, anxiety, and various other emotional and
psychological problems. For example, Dew et al. (2008) determined that 64 %
of the articles contained at least one finding documenting a positive relation
between religion and better mental health among spiritual youth. In the area of
suicidality, Dew et al. (2008) found that in 70 % of the studies reviewed (N ¼ 20),
there was some evidence that religion was related to lower suicidality. These
results are consistent with the conclusions of the other two reviews mentioned
above. Although virtually all of those studies were conducted with Judeo-
Christian samples of youth, one study also arrived at the same inverse association
among youth and adult members of North American Indian tribes practicing their
traditional spiritual practices (Garroutte, Goldberg, Beals, Herrell, Manson, & the
AI-SUPERPFP Team, 2003).
With regard to suicidal ideation, at least one study did not arrive at the same
conclusion, and therefore, it is instructive to examine it. In that particular study,
greater religiosity was associated with higher suicide risk in a sample of Chinese
college students in Beijing (Zhang and Jin 1996). Using questionnaire data, it was
found that religiosity was correlated with depression, suicidal ideation, and pro-
suicide attitudes. This study did not identify the nature of the students’ religious
beliefs. It could be that students’ nonindigenous religious beliefs were driving these
associations. Furthermore, the context of religion in China may have played a role.
Historically, religious practices were strictly repressed with the advent of the
communist revolution and Mao Zedong’s rise to power in 1949. It was not until
the economic reforms of 1978 that religion began to reemerge as a socially accept-
able practice. Depending on their particular religious beliefs, the religious students
in this study may have felt some of the continuing persecution or disapproval of
their beliefs by the atheist majority. This study highlights the need to recognize that
cultural and religious variables interact to influence the behavior of youth.
Religion is not a mental health cure-all. This point can most clearly be seen in
the area of depression, where there are other discrepant results. Religious youth
typically report lower rates of depression, as indicated above. However, under
certain circumstances, religion may actually be the source of depression. In partic-
ular, pregnant or religious adolescents who have recently given birth are at risk for
depressive symptoms (Dew et al. 2008; King and Roeser 2009). This relation is
especially strong among conservative religious groups. Youth who have religious
beliefs that stress guilt or sin, have parents that do, or who live in communities that
view premarital sex and pregnancy as sinful behavior become depressed when
faced with unintended, out-of-wedlock pregnancies or single parenthood.
Similarly, if youth are subjected to negative interpersonal experiences in their
religious communities, there can be negative mental health repercussions. For
example, Pearce et al. (2003b) studied negative interpersonal religious experiences
in a sample of 744 early adolescents. The result was that in congregations that made
frequent demands of their teenagers or that were critical of youth behavior, there
were higher rates of depression. Moreover, positive and negative interpersonal
religious experience appeared to have more impact on whether or not youth
experienced depressive symptoms than did more traditional measures of religious-
ness such as attendance to services or self-described religiousness. In other words,
when it comes to mental health, the social context in which religion occurs may be
a more important consideration than religiosity itself.
Some studies simply fail to find any association at all between religion and the
mental health of young people. For example, in a study of 201 Austrian high school
students, there was no significant correlation between measures of religious practice
with a measure of depression and happiness (Wenger 2011). The authors speculated
that it is possible the effects of religion on youth are less pronounced in more
secularized regions.
Conflicting results are sometimes reported in the same study. Consider the
investigation of 236 early and mid-adolescents in Singapore (Sim and Yow
2011). Self-reported ratings of “attachment to God” had a significant positive
correlation with self-esteem (r ¼ .21, p < .05) in early adolescents but, unexpect-
edly, not in older adolescents. Even more surprising was that attachment to God
was positively related to depressive symptoms (B ¼ .25, t ¼ 2.39, p < .05). The
authors speculated that adolescents may seek the help of a higher power consequent
to experiencing depression.
As with depression, though religious influence is generally associated with
a salubrious effect on other aspects of mental health, there are exceptions. In
particular, Dew et al. (2008) noted that with respect to anxiety, results from studies
in their review were somewhat equivocal. In a more recent study of 87 minors
(8–17 years old) hospitalized for asthma, positive religious coping did not predict
scores of psychological adjustment, but negative religious coping did predict poor
adjustment (Benore et al. 2008). After adjusting for other variables such as
demographics, perceptions of overall health, perceptions of control over asthma,

and secular coping strategies, religious coping accounted for up to 50 % of the
variance in adjustment scores.
39.5.3 Delinquency and Other Behavior Problems
The single most commonly investigated topic regarding religion and adolescent
well-being concerns delinquency. In this domain, the empirical data are more
homogenous than was the case with mental health. Two research reviews arrive
at similar conclusions. In a meta-analysis of 60 studies, Baier and Wright (2001)
concluded that religiosity provides a moderate deterrent effect on youth criminality.
Similarly, in a review of 40 studies, Johnson et al. (2000) determined that 80 % of
the studies provided solid evidence of an inverse relation between religiousness and
delinquency. It was also the case that more methodological rigor was associated
with increased likelihood of significant findings.
Generally, the studies in those research reviews included youth having commit-
ted status offenses and property crimes. A more recent sociological study under-
scores the significance of the association between religion and delinquency by
examining a much more serious juvenile crime, homicide. Lee and Bartkowski
(2004) found that communities with a more prominent religious presence also had
fewer incidents of juvenile homicide relative to communities where religious
influence was less prominent. However, this effect was only seen in rural commu-
nities. Furthermore, the effect was only seen in the rate of within family homicides
and not in juveniles’ homicide rates of acquaintances or strangers.
This study illustrates that the influence of religion on youth operates not just
directly by affecting the child or youth but religion also likely influences commu-
nity standards, norms, and social controls. It also shows that the relative effect of
religion may vary a great deal depending on contextual factors. For example, the
authors suggested that effects were only seen in rural counties because religious
institutions play a more central role in rural civic life. In cities, the density of many
social networks may dilute religious influences on juveniles.
There is less research examining the associations between religious influence
and common precursors to delinquency in younger children, such as externalizing
behavior or diagnoses of conduct disorders. The evidence that is available indicates
that religion is a deterrent to aggression and other forms of acting out. In five studies
that addressed the topic, it was found that there are fewer externalizing problems,
fewer diagnoses of conduct disorder, and better social skills and attitudes among
children and adolescents who experienced some form of religious influence
(Donahue and Benson 1995; Johnson et al. 2001; Laird et al. 2011; Meltzer et al.
2011; Pearce et al. 2003a). All but one of these studies (Laird et al. 2011) had
samples of at least 1,400. Multiple Western ethnicities were represented in these
studies and effects were generally robust even after controlling for various
sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., Donahue and Benson 1995).
Even in this domain, religion is not always associated with fewer behavior
problems in children and youth. For example, of 35 studies examining delinquency,
Dew et al. (2008) found four investigations that demonstrated significant associa-
tions between high scores on religious variables and behavior problems. In a sample
of 1,000 German adolescents, regular church attendance was associated with less
risk-taking behavior, but at the same time, the youth were more likely to experience
social problems (Martin et al. 2003). As with the mental health domain, these
discrepant findings may be better understood by examining distinctions in the
assessment of religiosity.
In a study that assessed a large sample of children (7, 515 third graders), families’
church attendance predicted lower levels of internalizing behavior in their children
(Schottenbauer et al. 2007). However, the same study also found that parents’ trust in
a higher power predicted children’s externalizing behaviors. Not only was this relation
found at the bivariate level but it held up in hierarchical regression models that controlled
for parenting constructs including nurturance, responsiveness, and consistency. More
specifically, parental trust in a higher power was associated with externalizing behaviors
such as aggressiveness and poor anger control and with hyperactivity.
The significance of these findings is attenuated by two considerations. First, the
effect sizes were extremely small. Parental trust in a higher power accounted for
less than one percent of the variance in children’s externalizing and hyperactivity.
This means that the differences associated with that variable were so small that they
likely have no meaningful significance. Second, it must again be remembered that
the directionality and the causal relations cannot be determined in this study.
39.5.4 Cognitive Functioning
Although to date there are no reviews on the topic of religion and children’s
cognitive functioning, we did locate three studies on the topic. Each reported
a modest to strong positive association, as assessed by academic performance.
The largest one included a sample of 20,706 high school seniors throughout the
United States. It was found that religious students performed better than less
religious students on most measures of academic achievement (Jeynes 2003).
This was true both for students from single and two-parent families, as well as for
ethnic minorities (African Americans & Hispanics). In Germany, a study of 1,000
adolescents found that for youth who regularly attended church, they had higher
grades in linguistics but not math, compared with other youth (Martin et al. 2003).
Similarly, a meta-analysis of 15 studies that examined the relations between
religion and academic achievement of Blacks and Hispanic students found evidence
for higher overall high school academic achievement, grade point average, and
achievement test scores in minority students with a high level of religious commit-
ment compared with their peers (Jeynes 2002).
One longitudinal study also found that religion was positively associated with
earning a bachelor’s degree. Using a national sample of more than 11,000 students
from the USA, it was found that 48.9 % of the students who identified themselves as
“very religious” in the 10th grade were found to have obtained a bachelor’s degree,
compared with 38 % of the “somewhat religious,” and 29.7 % of the “not religious”
Table 39.1 Examples of variables studied that link religion to child well-being
Domains Examples of findings
Health behaviors More exercise, good hygiene, seatbelt use, healthy diet, delayed
sexual activity
Mental health Less depression, anxiety and suicidality, higher self-esteem
Delinquency and acting out Less crime, fewer externalizing behaviors
Educational aspirations and Higher grades, increased likelihood of earning a college degree
achievement
(Lee et al. 2007). Analyses controlled for other variables including prior academic
achievement and parental involvement. The effect was especially striking with low
SES students, who were four times more likely to earn a degree than their
nonreligious counterparts. The authors speculated that religious beliefs provide
a protective buffer for students in general and especially for at-risk students.
Closely related to cognitive performance is neurological functioning. For more
than a decade, spiritual practices have been linked with adult neurology. A review
of neurological and imaging studies by Cahn and Polich (2006) indicated medita-
tive practices are indeed associated with differential cognitive functioning. Specif-
ically, results have shown that meditative practices are associated with increased
attentional capacity and also with increased perceptual sensitivity. Further, medi-
tation can mitigate the effects of anxiety and stress on physiological and psycho-
logical functioning.
The Cahn and Polich review was comprised of studies with young adults or older
adults. However, a recent study utilized older adolescents and young adults to
obtain the same effects (Urry et al. 2012). The investigators found that mediation
was positively associated with prefrontal cortex activation and was also linked to
positive emotion. Taken together, these studies indicate a neurological/physiolog-
ical mechanism that may link religious practices to psychological well-being that is
likely present in children as well.
Taken as a whole, the studies are consistent in that they predominately show that
religion is indeed associated with children’s well-being. Table 39.1 lists the most
common child variables that have been linked to religion.
39.5.5 Assessment and Limitations of the Research
Religion and spirituality appear to buffer youth against mental health problems,
externalizing behaviors, delinquency, and risky health behaviors. It has been
determined that the positive relation between religion and various indices of mental
health generally holds after controlling for sociodemographics and other covariates
(Donahue and Benson 1995; Rew and Wong 2006; Schottenbauer et al. 2007).
Although Regnerus (2003) argued that, based on high-quality studies, the evidence
tends to be modest, subsequent research has continued to find positive relations.
King and Roeser (2009), when summarizing the evidence in this domain,
concluded: “the current literature paints a clear picture of the protective relationship
between adolescent religiosity and various risk behaviors” (p. 464). Religiosity also
appears to promote academic performance and may even enhance cognitive
development.
To be sure, the findings are less conclusive than in similar research with adults,
particularly in the mental health domain. Inconsistencies may be accounted for by
the particular samples of youth and their living contexts and by stronger multi-
directional associations operating among adolescents. Recall that religious Chinese
youth had higher rates of suicide and that Austrian religious youth did not receive
the protective benefits of religion compared to youth in less secularized societies. In
cases such as these, it may be the case that factors besides religiosity are at work
which influence children’s well-being. For example, perhaps religious youth in
these countries experience high interpersonal religious stress or are prone to
identity crises because their beliefs set them apart from their peers. Evidently, it
is essential to understand the context in which a study is conducted.
Findings with children and youth are also less definitive than is the case with
adult populations (e.g., Dew et al. 2008). In part, this is simply because fewer
studies exist, and so inconsistent results are difficult to interpret. The best example
of this inconsistency is in the area of adolescent depression. There are some
discrepancies in the adult literature as well, but discrepancies can often be
accounted for by considering the definition of religiosity (Hackney and Sanders
2003). In adults, when religiosity is defined institutionally, nonsignificant and even
some negative associations emerge between religion and well-being. When defined
by ideology and personal devotion, negative associations were not found, and
positive effects sizes were strengthened.
However, in the area of youth depression, contradictory findings occur across
multiple measurement domains (Dew et al. 2008). This again suggests that relations
between religious factors and child well-being are more complex than is the case
with adults. Depression generally results in decreased motivation and activity level
and increased hopelessness. Consequently, as depression sets in, some adolescents
may stop going to church and others may simply lose faith. This may account for
some of the negative associations. Another possibility is that adolescents may be
more sensitive than adults to negative interpersonal religious interactions. If that is
true, it too may account for discrepant findings among adolescents. Unfortunately,
there is not enough research available to address complex possibilities such as
these.
The corpus or research is also limited by the relatively low number of longitu-
dinal studies. Given the dramatic changes that children and youth experience, to
best understand how religion is related to the development of well-being, long-term
longitudinal studies are required. Furthermore, experimental rather than correla-
tional studies are required to make causal statements about the role of religion. Not
surprisingly, to our knowledge there are no published experimental studies where
families are randomly assigned into a religious or nonreligious category and then
tracked over time. Only with such studies can we definitely say that religious
involvement is causally linked to child well-being. Consequently, in the absence
of experimental studies and only a few longitudinal studies, definitive causal

statements cannot be made. However, the longitudinal studies that are available
do indicate that religion and spirituality are predictive of good mental health and
other positive developmental outcomes (e.g., Bartkowski et al. 2008; Schottenbauer
et al. 2007).
Whatever the interpretation, it appears that the manner in which religion
operates in the lives of youth is complex and requires sophisticated research
approaches to be fully understood. Bidirectional or reciprocal causality may well
be operating. For instance, life stress may cause a teenager to seek support or
comfort through religious involvement, but religious involvement may also
increase life stress through increased demands or conflicts with peers or even
parents.
Another causal relation could involve a third variable. In this case, religiousness
may be highly correlated with another variable and could give the false impression
of a direct causal association when none exists. This may be the case in the study
showing an association between religiosity and academic performance. Although
there was apparently some direct association between religiousness and academic
achievement, in reality a third variable, that of “family capital,” was also directly
associated and likely driving the relations (McKune and Hoffman 2009).
Yet another possibility to consider is that a religious variable interacts with some
third variable to jointly influence the well-being of youth. The study by Zhang and
Jin (1996), linking high suicidal ideations among religious Chinese youth, may be
an example of this type of association. The same measures were administered to
individuals of the same age in the United States. In the US sample, religion was
associated with less suicidal ideation relative to youth who were not as religious.
Evidently, cultural or contextual influences differentially moderate the impact of
religion on this manifestation of well-being.
Mediated associations are another type of multivariate influence to consider. In
these situations, a direct relation between religion and child well-being is again the
most readily apparent explanation of data. However, sometimes another variable may
facilitate the correspondence between these two variables. For example, neurological
function might be a mediator between religious practice and academic achievement.
A religious practice like meditation or prayer may enhance neurological and cogni-
tive function in a manner that in turn is conducive to improved academic perfor-
mance. We will return later to the potential role of mediating variables.
In some cases, the direction of causation simply may not operate in the direction
that one would like to think it does. Sometimes it may really be the case that
a healthy youth seeks out religious experiences due to a sense of well-being instead
of religion promoting a youth’s good health. An even bigger concern is that some
components of religious experiences may very well be hazardous for young people,
as in the case of unwed teenage mothers. No matter how well intentioned the
cultural norms within a religious group, conveyed or perceived messages of rejec-
tion will likely contribute to depression in young single mothers.
Another nuance of the research, often gone unrecognized, is the role of the
religious dosage. Several studies clearly indicate that whether religion exerts any
influence at all is dependent on dosage (Francis et al. 2008; Meltzer et al. 2011; Sim
and Yow 2011; Van Dyke et al. 2009). So it is not simply a matter of whether
a youth ever prays, or attends church, or believes in a higher power but the
frequency of observance and the strength of conviction.
Furthermore, as Pargament et al. (2005) argued, in addition to analyzing the
quantitative impact of religion on youth, there are also qualitative effects to
consider. Determining the effects of religion is not only a question of “how
much” but also simply a question of “how” a person is involved in religious
practice. They specifically focus on the qualities of religious coping and have
identified 21 distinct methods in religious coping, some of which can be helpful
though others may be harmful. The coping list included items such as seeking
spiritual support from clergy, using a religious activity to shift focus, asking
forgiveness, making religious reappraisals of stressors as potentially beneficial or
as divine punishment, and praying for divine intervention.
Broadly speaking, these coping techniques can be grouped into categories of
positive and negative religious coping. Positive religious coping reflects percep-
tions of a secure relationship with the divine and/or a sense of spiritual connected-
ness with others. Negative religious coping is characterized by feelings of
insecurity in relation to divinity and/or tension with members of the religious
community. Research that examines this distinction with minors generally indicates
a beneficial influence of positive religious coping, but negative effects emerge with
negative religious coping (e.g., Benore et al. 2008; Van Dyke et al. 2009). This is
consistent with aforementioned research showing depressive symptoms were asso-
ciated with negative interpersonal religious experiences, such as with pregnant
adolescents in conservative religious groups.
Other qualitative aspects of religion that may determine whether religion and
spirituality are associated with positive or negative outcomes include distinctions
between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, existentialism, institutional religiosity,
specific ideologies, and personal devotion. A few studies have shown intrinsic
religiousness and existential aspects of religion (spirituality) in particular to be
associated with better scores on mental health measures (e.g., Holder et al. 2010;
Huculak and McLennan 2010).
It should be recognized that the topic is difficult to investigate for multiple
reasons. Simply measuring the independent variable of religion, religiosity, or
spirituality is challenging. Merely indicating whether someone is Christian, or
Muslim, or associated with any other religious group is insufficient for capturing
the potential role that religion may play in their beliefs and behavior. As Mahoney
et al. (2001) pointed out, and it continues to hold true with more recent research, the
vast majority of research is based on one or two item assessments of religiousness
(e.g., denomination or church attendance) (e.g., Strayhorn et al. 1990). At a mini-
mum, it would be helpful if researchers adopted the taxonomy proposed by
Stennsland and his colleagues (2000) to classify American denominations. However,
to date few researchers have adopted their scheme – or any other for that matter.
By failing to adequately categorize the denomination, the results of a study could
be inadvertently confounded. Perhaps the clearest example is use of corporal
punishment. Christians with literal views of the Bible are apt to endorse the
practice, while those from mainline denominations (Episcopal, Methodist,
Presbyterian) do not. Those beliefs lead to very different child-rearing practices,
and they can differentially affect children (Gershoff et al. 1999).
Other dimensions of religious beliefs that are typically not evaluated are
strength of faith, length of adherence, and extent to which the individual
has spiritually transformed to align with the tenets of the faith. Even within
any single church, assembly, synagogue, or temple, there is considerable heteroge-
neity of beliefs and behavioral adherence to the faith. A further complication
is the relation of faith to action. Two equally devout individuals may react to
a stressor with different coping responses. One individual might pray and leave
the problem in God’s hands. In contrast, another person might pray and feel
empowered to act.
With respect to child and youth development, an important issue in the family is
whether both parents share the same religion and views – the homogamy of couples.
As indicated in the review above, homogamy of parents can either be a cohesive
influence on family interactions or a source of conflict. Furthermore, the extent to
which a couple believes their marriage holds spiritual meaning is also likely to
affect their behavior (Mahoney et al. 2003).
Another significant limitation is an almost exclusive focus on adolescents. We
only located a handful of investigations that examined direct religious influences in
children younger than 11 years old (e.g., Schottenbauer et al. 2007). It remains an
open question as to how religion or spirituality might affect the well-being of
younger children.
The body of research is also significantly limited by its reliance on Judeo-
Christian samples in Western countries. For example, in a sample of 2,992 British
youth ages 11–19 years, those youth who had weak beliefs or who viewed religious
practice as unimportant were more likely to have emotional disorders (e.g., anxiety
and depressive disorders) compared to those with stronger beliefs or who held
religious practice as important (Meltzer et al. 2011). There is now similar evidence
beginning to emerge from other populations. For instance, from a sample of 325
Brazilian teenagers, there was some evidence that religiosity may protect youth
exposed to violence against risk for mental disorders (Huculak and McLennan
2010). In addition, findings from Muslim youth in the Middle East are beginning
to appear in the literature. Thus far, investigators arrive at similar conclusions:
Religion generally corresponds to a protective effect when assessing mental health
(e.g., Abdel-Khalek and Eid 2011). Still, we know from previously mentioned
studies of Chinese and Austrian youth that findings may be very different in some
cultural contexts. Exceptions like these indicate a continued need for research in
diverse contexts and religious faiths. We have barely begun to speculate on the
explanations for exceptional results, but only through continued study will we truly
be able to identify the reasons.
A final limitation with the body of work is that most studies analyze whether
religion is related to increases or decreases in negative behaviors such as delinquent
acts. A smaller proportion of studies look at relations to positive behaviors such as
prosocial and health promoting behaviors. For instance, Schottenbauer et al. (2007)
found that families’ church attendance was associated with more positive social
skills in third graders. More studies like this are needed to investigate other positive
effects, including variables such as moral development, empathy, compassion, and
forgiveness.
39.5.6 Summary
Overall, the empirical data indicate that religion and spirituality are indeed likely to
promote mental and emotional health in young people. However, in some cases, the
evidence indicates only modest effects, and with a small handful of studies, the
results indicate the opposite relation. The research, in general, shares several
limitations such as lack of precision in measuring religion, a reliance on Christian
adolescents, and a focus on problems. More research into the differences in
religiosity and religious practice is needed to better understand how religion can
influence the lives of children. In particular, we need a better understanding of what
may account for some of the inconsistencies that do arise.
39.6 Impaired Child/Youth Well-Being as a Consequence of

Maltreatment
Despite the strong evidence that religion is positively associated with children’s
well-being, we would be remiss if we did not review the literature on the relation of
religion and child maltreatment. The issue was mentioned previously with regard to
the physical health and the practices of circumcision, female genital mutilation, and
inoculations. However, there are many other examples of religious beliefs being
used to foster, promote, or rationalize child maltreatment. Child maltreatment
consists of both acts of commission (e.g., abuse) as well as acts of omission (e.g.,
neglect). Below, we just focus on acts of commission – physical abuse, psycholog-
ical maltreatment, and sexual abuse.
Religion being used to maltreat the young is not just found in some of the fringe
or fanatical churches that overly control and even abuse children and adult mem-
bers (e.g., Enroth 1992). For example, since the mid-1980s, the media has published
reports of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests (e.g., Plante 2004).
Another example occurred in 2008 when the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints gained considerable notoriety. Some of its members were
arrested in Texas because of the practice of polygamy and girls as young as 14 years
were forced to marry (Jacobson and Burton 2011).
Beyond newspaper headlines, there is evidence of four types of child maltreat-
ment related to religious beliefs: physical abuse, emotional abuse, medical neglect,
and sexual abuse by those with religious authority. Heimlich (2011) summarizes the
multiple forms of religious child maltreatment in her carefully researched book.
She concluded her book with the comments:
People of all faiths, and of none at all, bear responsibility for the welfare of society’s
youngest members. That responsibility begins with fulfilling children’s physical and
emotional needs so that they can fully develop into compassionate and loving adults.
Through the acknowledgement of children’s rights, we can take a big step toward eradi-
cating child maltreatment, including that which is perpetrated in the name of faith. (p. 326)
The most pervasive form of religion-sanctioned child maltreatment can be found

in conservative Protestant churches. As the historian Philip Greven detailed in two
monographs (1977, 1991), there is a long history in the United States of an
authoritarian orientation to parenting that Greven labeled the Protestant “tempera-
ment.” Based on the doctrine of original sin and those proverbs mentioned previ-
ously, a disciplinary dogma was developed that called for harsh corporal
punishment. According to this view, hitting children is considered necessary to
break the sinful will of children so that they become compliant to and respectful of
authority figures. That message continues to be preached in popular conservative
Protestant child-rearing guides (e.g., Dobson 1992; Ezzo and Ezzo 1995; Pearl and
Pearl 2002; Rosemond 2007).
Two studies have found support for an association for religious views and an
increased risk of abuse. Both in undergraduate students (Dyslin and Thomsen 2005)
as well as in a church-going sample made up predominantly of parents (Rodriguez
and Henderson 2010), individuals who were high on “extrinsic religiosity” (who
use religion for their own personal ends) were at greater risk to engage in child
abuse. In addition, the parents who were literalists in the latter study were also at
greater risk for engaging in maltreatment.
It is easy to see how corporal punishment can turn into physical abuse if a parent
follows the precepts of Michael and Debi Pearl (2004) found in their popular book
(with more than 670,000 copies sold). Spanking is described as an indispensable
tool for the removal of a child’s guilt. They write that infants as young as 5 months
old should be hit for climbing stairs and that a baby’s hair needs to be pulled in
retaliation for biting a nursing mother. They advocate using a switch (such as
a quarter-inch flexible pipe) on a 10-month-old infant who does not immediately
come to the parent when called and spanking a child for not eating breakfast.
Furthermore, they advise that the intensity or duration of a spanking should not
be reduced when a child starts crying.
Use your own judgment as to what is effective. I have found five to ten licks are sufficient.
As the child gets older, the licks must become more forceful if the experience is to be
effective in purging his rebellion. A general rule is to continue the disciplinary action until
the child has surrendered. (p. 46)
For children living in these families who are temperamentally disposed to resist
succumbing to the hitting, the likely consequence is they will be hit more forcefully
and more times. It is not difficult to see how this disciplinary philosophy can lead to
physical abuse. In fact, at least four children have been killed in recent years by
parents who were following the Perls’ child-rearing advice (Eckholm 2011).
Fortunately, most children subjected to religious-oriented corporal punishment
do not suffer such a fate. Although there is considerable evidence that children who
are spanked are likely to be more aggressive and have other emotion problems
(Gershoff 2002), being reared in a conservative Protestant family may moderate
that relation. One study has found that children of mothers who attended evangel-
ical or fundamentalist churches and were occasionally spanked at ages 2 to 4 were
less likely than children who were never spanked to be reported as having antisocial
or emotional problems 5 years later (Ellison et al. 2011). It could be that children
raised in the conservative Protestant tradition experience spanking as a more
normative behavior, and thus its common negative effects may be ameliorated.
A second explanation is that the conservative Protestant mothers may engage in
a more involved, coherent, and scripturally based child-rearing approach that is
more effective in promoting healthy socialization than the methods practiced by
other parents.
Even so, religious practices and be engaged in such that they result in psycho-
logical maltreatment. Examples can be found in autobiographies and anecdotal
accounts (see Heimlich 2011). These reports are replete with examples of Judeo-
Christian religious concepts, including “hell,” “the devil,” and “sin,” that are used
by parents and religious leaders to terrorize, degrade, and reject children. Many
religions or religious denominations condemn homosexuality. Consequently,
a homosexual youth may experience degrading criticism, demeaning comments,
and perhaps rejection. Isolation is another form that religiously based psychological
maltreatment can take. Children and youth can be isolated from other peers, people,
or ideas in service of religious beliefs. Well-meaning parents seek to protect their
children from materialistic cultures, drugs, violence, pornography, and other neg-
ative secular influences. But some parents go too far in isolating children and
limiting their freedom of thought and intellectual autonomy.
Sexual abuse of children has received more attention than psychological mal-
treatment, both in autobiographical accounts and some research studies (e.g., Fater
and Mullaney 2000; Rossetti 1995). In terms of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse,
there are a number of autobiographical accounts as well as books on sexual abuse
not just in the Catholic Church, but also in yeshivas (Heimlich 2011; Plante 2004).
Several studies have addressed the question of how children are affected when
abused by clergy. At least one study indicates that religious-based physical
abuse has more negative effects when perpetrated by a religious leader or teacher
(Bottoms et al. 2003). Children experience a violation of a sacred trust which results
in serious, and in some cases, irreparable damage to their faith (Rossetti 1995).
Similarly, youth experience spiritual distress and rage following sexual abuse by
clergy (Fater and Mullaney 2000). However, the response to abuse can depend on
the gender of the perpetrator. If fathers rather than mothers are the perpetrators of
physical or psychological abuse, then their children have been found to be less
likely to abandon their faith (Bierman 2005).
In sum, child maltreatment occurs under the guise of religion, just as abuse
occurs in all segments of society (Barnett et al. 2011). Religiously influenced
maltreatment is not the norm. Clergy or religious adherents to religious faiths
should not be pathologized, just as Conservative Protestants are unlikely to be child
abusers, even if they rely on corporal punishment (Dyslin and Thomsen 2005).
Indeed, both church attendance and religiosity have been found to protect against
various forms of family violence (Socolar et al. 2008).
The fact that religion is sometimes misused to inflict maltreatment does not
imply that religion inhibits child well-being. Some practitioners of Christianity
have lived out their beliefs in such a way that results in unquestionable good for
children. For example, few individuals would dispute the benevolence of Mother
Teresa and her contributions to the welfare of the destitute of all ages. On the other
hand, as indicated above, atrocities against children continue to be committed in the
name of religion. Evidently, theological belief systems can be misused and goals
can become misguided. Understanding the mechanisms by which children are
influenced by religion can aid in the rehabilitation of maltreated children, the
prevention of future abuse, and the promotion of child well-being, the topic we
next address.
39.7 Why Is Religion Related to Children’s Well-Being?
Why is religion or spiritual belief linked with better child or adolescent health?
A number of different potential mechanisms are involved. Smith (2003) proposed
a conceptual framework for describing how religion can directly affect children
and youth on three dimensions: moral order, learned competencies, and social/
organizational ties. What he meant by moral order is that through religion,
children learn the moral directives of self-control and virtuous behavior. These
directives are facilitated through spiritual experiences as well as exposure to role
models. Learned competencies refer to the community and leadership skills many
youth accrue from being in youth groups and from engaging in benevolence
efforts. Religion also provides coping skills for dealing with life’s inevitable
hardships and tragedies as well as the benefits afforded by a rich cultural tradition.
Finally, Smith recognized the considerable influence of social and organizational
ties provided by religion.
There is some evidence to support Smith’s proposal that religion promotes
a sense of moral order in children. McCullough and Willoughby (2009) in their
review identified seven studies that found parents’ religiousness was related to
children’s self-control. Subsequently, two more studies on the topic have appeared.
In one, it was found that religious parents who used positive socialization tech-
niques reported their preschool children to be higher on a measure of conscience
development than other children (Volling et al. 2009). In a recent study using
a sample of 166 12–13-year-old youth, Laird et al. (2011) linked religion, self-
control, and antisocial behavior. They determined that religious youth were better
able to regulate themselves and were less likely to engage in antisocial or rule-
breaking behavior than less religious youth. Mothers’ religiosity was closely linked
to adolescent religious views and practices. Consequently, it was concluded that
religion in the parent plays a promotive and protective role in development.
Self-control also played an important meditational role along with personal
religiosity for refraining from drug use in a sample of middle school and high
school students in New York City (Walker et al. 2007). King and Furrow (2004)
found evidence for religious involvement being linked to greater altruism and
empathy. They proposed a key process of social capital resources (trusting inter-
actions with parents, other adults, and friends) that promote moral development
with an orientation toward more empathetic and altruistic behavior.
Another attribute of moral order is identity development (Erikson 1968). Reli-
gion can provide a ready-made identity for youth who may be struggling to
determine who they are and where they fit in society. For example, in a study of
more than 800 high school students, it was found that those students with faith
reported they had a personal philosophy or a “meaning framework” that provided
direction and fulfillment to their life (Furrow et al. 2004). Although well-being was
not assessed, prosocial concerns were. Those youth with a religious framework
indicated greater concern for others. Presumably, those who adopt prosocial values
and act on them will experience a sense of well-being through their contributions to
the common good. Religion as a source of meaning and purpose has been noted in
other studies as well, as Dew et al. (2008) reviewed. One other trait related to
identity development that has received some research attention is self-esteem.
There is good evidence that religion can influence child well-being through enhanc-
ing self-esteem (Cotton et al. 2006).
In terms of Smith’s second hypothesized process that religious involvement pro-
motes youth skill development, there is little evidence to support it. The only
supportive findings we were able to identify included a study in which religion was
found to promote resiliency by being a source of comfort and strength for coping with
adversities. By bolstering feelings of hope, optimism, self-esteem, belongingness,
and meaning, religion can be an important source of resiliency (e.g., Valentine and
Feinauer 1993). The social structure provided by religious organizations may also
afford youth opportunities for positive guidance from a mentor, the means to develop
leadership competencies, and other nonacademic learning experiences conducive to
positive development (Wong et al. 2006). Organized religion can also create ideo-
logical contexts and opportunities for experiences that may foster skill development
as well as positive self-perceptions (King et al. 2011). Unfortunately, at this point
there simply is not enough research upon which to draw firm conclusions about what
skills might be developed as a consequence of religious involvement.
In contrast to skill development, there is ample evidence that religious involve-
ment provides a ready-made system of social support. As one example, in a study
that included more than 6, 500 adolescents, it was found that church attendance was
associated with positive adjustment (Good and Willoughby 2006). Secondary
analyses indicated that the advantage associated with church attendance could
be explained by observations that teenagers became integrated into supportive
social networks. Similarly, it may be the presence of a moral/ethical system
provided by religious communities that acts to influence child well-being (Cotton
et al. 2006; Dew et al. 2008; Wong et al. 2006). Children are influenced and
supported by spiritual guides that include, depending on the faith, pastors, youth
ministers, priests, rabbis, imams, gurus, ayatollahs, mullahs, swamis, sages, and
even “godparents,” just to name a few (Mattis et al. 2006).
Table 39.2 Mechanisms associated with religious involvement hypothesized to promote child
well-being
Domain Variable
Child/youth Provides a clear moral code of behavior
Gives a sense of identity
Encourages greater self-control
Promotes character and conscience development
Marital domain Higher commitment and sense of spiritual relationship (sanctification)
Greater marital satisfaction
Less conflict, aggression, and likelihood of divorce
Parenting Regard pregnancy as spiritually significant
Greater involvement and affection
Firmer discipline
More harmonious interactions
More supervision
Model health-promoting behaviors
Guidance of developmental trajectory
Better coping in adversity
Reduced risk of child abuse
Social network Exposure to adults who are positive models
Availability of resources
Exposed to non-deviant peers
At a peer group level, having children and youth with others promotes good
behavior. Religions prescribe culturally sanctioned pathways for positive develop-
ment. The selective nature of the social support system and peer group can provide
a buffering effect against negative peer influences and related experiences. The
social structure may steer youth away from deviant peer influences and instead
toward more positive peer groups, a process referred to as peer channeling. This
may in turn decrease the probability of risky behaviors or other adverse outcomes.
This hypothesis was supported by the finding that friends’ religiosity was
a significant predictor of adolescents’ sexual debut (Adamczyk 2009). More pious
teenagers were less likely to engage in sex during early adolescence. It should be
noted that some evidence for a bidirectional relationship between religion and the
sexual practices of other teens was found. Teenagers who delayed sexual activity
tended to seek out more religious friends who also were not sexually involved with
others. Conversely, sexually active teens had a tendency to migrate to less religious
friends who were more likely to engage in sex.
Christian Smith (2003) omitted at least one major mechanism in his analysis of
how religion affects youth – the family. As Mahoney and her colleagues have
reviewed (Mahoney 2010; Mahoney et al. 2001), various aspects of the family can
influence children. In fact, there are both direct and indirect ways in which family
interactions can promote – or inhibit – positive development. Table 39.2 lists the
most commonly investigated mechanisms linking religion to child well-being.
Research investigations have increasingly documented the quality of interac-

tions present in religious families. Parents who share religious beliefs and prac-
tices are likely to experience good marital relations, marital satisfaction,
commitment, and better communication according to a recent review (Mahoney
et al. 2001). Furthermore, religious parents are less likely to experience verbal
conflict, physical aggression, and divorce, particularly if the parents are reli-
giously homogamous. At the family level, religious families tend to have more
cohesive family relationships and fewer problems, as Brody et al. (1996) found in
African American families.
However, these relations can also be influenced by religious homogamy –
whether parents share the same religious beliefs. At least one study has shown
that parental religious heterogamy can have a negative effect on child well-being.
When one parent is religious and the other is not, more marital conflict has been
found and children were more likely to report smoking marijuana and drinking
alcohol (Petts and Knoester 2007). However, the effects were limited: No links to
children’s self-esteem or school grades were found. Furthermore, if the heterogamy
is restricted to different affiliations within the Protestant denominations, then there
were no negative associations.
In terms of individual parenting practices, there is evidence that religious parents
interact and rear their children differently from nonreligious parents in several
ways. A recent review summarized the evidence in three areas of parent–child
relations: warmth and positivity, coping with child illness and other stressful child-
rearing experiences, and discipline (Mahoney, et al. 2001). In two of those areas,
there has only been limited research. To date, the eight studies on the topic found
that religious parents are consistently warmer and more positive than other parents.
More studies confirm that religion can play a prominent role in helping parents cope
with child-rearing adversity, including coping with pervasive developmental dis-
abilities and cancer. Presumably, parents who are coping better themselves are then
able to provide better quality child-rearing and thus promote child well-being, even
in the context of significant problems.
The third area, religion and parental discipline, has received the most extensive
attention of any of these areas. By 2001, at least 14 studies had been published on
the topic of parental disciplinary attitudes or behavior (Mahoney et al. 2001).
Conservative Protestant parents, as previously discussed, typically adopt
a distinctive disciplinary orientation. They value child obedience and compliance
as well as report using corporal punishment much more than other religious groups
(e.g., Ellison et al. 1996; Gershoff et al. 1999).
There are other aspects of parenting that apparently are also affected by religious
beliefs. To mention three findings concerning fathering, religious fathers have been
shown to be more involved in child-rearing, report higher quality parent–child
relationships, and to be less likely to yell at their children than other fathers
(Bartkowski and Wilcox 2000; King 2003; Knoester et al. 2007; Wilcox 2002, 2004).
Of course, not all religious fathers act the same way. Although few investiga-
tions have differentiated religious fathers, some work has examined parenting style.
In general, religion appears to promote better disciplinary practices in terms of
authoritative styles as opposed to authoritarian styles (Gunnoe et al. 1999, 2006).

This includes setting age-appropriate limits and demands of adolescents, without
excessive control (Mahoney 2010). At least one study demonstrated that parenting
style interacts with religion to result in differential outcomes for youth. Stewart and
Bolland (2002) found that both religiosity and parenting style were associated with
less adolescent substance use in a sample of over two thousand African American
adolescents.
Evidently, there are multiple mechanisms operating on the individual, family,
parenting, and in group context that work synergistically to provide a protective
factor to help youth avoid what Holden (2010a) called developmental “off-ramps.”
Common off-ramps for teens include early sexual activity, substance use, and
antisocial or delinquent behavior. Instead, the evidence indicates that religious
involvement is indeed likely, through multiple mechanisms, to help keep youth
developing on healthy trajectories.
39.8 Directions for Future Research
As this chapter has made clear, the study of the relation between religion and
children’s well-being has become a significant research area. Investigators into this
area have made significant progress in revealing some of the developmental
benefits derived from religious involvement. However, work in this area is still in
its early stages, and we identify three gaps or limitations in the knowledge base that
require attention as this area develops its knowledge base.
First, the characteristics of the participant included in studies need to be broad-
ened in three ways. The vast majority of the research utilizes adolescent Protestants
in the United States. Studies are needed to expand the database by including
participants with the following characteristics: young children, children
representing more diverse religions affiliations, and children from different coun-
tries. Although some investigations that include Muslim children are beginning to
appear, as well as studies with children from other countries (e.g., Abdel-Khalek
2011; Khan 2006), they only represent a small fraction of the studies in this area.
Second, more attention is needed to better understand how religion is linked to
child well-being. Each type of the four major mechanisms mentioned above needs
further explication, especially in terms of variables that may moderate or mediate
the links. For example, to what extent do parental religious messages influence
children’s developing identity and well-being? Longitudinal studies are also needed
to identify the causal role that religion can play in relation to family functioning or
crisis. Research investigating the relative roles of the different mechanisms is
needed to fully understand the extent to which beliefs and/or practices contribute
to well-being.
Finally, improved assessments of religiosity as well as of children’s functioning
are needed. All too often, assessments of religiosity are limited to a few cursory
survey items. As Mahoney and her colleagues (e.g., Mahoney et al. 2003) and
others have argued, there is a fundamental need to better assess how religion and
spirituality affects individuals. For example, their concept of “sanctification” refers

to the psychological process through which aspects of life are perceived as having
spiritual character and significance. This construct represents a promising variable
to further explicate religion’s impact on individuals’ beliefs and interpersonal
behaviors and to determine exactly what is needed to further refine assessments
of religiosity.
39.9 Conclusion
There is now strong correlational evidence that religion can be an important

determinant of children’s healthy development. This association has been
documented in many domains of development, including health behaviors, mental
and emotional health, as well as behavior problems. However, that does not mean
that all religious involvement is necessarily associated with positive development.
There are multiple accounts documenting how religion can be misused or used in an
authoritarian way that results in negative consequences. The mechanisms for these
relations are less well understood, but it appears that a number of different pro-
cesses are at work. In some cases, religious involvement directly affects youth, such
as through a strong social network provided by affiliation with religious groups.
This area is ripe for further investigation and refinement. These investigations will
help to better reveal the mechanisms through which religion is – and is not – a force
for promoting the well-being of children and youth.
Acknowledgments We thank Duaa Bayan for her assistance on the section regarding Islam and
Mark Chancey, Ph.D., for his thoughtful comments and suggestions.
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Religion, Spirituality, and Child Well-Being
40
Kurt Bangert
40.1 Introduction
Researchers and policy makers who looked into the concept of children’s well-
being have in recent years become increasingly aware of the fact that for all too long
the aspects of spirituality and spiritual well-being have been neglected or even
overlooked. Only lately has the aspect of spirituality come to the fore.
To be sure, there are other vital aspects of children’s well-being that certainly
require consideration, such as nutrition and health, life-skills development and
education, child protection and participation, and children’s rights. All of these
aspects have received increased attention over the last 25 years. After the
Convention on the Rights of the Child had been adopted by the United Nations in
November 1989 and signed by all UN states except Somalia and the USA, it
became necessary to ensure that children’s rights are actually adhered to in all
UN member states. According to the Convention, not only do children have rights
for survival, food, education, health, citizenship, protection, etc., but attention was
also to be given to the best interest of the child and a child’s well-being (UN 1989).
While the best interest of the child primarily implies the state’s obligation to
cater to the legal interests of the child versus the legal rights of the child’s parents,
the concept of a child’s well-being goes far beyond the legal aspects. Child
well-being not only implies an all-encompassing holistic notion but also has
a subjective connotation. Give children everything they need in terms of material
goods and services, but take from them the subjective sense of well-being, and they
will not fully flourish. There is more to child well-being than material commodities
and service benefits. Child well-being has much to do with psychology, relation-
ships, self-perception, and the role a child sees for herself or himself in the world in
which she or he lives. Child well-being has much to do with a child being allowed to
K. Bangert
World Vision Institute for Research and Innovation, Friedrichsdorf, Germany
e-mail: Kurt_Bangert@wvi.org

