Editorial

The study of child–adult relations is core to our understanding of children’s experiences. Inso many arenas, children’s everyday lives are, directly or indirectly, shaped by the kinds ofrelationships they have with adults — be that at a personal level with adult family membersor at a greater distance through the laws and social policies that regulate children’s lives. Inthis issue of the journal, this relationship comes under scrutiny. Looking at the practices ofparents, grandparents and professionals who look after children, the articles variously con-sider what are the outcomes for children from these different kinds of child–adult relations.

The story of child–adult relations begins before birth, and especially during the earliestmonths of infancy. In their analysis of the Home-Start support scheme offered to disadvan-taged and ⁄ or vulnerable mothers in England, Kristen MacPherson, Jacqueline Barnes,Michelle Nichols and Sharon Dixon examine whether or not this intervention is effective.Does it meet the needs of mothers as they begin to care for their newborn children and doesit lead to better outcomes for children than other kinds of formal and informal support? Theconclusion these authors reach is equivocal. Although the kind of volunteer support offeredthrough the scheme mirrors that given informally by friends and family, and was muchappreciated, mothers also experienced a range of difficulties with the scheme. The authorsconclude therefore that Home-Start can be a useful source of support for those families whodo not have strong social networks upon which to draw, but that its cost-effectiveness inpromoting better outcomes for children remains in doubt.

Mothering is also the focus of Jean Clarke’s analysis. In examining the ‘social problem’ ofrepeat teenage pregnancy, she argues that, to understand why this occurs, it is necessary toconsider the meanings that teenagers themselves attribute to their pregnancies. Drawing oninterviews with teenagers in London and the Caribbean, she shows that being pregnant isstrongly felt and understood, by these girls, as the first stage of becoming a mother and hav-ing a baby. Those girls who, during their first pregnancy had experienced miscarriage or astillbirth or had opted for an abortion, spoke eloquently, for example, of their feelings of lossand grief. For them a second pregnancy was one of the ways in which they chose to repairtheir emotions. As Clarke argues, professionals and policy-makers need to understand thesepowerful motivations if they wish to have an impact on repeat teenage pregnancy rates.

The importance for children’s well-being of the close emotional bonds between grandparentsand their grandchildren has long been observed in the literature. However, Julia Griggs,Jo-Pei Tan, Ann Buchanan, Shalhevet Attar-Schwartz and Eirini Flouri argue that close-ness per se may not be sufficient. What may matter more is what grandparents do with theirgrandchildren for it is this social interaction that grandchildren value most in their relation-ships with grandparents. This UK-based study of young people’s views on grandparentingfound that, it was grandparents’ active involvement in their everyday lives that was mostappreciated. This ranged from the grandparents providing day-to-day care and attendingschool events or after-school activities through to sharing their hobbies and offering ‘infor-mal education’ to young people by helping with homework and career advice. Grandparentswere also seen by young people as an additional source of emotional support and help at

CHILDREN & SOCIETY VOLUME 24, (2010) pp. 173–174DOI:10.1111/j.1099-0860.2010.00297.x EDITORIAL

� 2010 The Author(s)

Journal compilation � 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited

times of trouble. What these authors highlight, therefore, is the significance of these less visi-ble and more informal roles played by grandparents in their grandchildren’s lives.

What children gain from their relationships with adults is, therefore, perhaps less clear-cutthan we might imagine and, as Turf Bocker Jakobsen argues, this is particularly critical withrespect to children in care. Drawing on his study of everyday life in residential care settingsin Denmark, Jakobsen shows that, although all professionals might agree that what childrenneed to flourish in such settings is strong relationships with adults, how those were definedand how they were to be achieved varied enormously. For Jakobsen, such variations can beexplained by the very different ways in which therapeutic regimes become naturalised as‘self-evident’ across a range of institutions. This means, he suggests, that the central valuesthat are core to child welfare work can have no intrinsic meanings as, in different settings,they will be operationalised in different ways.

In the final article, Imelda Coyne explores a key ethical issue in research relationshipsbetween adults and children: is it always necessary to gain parental, as well as child, consentin research with children? Although ethical review panels tend to err on the side of caution,citing child protection or children’s immaturity as reasons for requiring consent from par-ents, Coyne argues that this may not always be in children’s best interests. Children, forexample, may not wish to participate in research for which parents have given their proxyconsent. Coyne urges researchers therefore to draw on children’s own perspectives on beinginvolved in research to help develop better informed ethical guidelines for research withchildren.

Finally, the research review by Lester Coleman and Fiona Glenn offers us a picture of thefactors that are likely to advantage and disadvantage children during family or relationshipbreakdown. What matters most for child well-being, their review suggests, is the way a fam-ily functions, rather than the way it is constituted, indicating, once more, the centrality ofchild–adult relations in outcomes for children.

Allison James

174 Editorial

� 2010 The Author(s) CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 24, 173–174 (2010)

Journal compilation � 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited