From Children's Services to Children's Spaces (PDF)

respects, at a disadvantage compared to adults; it is not to deny that many children are living in material poverty; it is not to deny that children have needs. Nor are we saying that public provision for children should ignore issues such as child protection or the need of some children for more support than others by reason, for example, of a disability.

Nor, if we suggest that the dominant image emphasises children’s dependence on their parents, do we imply that children should be regarded as independent and autonomous. Rather, we would question the dependence/ independence dichotomy, with its assumption of the desirability and feasibility of becoming a detached, independent human being. Like Sevenhuijsen (1999b), in her critique of Giddens’ book on The Third Way (1998), we think there is a ‘need to deconstruct the normative image of the independent wage-earning citizen which is at the heart of contemporary notions of social participation and citizenship’ (31). Like her, too, we would prefer to ‘acknowledge everybody is dependent on care’ and talk instead about our dependences on, and interdependence with, others-both children and adults.

Instead, our questioning is partly about proportionality and perspective. Why, as a society, do we in Britain choose mainly to talk about and portray children in such predominantly negative ways? Once again Rinaldi throws the issue into sharp relief when she asks ‘why talk more about the needs of the child, than the possibilities or rights of the child?’. In Reggio, she says, while recognising that children have needs, they choose to focus on rights, moving from ‘the child as the subject of needs to the child as the subject of rights’. Rather than weak, they choose to speak about the child as strong, rich in resources and competent, the meaning of which language we shall explore later.

Second, to speak of a ‘dominant discursive regime’ can give the misleading idea that we, as authors, think all people in Britain (or, more broadly, in the Anglo-American world) speak about and act towards children in only one way, share the same image, and that this way is the realisation of some general and coherent philosophy. This is not our position at all. We are not painting some Orwellian picture of a post-1984 society. We see in Britain a variety of ways of thinking and talking about childhood, and many and various images, not all by any means the image of the weak, poor and needy child. We could give many examples but will confine ourselves to four. At a national level, we can point to the increasing attention being paid in Britain to children’s rights (Wales, for example, has appointed a Children’s Commissioner), to children’s participation, and to what has been called a new sociology of childhood or new childhood studies. Or at the level of a particular provision for children, we began this book with a description of the Venture in Wrexham, Wales: this seems to us to provide an example of what we call a ‘children’s space’, a space that was psychologically available for children, and a space that supported social interaction and processes. Many play service providers would share the Venture’s aims. Such examples assume very different understandings of the child compared to those found in the dominant discourse, and can support an image of the child as rich, competent and powerful.