1172 K. Bangert
live up to his or her potential. There has been a recent trend to emphasize children’s
subjective well-being and to carry out representative surveys with children
regarding the perception of their own well-being (such as the UK national survey
by The Children’s Society/University of York, Rees et al., 2010, the German World
Vision Kinderstudie 2007/2010, or the upcoming international Children’s Worlds
study by ISCI www.childrensworlds.org). In any case, it is also against the back-
drop of children’s subjective well-being that the concept of spirituality must gain
currency.
Spirituality is a rather recent and trendy but also somewhat fuzzy concept that
people sometimes like to make use of without being very clear about what they
mean by it. They may have an approximate idea of what it is, but may not be able to
exactly define it. In addition, there is some confusion about its relationship
with religion. Some people will see a close connection between spirituality and
religiousness, while others would be quick to point out a clear distinction
between the two. Nevertheless, spirituality is increasingly seen as an integral and
indispensible dimension of a child’s life, a child’s development, and a child’s
well-being. The “rediscovery” of the spiritual dimension may also be an effort to
zoom in on the essentials of life. This chapter is an attempt at defining spirituality
and making it work for the well-being of children.
40.2 Spirituality: Background
In this chapter, I shall address spirituality both as a recent social phenomenon and
as a new field of research, then discuss its relationship with religion and religious-
ness, make an attempt to define it, relate it to the concept of well-being, and ask the
question: How can it be measured – and achieved?
40.2.1 Spirituality as a New Social Phenomenon
Not only has there been an increased attention on spirituality in recent years, but
“there has been a distinct surge of interest in children’s spirituality” (Boyatzis 2008,
p. 43). In fact, “spiritual development may be at a ‘tipping point’ for becoming a
major theme in child and adolescent development,” say the editors of the Handbook
of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence (Roehlkepartain et al.
2006b). While Roehlkepartain et al. are not sure “whether the current popular
interest in spirituality is a passing fad or a long-term trend,” they do see evidence
that spiritual development “is a vital process and resource in young people’s
developmental journey” (Roehlkepartain et al. 2006b, ibid.).
According to David Tacey, spirituality, as it has recently emerged, is
. . . a spontaneous movement in society, a new interest in the reality of spirit and its healing
effects on life, health, community and well-being. It is our secular society realising that it
has been running on empty, and has to restore itself at a deep, primal source, a source which
is beyond humanity and yet at the very core of our experience (Tacey 2004, p. 1).
40 Religion, Spirituality, and Child Well-Being 1173
Possibly, the new interest in spirituality is a result of the process of seculariza-

tion which is defined here as the process by which religious views and values are
gradually abandoned altogether or replaced by nonreligious (i.e., secular) views and
values. While people are increasingly distancing themselves from traditional
churches and religious traditions, they nevertheless feel the need for honoring
a spiritual dimension that has been neglected for too long.
The process of secularization has not been uniform across the globe. According
to the World Values Survey conducted in 1999–2001, the importance of religion
dropped from 1990 to 2000 in most advanced industrialized countries, while in less-
developed countries, the importance of religion grew. That increase was apparently
due to the growth of evangelical groups, coupled with a general population growth.
The United States, a statistical outlier, also showed a light increase in the
importance of religion (Inglehart et al. 2004). Apparently, as countries develop
economically, “there is less emphasis on traditional religious values and more
emphasis placed on secular institutions” and “a growth in individual choice and
freedom of expression.” There is also an “inverse relationship between education
and religious practice” (Lippman and Keith 2006, p. 117) which suggests that the
more educated people become, the less religious they tend to be. Education in
general tends to contribute to secularization.
Whatever its causes, secularism has not offered a way of looking after people’s
inherent spiritual needs. Secularism cannot simply be substituted for religion.
“The problem is that no obvious alternative to religion has emerged with sufficient
power to act as a vehicle for the nurture of spiritual awareness” (Tacey 2004, p. 48).
Secularization may have been the answer to rigid and authoritarian forms of religions,
but it cannot satisfy the inner yearning of man for meaning and purpose. Hay, Reich,
and Utsch suggest “that the natural spiritual awareness common to all human beings
has, during the course of European history, become overlaid by a socially constructed
secularist critique that denies its reality” (Hay et al. 2006, p. 53).
People have become disenchanted with a secular world that provides little
meaning to their lives; they have become disillusioned also with an often unfair
and exploitative capitalistic system and, of late, with the hazards of the global
financial markets. Millions of people around the world are today questioning
the pursuit of materialism and crude secularism and are looking toward spirituality
for meaning and orientation. To be sure, spirituality will not solve all of the
world’s economical and political problems, but may lend critical and creative
new perspectives on them.
Hence, one may observe “a counter-cultural revolution, a romantic rebellion
against the rise of materialism, inhumanity, and economic rationalism” (Tacey
2004, p. 4), or, in short, we see a “spirituality revolution” – if we go by the title
of David Tacey’s book (2004). Tacey expresses the view of many when stating:
“We need spiritual guidance, but for a variety of historical reasons we cannot return
to organized religion or dogmatic theology in their old premodern forms” (Tacey
2004, p. 2). And yet we are also dissatisfied with a spiritless world and an empty
secularism that is virtually void of values and virtues. “We have imagined that we
have outgrown the sacred, and that notions of soul and spirit are archaisms of
1174 K. Bangert
a former era. When the hunger for the sacred erupts in our time, we don’t know how
to respond . . .” (Tacey 2004, p. 3).
That people tend to distance themselves from their inherited religions and
church affiliations, “makes some people shudder with horror, while others rejoice
at the new feeling of liberation and freedom from the strictures of the past”
(Tacey 2004, p. 2). In any case, organized religion is on the decline in many parts
of the world, but more and more people recognize that a secular society without
spiritual values cannot be the alternative to religious affiliation: “We are caught in
a difficult moment in history, stuck between a secular system we have outgrown
and a religious system we cannot fully embrace” (Tacey 2004, p. 2).
That is why we are observing an upsurge of spirituality nowadays – albeit that
spirituality may take many different forms and few people have as yet a clear
understanding of what it actually signifies. So there are good reasons why scholars
have begun to look at spirituality and what it can do for society – and for children.
40.2.2 Spirituality as a New Field in Child Research
In child research, there seems to be “a new burgeoning of scholarly interest in child and
adolescent spiritual development” (Roehlkepartain et al. 2006a, p. xiii). Researchers
have formed interest groups and convened conferences around these issues. There
appears to be “an emerging sense among developmental scholars that something has
been missing in the scholarship, and that domain is spiritual development”
(Roehlkepartain et al. 2006b, p. 2). While there may be a long history of reflecting
on spirituality, there can be no doubt that the topic has recently gained enormous
momentum.
According to some authors, the first research study dealing with children’s
spirituality was already published in 1892 (Ratcliff 2008, p. 21). But in those days
spirituality was primarily connoting religious occurrences and was considered as
being experienced within the confines of religious settings. In the first half of
the twentieth century, spirituality was no burning topic, but was still being discussed
within the field of religious education. Starting with the early 1960s, a cognitive
approach to the study of children’s religious education seems to have predominated,
and it was only by the late 1980s and early 1990s that an interest in children’s
spiritual experience moved to the foreground (Ratcliff 2008, p. 22).
In psychology, religion and spirituality were no topics to be taught or researched
extensively until the final quarter of the last century. In the USA, for one, “as
recently as 1980 a scholar who wanted to launch new research or teach a course in
this specialty would find that no systematic or comprehensive summaries of
research existed” (Paloutzian and Park 2005, p. 4). That has changed, however,
over the last 25 years. A copious stream of research evolved in the psychology of
religion, even at a time when the process of secularization went on unabated. Since
the turn of the millennium, spiritual well-being has become a hot topic.
It may be that the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York also
contributed to a general increase of interest in religious issues. People began to take
a closer look at the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism and extremism but

also at religion and spirituality in general. Even governments “rediscovered”
religion and employed theologians and religious scientists to advise them; books
began to be published on the topic of “religion and political development”; I myself
participated in several conferences on such topics and observed a general public
interest around religious and spiritual issues.
The new surge of interest in children’s spirituality can be documented by a
number of handbooks and monographs on the subject: The Handbook of Spiritual
Development in Childhood and Adolescence (Roehlkepartain et al. 2006a), the
Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (Paloutzian and Park
2005), Nurturing Children’s Spirituality (Allen 2008), Nurturing Child and Ado-
lescent Spirituality. Perspectives from the World’s Religious Traditions (Yust et al.
2005), and Children’s Spirituality. Christian Perspectives, Research, and Applica-
tions (Ratcliff 2004). Older works worth mentioning are The Spirit of the Child
(Hay and Nye 1998, 2006) and The Spiritual Life of Children (Coles 1990).
The last book mentioned here by Robert Coles, a Harvard scholar, has been
a landmark study in the field of children’s spirituality that subsequently prompted
further research. When hunting for theories on spirituality, one is tempted to
put Coles’ book aside quickly as one will not find much in it in terms of
definition, abstract analysis, or theoretical discussions. But on second look it
becomes clear that Coles had done what child researches have only lately endeav-
ored to do: He spoke with children, rather than just about them. He forewent
extensive theoretical analysis for the sake of conducting some 500 interviews and
recording many of them. Most of the children he questioned were between 8 and
12 years old – some as young as six. Coles used a narrative approach in order to
portray what it meant to be a child within a particular faith tradition such as
Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. But he also interviewed kids from “nonbelieving”
families, who also struggled with religious topics and wondered about life’s
meaning – “young human beings profane as can be one minute but the next,
spiritual” (Coles 1990, p. xviii). Take 12-year-old Eric, for instance, whose reflec-
tions are abridged below:
I’m not into religion . . . My dad laughs at religion a lot . . . Religion doesn’t mean much to
me – going to church; but I sure can stop and wonder about things . . . You look at the sky,
and you wonder what’s up there, except what we see, the sun and the moon and stars.
Anything else? Who knows? Not me! Most of the time, I’m just going from minute to
minute . . . It’s when something unexpected happens that I stop myself and ask what’s going
on: what’s it all about?. . . Then I’ll wonder how all that got going. Is there a God? Did He
get it all going? Are there other people somewhere in the universe? I guess you just wonder
about that kind of thing – and a lot of the time I stop myself and ‘get back to the basics,’. . .
But when there was this accident right near us, and the driver got killed, and we saw her
being taken from the car – they had to cut her out, she was ‘glued in,’ a cop said – you had to
stop and ask why that happened to her. And it wasn’t her fault. A drunk guy . . . smashed
into her, just like that!. . . I guess that’s what you do even at my age. I’ll be riding my bike
. . . and I’m wondering how much time I’ve got . . . and I’m thinking the kind of stuff –
I guess it’s what philosophers think. I’m thinking that I’m here, now, but one day I’ll be gone.
That’s far off, I hope, but it could be tomorrow. Look what happened to my cousin, Ned.
1176 K. Bangert
All he was doing – he was crossing the street, and that truck went wild, and he got killed . . .
It was later, in the night, that it really sunk in: Ned was gone. I’d never see him again! I was
lying on my bed, on by back . . . I just stared, and I thought. I was conscious of my whole
body. I made my toes move, and my hands; I bent my legs and lifted my arms – strange! I said
to myself, ‘You’re Eric, and you’re alive! Ned is gone – there’s no more Ned. You’re still
here, but there will be a time when you’re gone, too.’ (Coles 1990, p. 280–87)
Reflecting on such utterances of kids, religious or nonreligious, Coles

commented: “So it goes: with respect to faith and doubt, belief and unbelief, we
are all ‘on the edge’” (Coles 1990, p. 301). Eric’s account shows that at one point or
another, we all have reason to reflect on things unseen, things spiritual, things
beyond the material world. We all have our encounters with “the Spirit.” But
while children may not always readily talk about such encounters, “there is
a growing body of evidence that children have spiritual capacities and experiences –
moments, both little and large, that shape their lives in enduring ways” (Hart 2006,
p. 163). Hart was referring to a number of recent publications to that effect. He also
believed that “these varied experiences reveal a rich and significant spiritual
life that has gone largely unrecognized in the annals of child development
and yet may provide one of the most fundamental sources of human motivation”
(Hart 2006, ibid.).
One key researcher to look into such spiritual experiences of children was
Rebecca Nye who as a doctoral student assisted David Hay, then director of the
Religious Experience Research Centre at Oxford. Nye did some groundbreaking
fieldwork by interviewing primary school children regarding their spiritual experi-
ences. She gave account of her survey in two chapters of Hay’s book The Spirit of
the Child (Hay and Nye, first edition: 1998, second edition: 2006). In the first
chapter, she recounts some of her “religious dialogues,” while in the second she
deals with what she calls the “core of children’s spirituality.” While Cole had found
an obvious dimension even in nonreligious children, Nye could testify to some of
the intense doubts that troubled even the most religious kids. In fact, even when
there was a strong sense of the divine, children could have a feeling of uncertainty
and skepticism regarding their own religious experience. In quite ambiguous terms,
10-year-old Maggie told of how sometimes God spoke to her: “Weird, because
I think like he’s talking to me. But I never know whether it’s him or whether it’s
just what I want him to say, and that’s my conscience. I never know” (Hay and
Nye 2006, p. 100).
While on the one hand it was clear to Nye “that children’s spirituality could
not be divorced from their individuality,” it also “became necessary to make
comparisons between children” (Hay and Nye 2006, p. 107) and to come up with
what she called a “superordinate core category” to provide an interpretive key to the
otherwise very individualistic notions children have about their spiritual
experiences (Hay and Nye, The Spirit of the Child, 2006, p. 99). However, rather
than bringing to the table a ready-made definition of spirituality or spiritual
experience, Nye extensively analyzed the conversations she had with the children
in order to apply a grounded theory approach, i.e., a bottom-up method instead of
a top-down approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967). The challenge for Nye was how
to compare the different experiences without having developed a set of criteria by

which to judge these experiences. Or in other words: “How do You Start Without
a Starting Point?” – as was the title given to a report on Nye’s work in the
prestigious British Journal of Religious Education (Allen 2008, p. 35). Nye wanted
to see if it was possible, by carefully analyzing and scrutinizing what the children
had told her, to “expose a core category that would ‘tell the story’ of the phenom-
enon being studied” (Hay and Nye 2006, p. 108).
On the basis of her grounded theory approach, Nye came up with what she
termed relational consciousness which encompasses not only the I-others relation-
ship but also the I-self, I-world, and I-God relationships. Children’s spirituality
can be reflected in children’s “feelings and thoughts about their relationship with
God” (p. 115), but it can also be seen in children’s reflection on interpersonal
relationships. Other children relate to the natural world and the beauty of nature as
a primary context for spiritual consciousness, while many kids express their
spirituality in terms of thinking about themselves and their own identity:
Why am I here? How did I get here? None of these aspects can be taken as
the only avenue for spirituality. It is in combination that “they help to specify
the properties of children’s spirituality when revealed as ‘relational consciousness’”
(p. 118).
This relational consciousness was more than just being alert or mentally
attentive. It was an awareness of what was going on in the children’s own mind
in terms of their own relational reflections. Nye called this their “objective insight
into their subjective response,” a kind of meta-consciousness; it was a “special
sense that added value to their ordinary or everyday perspective” (p. 109).
The children displayed a sense “of being objectively aware of themselves as
‘subject,’” and that helped them “to perceive their world in relational terms.”
Nye believed that “in this ‘relational consciousness’ seems to lie the rudimentary
core of children’s spirituality, out of which can arise meaningful aesthetic
experience, religious experience, personal and traditional responses to mystery
and being, and mystical and moral insight” (ibid.).
Nye certainly has to be given credit for having pulled this core from the
conversations she conducted and recorded. But the children, too, have to be given
credit for being so perceptive of their own spiritual experience and for articulating
their awareness for these distinct forms of relationship.
While subsequent research may not have confirmed all of Hay’s and Nye’s
insights, most researchers that followed have at least taken Hay/Nye as a
reference point. Hay and Nye both have to be commended for placing children at
the center of their own spirituality and for prompting further research so that
“children’s spirituality is receiving attention from scholars like never before”
(Boyatzis 2008, p. 54).
One thing seems to be clear from the research so far: Children are spiritual from
the start. They seem to have “a natural inclination towards spirituality” (ibid., p. 47);
in fact “children are spiritual beings first, and then are socialized and acculturated
(or not) into a religious tradition” (ibid.). Some have even argued that spirituality
is “an expression of a bodily predisposition” (Hay and Nye 2006, p. 23)
1178 K. Bangert
“which can either be obscured or enhanced by culture” (p. 141). So it would only be
right to recognize what has always been there, what has always been common to
humans, and what a secular society has all too often overlooked or even denied: that
spirituality is an important part of human life, even children’s lives; that we all are
in need of making sense of what life is all about; and that spirituality is also a key to
our general well-being. Consequently, the spiritual well-being of children must be on
our agenda.
But if spirituality has always been part of human life, so has religion. Do both
not go inextricably together? Are we not talking here of one and the same phe-
nomenon? Or are they to be distinguished from another? Let’s have a closer look.
40.2.3 Spirituality Versus Religiousness
In order to better understand spirituality and its implications for child well-being,
it will be useful to distinguish it from religiousness and show where the two converge
and diverge. I will show here that not only do people in general have quite an
ambiguous feeling about religion but that religion itself is ambiguous in nature.
It has a dark side to it as well as a bright side. But where does spirituality come in?
While the term spirituality is seen by many to be closely related to and connected
with religion, it is more often than not considered something to be distinguished
from religion and religiousness. There appears to be some overlapping but also
a distinct variance. “A few people see very little difference between religion and
spirituality. Many more make a clear distinction” (Hay and Nye 2006, p. 19).
“Spirituality is often described in personal or experiential forms, whereas religious-
ness includes personal beliefs as well as institutional beliefs and practices,” say
King and Benson (King and Benson 2006, p. 384).
According to the report With Their Own Voices, “youth struggle with the
relationship between religion and spirituality” (Search Institute 2008, p. 6).
A substantial proportion of the youth questioned by the Search Institute considered
themselves both spiritual and religious (34 %). Another large group (24 %)
indicated they are spiritual but not religious. A sizable third of the youths surveyed
considered religion as “usually bad.”
When David Tacey, an Australian psychology professor, questioned his own
students whether religion and/or spirituality was a concern in their lives, 47 out of
50 students “indicated that personal spirituality was a major concern in their lives,
while only two students said that religion was important” (Tacey 2004, p. 14).
In another similar survey conducted by Tacey, 115 out of 125 were concerned about
spirituality; only 10 said they were pleased to follow a religion.
David Hay has for some years used brainstorming sessions with students to
discuss the links between religion and spirituality and had his students jot down
associations linked with religion first, then spirituality. He summarized those
sessions as follows:
Religion tends to be associated with what is publicly available, such as churches, mosques,
Bibles, prayer books, religious officials, weddings and funerals. It also regularly includes
uncomfortable associations with boredom, narrow-mindedness and being out of date, as well
as more disconcerting links with fanaticism, bigotry, cruelty and persecution . . . Spirituality
is almost always seen as much warmer, associated with love, inspiration, wholeness, depth,
mystery and personal devotion like prayer and meditation (Hay and Nye 2006, p. 19).
Hay observed that the critique against religion was not just advanced by
outsiders. It is often made by those well ensconced within their religious group or
faith. Even children can well distinguish between religion and spirituality. Robert
Coles, in reviewing the experience of his own sons participating in religious
services, says he “got weary of (sometimes really annoyed by) some of the pieties
the children brought home,” but one day he became “forever a fan of such
educational experience” when, to his great surprise, one of his boys announced:
“There’s religion and there’s the spirit.” Asked where he got that idea from, the
10-year-old referred to St. Paul who had spoken of “the letter and the spirit.”
The teacher had explained that going to church and observing all the church laws
doesn’t make you spiritual (Coles 1990, S. xvii). Other children, too, whom Coles
had interviewed portrayed insights sometimes “sharply critical of organized
religion,” even when they themselves belonged to such a religion. “There is
certainly an overlap for many children between their religious life and their spiritual
life” (Coles 1990, p. xvii).
Tracey felt that these young people “realize, often with some desperation, that
society is in need of renewal, and that an awareness of spirit holds the key to our
personal, social, and ecological survival” (Tracey, p. 2). While religion has
often been associated with top-down hierarchies, spirituality has been considered
as something like a “democratic movement from below” (Tacey 2004, p. 3).
Inasmuch as many young people – not only in Western countries – are abandoning
organized religion as it appears too restricted to them, they are embracing
new forms of spirituality. However, there are also some who tend to throw out
the baby with the bath water: In forsaking religion, they also give a cold shoulder to
anything spiritual. “The confusion of spirituality and religious fundamentalism
causes reasonable people to reject both, in the belief that humanity is better
off without the sacred . . .” (Tacey 2004, p. 12). But many do make the distinction,
some considering themselves spiritual, but not religious; others think of themselves
as both.
People tend to distance themselves from religion and religious institutions not
only because they have been caught within the vagaries of secularism – sometimes
quite unwittingly – but also because they have observed the consequences of
religious extremism and fundamentalism, such as was responsible for the 9/11
attack on the World Trade Center, or the kind that puts creationism in constant
conflict with the natural sciences.
Spirituality is religious pursuit largely without religion and outside of religion.
“The spirituality revolution is also about finding the sacred everywhere, and not just
where religious traditions have asked us to find it” (Tracey 2004, p. 4). Even the
term spirituality itself is an opportunity, as it offers the chance to be spiritual
without the constraints and control of religion and its power brokers. Religion, so
it seems, is for the religious people; spirituality for all. “Spirituality is now the
1180 K. Bangert
concern of everyone, religious or secular, young or old, atheist or believer, educated

or otherwise . . .” (Tacey, p. 2).
In order for us to better distinguish between spirituality and religion, it will be
good to understand the ambiguity of religion. This will also help us to better
understand the nature of spirituality.
It needs no research or footnotes to propose that religion can bring out both the
best and worst in man. Religion is dubious and ambiguous. Comparative religion
can help us to understand that ambiguity: It has distinguished between a substantive
definition of religion and a functional definition of religion. The substantive
definition is what has been considered (notably by Rudolf Otto, but also Mircea
Eliade, Max Weber, or Gustav Mensching) as the encounter with the Holy,
the Sacred, the Transcendent, the Irrational, the Numinous, also known as the
mysterium tremendum (Otto 1917/2004). Religion, in this sense, is not only the
encounter with the Transcendent but also man’s response to it. It is this encounter
with the Sacred that we normally call a religious experience. The experience of the
Holy is what theistic religion would call experiencing God. According to
Paul Tillich, the Holy “is a very important ‘doorway’ to understanding the nature
of religion, for it is the most adequate basis for understanding the divine”
(Tillich 1951, p. 215).
The functional definition of religion, on the other hand, rather than looking
at religious experience, has to do with the functional or operative expressions
of religions. This perspective was brought forth by such scholars as Emile
Durkheim, Ninian Smart, Thomas Luckmann, Joachim Wach, or Clifford Geerth.
Ninian Smart, for instance, distinguished seven functional aspects of religion:
(1) ritual, (2) mythology, (3) ethics, (4) theology, (5) experience, (6) institutions,
and (7) outward representation (such as symbolism, religious art, and architecture)
(Smart 2002). The mere mention of these functional or sociological aspects of
religion is probably sufficient to suggest that the dark side of religion is most likely
to be found within the minefield of religious functionality and outward appearance,
rather than with a genuine religious experience. It is more in the external forms of
religion (including formulated dogma) and less in the religious encounters that we
must see the dark and dubious nature of religion.
Hence, William James rightfully distinguished between personal religion and
institutional religion (James 1902/1936). And Tobin Hart (2006), in discussing
spirituality, went a step further and equated spirituality with James’ personal
religion, setting personal religion and/or spirituality in contrast to formal religion.
Spirituality, according to Hart, could be taken as the very direct and intimate
experience of divinity:
That divinity is the incomprehensible life force that remains so difficult to pin down, but to
which we try to point with words like God or spirit. These experiences may emerge as
a sense of interconnection or compassion, a revelatory insight, a quest for meaning, a sacred
other, and so forth (Hart 2006, p. 164).
So a definition of spirituality that would lend itself to positively influencing child

well-being must distinguish itself from the potential dark sides of religion without
denying the genuine religious or spiritual experience which is almost always

perceived as being positive – at least by those who have reported such experiences.
The point is that the overlap between religion and spirituality will be in what may be
termed experience – call it religious or spiritual. The experience with the mysterium
tremendum is what constitutes true religion or true spirituality.
40.2.4 The Spiritual Experience
A spiritual (or religious) experience has been defined as “a melting of boundaries”

and “a merging with the surrounding environment” and also as a “cosmic
consciousness,” “a unity with all,” and “the attainment of self-actualization”
(Newberg and Newberg 2006, p. 184). But according to Andrew Newberg, the
leading authority of “neurotheology,” a spiritual experience may “reside along
a continuum from relatively brief feelings of ‘awe’ to profound unitary states”
(ibid.). “While it is difficult to define what makes a given experience spiritual, the
sense of having a union with some higher power or fundamental state of being
seems a crucial part of spiritual experiences” (ibid., p. 185). A “unitary state”
experience is at the extreme end of the continuum, says Newberg, and it is described
in the mystical literature of all the great religions. “When a person is in that state he
or she loses all sense of discrete being, and even the difference between self and
other is obliterated. There is no sense of the passing of time, and all that remains is
a perfect timeless undifferentiated consciousness” (ibid.). There is no place here to
describe the kind of brain activity to be observed when people meditate or contem-
plate. Suffice it to say that any human experience is ultimately processed by the
brain, in one way or another. Newberg is first to admit that “the brain therefore can
only provide a ‘secondhand rendition’ of external reality” (ibid., p. 184). According
to David Hay, when a person has a spiritual experience,
It is as if the psychological distance between the self and the rest of reality is shortened or
disappears. People realize that they are inextricably part and parcel of manifold reality,
hence it becomes more important to them to care for the rest of reality. In a direct and
concrete sense, when any part of the environment is damaged, they experience it as
personal damage and from this direct insight grows compassion (Hay and Nye 2006,
pp. 164–65).
So there seems to be ample evidence of the phenomenon of spiritual experience.

But spiritual experiences can be of different types and along a broad spectrum of
incidents and occurrences that are interpreted as being spiritual. Each individual
will experience his or her own spirituality in many different ways.
Can children have spiritual experiences? Certainly.
For one, children, enjoying an inherent sense of wonder and awe in the first
place, have sometimes had spiritual experiences at a very young age that shaped the
rest of their lives. Not all children, however, will have such dramatic experiences as
Catherine of Siena who had a revelation at six or Hildegard of Bingen who had
spiritual visions at three, but children are susceptible to encountering various
types of incidents that may be considered spiritual experiences (see below a list
1182 K. Bangert
of spiritual experiences young people reported on, according to With Their

Own Voices).
In the report With Their Own Voices, the authors asked young people what type
of spiritual experience they have had. 50 % or more young people admitted having
had these types of experiences: (1) having inner strength to make it through
a difficult time; (2) feeling a profound inner peace; (3) feeling an overwhelming
sense of love; (4) experiencing God’s energy, presence, or voice; (5) experiencing
a feeling of emotional closeness or connection to the people around you; (6) meeting
or listening to a spiritual teacher or master; (7) feeling of oneness with the earth and
all living things; seeing a miraculous (or not normally occurring) event; and
(8) experiencing a healing of your body (or witnessing such a healing). It must be
said, however, that not in all cases did these young people attach a spiritual meaning
to these experiences!
For another, children have a basic propensity and capacity for connecting
themselves to others. Unless that predisposition is thwarted through neglect,
abuse, or violence, children develop, very early in their life, what in German is
called Urvertrauen (basic sense of ultimate trust) from which grows
Selbstvertrauen (self-confidence). It is this urvertrauen (Erikson 1973) that enables
them to master life in general and to prevail over the adversities and difficulties that
may be put in their way, but more importantly, it allows them to trust other human
beings and to connect themselves to them. Children’s spiritual needs (“Who am I?
Where do I come from? Where am I going?”) seem to be closely linked to their
social-emotional needs (“Who do I belong to?”). In fact, “the need for connection to
human attachment figures parallels that of connection to the sacred or divine,” say
Granqvist and Dickie (2006, p. 201).
So children can be said to have spiritual experiences, not only because they have
a keen sense of connecting themselves to the people about them but also because
they have a receptive inclination to experience the Spiritual.
Some would rightly argue that one can be spiritual without having a spiritual (or
religious) experience. Indeed, it may be debated whether spirituality would always
imply an actual experience of (or encounter with) some kind of mysterium
tremendum – that some may even denigrate as being “esoteric” – or whether
spirituality could simply be understood as a general attitude of spirituality, rather
than an experience of spirituality. An experience of spirituality would signify some-
thing that overpowers or befalls us in that we become the recipients, as it were, of
such metaphysical incidents (Widerfahrnis). An attitude of spirituality, on the other
hand, would be a mind-set or predisposition which would allow us to engage in
spirituality and become open and receptive for spiritual insights and experiences.
I would like to suggest that, rightly understood, spirituality could actually be
both in that there may not be much difference between attitude and experience.
Perhaps it takes an attitude of spirituality to have spiritual experiences. Conversely,
in order for a certain experience to be interpreted as “spiritual” would require an
attitudinal predisposition toward spirituality. That means, if a person has
a spiritual attitude, his or her whole life could become a spiritual experience, a
spiritual journey. And if, as David Hay has argued (Hay and Nye 2006, p. 162ff),
we as humans all have a natural, inborn, even genetically embedded propensity

toward spirituality (see also Andrew Newberg’s Why God Won’t Go Away and
Dean Hamer’s The God Gene), then by cultivating, rather than disregarding, that
spiritual predisposition, we could all become susceptible to the experience of
spirituality.
With that, we are already in the very midst of the crucial question on how to
define spirituality for the purpose of better understanding spiritual well-being and
well-being in general; but before we address the definition problem in more detail,
let’s look at an important landmark study that will help us ascertain what young
people around the world are thinking about religion and spirituality.
40.2.5 A Review of the Study With Their Own Voices
In a global research endeavor, the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood

and Adolescence (Search Institute) explored and surveyed what young people aged
12–25 in 17 countries think of spiritual development. The center published With
Their Own Voices in 2008, a preliminary report on the first findings after having
surveyed 6,500 youths in eight countries and gathering insights from focus groups
in 13 countries. The researchers started out by stating some of their operating
hypotheses which assumed that spiritual development (1) is an intrinsic part of
being human; (2) involves both an inward journey and an outward journey; (3) is
a dynamic, nonlinear process that varies by individual and culture; (4) cannot be
separated from other aspects of one’s being; and (5) can be distinguished but not
separated from religious development.
They also assumed that there is “a constant, ongoing, and sometimes difficult
interplay with three core developmental processes.” While these three processes
receive different emphases in different cultures and traditions, they nevertheless
play an essential role in understanding spiritual development. The three core
processes identified were as follows: (1) connecting and belonging – seeking,
accepting, or experiencing significance in relationships and interdependence with
others, the world, or one’s sense of the Transcendent (often including an under-
standing of God or a higher power) and linking to narratives, beliefs, and traditions
that give meaning to human experience across time; (2) becoming aware of or
awakened to self and life – being or becoming aware of or awakening to one’s self,
others, and the universe (which may be understood as including the sacred or
divine) in ways that cultivate identity, meaning, and purpose; and (3) developing
a way of living – expressing one’s identity, passions, values, and creativity through
relationships, activities, and/or practices that shape bonds with oneself, family,
community, humanity, the world, and/or that which one believes to be transcendent
or sacred (ibid.).
According to the authors, spiritual development must be separated from other
aspects of one’s being; it must be relevant across gender, age, and socioeconomic,
cultural, and ethnic differences; it ought to be seen as involving an inward as well as
an outward journey; spirituality must be seen as contributing to human development
1184 K. Bangert
and hence being connected with other areas of development; it must be recognized as
a dynamic, nonlinear process that varies by individual and cultural differences;
spirituality may be approached in many different ways among individuals, cultures,
and traditions; it can be distinguished but not entirely separated from religious
development; spirituality may be seen as having the potential to contribute to the
well-being of self and/or others but also to harm self and/or others. According to the
authors, spirituality must also be defined without, however, giving the impression to
be final or comprehensive, thus inviting continued dialogue and exploration.
The study yielded some interesting results: Most young people surveyed believe
life has a spiritual dimension; only 7 % thought life had no spiritual dimension.
More than half said they had experienced a feeling of oneness with the earth and all
living things, but not all thought this was a spiritual experience. Many young people
want to talk about spiritual matters; a third said they frequently (at least monthly)
talked about such issues with friends. Most young people see themselves as being
spiritual, and most see themselves doing well spiritually; the rate for considering
themselves spiritual was highest in Thailand (88 %) and lowest in Australia (53 %).
Youths in the USA and the UK were most likely to say they were doing well
spiritually. Young people see spiritual development as “part of who you are” but
also as an intentional choice; seven of ten youths believe life has a meaning or
purpose. More than half (55 %) of the youth believed their spirituality had increased
over the last 3 years. Many youths believe in God or a higher power. Only 8 % said
they did not believe this, and 10 % did not know either way.
In asking what spirituality means, several options were given to them. Among
the answers most frequently given were (1) believing in God, (2) believing there is
a purpose in life, (3) having a deep sense of inner peace or happiness, and (4) being
true to one’s inner self. Which answer received the most affirmation depended very
much on the country and/or culture in which the question was asked. It is important
to note, however, that by giving choices to the youth surveyed, they were of course
somewhat predisposed to these answers. Hence, the answers given are probably to
be taken with a grain of salt.
For many young people, the concept of transcendence (to be understood as the
dimension that is beyond the visible world) is integral to an understanding of
spirituality. The answer most often given as being relevant to spirituality was the
notion of all living creatures being connected to each other. When asked about their
belief in a God, 57 % said they believe there is a God; 18 % said they believe in
a higher power, but not in a personal God; and 7 % believe in many gods or
goddesses. Only 8 % say they don’t believe in any God/gods/goddesses, and 10 %
did not know what to believe on this point.
When requested to choose one of only six items (family, friends, religious orga-
nizations, school, youth organization, or no one) while being asked “Who helps you
most in your spiritual life?” most of them opted for the family (44 %), friends were
next (15 %) with religious organization following close behind (15 %), while school
and youth organization were rarely mentioned (6 % and 4 %, respectively). Almost
one fifth of the respondents chose “no one” for their answer (18 %).
We see from this study that young people can easily relate to the concept of
spirituality. Many feel that life does have a spiritual dimension and that it is relevant
to them. Even though their answers to the questionnaire may at times have been
predisposed by the nature of the questions or the optional answers submitted to
them, these answers nevertheless reveal much of the nature of spirituality as seen by
young people. According to them, spirituality has something to do with what is
beyond the self; it has to do with finding purpose and meaning in life, experiencing
inner peace and happiness, and being true to oneself. Spirituality also has much to
do with relationships: being close to the people around you but also to all living
creatures and even to the environment. Many young people have had what can (but
must not necessarily) be interpreted as spiritual experiences. A personal God may
or may not be constitutive to their spirituality.
With these empirical results before us, let us now move to actually define
spirituality.
40.3 How Can Spirituality Be Defined?
In order to show that spirituality can have a positive effect upon children’s
well-being, it is now necessary to clearly define spirituality. Having distinguished
between spirituality and religiousness, having discussed the phenomenon of the
spiritual experience, and having looked at what children and youth think of
spirituality, we will now look at how other scholars have tried to define spirituality.
On the basis of their insights – but more so on the basis of what has surfaced
(by way of grounded theory) from children’s own perceptions of spirituality – we
hope to arrive at a definition that is comprehensive enough to lend itself for
examining spirituality’s effects on child well-being.
40.3.1 The Vagueness of Spirituality
While most people have a general idea about what spirituality is, few have a clear-
cut definition for it. “Spirituality is a topic on which everyone is an expert”
(Gorsuch and Walker 2006, p. 101). Even among scholars, the term spirituality
has been used in many different ways, and there is by no means a consensus about
its meaning. Donald Ratcliff and Rebecca Nye concluded that “the innovative
nomenclature employed to describe spirituality” is a special challenge for the
immediate future of research as that “terminology can vary significantly from study
to study when even the definition of what is being studied is fluid . . .” (Ratcliff and
Nye 2006, p. 481). Hanan Alexander and David Carr express a similar view:
Spirituality is difficult to define because of deep ambiguities of everyday usage that have
encouraged educational theorists, policy makers, and practitioners to pursue diverse social,
cultural, and political aims, agendas, and outcomes in the name of spiritual education
(Alexander and Carr 2006, p. 74).
1186 K. Bangert
Gill Main, in an as yet unpublished study on religion, spirituality, and well-

being, noted that “many authors have highlighted the lack of clarity and differen-
tiation between terms in studies of the impact of religion and spirituality,” and she
asked for “clearer definitions and distinctions” between those terms (Main 2010).
There may be good reasons for this absence of a clear definition of spirituality.
Perhaps, spirituality is too complex a concept as to lend itself for an exact defini-
tion. It is rather elusive and ephemeral in nature and is perhaps reflecting the
complexity of life in general. Rebecca Nye is probably right in observing that
Attempts to define [spirituality] closely, and derive an adequate ‘operational definition’ can
be sure of one thing: misrepresenting spirituality’s complexity, depth and fluidity. Spiritu-
ality is like the wind – though it might be experienced, observed and described, it cannot be
‘captured’ – we delude ourselves to think otherwise, either in the design or research or in
analytical conclusions (Nye 1999, p. 58).
But despite that notion, it was none other than Nye who had come up, as we have
already seen, with a “core of children’s spirituality,” which she defined as relational
consciousness. It was an awareness of children about what was going on in their
own mind with regard to the importance of their relationships with themselves,
to others, to the world, and to God. Nye spoke of a meta-consciousness that allowed
children to look into and beyond themselves. Despite the difficulty of defining
spirituality, Nye made an important contribution to narrow that definition to some
of its essentials. Furthermore, children questioned by Coles, Nye, or the Search
Institute have given us ample evidence from which to draw a valid definition of
spirituality.
I will now zoom in (telescopically, so to speak) on what I believe is the core of
spirituality and, having done so, zoom out to giving a (wide-angle) comprehensive
definition of the term.
40.3.2 Toward a Core Definition
In a consensus report on spirituality and health, sponsored by the US-American

