Centering childhood(s) in the Anthropocene: (Re)production of human genres through nature(s) in early childhood education and care

Abstract

This article argues for scrutinizing the concept of ‘human’ in Anthropocene childhood research instead of diverting attention from it. The postulate is that global ecological degradation results from people being forced to model a capitalist genre of human, ‘Man.’ Employing ethnographic fieldnotes from a Finnish kindergarten, I analyze how two children (re)produced themselves as different genres of human through distinct kinds of nature(s). Emphasis is given to the plurality of childhoods and natures. It is shown that children can play an active role in formulating humanness in ways that are ecologically either more or less troubling.

Introduction: Anthropocene and the overrepresentation of ‘Man’

This article analyzes the (re)production of genres of human through different kinds of nature(s) in Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC). I call for Anthropocene childhood studies to center the human/the child in research, which differs from recent early childhood research addressing the Anthropocene where the human/the child is often “decentered” (see literature reviews by Sjögren, 2023; Wolff et al., 2020; Yliniva and Brunila, 2024). In this article, I conceptualize ECEC as labor that (re)produces humanity both materially and socially (see Backer and Cairns, 2021). I focus on the social aspect via exploring the sociocultural formation of children’s subjectivities through differing types of nature(s). I refer to nature as a cultural construction (Neimanis, 2014: 32–35) because this allows different types of nature(s) to be identified, such as domesticated and wild, which have different gendered and racialized connotations (Anderson, 1997). Through the ethnographic cases of two children, Maisy and Mahad, ¹ I demonstrate how they (re)produced themselves as particular types of humans by attaching themselves to and/or distancing themselves from different types of nature(s).

An impetus for this article is to criticize the current planetary epoch, often called the Anthropocene, which is characterized by the climate crisis and mass extinctions of species. The term ‘Anthropocene’ implies that humanity as a whole is behind global ecological problems, which is misleading. I follow Wynter (2003: 260–262), who argues that “the struggle of our times” is to combat the “overrepresentation” of one genre of human, ‘Man,’ “as if it were the human itself.” From this perspective, planetary ecological problems result from the majority of the world’s population being forced to conform to the Western capitalist genre of human, ‘Man’ (Wynter and McKittrick, 2015: 20–23), embodied in the figure of a bourgeois white male unconcerned with the environment. Changing the planet’s course, then, requires new answers to “who as humans we are” (Wynter and McKittrick, 2015: 24, italics in original). This article explores whether kindergarten children might play a role in reformulating humanity in more ecological terms.

I use the idea of human ‘genres’ to mean different ways of being human that children and educators (re)produce in everyday kindergarten life. However, in a world where the ‘Man’ genre of human is overrepresented, children are generally understood as not yet ‘fully’ human (Lewis, 2012). Furthermore, some children tend to be more readily seen as humans compared to others, also within education (Kromidas, 2019). Regardless of this, actual children can act as potential challengers of what it means to be human (Knight, 2025; Kromidas, 2014). Children can be understood simultaneously as human presents and futures: existing as valuable beings here and now while being simultaneously in a constant state of becoming (Uprichard, 2008). In other words, children simultaneously are humans and continuously construct their humanness. In this study, I examine how Maisy and Mahad’s (re)production of different human ‘genres’ takes place through different versions of nature(s), and how the two children relate to the hegemonic and ecologically disastrous genre of ‘Man.’

