The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development. Группа авторов. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

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Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
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Жанр произведения: Общая психология
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781119678991
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and Child Well‐being

      It is reasonable to think that children’s well‐being mirrors the social and economic conditions in their life. The relationship between well‐being, mental health, and poverty is strong and far from being resolved (Hartas, 2019; Lund et al., 2010). In a study by Hartas (2019), mental health and well‐being were found to decrease for children in families with low income and parent education. Thoughts, behaviors and emotions are socialized primarily in the family environment; there is a direct influence between emotional development and well‐being and the kind of family to which children belong. Families shape emotions according to risk factors in relation to housing and socioeconomic status and these issues directly affect children’s feelings (Shaffer et al., 2012). Social life is organized in ways that the focus is on human relationships where relations and practices of care are an integral part of everyday ethics (Held, 2006). However, the ethics of care, concerned with fostering interdependency, social bonds, and reciprocal responsiveness to need across individual and wider social scales, are gradually replaced by economic rights. Globalization, initially presented as an international project that was equitable, working towards creating a level‐playing field for all, has brought divisions to the fore, outsourcing everything from products and services to care relationships, creating near slavery conditions, affecting low‐paid carers, predominantly women, and the care and socialization they offer to their children (Ehenreich, 1989).

      Trends in mental ill health have changed over time, manifesting themselves earlier, during childhood, and becoming increasingly gendered. Since the 1990s, traditional patterns of mental ill health appear to be reversed with the rates of depression increasing faster among children at younger and younger ages while rates of depression among people over 40 have remained stable (Zahn‐Waxler et al., 2008). Over the last 5 years, research has shown a growing gender divide in young people’s mental health and wellbeing (Finch et al., 2014; Hartas, 2019; Patalay & Fitzsimons, 2017). Less pronounced among boys and young men, self‐reported rates of anxiety and depression are rising sharply among preadolescent and adolescent girls, revealing a deeply worrying trend.

      During childhood and as they enter adolescence, girls are told that gender equality is advancing, with gender having become a “protected” characteristic. However, what they experience in almost all domains of their life is quite the opposite. Since the 1990s, feminism as a social justice movement has turned into a form of corporate feminism, promoted because it makes “good business sense,” which seeks to empower girls and women through their participation in employment and position in the market (Fraser, 2009). This form of empowerment does not question existing economic structures but becomes part of them and further emboldens them. As inequality rises so does gender inequality because girls are disproportionally hit by cuts in public services (e.g., education). A report for Young Women’s Trust – a charity that supports women aged 16–30 in poverty or on low or no pay – showed a third of young women feel more anxious now than this time last year, due to money worries, lack of affordable housing, and insecure jobs. A quarter of women reported to be in constant debt and one in 10 is skipping meals (Young Women’s Trust, 2017).

      These gendered forms of inequality reflect and reproduce neoliberal frameworks of accumulation that are inherently inequitable and exploitative. As Fraser (2009) and Eisenstein (2009) pointed out, whereas second‐wave feminism tended to focus on the interconnectedness of economic, cultural, and political injustice, in ensuing decades, these struggles have been sidelined by corporate feminism that does not account for unequal social and political structures. Instead, it has helped to legitimize a version of capitalist society that “runs directly counter to feminist visions of a just society” (Fraser, 2009, p. 99). Gender inequality shapes child socialization practices because it emboldens practices related to bullying, body shaming, sexual harassment, and everyday sexism. A study by Bucchianeri et al. (2014) found verbal abuse and sexual harassment to be closely connected to children’s well‐being, particularly in girls who reported lower self‐esteem and body satisfaction, depression, and self‐harm. Body shaming, weight‐based harassment, and sexual harassment are particularly potent correlates of mental ill health among girls resulting in reduced well‐being.

      Children flourish in a civic society with a strong communitarian ethos and social trust bonds, relying on networks that bring mutual benefits where state responsibility towards social care and service provision is at its heart. Child socialization in the global north is surrounded by discourses of rights but we need a radical shift in the balance between rights and responsibilities/obligations, especially as unprecedented crises change the timbre of our lives. As we currently experience with the appearance of the Covid‐19 pandemic, when social crises occur dramatically a window into family functioning and child socialization opens wide. We see parenting and socialization to be further intensified, children’s physical and social spaces reduced, and virtual encounters increased. We see low‐income parents struggling to offer concerted cultivation to their children when even the accomplishment of natural growth becomes a mounting struggle. Inequality and its manifestations become starker and micro‐management of private family life more excessive. There is a glimmer of hope though in that people are rejecting fragmentation and division and are actively seeking to redefine common good, and redesign social arrangements and institutions to better align with the support and care families need to raise their children.

      1 Aarseth, H. (2018). Fear of falling–fear of fading: The emotional dynamics of positional and personalised individualism. Sociology, 52(5), 1087–1102.

      2 Archer, L., DeWitt, J., & Wong, B. (2014). Spheres of influence: What shapes young people’s aspirations at age 12/13 and what are the implications for education policy? Journal of Education Policy, 29(1), 58–85.

      3 Bellis,