National Institute for Healthcare Research, spirituality was described as “the
feelings, thoughts, experiences, and behaviors that arise from a search for the
sacred” (Larson et al. 1998). The interesting notion about this definition is not
only the term sacred here but also the search aspect. Spirituality as the encounter
with the sacred, so the implication, is not something that one achieves or arrives at,
but something that is being pursued. Koenig et al. define spirituality as “the
personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate questions about life,
about meaning and about relationship with the sacred or transcendent” (Koenig
et al. 2001, p. 18).
Roehlkepartain et al., in their keynote chapter with which they introduce their
Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, start off with
two definitions they think may be a good starting point. The first one, by
Robert Coles, is perhaps not so much a definition as it is a description of the

human dilemma which may lie at the basis of all spirituality:
We are the creatures who recognize ourselves as “adrift” or as “trapped” or as “stranded” or
as being in some precarious relationship to this world; and as users of language, we are the
ones who not only take in the world’s “objects” but build them up in our minds, and use
them (through thoughts and fantasies) to keep from feeling alone, and to gain for ourselves
a sense of where we came from and where we are and where we’re going (Coles 1990, p. 8).
The human dilemma of feeling alone, stranded, and cast away – like Robinson
Crusoe on his remote island – may indeed be the substratum that requires us to look
not only for life’s meaning and purpose but also for some way of connecting
ourselves to others, to the universe, to God, and to that which is beyond ourselves.
Then the Handbook presents a second quote, by P. L. Benson et al., that thanks to
its succinctness can hardly be improved upon in terms of a general and yet concise
definition of spirituality:
Spiritual development is the process of growing the intrinsic human capacity for self-
transcendence, in which the self is embedded in something greater than the self, including
the sacred (Benson et al. 2003).
According to that definition, spirituality has to do with a person’s self-

transcendence, i.e., one’s consciousness of being embedded into something
greater than oneself. This “something greater” may ultimately be the universe or
a transcendent reality or God. But it may also be something much less: such as
learning to be empathetic with one’s brother or sister or a friend or a person in need.
In any case, being spiritual means to go beyond ourselves. Self-transcendence, then,
may well be considered the crucial issue of spirituality. I consider this to be an
excellent workable definition that seems to encapsulate what may indeed be
the core of spirituality – although it does not, of course, reflect all the different
facets, intricacies, connotations, and complexities of spirituality which the term
also entails.
Roehlkepartain et al., after offering the above definition as a “starting point,”
then encourage other authors “to articulate their own approach and assumptions,
in hopes that the resulting diversity enriches the dialogue and understanding”
(2006b, p. 6).
If we take the two citations together, then spiritual development may be under-
stood as the process by which we are lifted from our own human dilemma of being
alienated and “cast away” on a lonely planet, if you will, in order to connect
ourselves with the outside world (including the Sacred) by first looking inside
ourselves and then beyond ourselves. That, I think, is meant by self-transcendence.
Human life, if it is to be spiritual, may be understood as a journey from a castaway
self to the whole (of the universe) and back to the self. But in returning to its
own self by having connected itself to the whole, the self is regaining itself, or
rather “its self,” in a new way, namely, as a connected self, as a self that is conscious
of its identity with the whole (i.e., with the world about us, even with the whole
universe). A person conscious of being connected (or being one) with others, with
the world, and with the transcendent being is a spiritual person.
1188 K. Bangert
The experience of self-transcendence, i.e., the realization of being connected to

the whole, is at the core of spirituality. In this experience, the self is not dissolved by
the whole but enshrouded by it. (Incidentally, the German word aufgehoben
has both meanings: dissolved and enshrouded; but it is the latter meaning in the
sense of “being held secure” which is applicable here). In the experience of self-
transcendence, the self remains intact; in fact, the self comes to its true self by being
held secure through its connection with the whole, with the Holy, and with the
ultimate transcendence. So the quest for spirituality may be understood as a journey
from the (castaway) self to the whole and back to a regained and connected self.
We are not alone.
But, maybe it’s the other way around: Maybe our spiritual existence is not so
much a journey from the self to the whole and back to the self, but instead a voyage
from the whole to the self and back to the whole, for our identity with the whole can
also be considered to be our very first primordial state. If that sounds enigmatic, it
will require some explanation.
When the human fetus develops in the maternal uterus, it subconsciously
experiences itself as being one with the only universe it knows: mother’s womb.
Inside, there is no distinction between the self and the world! The self and the
universe are one! At birth, that begins to change; the newborn is “cast away,” as it
were, into another universe: the world as we know it. That new world will soon
force upon the child the stark reality that he or she is not one with the universe but
quite separate from it. But it is only about 2 years after birth (somewhere between
the 18th and 36th month, so developmental psychology tells us) that the young child
begins to realize (albeit subconsciously) that it is actually separate from other
people and other things. It is the time when the child becomes conscious of his or
her own identity, while at the same time becoming conscious of the outside world.
Individuality is created – not only with its positive potential for self-realization
(also called individuation) but also with its negative aspects of isolation, alienation,
and anxiety. We’re stranded!
The German psychologist Norbert Bischof (1998) has analyzed this experience
of the young child and concluded that this transition (of becoming aware of the self
and the world) constitutes a collective human experience that forms the basis for
most of the world’s cosmogony myths. He gives numerous examples showing how
creation myths almost invariably have two phases: The first phase is represented by
a primordial ocean, an undefined chaos, a murky mist, an impenetrable darkness,
an amorphous mass, a circular form, an egg, sometimes a serpent, or a sea
monster. This undivided oneness, so Bischof, represents the early phase when the
child is still in a state of symbiotic fusion, still experiencing an oceanic feeling of
oneness, of still being united with the world about him (or her). The child is merged
with infinity, amalgamated with everything and nothingness (Bischof 1998,
p. 157ff).
Then there is the second phase seen in cosmogony myths, when that amorphous,
oceanic whole is disrupted or cut asunder through a sprout, a rope, a ladder, a tree,
a mountain, an island, a phallus, a man, a woman, or a god – or sometimes it simply
breaks apart, giving way to a human being or to a human couple. This phase,
according to Bischof, represents the experience of the child, about 2 or 2½ years

old, when the child subconsciously or consciously awakens to the realization that it
is an individual all of its own, separate from Mum, Dad, and the rest of the world
(Bischof 1998, p. 191ff).
To give an example, according to one Indian creation myth, there was
a primordial ocean upon which floated a golden egg. One day, the egg breaks
apart and from it emerges Purusha, the first man, the eternal Lord of the universe.
While Purusha had still slumbered inside the egg, he had been free from anxiety, but
now, as he is looking at the vastness of the sea, he feels very lonely and
anxious. To no longer feel that lonesomeness, he divides himself up into a male
half and a female half, the latter being named Viraj. Purusha and Viraj unite
in love, from which springs the rest of humanity as well as the animal world
(Bischof 1998, p. 217).
Such cosmogony myths (which can be found around the world in all cultures and
religions) encapsulate man’s primordial experience of the original symbiotic
union with an amorphous whole that is subsequently cut asunder so that man is
thrown into existence along with the rest of the world. It is the constitutive
experience for the human dilemma of alienation and isolation. The sexual
union of which the above myth speaks may partly compensate for the loss of that
original oceanic feeling, but the yearning for the former oneness and wholeness will
linger on. Incidentally, one can find similar cosmogony patterns in the Babylonian
Enuma Elish as well as in the two Biblical creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2
(see Bischof). The point is that every human being, while painfully aware of
having lost the original primordial oneness with the whole, will always long to
regain that oneness. So in this sense, the spiritual journey is from man’s identity
with the whole to a lonely self and back again to the whole to which the self is
connected.
A spiritual person or youth, then, may be considered as one who, conscious of
his or her own alienation, anxiety, isolation, and vanished oneness, has begun to
walk on a path leading up to a newly regained consciousness about being connected
to others, to the world, even to the whole universe, or, theologically speaking, to
God, who is all in all (1Cor 15:28). It is the path of self-transcendence, of looking
inside oneself in order to look beyond oneself. If it is true, as Norbert Bischof
suggested, that all human beings start out with the experience of oneness, then each
of us will have a subconscious residual memory of that oneness which we all wish
to regain in some way or another.
The experience of self-transcendence could be understood, then, either (a) as an
occurrence through which a person encounters what is said to be the Sacred, the
Transcendent, the Holy, the whole, or the universe or, less dramatic, (b) as an
incident through which a person experiences a sense of empathetic connectedness,
of belonging, and of being one with others, with nature, with the world, or with God.
To sum up, Benson et al.’s definition cited above (about spiritual development
being a process of acquiring the capacity for self-transcendence) may be considered
an appropriate definition that encapsulates the very core of spirituality and spiritual
development.
1190 K. Bangert
However, the statement is also somewhat limited in that it defines only the core
of spirituality, not its constituent parts or its multifaceted expressions. There are
a number of aspects to spirituality which the core definition does not explicitly
capture. Spirituality is a “multidimensional domain” (Roehlkepartain et al. 2006b,
p. 9), and in order to make spirituality work for the well-being of children, we need
to be more specific, more explicit, more concrete. We could ask: What are the
prerequisites or fundamentals that make self-transcendence possible?
40.3.3 Toward a Comprehensive Definition
If self-transcendence is at the core of spirituality, what is the periphery? Or better,

what are the layers through which one will have to dig in order to get to the core?
Spirituality may be seen as an overarching concept that encompasses the constitu-
ents needed to become a spiritual, self-transcendent person. It is giving flesh to the
bones, when we ask for the ingredients of spirituality. While the whole is more than
the sum of its parts, the whole would fall apart without the parts.
There is another reason for identifying the constituents of spirituality. Since our
fundamental concern is children’s well-being, we must relate spirituality and
spiritual experience to children’s well-being and to their everyday environment.
Spirituality must work for well-being. If it doesn’t, why bother with it?
Is there any evidence that spirituality contributes to child well-being and chil-
dren thriving? Too little, I think. There is some evidence to suggest that being part
of a religious group contributes to well-being, such as health, for instance (King and
Benson 2006). Most of the studies that looked at religiousness and its impact on
well-being did not differentiate between religiousness and spirituality. Only
Dowling et al. found that spirituality and religiousness can both be associated
with thriving (Dowling et al. 2004). Those findings were later confirmed by the
Search Institute (King and Benson 2006, p. 389). That study came to the conclusion
“that spirituality may have an influence on youth thriving beyond that of religion”
(ibid.). But on the whole, the evidence of spirituality enhancing children’s
well-being is too scant as yet. And part of the problem seems to have been that
there was no consensus of what spirituality was in the first place. How can we hope
to document the impact of spirituality on well-being if spirituality is as yet fuzzy
and ill-defined?
Hence, we will need to break the core definition down into specific and concrete
components that can be identified, observed, taught, learnt, and maybe even
measured. “Unambiguous measures are essential” (Gorsuch and Walker 2006,
p. 93). It is also worth noting that the “vast majority of researchers in the field
agree that spirituality has multiple domains” (Roehlkepartain et al. 2006b, p. 9).
The challenge would be to identify such domains and make them work toward
children’s well-being. Gorsuch and Walker have suggested the following measure-
ment domains: belief, motivation, behavior, experience, and relationships among
the domains (Gorsuch and Walker 2006, p. 93f). “Being unambiguous begins with
identifying the domains of measurement and then proceeds by using high-quality

measurement methods” (ibid., p. 93).
In order to come up with a comprehensive definition of spirituality that involves
measureable domains, this author perused the spirituality literature (such as Hay
and Nye 1998/2006; Roehlkepartain et al. 2006a; Allen 2008), wrote down a great
number of “ingredients” that seem to emerge from numerous studies, discussed
these with a number of child well-being experts, and summarized these components
to form the following six domains which are suggested as being able to serve as
stepping stones to children’s spiritual well-being: (1) congregational grounding or
embedment, (2) relationship with others (family, friends, peers, and neighbors),
(3) relationship with oneself, (4) relationship with a transcendent reality, (5) values
and convictions, (6) and a sense of responsibility. I will now discuss these six
domains in more detail:
Congregational grounding is taken to indicate the extent to which a child is
rooted or embedded in a spiritual community. For want of a better term, congre-
gational is used here to designate a communal body that shares fellowship and
spiritual values (Roehlkepartain and Patel 2006c, p. 325). Although the term is
usually referring to Christian church fellowships, it is applied here in a generic
sense and may refer to any type of spiritual or quasi-religious community, as
“spiritual development can occur outside traditional religious contexts” (Donnelly
et al. 2006, p. 240). By a quasi-religious community, I mean a communal fellowship
that may cater to certain spiritual values, responsibilities, relationships, and even
rituals and symbols, without necessarily being religious. It is within such contexts
that children’s natural spirituality is nurtured and developed, in order to mature.
Children may lose their spirituality unless they are encouraged by a well-meaning,
warm social environment. They develop and nurture their spirituality not just by
themselves but through interaction with others. They need a sense of belonging and
togetherness, in order for their spirituality to flourish and to prosper. If children are
not part of such a spiritual group, they will not only lack the spiritual foundation to
develop their own spirituality, but they will also miss a sense of being part of
a larger whole – which in our view lies at the base of any spiritual experience. One
cannot measure the genuineness of a spiritual or religious experience, but one
should be able to measure congregational embedment or grounding. Children
embedded into a spiritual community are likely to thrive and flourish. At least in
the United States, there is evidence that youth “who live in high-poverty areas are
more likely to stay on track academically if they are also high in church attendance”
(Boyatzis 2008, p. 49). There is also evidence “that higher rates of church atten-
dance correlate with lower rates of drug and alcohol use among adolescents”
(Gorsuch and Walker 2006, p. 92). While spirituality can be experienced outside
institutional religion, congregational fellowship can serve to mediate a personal
spirituality that helps individuals to flourish.
The quality of a child’s relationship with others seems to be a major key to his or
her well-being, and the literature on spirituality and well-being emphasizes the
importance of relationships for a child’s spirituality and well-being. A child does
1192 K. Bangert
not live by himself and will not thrive by herself, but only through relationships.
Hence, the quality of a child’s relationship with parents, friends, peers, relatives,
acquaintances, and neighbors can be a major source of well-being or sadness. Of
all relationships, the bonds to a child’s parents are, in general, of utmost importance
to the child’s well-being, as is documented, for instance, in the study “With Their
Own Voices.” Perhaps, being spiritual simply means being human. But being
human has to do with relationships. It may mean finding the right balance between
catering to one’s own individuality and autonomy while at the same time respecting
others and relating to others for each other’s mutual benefit. “Persons are not
independent, autonomous entities but are instead fundamentally interdependent
with one another” (Markus and Kitayama 1998, p. 69). Loving relationships
also have a bearing on self-determination. The quality of relationships and the
capacity for autonomy are interdependent to each other. “Children with parents who
are nurturing and warm, autonomy supportive, and involved in their child’s life
are more autonomously self-regulated, are more competent, and have higher
grades in school than children with controlling parents” (Kneezel and Emmons
2006, p. 267).
The relationship with oneself is crucial for a child’s spirituality and well-being.
If spirituality is essentially the capacity for self-transcendence, then it’s of vital
importance how a child relates to him- or herself. To be spiritual is to look inside
oneself – in order to look beyond oneself. How do I see myself? How do I value
myself? How do I see myself in relation to others? What is my place in the world?
With age, a young person may also ask: Do I make myself dependent on the way
others see me or do I have a self-assurance all my own? How do I deal with my own
feelings of joy and exuberance, but also of shame, anxiety, guilt, hurt, and rejec-
tion? How do I cope with the difficulties and vicissitudes of life? The ability to cope
with one’s own feelings and desires may very well be the most important factor to
a child’s well-being. Beyond that, a child’s view of his or her future is also an
important spiritual ingredient: Who am I? Who do I want to be? What does the
future hold for me? Being spiritual could mean to be conscious of one’s own
(God-given) identity even though a person may change over time. Robert Coles
once asked fifth graders to jot down “who you are, what about you matters most and
what makes you the person you are.” One girl spontaneously wrote: “I’m the one at
home who can make our Gramps laugh.” But then she had second thoughts, gave it
another try, and handed her paper to Coles who read: “I’m like I am now, but I could
change when I grow up. You never know who you’ll be until you get to that age
when you’re all grown. But God must know all the time” (Coles 1990, p. 309).
Spirituality has to do with confronting yourself, becoming your very self, and
staying true to yourself.
A child’s relationship with a transcendent reality is another ingredient of
spiritual well-being. This relationship entails an awareness of being part of
a whole, being one with the universe, or being one with God, if you will, rather
than viewing oneself as being separated and isolated from everything and every-
body. For the sake of an intercultural and interreligious spirituality, we must not
confine that transcendent reality here to a personal God, but widen it to include such
ideas as a universal consciousness, a higher self, or simply an awareness of the
whole of which I am conscious to be a part. Learning to be part of a universal whole,
or being in touch with the transcendent reality, does not require us to lose touch with
our individual identity; on the contrary, the awareness of our own identity is
a prerequisite for being able to recognize ourselves as being part of the whole.
It has been shown that the perception of individuality and identity is a sine qua non
for feeling any kind of empathy (empathy being the capability of identifying myself
with someone other than myself). Only those children were able to be empathetic
toward others who were already aware of their own identity (Bischof 1998). Being
true to yourself while at the same time being aware of the whole is what constitutes
the core of spirituality (self-transcendence).
Excursion note: What we here call transcendent reality can be understood not so much as
another worldliness but rather in terms of the spiritual or nonmaterial dimensions of our
world (the Transcendent being also the immanent). A word must also be said here about
those who feel that spiritual development is of necessity connected with faith in a personal/
theistic divinity. Should children be taught to believe in a personal God? My answer is
twofold: For one, there are indications that children are natural theists anyway (Kelemen
2004) and, hence, need not be taught to believe in God; they already do – unless explicitly
taught not to. For another, children’s concepts of God certainly change over time, and we
must allow for those changes. Goldman distinguishes between intuitive, concrete, and
abstract religious thinking, which can be demonstrated to coincide with certain ages or
stages in children’s development (Goldman 1964, p. 51ff). A young child still has a very
physical, anthropomorphic understanding of God (an old, bearded man with Palestinian
clothes). A late junior/preadolescent abandons crude anthropomorphic thinking in favor of
a supernatural or superhuman understanding of God, and yet for God to be present, he must
still be present in person. For an adolescent child (the age of 13 marking a “watershed”),
God is conceived more in terms of symbolic, abstract, and spiritualized ideas, unseen and
unseeable (Goldman 1964, p. 220–246). The challenge of spiritual development and
education is to allow the child to grow in its understanding of the Transcendent from
a physical/anthropomorphic to a nonmaterial/spiritual concept of the divine. Children must
be allowed to develop their own understanding of divinity and transcendence and not be
coerced into believing dogmatic tenets about God.
Convictions and values should also be considered of key importance to a child’s

spiritual well-being. Convictions have to do with what we believe about ourselves
and the world, about the meaning and purpose of life, etc. Convictions influence
our behavior, attitudes, and priorities. Values are more basic; they constitute the
foundation on which these beliefs and convictions are based. Values are virtues:
They have to do with cultivating integrity, compassion, forgiveness, empathy,
altruism, kindness, etc. Values help us in our decision-making and are especially
crucial in deciding moral issues. People faced with moral dilemmas report that
their reliance on spiritual or religious values helped them in their decision-making
(Walker and Reimer 2006, p. 226). A child conscious of his or her values and
convictions will be better off than a child that is always unsure of everything or
does not have an opinion or conviction either way. Beliefs and values constitute
the foundation on which a child is grounded and hence make up an important
1194 K. Bangert
part of a child’s well-being. Values and convictions are the guideposts or

handrails of life. A child with values will know where to tread and where not to
tread – not because it is forbidden to do so but because the child has internalized
these values. However, it is probably not enough to have internalized values but to
also develop what may be called a value consciousness, i.e., an awareness of the
relevance and importance of values for coping with the vicissitudes of life. Being
value conscious means being spiritual and will contribute to a child’s spiritual
well-being.
Finally, a sense of responsibility will also be part and parcel of a child’s
spirituality. This sense of responsibility has to do with a person’s commitment
directed toward the well-being of family, friends, neighbors, the community, the
nation, and even the world at large. While spirituality certainly has to do with
personal growth, it also has to do with civil engagement. According to Donnelly
et al., there may be two pathways leading from spirituality to an engagement for
civil development: (1) for one, spirituality leads to developing virtues such as
charity and concern for others; (2) for another, spirituality coincides with partici-
pating in a spiritual or religious congregation that provides an environment for
developing social capital and a common concern for community service and civil
engagement (Donnelly et al. 2006). While there is some evidence for the first
pathway leading to civil engagement, there is greater evidence for the second.
Numerous studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between religion and
community service. One reason is because children’s and adolescents’ congrega-
tional participation “can lead to increased and deeper relationships with peers and
adults, and these relationships can become avenues for recruitment into service”
(Donnelly et al. 2006, p. 242). Also, faith communities generally promote values
and virtues indispensible for civic engagement, and they often deliberate over
issues of public concern and even call for voluntary service. On the other hand,
there can also be a reverse effect in that civil engagement can lead to an increased
concern for others, and this concern for others “in turn can lead one to higher levels
of spirituality” (Donnelly et al. 2006, p. 241). Hence, “participating in community
service may influence spiritual development” (Donnelly et al. 2006, p. 249). So the
relationship between spirituality and civic engagement appears to be bidirectional.
However, a note of caution may be in order: While spirituality can lead to civil
engagement, it can also lead to escapism (Weltflucht), if an overemphasis is placed
on the purity of the soul, on self-perfection, even asceticism. Then this may
lead away from civil engagement. But if spirituality is to be understood as the
“capacity for self-transcendence,” then it must be a journey not only to the self but
beyond the self.
I have just elaborated on the six domains which I suggest are the ingredients of
spirituality and will be needed in order to experience spiritual well-being. It is
an attempt to elucidate on what is otherwise described as “the capacity for self-
transcendence” or “relational consciousness.” Or, to use yet another term, spiritual
well-being has to do with the ability to connect. That’s why it is useful to once again
emphasize the holistic nature of spirituality.
40.3.4 Spirituality’s Holistic Nature
In discussing the core definition of spirituality, we suggested that, based on

the primeval experience of children’s oneness with the whole, children have an
inner sense of connectedness. This would explain why children may be said to
have a natural propensity to spirituality. Their past experience of being one with
the uterus, one with their mother, and one with the universe as they know it is
still very much present in their subconscious mind. They want to continue to
feel connected; they long for union, for security, for coziness. But they also need
to discover themselves and their identity and probe their self-sufficiency, but
in such a way as to remain connected. Children will test how far they can go
on their own but need reassurance of being able to return to the nest when
they feel like it.
Children have a sense of interconnectedness. Their individuality is not separated
from the world around them. In that sense, children have always anticipated what
modern science and philosophy have only lately discovered: the interconnectivity
of everything. According to James Jeans, physicist and mathematician, the universe
is not an agglomeration of particles but an organism whose interconnectedness is so
intricate that no part of it can be clearly delineated from the whole. “Individuality is
replaced by community” (Jeans 1942, p. 204). This notion was reflected in the
process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead who assumed the unity of nature
and the unity of being and who denied any independent existence:
“The misconception which has haunted the philosophical literature throughout
the centuries is the notion of ‘independent existence’. There is no such mode of
existence; every entity is only to be understood in terms of the way in which it is
interwoven with the rest of the universe” (Whitehead 1947/1968, p. 91). According
to L. B. Murphy, “the child shares with other organisms a biological tendency to
achieve wholeness” (Murphy 1987, p. 101). Spirituality, then, implies a sense of
being connected to the whole.
Spirituality should not be seen as just one aspect of human life. To be sure, we
can distinguish human development according to its physical, mental, educational,
social, or other dimensions and then add the spiritual dimension as though it were
an additional component on top of the others; an aspect on which we need to
focus at least occasionally. But instead, spirituality ought to be seen as an
all-encompassing, overarching concept having a bearing on all aspects of human
life. According to Roehlkepartain et al., spirituality is a “complex, multidimensional
phenomenon” (p. 9). Spirituality is holistic in nature. It touches upon everything that
makes up a human being or a child’s life. It is multifaceted and has the potential of
influencing, reshaping, and even completely overturning one’s whole life. Spirituality
can change direction, shift priorities, set new goals in life, and help refocus one’s
perspective on life. It is a “life-shaping force” (ibid., p. 10).
It is an assumption not only of this author that spirituality will positively
contribute to a person’s well-being. If this is true and there is evidence that this is
indeed the case (see Lerner et al. 2006, and Crawford et al. 2006), then it follows
1196 K. Bangert
that every effort should be made to preserve, develop, and nurture children’s
spirituality from early on. While humans are still capable of some drastic changes
later in life, the human mind will never enjoy the kind of plasticity found in young
children. Hence, the earlier a child learns the ingredients of what constitutes
a spiritual life, the more it will benefit from its positive outcomes. If children
learn early on how to connect, entertain good relationships, feel part of a greater
group, be conscious of values and beliefs, learn a sense of responsibility, and are
capable of transcending themselves to feel part of a greater whole, then they will
contribute positively to self, family, and community.
We will now turn to the crucial question of how spirituality can actually
contribute to children’s well-being.
40.4 How Can Spiritual Well-Being Be Achieved – and