Anthropocene childhood studies decentering children

By Anthropocene childhood studies, I refer to a loose field of study within childhood studies that is “Anthropocene-attuned” (Kraftl et al., 2020: 335). Anthropocene childhood studies is known for decentering childhood studies’ sole focus on children and childhoods due to the field’s engagement with ontology (Spyrou, 2017). This tendency to focus on children’s entanglements with materiality is found in several literature reviews focusing on ECEC and the Anthropocene (Sjögren, 2023; Wolff et al., 2020; Yliniva and Brunila, 2024). Often the studies draw on posthumanist and new materialist theories. Frequent frameworks in ECEC contexts include multispecies ethnographies (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2016) and common world pedagogies (Taylor, 2017). These approaches overlap and share an interest in how other species, especially other animals, shape the worlds cohabited by children. Many Anthropocene childhood studies’ ethnographies emphasize the importance of telling stories that showcase the complex, non-innocent intermingling of children with animals and materiality (see e.g. Hohti and Tammi, 2019; Pacini-Ketchabaw and Blaise, 2021; Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2016). Typically, these studies follow Haraway (2016) and “stay with the trouble” without giving any simple guidelines for more ethical human–nature-relationships. Nevertheless, the implicit hope is that through showcasing complexities, avenues could open up for better ways of relating to nature and animals. Anthropocene childhood studies can be perceived as a trendsetter in the emergence of a material or “ontological turn” (Spyrou, 2019) and an “animal turn” (Rautio et al., 2021) within childhood studies.

While the increased interest in more-than-human worlds in childhood studies delights me, there are three aspects in the adherence to materiality that concern me. These all relate to power: power affecting animals, children, and people in general.

First, I am concerned about the consequences for non-human animals when their boundaries are blurred in theorizations such as ‘assemblages.’ As Pedersen (2019) argues, studies can “ontologize” non-human animals for human use if the societal normalcy of animal exploitation is left unquestioned. According to Sjögren (2023: 52–53), Anthropocene ECEC studies can idealize young children’s relationships with nature(s), animals included, to the extent of implying that children would be better off without any education. However, from animals’ viewpoints, many common worlds of children and animals are “common violent worlds” (Saari, 2021: 143–145, emphasis added), which require intervention rather than idealization. Respecting animals might be easier when recognizing them as independent and not only dependent beings.

Second, the same dismissal of power relations affecting animals can devalue children when their agency is distributed among actants. Yliniva and Brunila (2024) argue that Anthropocene ECEC research problematizes children’s political agency, which is troubling, given children’s overall limited societal possibilities for agency. In other words, even though childhood studies scholarship has struggled for the recognition of children as active subjects that shape our worlds, some recent theorizations in the field appear to strip them of their agency. When theoretical devices such as assemblages are used, it is crucial to recognize power imbued within these entanglements: how the agency of various children, adults and animals is constrained and enabled differently.

The third problem in Anthropocene childhood studies concerns power across human differences. Several scholars of childhood and education point out that it is insufficient to retheorize/criticize the separation between nature and children/humanity/culture without considering inequalities between humans (Maina-Okori et al., 2018; Sjögren, 2023; Yliniva and Brunila, 2024). Environmental degradation is not caused by a unity of humans; rather, differences exist in the ways people contribute to and experience ecological problems.

The dichotomy of the centering/decentering of childhoods is useful in summing up a broad field of research, but it also oversimplifies it: individual studies hardly fit neatly into one or other category. However, it is important to identify the problems so that they can be tackled. This study’s solution is to “empower culture” (Neimanis, 2014). I center childhoods and think nature(s) in relation to them. In other words, I perceive children’s self-making as utilizing nature in its cultural forms. Nature in its cultural forms is also present in spaces that are not so obviously multispecies, such as regular indoor ECEC classrooms, where most of my data comes from. This study’s aim is to investigate how constructions of nature are employed in (re)producing constructions of the human, or as I call it here, various ‘genres’ of human.

Natural childhoods and children

Although often invested in materiality, some Anthropocene childhood research has also explored cultural conjunctions between childhood(s) and nature(s). Taylor (2011) influentially shows how an ideal Western childhood is conflated with an ideal of nature as pure, romantic wilderness. However, Taylor leaves non-romantic, non-ideal natures and othered non-natural childhoods undertheorized. Other scholars illuminate why considering these is crucial. For instance, Nath (2009) reveals a racial aspect in ideal natural childhoods by explaining how “feral children” found in Europe in the sixteenth century were regarded as innocent examples of pure nature, while African and Indian feral children behaving in similar ways were perceived as barbaric. Jones (1999) exposes a gendered layer to this by showing how idyllic discourses of countryside childhoods depict boys freely exploring rural environments, but when girls do the same, they are ‘unnatural’ tomboys. It might be that often mainly white boyhoods are neatly placed within so-called pure nature, whereas other childhoods are associated with different, ‘impure’ nature(s).