Measured?
This handbook is about child well-being. The specific purpose of this article is to
ask what spirituality is and in what way it can contribute to child well-being. In
order for us to reflect on spiritual well-being, we need to further define some
essential terms here.
40.4.1 Further Definitions
So far, the reader had to cope with concepts like spirituality and well-being,
spiritual well-being, spiritual development, and spiritual education. While they
are all related to each other, we must also distinguish them from another and use
correct language to describe them. Hence, for the sake of clarification, it is
worthwhile to define these concepts.
Following Benson et al.’s suggestion, we are defining spirituality here as the
capacity for self-transcendence (in which the self is embedded in something greater
than the self . . .) or better still – since nobody can be said to actually have achieved
that capacity – as the disposition for self-transcendence. The capacity for self-
transcendence is not something which, once attained, will continue to be at an
individual’s disposal. Rather, it is something a person will have to continue to strive
for. It is something one can lose sight of. It will always remain something to be
attained, to be acquired. It may be more of an attitude and aptitude rather than an
acquired and secured capacity. Hence, the inclusion of spirituality into the concept
of well-being can only be a development process. That’s why Benson et al. pre-
ferred to speak of spiritual development as being “the process of growing the
intrinsic capacity for self-transcendence . . .” (Benson et al. 2003).
Thinking of spirituality as a process makes it virtually impossible to speak of
spiritual maturity. While adulthood and general maturity may be seen as the objective
of a child’s development process, it appears inept to speak of spiritual maturity.
It would also be inappropriate to associate spiritual immaturity with children and link
spiritual maturity with adults. There may be adults with only a rudimentary spiritu-
ality, and there are children displaying an astounding spirituality even at a tender age.
One is reminded of Jesus saying: “Unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Math. 18:3).
It is reported that some cultures traditionally attribute a high spirituality to children.
In fact, the younger they are, the more spiritual they are said to be, with newborns being
considered the most spiritual of all living humans (Gottlieb 2006, p. 151). Becoming an
adult may not always be conducive to being spiritual. If there is such a thing as spiritual
maturity, it may be that we are born with it and must learn to preserve and nurture it.
Still, Hay et al. have given a definition of mature spirituality (or rather, of its effects)
that is worth noting and that may also constitute spiritual well-being:
A mature spirituality translates into inner peace and harmony, into the certainty of having
made the right basic choices, into the ability to dedicate one’s thoughts, feelings, and efforts
in a balanced, “stress-free” way to both devotion to the sacred and the execution of one’s
daily chores, into a sharing of joyful giving and receiving in relation to one’s human and
physical environment (Hay et al. 2006, p. 52).
While spiritual maturity may be considered an objective to be attained, we must

nevertheless recognize that spirituality is always in progress.
Adults may help children to progress spiritually. If they do, it becomes an
educative process. Spiritual education would be understood as a mediatory process
by which children are learning to acquire knowledge and skills that will help them
to develop their intrinsic capacity for self-transcendence. How do children or
adolescents acquire this capacity? By learning the various ingredients that
constitute spirituality: learning how to relate to one’s own self, to others, and
to a transcendent reality and learning to become conscious of values and
convictions and to take responsibility for self, family, community, and the world.
It is thought that this capacity for self-transcendence contributes to a child’s
well-being. But – what is well-being? And what is spiritual well-being?
40.4.2 What Is Spiritual Well-Being?
In general terms, well-being could be described as the fulfillment or actualization of

a person’s unique potentials. In a recent paper on children’s well-being designed to
introduce the concept of child well-being to European governments and societies,
well-being is defined as “realizing one’s unique potential through physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual development . . . in relation to self, others and the
environment” (EIESP 2012, p. 5). Well-being, too, is a holistic concept. It is an all-
encompassing notion.
Well-being has both an objective and subjective dimension to it, as was already
indicated above. Children’s well-being can be understood in terms of objective
criteria that can be measured through certain objective indicators representing
certain domains such as good nutrition, good health, and quality education, but it
must also be understood in terms of a child’s subjective feeling of well-being.
1198 K. Bangert
Subjective well-being has recently given rise to a number of studies in which

children are questioned on their perception of themselves. For children to really
flourish, they themselves must feel good about who they are, what they can, who
they will be, etc.
On the basis of the foregoing, we can define spiritual well-being as the positive
effects spirituality will exert toward the realization of a person’s (or a child’s)
unique potential. These positive effects can be manifold, as spirituality is holistic in
nature. They can have an effect on an individual’s health and physical well-being,
on the state of mind, on his or her attitude to acquire knowledge and skills, on how
to entertain good relationships and to take responsibility for them, and on how to
cope with the vagaries of life. It is assumed that paying due attention to the spiritual
dimension will be a key factor in realizing one’s unique potential.
Having defined these auxiliary terms, we must now ask: How can spiritual
well-being be acquired and achieved?
40.4.3 Achieving Spiritual Well-Being
Spirituality, according to Daniel Helminiak, is not only a concern for the self and
for the Transcendent but also a lived reality. Spirituality is a way of life (Helminiak
1996, p. 34). Spirituality ought to translate the sense of connectedness into every-
day life. Spirituality must work for well-being. Spirituality, as a lived reality, should
have the very practical effect of making children a bit more invulnerable to the pain
and disappointments that life may put in their way. In this context, a quote from
Robert Louis Stevenson is often used as an analogy: “Life is not a matter of holding
good cards but of playing a poor hand well.” Pain and suffering can have either
a debilitating or a steeling effect. As Lois Barclay Murphy writes: “There are ups
and downs, downs and ups, and the growing child begins to feel that he can get out
of the downs and help to make his life good” (Murphy 1987, p. 104). Spirituality
may give children the paraphernalia to thrive and to make them more resilient.
It may help children to want to be resilient. The spiritual child has an optimistic
bias. It is oriented toward the future, expecting the best.
On the basis of the comprehensive definition for spirituality advanced above,
any effort or program designed to improve the spiritual well-being of children
should aim at achieving the following:
– Ensure children are firmly grounded in a spiritual community that offers
(1) guidance, meaning, stories, and histories; (2) reflection, contemplation, and
meditation; (3) structure and rituals; and (4) social embedment and communal
bonds – without in any way coercing children or putting undue pressure on them.
– Ensure children have a close and warm relationship with parents, siblings,
relatives, friends, school peers, and neighbors and learn how to nurture these
relationships by giving and taking, by learning to respect their own needs and
others’ needs, and also by asking questions such as: What do I gain from this
relationship? What are its challenges? And what can I learn from it?
– Ensure children take time to reflect on themselves: on their needs, on their

feelings, on the way to give expression to them, on how to fulfill their needs
or cope with unfulfilled needs, on being aware of their great potential and talent,
on who they are or want to be, and on the visions they may have for their future.
– Ensure children learn to see themselves not only as precious, unique, and
irreplaceable individuals but also as part of a greater universal whole that
comprises many things at once: the family and community, the ethnic group
and nationhood, mankind and the world community but also flora and fauna, the
whole universe, the spiritual realm, and an invisible transcendent reality (that in
a theistic environment is usually referred to as God).
– Ensure children acquire convictions and values about the meaning and purpose
of life and on what to expect from life; on culture and society; on religious
beliefs, religious diversity, and religious tolerance; on how to cope with
society’s economic, ecological, and social needs; on culturally accepted behav-
ior, virtues, human rights, and children’s rights; on the importance of order, law,
and legislation; on how to cope with conflict, how to become peacemakers, and
how to avoid crime and war; and on how to set priorities, formulate objectives,
and achieve aims.
– Ensure children develop a sense of responsibility not only for taking part in
household chores but also by contributing to the well-being of their family and
community; children should learn to look after themselves, their home, and their
neighborhood; know how to relate to strangers and foreigners and care for plants
and animals and their whole environment; and be taught that one does not live
just for oneself and one’s loved ones but also to make the world a better place for
all to live in.
If this sounds like an ambitious and idealistic program for life-long learning,
then so be it. But the question is: How can all this be acquired and achieved? It
seems that the family would be the appropriate place to impart such skills. But
parents and families may not always be in the position to mediate these insights.
What, then, can the community, the society do to facilitate this? Certainly, one
would need to develop a number of avenues and methodologies that would lend
themselves to convey these spiritual ideas, skills, and experiences.
In a recent article on values, the German theologian Matthias Kroeger suggested
that the impartation of values and spiritual insights needs certain venues or places
conducive not only for an intellectual acquisition of values but also for their
emotional and spiritual appropriation and internalization (Kroeger 2011). Such
places (and persons!) through which values are mediated are necessary for several
reasons: the obvious multiplicity of values existing in a modern society, the
enormous influence of the modern media which crowd out traditional values, and
the inalienable right of exercising the freedom to choose one’s own values.
According to Kroeger, people need structures and places where values can slowly
be acquired and internalized until they are firmly grounded in a person’s soul and
subconscious. Values cannot be dictated; they must be mediated through an atmo-
sphere of informal learning, assisted by music, art, poetry, and rituals. Churches and
1200 K. Bangert
religious places of learning and worship have been the traditional venues for
acquiring values and worldviews. But in modern societies, these venues no longer
hold the attraction for young people and have been crowded out by a secularism that
often comes with an arbitrariness and libertinism regarding the principles guiding
one’s life. There is no dearth of good values in this day and age, but only a lack of
places to acquire them.
In light of religions and churches gradually losing their influence on children
and youth, alternative (or, if you like, additional) venues and methods may be
envisaged through which children and young people may acquire spiritual
skills and spiritual well-being. I myself envision what one might call “intercon-
fessional youth clubs” (ICYC) designed to help young people nurture and
develop their spirituality. The objective of such clubs would be to convey to children
and young people the essentials of life so as to attain physical, mental, social, and
spiritual well-being, and children could acquire many of the aspirations enlisted
above. One of the principles of these clubs would be to appoint a mentor for each
child who in turn would, in due course, learn to become a mentor to another,
following an agenda or curriculum of ideas to be imparted. Such clubs could go
a long way toward complementing efforts by families, schools, and churches to
provide children and young people with the knowledge, values, and spiritual guide-
posts to become or, better, remain, spiritual human beings.
40.4.4 Measuring Spiritual Well-Being
There may be some who are convinced that spirituality or spiritual well-being
cannot and should not be measured. How can one measure, so they think, the extent
or intensity to which a person is spiritual? Or how can one assess the quality of that
person’s spirituality? What is quality in this regard anyway? These questions are
difficult or near impossible to answer. Furthermore, if spirituality constitutes, at its
core, an experience of self-transcendence, then the quality and meaning of such an
experience will always remain subject to the subjective perception of the individual
having that experience. No outsider could judge the significance, meaning, or
quality of such an experience.
However, I have suggested above a more comprehensive definition of spiritual-
ity and, hence, of spiritual well-being that would allow for certain parameters or
indicators to be developed and which, in my view, could also be measured. By
formulating such indicators, one ought to be able to design a number of questions
that children could be asked in order to measure their subjective spiritual well-being
in a survey. It is assumed that only by measuring spiritual well-being on the basis of
well-defined indicators will we be able to actually document the positive effects of
spirituality on a child’s well-being.
The international development and relief agency World Vision has developed
a compendium of outcome indicators to measure the impact of their development
work with children and their communities. Apart from indicators for good nutrition,
health, education, protection, etc., the agency also developed outcome indicators
for spiritual well-being. They are subsumed under the following outcomes, all of
which are subjective in nature (Einloth 2010, pp. 118–19): (1) children become
aware of and experience (God’s) love; (2) children enjoy positive relationships with
peers, family, and community members; (3) children value and care for others and
their environment; and (4) children have hope and vision for the future. I myself
have drawn up a set of tentative indicators based on the six domains suggested
earlier. They are:
Religious Grounding
– Children are firmly grounded or embedded in a religious community or congrega-
tion, be it Christian, Muslim, or otherwise, including quasi-religious communities.
– Children feel welcomed to take part in services offered by that community or
congregation.
– Children practice meditation, prayer, devotion, or similar reflective activities
and find comfort and meaning by engaging in them.
– Children feel that being part of such a community/congregation gives them
a sense of emotional stability and security, a sense of belonging.
– Children find being part of that community/congregation is helpful in drawing
from it meaning, fulfillment, and a sense of togetherness.
– Children enjoy being together with others when participating in communal/
congregational meetings and fellowship.
Relationship with Others

– Children enjoy a caring, fulfilling, loving relationship with their parents, con-
ducive to bringing out the best in them.
– Children have the feeling of being able to approach their parents with most of the
problems they may have.
– Children enjoy close and warm relationships with their siblings and are learning
how to solve conflicts mutually.
– Children have a few close friends with whom they can play, joke, talk about
problems, or just enjoy being together with.
– Children enjoy a friendly relationship with neighbors or other members of their
community.
– Children feel that other people in the community try to help them when they
need help.
– Children enjoy a good relationship, even friendship, with some of their school-
mates, occasionally studying together or doing things together.
– Children know how to resolve interpersonal conflicts, seek reconciliation with
conflicting parties, and be ready to forgive another person who upset them.
– Children have a nonparent adult they can trust and to whom they can talk about
things that frighten or bother them.
– Children can identify an adult role model in the community who is like what they
want to be when they grow up.
1202 K. Bangert
Relationship with Oneself

– Children see themselves as unique and precious individuals of highest value
and dignity.
– Children have dreams and visions about the future and a positive perception of
their own future.
– Children have a good idea of what they want to do when they leave school and
grow up.
– Children are able to identify their own strengths and talents.
– Children can perceive and express their own feelings, whether it be shame, guilt,
anxiety, hurt, rejection, or love and affection.
– Children can perceive and express their own needs and wants, be it hunger for
food, drink, affection, attention, physical contact, praise, guidance, space for
play, etc.
– Children believe that if they try hard, they can accomplish their goals in life.
– Children have a sound resilience to overcome difficulties, obstacles, even oppo-
sition, setbacks, and failure.
Relationship with Transcendent Reality

– Children have a sense of a spiritual realm outside of the material world before them.
– Children know that while they may not be perfect (especially in the eyes of
others), they are perfect in the eyes of God or a universal consciousness. They
are perfect in their own right.
– Children are conscious of being in communion with a transcendent reality, not
being confined to themselves but being an integral part of a universal reality,
divinity, or consciousness.
– Children are also aware of being wanted and desired not only by a Creator God
(or by a universal creative principle) but also by those into whose care they were
entrusted. They have a sense of being appreciated and loved.
– Children have a sense of love and commitment with regard to God or the
universal consciousness.
– Children realize that their identity is not just predetermined by nature or nurture
but by their inward strength and the visions they may acquire about themselves,
or, to put it differently, they are conscious of their ability to transcend them-
selves to become their own true self.
Convictions and Values

– Children know why they are here, what they can expect from life, and what life
expects from them.
– Children know the basics of their identity, their family’s and nation’s history,
and the history of the world.
– Children are aware of political systems such as dictatorship, democracy,
multiparty systems, and legal systems.
– Children know that their lives are often limited by their background, their past,
and their environment but mostly by themselves and that they can overcome
such limitations if they set their goals high and persistently strive to achieve
them even by growing beyond themselves.
– Children are conscious of the values and virtues that their families, traditions,
and religious communities stand for.
– Children are aware of the need to cultivate and consciously practice values
and virtues and to apply them wisely to the many varied situations they encounter
(by being conscious of the basic principles underpinning those values and virtues).
– Children know what is allowed and appropriate in getting what they want and
what is not appropriate.
– Children are aware of legal rights, human rights, women’s rights, and their own
(children’s) rights.
– Children are conscious of the universal priority of cultivating respect not only
for all human beings but also for the animal world and the whole environment.
Sense of Responsibility
– Children are aware of the need to take care of themselves, to ensure their own
safety and comfort, and to avoid and avert threats and dangers.
– Children are also aware of the need to contribute to the well-being of their family
as a whole and to their parents and siblings in particular.
– Children are aware that human relationships are marked by giving and taking
and by respecting each other’s needs, feelings, dignity, and rights.
– Children learn how to act responsible with regard to other human beings, the
animal world, and the ecological environment as a whole.
– Children are involved in environmental improvements of their community (such
as soil conservation, tree planting, and cleaning communal areas).
– Children actively participate in building a better future for their community, and
they can give an example of how they (could) do this.
– Children actively participate in improving the situation of vulnerable children
and/or adults in their own community.
– Children speak out or advocate on behalf of themselves and others in their
community.
– Children are conscious of being responsible not only for themselves and their
own but for the universal whole of which they are an important part.
I believe that the above outcome indicators regarding spiritual well-being reflect
not only the literature on spirituality but also children’s own perception of spiritu-
ality and well-being. These outcome indicators, tentative as they may yet be, lend
themselves to be translated into simple questions that one could ask children in
order to assess their own spiritual well-being.
40.5 Summary
Researchers and policy makers have realized in recent years that the aspect of
spirituality in connection with children’s well-being has been seriously neglected.
1204 K. Bangert
It is assumed that the process of secularization has given rise to a new interest in
spirituality. While people are increasingly distancing themselves from traditional
churches and religious traditions, they still feel the need for honoring their
spiritual dimension. Hence, spirituality has come to the fore not only as a social
phenomenon but also as a somewhat trendy topic in child research and development
research. Scholars have sensed that spirituality has been conspicuously absent
from child research; there has been a recent burgeoning interest in the topic,
and researchers have formed interest groups and convened conferences around
these issues.
There appears to be an ambiguous relationship between spirituality and religiosity.
While some see a virtual congruency of religion and spirituality, most people see
a clear distinction between the two. Religion is often perceived as having more an
external function, while spirituality is considered to have an internal and inherent
meaning. And yet, there is also a perceived overlap between religion and spirituality,
and that overlap may be termed experience – call it religious or spiritual.
Children seem to be spiritual from the start. They appear to have a natural
inclination toward spirituality, and some researchers argue that spirituality is an
expression of a genetic predisposition. So it would only be right to recognize what
has always been there, what has always been common to humans, and what
a secular society has all too often overlooked or even denied: Spirituality is an
important part of children’s lives and of children’s well-being.
While there is much talk of spirituality nowadays, few people in the past actually
had a clear understanding of what was meant by it. Research, too, has suffered from
a lack of consensus regarding a definition of spirituality. In this chapter, we have, as
a core definition, adopted Benson et al.’s definition for spiritual development as
“the process of growing the intrinsic human capacity for self-transcendence, in
which the self is embedded in something greater than the self, including the sacred.”
But we have also advanced the notion that beyond this core definition, we must
arrive at a more comprehensive, all-encompassing definition that will lend itself to
actually achieving spiritual well-being. That compound definition has to do with
relationships, acquiring convictions and values and a sense of responsibility, pref-
erably within what has been termed congregational embedment. Spirituality is not
to be seen as one dimension of human life among others, but rather as a holistic,
overarching concept influencing all aspects of human life. It is multidimensional
and can pervade everything a person can or ought to be.
Does spirituality have a positive effect on children’s well-being? There is some
evidence that it does. But because of the still existing definitional problems, that evidence
could so far not be fully substantiated. The evidence must be broadened. It requires us to
measure spiritual well-being by indicators that need to be defined on the basis of
a compound definition, and I have suggested a set of possible indicators. But the most
important question will be: How can spiritual well-being be achieved? While the
family and the religious communities would be the natural settings to impart
spirituality and ensure spiritual well-being, we today face the challenge that family and
religious traditions are in many cases no longer in the position to impart spiritual values to
children. There is a need, then, for identifying additional and innovative avenues and
venues through which spirituality can be mediated in an attractive, appealing, even
playful way.
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Islamic Education and Youth Well-Being in
Muslim Countries, with a Specific Reference 41
to Algeria
Habib Tiliouine
41.1 Introduction
The concept of “Islamic Education” has been used in the literature to cover many
different meanings: (1) Islam’s conceptions and propositions regarding a child’s
upbringing and education; (2) The entire traditional educational system which devel-
oped over time under the banner of Islam; (3) The curricular subject taught in modern
schools as an equivalent of religious socialization and moral/religious education.
In this chapter, I will discuss all these aspects but will begin by asking whether
religious education or whether a religion is at all needed in the twenty-first Century.
The answer would be affirmative if one takes into account at least the physical,
psychological, and social functions of religion. The growing recent evidence is in
its favor. In the area of health, it has generally been proved that religiously active
people are physically healthier and live longer. A strong inverse relationship with
mortality is “well documented” (Reviews: Williams and Sternthal 2007; Tiliouine
et al. 2009). This general association has been partly explained by the fact that
religious individuals have healthier smoking, eating, and drinking habits. Thus,
a religious education may contribute to the prevention of phenomena such as
excessive alcohol consumption, illegal drug addiction, and other widespread and
worrying abuses. As an illustration, The National Center on Addiction and Sub-
stance Abuse at Columbia University (CDC) published a study indicating that in
addition to being the result of 79,000 deaths in the USA alone each year, excessive
alcohol consumption cost the USA $223.5 billion in the year 2006. About three
quarters of the costs of heavy drinking were due to lost productivity, while 11 %
resulted from health care expenses, 9 % from criminal justice costs, and 8 % from
other effects such as those related to fetal alcohol syndrome and associated
H. Tiliouine
Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Laboratory of Educational Processes &
Social Context (Labo-PECS), University of Oran, Oran, Algeria
e-mail: htiliouine@yahoo.fr

1210 H. Tiliouine
disorders. According to the same source, alcohol use is responsible for more than
twice as many deaths as drug use, which makes it the third leading preventable
cause of death (http://www.cdc.gov/Features/AlcoholConsumption/, accessed
31.08.2012). This study did not include other costs, such as those caused by pain
and suffering among either the excessive drinker or others who were affected by
their drinking. Finally, the researchers estimated that excessive drinking cost an
estimated $746 for every man, woman, and child in the United States (the same
Web document).
At the psychological level, research evidence indicates that individuals who
have religious beliefs report higher life satisfaction and have lower suicide rates
than those who declare themselves atheists (e.g., Donovan and Halpern 2002;
Helliwell and Putnam 2005, cited in Tiliouine et al. 2009). Ardelt (2003) found
that purpose in life, rather than extrinsic or intrinsic religious orientation, was
positively related to elders’ subjective well-being (SWB). Others have suggested
that religiosity is a protective factor against loss of SWB in that it provides an
interpretive framework to make sense of life experiences, while many other
researchers have proposed religious activity to be a generator of community-level
social capital, which would thereby enhance SWB (Tiliouine et al. 2009).
In this section I will specifically deal with Islamic education, although one must
insist that Islam has in its basic teachings many common points as other Abrahamic
religions, i.e., Christianity and Judaism. Nevertheless, Islamic education remains an
unstudied subject in spite of the fact that it concerns the lives of about 1.5 billion
people. It is believed that a “good” religious education would also help Muslims
understand the humane and peaceful message of their religion.
This chapter adopts a holistic approach in describing Islamic education and in
clarifying how its traditional system has historically been instituted. Because the
subject is wide ranging, some case studies are utilized. Throughout this text, content
analysis of many firsthand documents and a collection of theoretical information
backed by available statistical data, constituted the main techniques of analysis. The
issue of learners’ wellbeing forms an integrated part of the text.
The first part of this raises the point of how Islam construes the status of children
and their well-being and the roles generally played by families and the society in
this respect. The second part discusses how the traditional Islamic educational
system evolved over the centuries to meet the religious, social, and personal
needs in Muslim communities. The final part looks at how the postcolonial modern
educational systems of Islamic countries integrate moral/religious education in
their schools. It concludes with a synthesis and recommendations.
41.2 The Status of Children and Youth and their Education

in Islam
The religion of Islam is the acceptance of, and obedience to, the teachings of God
which He revealed to His last prophet, Muhammad. For people belonging to this
faith system, Islam is a comprehensive way of life and a universal message.
41 Islamic Education and Youth Well‐Being 1211
The holy Qur’an, the Sunnah (sayings and doings of the Prophet as reported after
his death), analogy and societal consensus are its four major sources.
At the ontologic level, Islam views man as a viceroy of God on Earth. The
Qur’an declares: “And indeed, We have honoured the Children of Adam” (Qur’an
17:70). Therefore, his life is purposeful. From this perspective, true happiness
is twofold: Happiness in earthly life and happiness after death, in the hereafter
(Tiliouine 2012). The credo remains the prophet’s popular saying: Conduct yourself
in this world as if you are here to stay forever, and yet prepare for eternity as if you
are to die tomorrow. Therefore, an ideal education in this faith system would
aim to prepare Muslims to live according to Islam’s teachings and to fulfill
these ends.
It should be stressed that, aided by a long tradition of scholarly life, Islamic
sources regulated almost all important aspects of personal conduct, as well as that of
the Muslim community. A long list of disciplines was established to cover the main
categories of Islamic sciences and later formed the core of teaching curricula,
mainly: (1) Faith (Aqidah); (2) Shariah (laws regulating social life human deeds)
which had been too subdivided into categories: rituals (Ibadat), marriage or family
laws, commercial transactions, offences, crimes and punishments (Jinayat), and
(3) Ethics (Akhlak).
Furthermore, as early as the eleventh century, Abu Hamid al-Ghazzaly (1973)
summarized the intentions of the religion through five objectives (Makassid): the
protection of faith, life, intellect, posterity, and property. The right to life of the
human being is preserved starting from forbidding all forms of abortion, except for
utmost medical reasons of the pregnant woman. The point of when the fetus
becomes a human being constituted a fundamental question in Islamic Fiqh
(law). Most jurists believe that this occurs at the end of the 4th month of pregnancy,
when the fetus is ensouled. Abortion after that stage is treated as homicide, unless
done to save the life of the mother (Kabir and az-Zubair 2007).
Similarly, Islam totally abolished the Mecca tribes’ custom of killing their young
daughters to avoid their kidnapping during wars (Ahwani 1975). So, life has been
highly invaluable. The Qur’an clearly states: “. . . whosoever killeth a human being
for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed
all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of
all mankind. . .” (The Qur’an, 5: 32).
Marriage is recommended as one of the most important means to meet the
religion’s goals. The Qur’an declares: “And of His signs is this: He created for
you helpmeets from yourselves that ye might find rest in them, and He ordained
between you love and mercy. Lo! herein indeed are portents for folk who reflect”.
(30:21); with another translation (same website): “. . .He created for you mates
from among yourselves. . .” (Eng-Yusuf Ali, http://www.quranexplorer.com/
quran/). So, the marriage institution is aimed to providing its partners with rest
and tranquility as a consequence of mutual love and mercy put in their hearts.
Furthermore, all sexual relationships outside of marriage are forbidden, in order
to protect posterity. A whole set of regulations of marriage, family life and child
upbringing, were set forth. Among the important subjects of discussion in
1212 H. Tiliouine
Islamic family law are: legitimacy (legality of the marriage), custody (Hadanah),
guardianship, adoption, and the concept of Kafalah of children (e.g., Pearl and
Menski 1998; An-Naim 2002). According to Kabir and az-Zubair (2007), there
are three types of custody as applied to minors which are fixed from birth in
Islamic law: (1) general care and upbringing; (2) education, and (3) property. In
the event of divorce, the child is first awarded to the mother, the second instance
is that guardianship is divided between mother and father, and the third is the
right of the father. In comparison, Western laws usually assign custody to
the maternal parent, with the father being responsible for the costs of mainte-
nance and little else (Kabir and az-Zubair 2007). This is to say that the duties of
parents to provide for the survival needs of their children (such as food, shelter,
personal needs, proper upbringing, and education) are clearly regulated. Even
issues such as breastfeeding are given space. Breastfeeding is considered an
additional aspect of one’s genealogy. The relation of the child to its foster mother
is socially, ethically, and legally the same as that to its birth mother, but the child
may not inherit from her (Kabir and az-Zubair 2007). What some anthropologists
label “Milk kinship” is a specific characteristic of extended family relationships
in Islam (Parkes 2007). For these reasons, Muslim scholars prohibit human
sperm and milk banks.
It could be concluded that Muslim children enjoy various God-given rights. In
return, God offers rewards to those fulfilling these duties even after death. The
Prophet said: “Upon death, man’s deeds will (definitely) stop except for three deeds,
namely: a continuous charitable fund, endowment or goodwill; knowledge left for
people to benefit from; and pious righteous and God-fearing child who continu-
ously prays Allah, the Almighty, for the soul of his parents” (reported in Muslim,
http://www.islam2all.com/hadeeth/moslem/). So, the status of a pious child is
highly valued by parents and the community. The social admiration and God’s
recompense motivate Muslim parents to encourage youth to learn Islamic sciences
even through current times. The tradition insists that those who learn the Qur’an
have the privilege to save their parents and relatives in the hereafter.
To summarize, the family institution remains the backbone of Islamic
society. It fulfills the intention of the religion in giving and preserving the life of
the child and meeting its survival, upbringing, and educational needs. His rights to
be born through a legitimate union, to know fully one’s parentage, to be suckled,
and to be reared with kindness and respect are among the basic rights of a child and
duties of parents (Gatrad and Sheikh 2001). In return, family members’ rights
to respect and obedience from their children, as well as God’s salvation after
death are preserved.
41.3 Priming and Early Education in Islam
Individuals are instructed to found and preserve families, although divorce and
polygamy are permitted under very strict conditions. Early child priming
practices and induction into the Islamic way of life begin early in a child’s life.
These practices vary from one community to another, but usually start at birth with
loud reading of the Adhan (the call for the prayer) in the right ear of the newborn,
and loud reading of some verses of the Qur’an, ensuring that the name of God
would be the first thing to be heard by the newborn. Holding a party to announce the
name of the newborn and giving to charity (Akika) are part of the Sunna (the
prophet’s recommendations). Circumcision of males, for which timing differs
from one culture to another, causes a physical scar that remains for the life (Some
African societies practice on females some form of genital mutilation which is not
part of the religion in any case, but is a custom in some societies. Such practices are
proved very harmful to women and should be abandoned (Webb and Hartley
1994).) (e.g., Gatrad and Sheikh 2001). Slow induction of children into religious
practice, such as Islamic prayers, before the age of 10, and fasting are all examples
of a long socialization process and gradual introduction into the Muslim commu-
nity. Moreover, two important yearly Islamic festivities which are the sheep Aid and
the end of Ramadan Aid continue to be highly joyful opportunities for youth and
families every year. Caring for orphans and children with special needs is consid-
ered a religious duty for which the Muslim society should provide.
41.4 Formal Religious Education: The Traditional System
Historic accounts indicate that combating illiteracy and spreading knowledge was
a priority from the beginning of Islam. This is not surprising, knowing that the first
word of the Qur’an as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad was: “Read.” It is said:
“Read in the name of thy Lord Who created; He created man from a clot. Read and
thy Lord is most Honourable, Who taught to write with the pen. taught man what he
knew not” (96:1-5). This implies that learning and teaching are among the basic
duties of Muslims. One of the popular Hadiths said: Seeking Of Knowledge Is An
Obligation Upon Every Muslim, Be It A Man Or A Woman (http://www.sacred-
texts.com/isl/hadith/had06.htm accessed on 15.08.2012). In his life as Prophet,
some historic accounts revealed that he used to release educated war prisoners
with the condition of teaching his companions reading and writing (Ahwani
1975). Evidently, the teaching profession practiced with youth has been known
since the early days of Islam. The main curriculum activity was teaching young
generations the correct reciting and understanding of the Holy Book. In return,
this was considered the first step toward acquiring other sciences, which over the
years, and due to the evolving needs of the newly established multiple ethnicity
Islamic empire and its encounter with other cultures, continued to flourish
(Esposito 1998).
Historically, it is known that Islam expanded rapidly out of the Arabian
Peninsula. For instance, it reached Persia and Iraq in 633–651, Syria in 637,
Armenia in 639, Egypt in 639, North Africa in 652, Cyprus in 654, Constanti-
nople in 674–678 and again in 717–718, Hispania from 711 to 718, and Georgia
in 736, reaching Crete and Southern Italy in 827 (Esposito 1998). The encounter
with other civilizations enriched the new faith system and led to the rise of the
1214 H. Tiliouine
Golden Age of Islam in the Abbasid’s era, 749–1258 (Esposito 1998). Among the
most important achievements of this period was the assembly of the Prophet’s
Hadith, the codification of the language of the Qur’an, Arabic and the translation
of other civilizations’ important intellectual works, such as the Greek’s
philosophy.
Obviously, family structures, mosques, and religious congregations (Majalis)
annexed to them, which constituted in the beginning the central spaces for
learning different kinds of religious and scientific knowledge, could not meet
the expanding needs and the new complex society any more. Therefore, over the
centuries, a real school system was gradually taking place with many ramifica-
tions across the Islamic world. This system could generally be divided into
three stages: (a) Elementary Education (The Qur’anic School); (b) Medersa
and (c) Jami’a (Heggoy 1984). They are briefly described in the following
paragraphs.
41.4.1 The Qur’anic School
One common feature of the traditional Islamic educational system is that its
basic education comprised the teaching and learning by memory the Qur’an in
institutions called (in Arabic): Quttab, Katatib, Msid, i.e., Qur’anic school.
These schools could be found all over the Islamic world through current times.
They were particularly reserved to teaching reading and writing and learning
by memory the Qur’an by youngsters under the supervision of a teacher whose
mastery of the Book had been established. Each child learned individually at his
own pace the parts of the Holy Book. Individual progress was monitored
on a daily basis, and group sessions of reciting were held. At the end of some
given parts of the Qur’an, the student was rewarded with a short break. His or
her wood-board was colored and the student could go around to neighboring
houses to receive gifts for that achievement. This represented an
important involvement on the part of the community in education. A large part
of those gifts were shared with the teacher (Ahwani 1975). Nevertheless,
some differences were observed across the Muslim countries with relation to
curriculum activities in these schools. For instance, Ibn Khaldoun (1332–1406)
discussed some of these differences in his Muqaddimah. For example,
he reported that in Andalusia, in addition to the Qur’an, children were taught
language sciences and mathematics.
41.4.2 Medersa (Intermediate and Secondary Schools)
As mentioned earlier, the main objectives of Qur’anic schools were to teach the
Qur’an to youngsters to become hafiz (in some places as in present Algeria, called
Talib). Whereas, the institutions named: Medersas or Madrassah (literally School
in Arabic), are the equivalent of intermediate and secondary schools during modern
times (Heggoy 1984). They initiated students to become Alim. The certificate of
Alim required approximately 12 years of study (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Madrasah, accessed in 5 July, 2012). They prepared students for the professions
of Imams, clergymen, Islamic lawyers (Kadis), teachers, and other types of pro-
fessions according to the expressed needs of the society. A regular curriculum of
a Medersa would include the study of Arabic, interpretations (Tafsir) of the Qur’an,
Islamic law (Shariah), Prophet’s hadith, logic (mantiq), and history. However, very
little is yet known on how this system evolved and was organized throughout the
wide Islamic world. Nevertheless, it was historically established that Medersas
became a wide practice during the Abbassid era, and later during the Ottoman
Empire. The Nazimiah School became very famous and by the eleventh Century
almost every single city had its own equivalent of Nazimiah (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Madrasah, accessed in 5 July, 2012). A variety of Medersas exit nowadays
in Islamic countries and interested researchers could gain valuable information
through their careful study (Bustamam-Ahmad and Jory 2011). Many of them are
linked to different Sufi methods and traditional congregations (Zaouias). They serve
diverse functions as representatives of a large part of the civil society and as
safeguards of the tradition. In the past, they helped resist colonialism. In this
respect, Emir Abd-el-Kader (1808–1883) was a prominent figure among those
who combated the French colonial invasion for 17 years. As a warrior and
a prominent intellectual, he was the pure product of this institution and his father
was a Qur’an teacher (see Churchill 1981 for a full biography).
41.4.3 Traditional Islamic Higher Education
Many sources have indicated that some Medersas developed to deliver some
form of specialized higher education. For instance, Sir John Bagot Glubb wrote:
“By Mamun’s time medical schools were extremely active in Baghdad. The first
free public hospital was opened in Baghdad during the Caliphate of Haroon-ar-
Rashid. As the system developed, physicians and surgeons were appointed who
gave lectures to medical students and issued diplomas to those who were con-
sidered qualified to practice. The first hospital in Egypt was opened in 872 and
thereafter public hospitals sprang up all over the empire from Spain and the
Maghrib to Persia” (Quoted in Zahoor 1999). Many of these “universities” were
founded by personal initiatives, such as the Al-Qarawiyyin in Fes Morroco which
was founded in 859 by Fatima Al-Fihri who was a rich woman, and has been
considered the first university in the world. Al Azhar was established one
Century later in Cairo, Egypt (Esposito 2003). These universities delivered
diplomas in different scientific and professional disciplines according to social
needs. Their curricula were gradually enriched and their practices were diversi-
fied (Esposito 1998).
Because of their tight links with students’ well-being, two more points should be
raised here: Community engagement in education and pedagogy. First, the Muslim
community’s commitment in sustaining this educational system was evident
1216 H. Tiliouine
through ensuring the financial autonomy of these institutions. This autonomy was
reinforced by goods and resources acquired over the years through donations and
Alms. Wealthy women and men financed the construction and maintenance of the
infrastructure, such as the case of Al-Qarawiyyin University, mentioned earlier.
Moreover, they offered students lodging, food, and stipends. Teachers were also
regularly paid wages according to a merit system (Nakosteen 1978). A report to the
American Congress indicated that during the 1970s, the Medersa system was
revitalized, mainly in Iran and Pakistan, to meet the rising interest in Islamic
studies. However, this mission deviated. In the 1980s and due to boosted financial
support from the United States and its allies, these schools were used as instruments
in their fight against the Soviets, mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan
(Blanchard 2007).
Second, educational issues were extensively discussed by Muslim scholars of
medieval era to provide theoretical backgrounds and practical guidelines
to teachers and students. Most known was the handbook of Ibn Sahnoun (about
777–855), entitled Adab el Moua’llimin, (The good manners of teachers) which
provided clear guiding principles on how to regulate school life and
classroom management, such as rewards and punishments, learning progression,
holidays, the relationship of the school with families and the community, etc
(Ibn Sahnoun’s Manual, annexed to Ahwani, 1975). Teachers are urged to be fair
to children and to encourage in-between pupils learning. Ibn Sina, known
as Avicenna (980–1037), was among many other philosophers who extensively
discussed different forms of teaching practice such as the role of
cooperative learning methods (interested readers can refer to http://www.
muslimphilosophy.com/). Another marking figure of the Islamic Theory
of Education was El-Qabissi (936–1012). In his handbook Ahwal wa Ahkam
El Mou’alimin wa El Mouta’limin, the conditions of teachers and students and
their regulations (annexed to Ahwani 1975), he recommended no gender sepa-
ration in learning, and the avoidance of physical punishment. He too discussed in
depth the related pedagogical issues. From a larger study, G€unther (2006) con-
cluded that medieval Muslim thinkers’ views could inspire modern educational
theory. Similarly, Halstead (2004) argued that those perspectives offered
a wholesome theory in the domain of education. This theory embraced all three
dimensions of education: individual development, social and moral education,
and the acquisition of knowledge.
41.5 Islamic/Moral Education in the Modern School System
The final part of this chapter is devoted to the status of Islamic education in the
official curricula of basic education in the Muslim world. Obviously the subject is
wide and cannot in any case be fully covered in such short account, but few
illustrations may suffice. In the first instance, I will describe how education
moved from the classical system where Islam was the framework in which all
education took place to a more modern education, where Islamic education became
a subject of study, one single course among diverse curricula. Modern education in
opposition to traditional education, as described earlier, means an institutionalized
school system which is usually linked to the highest spheres of the state. Its
infrastructure, organization, curricula, and certification system are standardized.
This type of education was known at varied levels in Europe first as a consequence
of the church reformist movements and later developed as a secular system. In
France, for instance, the law of separation of state and church was voted on in
Parliament in 1905 (Willaime 2007, p. 88). Consequently, the church no longer had
the monopoly on education. Adopting a “laic” education system meant that clear
lines of demarcation were drawn between a church-based education and an ordinary
education. Therefore, religious education in the latter became one of the subjects of
study, but neither the most important subject of study, nor the framework in which the
whole education took place. The movement toward modern education flourished with
the expansion of the Industrial Revolution and ended in the institutionalization of
mass education throughout the world in the twentieth century and acquired the
compulsory character for all children until a specific age (generally 16 years).
These ideals reached the Muslim world at a time when most of its countries were
weak and under foreign domination. However, in many places the confrontation
between the European educational model, or in short modern education, and the
long standing traditional educational model was very harsh and painful. One
obvious reason is that modern education was considered by locals as a consecration
tool of the colonial project (Altbach and Kelly 1984), whose principal aim for them
was to undermine their Muslim identity, a revival of the Crusade invasion. This
situation was accentuated by the secular character of modern education. The
Algerian case could clearly illustrate such a struggle for many reasons. First,
Algeria was the first country to be colonized by a European power during the
nineteenth century (1830) and was officially annexed as a French territory. It was
among the last to acquire independence, 132 years later, after a long armed war of
liberation which ended in the killing of more than one million Algerians. Second,
modern education was one of the means that the French occupiers used in order to
“domesticate” what they considered “barbaric” people (Turin 1983). Finally, the
colonial project sought from the beginning to eradicate the local education system
to facilitate its “Assimilationist” aim (Heggoy 1984; Turin 1983). However, it
should be noted that many differences could be found between the British and the
French projects and policies during the colonial era (e.g., White 1996).
There is no need to delve into details, it should however be stressed that from the
beginning, education was one of the forefront battle fields to resist colonialism. The
other two fields of resistance were the judiciary and the health care systems (Turin
1983). Les indigènes (the official name of local people in that period) massively
boycotted all three types of colonial institutions. From 1830 until 1880, French
schools completely failed to attract them, and until 1945 just a small number
accessed schools. World War I (1914–1918) witnessed the recruitment of Algerian
natives to fight beside the French soldiers, and hence created proximity in some
regions between the two populations, although the refusal of some tribes to send
their children to the French army ended in brutal confrontations (Stora 1989).
1218 H. Tiliouine
These events, in addition to other reasons, opened another form of resistance leading
to the birth of an organized Algerian political nationalism. Consequently, many
political parties saw the light (Stora 1989). On the top of their list was a call for an
adapted schooling system. Nevertheless, historic accounts proved that colonialists
were not truly willing to generalize education beyond the primary level. The reason
might have been that they needed just a few native mediators and an inexpensive
workforce (details could be found in: Heggoy 1984; Turin 1983; Saurrier 1982 and
Tiliouine 2002). The most important thing is that the French knew that traditional
education should be destroyed, but no real alternative was offered in return. One of
the organized methods consisted of cutting the financial supply to the traditional
schools by confiscating lands and goods belonging to them (Heggoy 1984; Saurrier
1982). However, the system continued to have popular support and a part of it was
modernizing under the initiatives of associations such as “L’association des Olémas
Musulmans Algériens” (Association of Reformist Ulama, founded by abd el-Hamid
Ben Badis in 1931). Its slogan was: “Islam is my religion; Arabic is my language;
Algeria is my nation” (Chiviges 2000, p. 10). In 1945, it enrolled 40,000 students,
while another 50,000 were in “Free Education” (i.e., Traditional Qur’anic schools),
compared to 300,000 in French schools (Saurier 1982; Tiliouine 2002).
For the small number of those who accessed French education beyond the
primary level, their school experience was very painful as they suffered from the
discrimination exercised on them. This cultural alienation or simply the cultural ill-
being was eloquently immortalized in the literature written in French by novelists
such as Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri, Mohammed Dib, and
Malek Haddad. This latter declared: “The French language is my exile” (Chiviges
2000, p. 9).
The resurgence of the armed war of liberation, launched in the first of November
1954, revived the French government promises for an educational reform and
a massive construction of schools, with the goal to calm the anger of the population.
We know that in 1954, 86 % of the Algerian school-aged population was
unschooled (Saurier 1982).
Generally, it could be concluded that three different educational organizations
co-existed during the French colonial era: a basically religious and traditional
Islamic system, a reformed but Islamic school, and a modern colonial school.
However, it may be interesting to see how the situation evolved after the mass
departure of French settlers on the eve of the independence in 1962 and the status of
religious education during this particular period.
In short, the mass departure of French settlers (Pieds-Noirs) created a big
vacuum in all institutions of the newly independent state (800,000 settlers were
evacuated to mainland France in 1962, while about 200,000 chose to remain in
Algeria. They were still 100,000 in 1965 and 50,000 by the end of the 1960s
(Chiviges 2000)). For instance, only 25 % of the French teachers remained in
their positions in 1962, while only 15 % of the teachers of that time were locals
(Tiliouine 2002). In contrast, the claim for schooling as a price of the independence
among Algerian parents soared. Unfortunately, a large part of the school infrastruc-
ture was totally destroyed by l’Organisation Armée Secrete (OAS), which also
assassinated many brilliant intellectuals and teachers, such as the novelist Mouloud
Mammeri. OAS violently opposed General De Gaulle’s (the French President)
decision to negotiate the independence of Algeria with Front de Libération
Nationale (FLN, the National Liberation Front) which led the war of liberation. It
is worth mentioning that in 1962, 792,258 students were enrolled in the schools of
independent Algeria. This number doubled 3 years later to reach 1,332,208 students
(i.e., a 59.57 % increase in 3 years). There were 19,908 new teachers recruited in 1
year (1962–1963) which increased the presence of native teachers to 46 %
(Tiliouine 2002). This exceptional situation forced the authorities to recruit people
with very low instructional levels and with no previous training to teach. Many of
these new recruits were the product of the Qur’anic schools.
Independent Algeria tried to recuperate the most salient characteristics of the
traditional system, such as Arabisation (the generalization of Arabic language) of
education, the reinforcement of the Islamic and Arabic identity of the country.
Tamazight (the language of the Berber ethnic group) was officially recognized as
the third component of the Algerian identity at a much later time by the country’s
Constitution of 1989. The French language gradually took the status of a foreign
language after long debates and conflicts between the Francophones and the
Arabophones. The First Algerian Constitution of 1976 stipulated that the first
language, including in education, should be Arabic. Similarly, education became
compulsory for all Algerian children through the age of 16 years within the
Socialist orientation of the country that time.
Algeria changed the system of governance allowing for a multi-party system
beginning in 1989. However, this democratic transition phase was marked by
another bloody struggle between armed Islamists on one hand (who were denied
winning the first round of the first pluralist parliamentary elections), and on the
other hand, the army. This bloody struggle resulted in a death toll of 200,000 lives
and billions of dollars worth of destruction between 1992 and 2002. That situation,
which for some researchers constituted the precursor of the Arab Spring (Entelis
2011), improved due to courageous steps taken by President of Abdel Aziz
Bouteflika through the Charter of National Reconciliation and Peace, approved by
referendum in September 2005. Consequently, that was followed by amnestying of
thousands of people and reinforced by the tangible improvement in the economic
situation, due principally to the increase in the prices of the Hydrocarbon sector
(natural gas and oil represent more than 90 % of the country’s exports). The country
has gradually succeeded in regaining stability and has launched highly ambitious
construction workshops and reforms in many sectors (Tiliouine and Meziane 2012),
mainly in education. The Education Act of 2008 (La loi d’orientation de l’éducation
nationale) came to regulate the education reform of 2003 (UNESCO 2010).
It should be stressed that since independence, Islamic education has been
a curricular subject and is viewed as a part of moral education of the schooled
population. The Education Act (in the second article) stipulated that education
among other things, aims to provide young generations with Islamic principles
and their spiritual, moral, cultural, and civilisational values. Article 44 of the same
Act reiterates that among the missions of Basic Education, reinforcing the student’s
1220 H. Tiliouine
Table 41.1 Primary school subjects and time allocated to them in Algeria
Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5
Arabic language 14 14 12 9 9
Tamazight language (optional) – – – 3 3
French language – – 3 5 5
Islamic education 1.30 1.30 1.30 1.30 1.30
Civic education 1 1 1 1 1
History/géography – – 1 1 2
Mathématics 5 5 5 5 5
Scientific and technology education 2 2 2 2 2
Music 1 1 1 1 1
Education plastic arts 1.30 1.30 1 1 1
Physical and sport education 1 1 1 1 1
Total (hours) 27 27 28.30 30.30 31.30
Source: Bousenna et al. (2009)
identity, in harmony with social traditions, spiritual, and ethical values, all consti-
tute the common cultural heritage (Article 44, www.jora.dz; the present author’s
translation).
Over the years, religious and moral education have been given different weight
in terms of school time, but it was not considered as the traditional system the
framework in which all educational activities should take place. Despite that fact,
no secular character of education has ever been recognized.
Currently, the Islamic education begins from the first school year and is
maintained until the baccalaureate (end of secondary school). The time allocated
to this subject remains steady at 90 min per week in primary school (Table 41.1) and
decreases in the middle school to 60 min per week (Table 41.2). In addition, as an
option, students can specialize in Islamic studies as starting from the secondary
school level.
Presently, formal education in Muslim societies has to some extent a similar
organization as specialized institutions which are devoted to teaching Islamic
sciences and theology. Despite a few exceptions, such as Turkey, where after its
defeat in World War I, Kamel Ataturk decided to follow the French enlighten-
ment model to abolish the Islamic Caliphate, to suppress all Islamic teaching in
Turkish schools, and to shift from Arabic script of the Turkish language to the
Latin script. He formalized secular education on March 22, 1926 and closed
madrasas (Fitzpatrick et al. 2009). Other Islamic countries never recognized
such a separation between education and religion. Most of them continue to
identify with Islam, maintain its teaching, and even variably recognize it as
a source of their jurisprudence. Regarding this latter point, “Twenty-two of 44
predominantly Muslim countries recognize some constitutional role for Islamic
law, principles, or jurisprudence. This includes 18 of the 22 countries where
Islam is the religion of the state, as well as four predominantly Muslim countries
Table 41.2 Middle School (Grade 6–9) subjects of study and weekly time allocated to them in
Algeria
Grade 6 Grade 7 Grade 8 Grade 9
Arabic language 6 5 5 5
Tamazight language (optional) 3 3 3 3
French language 5 5 5 5
English language 3 3 3 3
Mathematics 5 5 5 5
Natural and life sciences 2 2 2 2
Physics and technology 2 2 2 2
Islamic education 1 1 1 1
Civic education 1 1 1 1
History 1 1 1 1
Géography 1 1 1 1
Music 1 1 1 1
Plastic arts (education plastique) 1 1 1 1
Physical and sport education 2 2 2 2
Total (hours) 34 33 33 33
Source: Bousenna et al. (2009)
where a constitutional role for Islam is not the declared state religion” (Interna-
tional Commission on International Religious Freedom 2005, p. 9). This may
demonstrate how diverse Muslim countries are in relation to the status of religion
within the formal legal system.
Moreover, most Muslim societies adopt the spirit of modern education as
defended in the Progressive Education movement (Anthony 1979). The writings
of the well-known educationist John Dewey were translated to the local language
very early. They deeply inspired the Nahda (Awakening) Muslim intellectuals. At
the official level, the new Education Act (2OO8) of Algeria (www.jora.dz) clearly
recognized the main features of modern education, explicitly considering the
student as the center of education, and elaborating the curricula and
evaluation procedures referring to the competency-based approach of education
(Bousenna et al. 2009).
However, does all this mean that the traditional Islamic education is totally
abandoned in favor of the largely secular modern education? It is very curious to
find that the former is yet well alive and very influential, working with the
community backing in parallel to the official school system. Parents continue to
send their young children, before they are schooled, to study in Qur’anic schools.
For instance, L’ Annuaire statistique of the Algerian Ministry of Education
reports that in 2009, 93.54 %, i.e., 21,584 children younger than 4 years accessed
the Qur’anic schools for some time, and that they are mostly males (i.e., 76.39 %)
(Bousenna, et al 2009, p. 10). Even schooled students of diverse ages continue to
attend these schools during their free time and during the holidays. In Algeria,
most of these Qur’anic schools are financed and regulated by the Ministry of
1222 H. Tiliouine
Religious Affairs (http://www.marw.dz). This is reinforced by the existence of