There are studies that are more concerned with actual children’s relations to nature(s) rather than their cultural constructions, although these are interrelated. For instance, Nxumalo (2020: 549–550) notes how romantic nature imagery associated with white children easily appears colonial, but when linked with black children, such imagery can affirm actual black children’s belonging in nature in positive ways. Nxumalo’s focus is on North America, but the concurrent analysis of race and nature is relevant in the Nordics as well. In Sweden, for instance, a study by Harju and colleagues (2021) found that children who were regarded as more ethnically Swedish were allowed more agency in outdoor ‘natural’ environments. Regarding gender, natural environments have been found to enable gender exploration in less normative ways compared to indoor environments (Änggård, 2011). However, other studies have found that the breaking of gender norms does not necessarily occur in natural places any more easily than in non-natural places without the influence of educators (Decker and Morrison, 2023). Scholars have also argued that gender socialization might pressure boys to mute the care some of them feel for nature and/or animals, while for other genders, this caring might be more socially acceptable (Blenkinsop et al., 2018; Twine, 2024). Research suggests that children’s sense of their identity might affect how they associate with nature(s).

For scholars dedicated to tackling the nature/culture division, the term ‘nature’ might appear too uncritical in some of the aforementioned studies. Often in Anthropocene childhood research, the category of nature is ‘queered,’ that is, its givenness is problematized. However, the category of children may be being left un-queered (see Shillington and Murnaghan, 2016). Sometimes the situation might be other way round. My purpose here is to ‘queer’ both nature and children in the sense that they are understood as multiple. ‘Natures’ are not one and ‘childhoods’ are not one. I hypothesize that in this way, children’s (re)production of human genres through differing natures can be explored and avenues for challenging the genre of ‘Man’ might be opened up.

ECEC (re)produces humanity

Institutionalized education aims to socialize children into being competent members of society, as ‘fully’ human adults. This aim is recognizable in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for early childhood education and care, a document comprising binding yet loose requirements for formal ECEC in Finland. The curriculum obligates educators to “support the children’s growth as human beings who strive for truth, goodness, beauty, justice, and peace” (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2022: 18). The curriculum does not detail how such an ambiguous objective should be met. Educators in Finland are given significant pedagogical autonomy, but children’s active participation is encouraged. Thus, the curriculum recognizes children as competent humans who nevertheless need support in growing within their humanness. In other words, the curriculum frames children as members of the human species but not as ‘complete’ humans in the term’s sociocultural sense. The colonial idea of children as in-between animality and humanity (Kromidas, 2014; Lewis, 2012) is thus echoed in the curriculum.

I am adapting the term ‘(re)production’ from social reproduction theory to describe how various genres of human are simultaneously reproduced and produced in everyday kindergarten life. By reproduction, I mean the deployment of existing sociohistorical discourses in representing one’s humanness. By production, I mean that while deploying discourses, one can also modify them and reformulate what humanness means. For instance, Kromidas (2014) showed that children could rearticulate their racialized existence in playful interactions. Studies of social reproduction typically examine the continuity and challenging of capitalism in various fields, including education (Backer and Cairns, 2021). In this study, capitalism is approached through the overrepresentation of ‘Man’ that promotes a capitalist way of life (Wynter, 2003). The perspective here is that children are not destined to adopt the ‘Man’ genre of human but can refuse its expectations and invent humanity anew. The concept of (re)production captures how both stability and change are present in the everyday sociocultural making of humanness.