many Islamic congregations (Zaouias) which enjoy much popularity as in many
other countries in the Islamic world. In Algeria, Zaouias are encouraged and
officially given financial support as a way to face the extremist forms of
political Islam. It should be stressed that Zaouias existed long before modern
times. Thirty nine variants of these institutions are cited in http://fr.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Zaou%C3%AFa_(%C3%A9difice_religieux)#.C2.A0Alg.C3.A9rie. They
safeguarded the religion, reinforced the Islamic identity, but did not preach for
violence, unless it was for self defense. Present time terrorism is a new phenom-
enon. Its ultimate goal is achieving political supremacy and is fueled by the Israeli
occupation of Palestine and some other international tensions. However, much
research is needed in order to clarify the relationship between religiosity and
extremism and the role of education in this phenomenon. My guess is
that Islam is a religion rich with moral teachings as other religions of the
world, but has been misused by extremists in order to hide their real political
intentions. A genuine Islamic education would help prevent these extremist forms
of conduct.
It should be stressed that the early Islamic educational system enabled
Muslims to set the foundations of an authentic civilization, which provided the
world with remarkable scientific discoveries, extraordinary artistic and archi-
tectural works, and a marvelous literature (e.g., Esposito 1998, 2003). But with
time, education fell into classicism, discouraged creativity, and accentuated
imitation (taklid). This attitude may well be alive in modern schools in the
Muslim world and may well survive in many present teachers’ pedagogical
methods. The traditional schooling system gives priority to rote learning, mem-
orization, and discipline in learning. In opposition, modern education, at least as
construed by its precursors in the progressive movement insists on the cultiva-
tion of the intellect, students’ personal needs and preferences, and values
intrinsic motivation. They are the center of the learning process around
which all educational appliances revolve. These are some of the basic disagree-
ments between two attitudes which are not easy to reconcile at first glance.
Evidently this is a huge question which should be thoroughly addressed in
future research. However, in cases such as Algeria, many teachers are the pure
product of the traditional system and their practice may be to a great extent
influenced by their background training. They may base students’ learning on
memorization of texts, put a lot of constraints on pupils’ intellectual and
physical freedom, discourage cooperative learning and may use physical
punishment to correct undesired classroom behaviors. Such attitudes may be
harmful to pupils’ well-being and their school learnings. A conflict of
meaning in science students has been documented by Belhandouz (2011).
A big effort is therefore needed in order to bring profound reforms in the
area of teacher pre-service and in-service education. The use of modern tech-
nologies of information and communication would help bring new insights
(Tiliouine 2002).
41.6 Conclusion and Recommendations
This chapter tried to give an overview of the status of children and young persons and
their education from an Islamic point of view and the role of religious socialization
and teaching. It was shown that Islam brought a real revolution in the Arabic
Peninsula and the territories which it could reach. Among the main achievement of
that civilization was a completely new educational system which responded to the
needs of a multicultural society and gained the backing of the population. Through
pacific means it could influence neighboring regions in the deepest parts of Africa and
Asian territories, to China. It was also built on an adapted theoretical and practical
knowledge of pedagogy and human learners’ needs (Nakosteen 1978). All that
happened within the frame of a typically religious umbrella. However, that system
failed to keep up with world scientific advances. It fell into classicism and Muslims in
general were gradually put under foreign domination. This latter contributed further
in dividing the Islamic world with randomly set borders, which amplified in-between
ethnic groups tensions (UNDP 2009).
Despite the fact that present Muslim nations have succeeded in regaining their
independence and are gradually modernizing, they seem to yet have a long way to
go in order to achieve a fair amount of quality of life in general, and specifically
a good quality of education for their young populations (Tiliouine and Meziane
2012). Clearly defining the role of religion in different development schemes
and particularly in the educational field seems to be urgently needed. The tradi-
tional educational model as applied in the pre-modern era seems not to fit well
with the needs of the present modern and postmodern times. Scientific and
technological advances are giving new shapes to human societies. Furthermore,
Muslims cannot in any way fulfil their needs for adequate food, water,
housing, medication, industrial and technological products, preserve their sover-
eignty, and so forth, without mastering modern science and cultivating creativity.
However, this in turn would not happen without relying on an educational system
that promotes and respects learners’ autonomy, critical thinking, and to provide
for students’ well-being in friendly environments and with a well-trained
personnel.
However, Muslim countries would take a good step forward if they fully
succeeded to achieve at least the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by
2015, to which they have officially adhered, mainly eradicating extreme poverty,
achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering
women, providing proper health care to children and mothers, etc. Nevertheless,
data of the Third Arab Report on the MDGs indicate that by 2010 widespread unrest
in many countries such as Somalia, Sudan, and sub-Saharan Africa may jeopardise
development efforts in the region (United Nations and League of Arab States 2010).
Certainly, the situation is not much clearer in the Arab Spring countries (Tunisia,
Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria) and some other places such as Palestine, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Bahrain, and Myanmar. All the tensions distract
local populations from aspiring to improve young generations’ living conditions
1224 H. Tiliouine
and to enhancing their well-being. Facts such as rapid population growth (e.g., 60 %
of the Arab population is under the age of 25 years, making it one of the most
youthful regions in the world), sped up urbanization, water scarcity and pollution,
desertification and climate change (UNDP 2009), and soaring food product prices
all appeal for urgent collective actions between Muslim countries and a sincere
international alliance to help them surpass these sufferings.
Referring back to Islamic religious education, it should be reiterated that religion
is meant to lead its followers toward spiritual fulfilment, to avoid identity crises,
reinforce community belongingness, and avoid drugs and alcohol, which all have
a positive connotation and lead to well-balanced and healthy citizens. Religion has
been used as instrument, could become perverted. This applies to Islam currently,
as used to justify political ends by some so-called “Islamic” fundamentalist groups.
These marginal cases should not make the rule. Islamic teaching continues to
inspire people. For example, Bustamam-Ahmad & Jory (2011) forwarded their
volume by declaring: “The development of Islamic education in Southeast Asia is
tremendous and receiving an overwhelming support from the community. Many
governments support the establishment of Islamic educational institutions both
financially and administratively” (p. v). These institutions are succeeding in com-
bining religious subjects and modern “occidental” curricula. Nevertheless, scien-
tific methods should be applied in evaluating these experiences and assessing their
psychological impacts on students before they could be generalized to other
regions. Furthermore, other educational systems should carefully study the contents
of Islamic religious subjects and apply modern technologies of learning and
teaching in order to facilitate critical and long-lasting effects of learning. Religious
and moral education can be boring and superfluous if “rotely” taught. Therefore,
investing in educational innovation and a good preparation of teachers, educational
leaders, and advisors is a necessity toward achieving the higher objectives of
a humane education. Finally, democracy and wise governance remain desperately
needed prerequisites in Muslim countries.
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Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., y Korbin, J. E. Handbook of Child Well - Being, Theories, Methods and Policies in Global Perspective (V. 2)

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Asher Ben-Arieh

With 138 Figures and 85 Tables

Ferran Casas The Norwegian Center for Child

ISBN 978-90-481-9062-1 ISBN 978-90-481-9063-8 (eBook)

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Professor Asher Ben-Arieh

Asher Ben-Arieh is a professor of social work at the Hebrew University of

Professor Ferran Casas

Ferran Casas is a senior professor of social psychology in the Faculty of Education

Professor Ivar Frønes

Ivar Frønes is a professor of sociology at the University of Oslo, Norway, and

Professor Jill E. Korbin

Jill E. Korbin, Ph.D. (1978 U.C.L.A.), is associate dean, professor of anthropol-

Jonathan Bradshaw University of York, York, UK

1 Multifaceted Concept of Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Section I Multiple Perspectives on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Section II Multiple Approaches to Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . 161

11 Child Healthcare and Child Well-Being: From the Past to

Section III Theoretical Approaches to Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . 633

23 Children’s Well-Being and Interpretive Reproduction . . . . . . . . 709

25 Socialization and Childhood in Sociological Theorizing . . . . . . . 759

Section IV Children’s Activities and Well-Being .............. 795

28 After-School Activities and Leisure Education .............. 863

29 Play and Well-Being in Children’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 895

31 Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being in Early Schooling:

Section V Arts, Creativity and Child Well-Being .............. 1033

37 Imagination, Play, and the Role of Performing Arts in the

Section VI Spirituality and Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1099

Section VII An Ecological Perspective on Child Well-Being ..... 1227

Section VIII Economy/Material Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1385

48 Well-Being and Children in a Consumer Society . . . . . . . . . . . . 1427

52 Childhood and Inequalities: Generational Distributive

53 Economics of Child Well-Being: Measuring Effects

Section IX Life Course and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1603

55 Early Childhood: Dimensions and Contexts of Development

56 Developmental Assets and the Promotion of Well-Being in

57 Child Well-Being and the Life Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1679

58 Adolescence and Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1713

59 Monitoring the Health and Well-Being of Developing

60 Transition to Adulthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1763

Section X Interpersonal Relations ......................... 1785

62 Sibling Relationships and Children’s Social Well-Being . . . . . . . 1817

Section XI Media and Communication and Child Well-Being . . . . 1955

Section XII Well-Being and the Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2151

Section XIII Health and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2257

80 Illness and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2319

81 HIV and AIDS and Its Impact on Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . 2355

82 Cultural Roots of Well-Being and Resilience in Child

83 Body Image and Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2409

Section XIV Well-Being and Children’s Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2437

85 Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the

86 Child Participation, Constituent of Community Well-Being . . . . 2503

Section XV Risk and Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2575

Section XVI Methods, Measures and Indicators .............. 2697

98 Indices of Child Well-Being and Developmental Contexts . . . . . 2807

102 Ethics of Researching Children’s Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2895

Section XVII Interventions and Policies that Promote Child

104 Children in State Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2945

106 Key Elements and Strategies of Effective Early Childhood

107 Advancing Child and Adolescent Well-Being Through

Section XVIII Global Issues in Child Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3069

111 Well-Being of Asylum-Seeking and Refugee Children . . . . . . . . 3143