Methodology: Ethnography in an eco-kindergarten

This study is part of a research project on sustainable and just futures in environmentalist early childhood education and care. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in two kindergartens in Finland from November 2022 to June 2023. This article focuses on one of those kindergartens, an eco-kindergarten, which followed an international Eco-Schools program. However, in my view as a former ECEC teacher, the eco-kindergarten did not in practice differ significantly from any other Finnish kindergarten. Like most Finnish kindergartens, it was a publicly funded municipal kindergarten open to all children in the area regardless of family income. The kindergarten was located in the Helsinki metropolitan region in a quite an urban neighborhood with a diverse demography.

I acquired written consent from the educators and the children’s guardians to observe and/or interview them/their children. I informed the children about my study verbally and offered explanations of my work to them throughout the fieldwork as needed (Strandell, 2010: 97). All participants were free to withdraw from the study at any time. I collected no background information about the educators or children that EU regulations define as sensitive, which is why I do not identify participants with markers such as race or religion, for example. My university’s ethical review board approved this research project.

I spent 36 days at the eco-kindergarten observing a group of 5–7-year-olds. On most fieldwork days, I spent the morning in the group and the afternoon transcribing my notes. At the kindergarten, I mostly sat on the sidelines and wrote observations in my notebook. Toward the end of the fieldwork, I interviewed some of the children and educators. From the beginning, I attempted to take up a role ‘in between’ the eco-kindergarten’s children and adults in order to maintain good relationships with all participants (Gansen, 2017). I avoided teaching children and only participated in their play if they asked me to, which rarely happened at this kindergarten. I also respected the work of the educators by staying out of their way. Quickly, my presence seemed to become normal for the participants, who usually paid no attention to me.

When observing, I kept in mind my research interest in the interrelations of environmentalism and social justice. I wanted to record situations where nature/environment/animals and/or interhuman (in)equalities were somehow observable. In practice, I found it challenging to turn nature into text, especially when I mostly observed the eco-kindergarten participants indoors. In contrast, some social differences were easier to identify: I quickly noticed the children’s genders because they enacted gender in such explicitly binary ways. Unlike gender, race at the eco-kindergarten was not explicitly discussed. The more implicit racial dynamics were difficult for me to identify, possibly due to my own whiteness (see e.g., Matikainen-Soreau et al., 2025). In the end, my notes consisted mostly of descriptions of the children’s and educators’ actions and conversations, some more relevant to my research than others. The fieldnote excerpts presented in this article indicate when I failed to catch something that was said or done. I have left these passages in to be transparent about the limitations of my notes. Ethnographic notes are always only partial descriptions of actual events (e.g., Lappalainen, 2007).

For this study, I chose to analyze my notes concerning Maisy and Mahad. I had a theory-driven argument in mind of centering childhoods in Anthropocene childhood studies and wanted to test what an analytical focus on specific children could illuminate. At first, I read my notes and paid attention to incidents where nature, animals, gender or race were somehow observable. I quickly selected Maisy and Mahad for more thorough analysis because they appeared in several episodes where the selected themes were observable. I then re-read all my notes of Maisy and Mahad and identified patterns of them relating to distinct types of nature(s) differently, although not too unequivocally. Theoretical literature on the intertwinements of children, nature, gender and race substantially informed my data analysis. Gradually, I decreased the significance of race in my analysis because my data did not identify participants’ racial identities. I hope the chosen excerpts from my fieldnotes on Maisy and Mahad reveal how they (re)produced themselves as humans of different genres through relating to nature(s) in distinguishable ways.

(Re)producing Maisy

In the following excerpt, Maisy was with Leena and Aava in a small room during free play time.

Maisy says she can go to HopLop (children’s adventure park) on her own. Leena says she can go to a park with a friend on her own “for real”.

– –

Maisy: “I have a lot of money.”

Leena: “I have my own phone, a watch…” They discuss what each one has.

– –

Maisy: “I have a big bike. I can go twice to a friend’s house on my bike.”

– –

Maisy sits on a black chair with casters where Nafisa (educator) had sat earlier. Maisy says she can sit on an adult’s chair.

– –

All three go to stand by a window. They all have play phones in their hand.

Maisy: “Do you have WhatsApp?”

Aava: “I have it for real.”

The kids are busy on their phones.

– –

Maisy opens an old plastic ice cream tub and takes some sort of braided ribbon out of it and ties it around her wrist.

Aava sits on the black chair. Maisy says, “Can’t sit on an adult’s chair,” and Aava immediately moves to sit on the pillows in the corner.

Maisy: “Who will take a photo of me?” Maisy holds her phone in front of her, as if taking a selfie. She is posing, hand on hip. She also starts to sing something quietly in English. Both Leena and Aava say they can take photos.

[excerpt 1] ²

In this situation, Maisy constructed herself as a powerful, consumerist, and feminine individual through non-nature(s). Maisy acted powerful when she bragged about what she was allowed to do that other children might not be allowed to do, like going to a children’s adventure park by herself and sitting on an adult’s chair but telling Aava not to. Power was also evident in Maisy and Leena’s rivalry about who owned the best things: a phone, a watch, a big bike, or lots of money that could be used to buy such things. This wish to own things also demonstrates consumerism, an endless desire to purchase products. Feminine performance was evident when Maisy decorated herself with a ribbon and then posed, sang in English, and asked others to take photos of her with their phones. This performance for the cameras, along with the girls’ earlier WhatsApp discussion, augmented the artificial, non-natural feel of the play by situating the trio within the context of international social media imagery.

I call the genre of human that is (re)produced in the excerpt consumerist girlhood. This genre appears to draw from discourses of girl power of Western popular culture, which encourage girls to pursue anything they want while simultaneously requiring them to maintain a feminine appearance by consuming feminine products (e.g., Ivashkevich, 2011). I observed this kind of powerful, consumerist and feminine behavior from Maisy at other times as well. Maisy often mentioned various things she wanted to possess and could make up such aspects of non-nature(s), like computers, in her pretend play. She also tended to compare herself to other girls, which sometimes led to arguments or caused her to become envious. This envy connects with dimensions of class and race in Maisy’s (re)production of consumerist girlhood. Her desire for expensive products indicates a wish for higher-class status. Maisy could also envy other girls’ blond hair and sometimes gave herself a more Finnish-style name. Through such acts, Maisy seemed to align her striving for femininity with Nordic beauty ideals (see e.g., Hutton, 2017). Consumerist girlhood (re)produced through certain aspects of non-nature(s) can be read as a genre of human that is middle-class and white.

Sometimes Maisy directly distanced herself from traditional constructions of nature by expressing dislike for the outdoors. This way, she refused to perform the ideal of a Nordic child who is portrayed as enjoying outdoor activities regardless of the weather (Rutanen et al., 2019). When in an interview I asked Maisy what she would most like to change in the kindergarten, she declared that she would like “to choose yourself whether to go out or not to go out” because it was cold outside. However, she admitted enjoying the sunshine in the summer. I observed Maisy’s discomfort with going outside beyond the interview. Once, Maisy’s mother even asked the educators whether Maisy could skip the outdoor activities because of the cold weather and took Maisy home because this was not possible. At other times, Maisy expressed her dislike of wet weather because she was expected to wear mud pants, a specific type of waterproof trousers. Wearing appropriate clothing, such as mud pants during wet weather, is part of the ideal of Nordic childhood (Rutanen et al., 2019). However, regardless of the ubiquity of mud pants in Finnish kindergartens, it is not unusual for children to loathe them (Keränen and Kinnunen, 2025). At the eco-kindergarten, this loathing of waterproof clothing only seemed to be expressed by the girls. A boy cheerfully remarked, “let’s put on rubber boots, have you seen the puddles?”, indicating that going out into the wet weather would be fun with appropriate clothing. A ‘proper’ Nordic childhood, just like an idyllic countryside childhood (Jones, 1999), may align more easily with some forms of boyhood(s) than it does with girlhood(s).

Maisy did not only distance herself from nature(s) but also associated herself with forms of nature called domesticated nature(s). Mostly, this happened through cute animals. Maisy often wore mainly pink and purple clothing that featured cats and unicorns. Similar clothing was popular among the girls at the eco-kindergarten. Many of these girls also drew cute animals. In the interviews, it became a trend for girls to draw a cat when I asked them to draw “nature.” Maisy followed this trend and drew a cat with blue pants and a shirt with a red heart on it. In the interview, Maisy also characterized dogs, cats, bunnies and unicorns as animals she found “lovely.” She told me how she had taken care of a dog that had stayed at their house for a while. It was “so cute, it had so much fur.” During a visit to the zoo, Maisy said she wanted to own the big cats and red pandas, which she saw as her pets. Although these animals were ‘wild animals’ caged in a zoo, Maisy considered them domesticated or domesticable. This was possible because the big cats resembled domestic cats, and the red pandas looked cute enough to be pets due to their fluffy, colorful fur and big eyes. The cuteness of the animals seemed to be a determining factor in whether Maisy liked them. This is hardly surprising, since children’s media has been found to promote the depiction of cute animals, especially to girls (Cole and Stewart, 2014: chapter 6). Cute animals, especially pets, were a form of domesticated nature that Maisy gladly associated with.

A preference for some animals over others was also evident in the following situation, where Maisy and Aila had different animal figurines available to play with.

Maisy and Aila have placed a box of dinosaurs and other animals on a table in front of me and start playing with them.

– –

“Is it okay if this one is that one’s friend?”

“Who’s in here?”

“This is my friend, is it coming out?”

“This should be our friend.”

– –

Maisy: “The dinosaur is not allowed to come here.” Maisy is holding a sheep and a horse and plays with them.

Aila: “Let’s take you away from here, you are boring.” Aila picks up the dinosaurs from the table and puts them back in the box.

– –

“We’re going on a trip, bye friends!”

– –

Maisy and Aila say they have come back from the trip: “We went by bus.”

They play with the animals again on the table. They tickle the little animals and talk to them in a childish voice.

[excerpt 2]

On the one hand, this play was yet another example of Maisy detaching from nature. On the other hand, Maisy and Aila were playing with animal figurines that symbolize domesticated nature. There were two ways Maisy and Aila dissociated themselves from some types of nature(s) in the animal figurine play: First, by excluding the dinosaurs, they excluded wild nature from their play. Second, the way Maisy and Aila played with the remaining farmed animals had nothing to do with their animality. The farmed animals, a horse and a sheep, did nothing species-specific but instead discussed friendships and took a trip by bus. In fact, the animals were played with as if they were humans. Farmed animals share with pets the quality of domesticity, which is why they are typically viewed as further away from animality and closer to humanity compared to animals living in the wild (see Anderson, 1997: 491; see Melson, 2001: 35). It is possible that Maisy and Aila chose the farmed animals over the dinosaurs because of their different degrees of animality.

The domesticated animals contributed to Maisy and Aila’s (re)production of a human genre called domestic girlhood. There is a European ideal that associates (white) women with domesticated nature(s) and its associated morality (Anderson, 1997: 491–493). While the animality of the sheep and the horse played no role in Maisy and Aila’s play, their domesticity might have influenced the friendly interaction in the play. In the play, Maisy did not draw on the girl power discourse as she did in the first excerpt but enacted a more friendly and caring genre of human. The play revolved around friendly interactions between the animals without evident power struggles. At the end, Maisy and Aila even tickled the animals and talked to them using a childish voice resembling motherly childcare and infant-directed ‘baby talk.’ Besides this example, I have other notes of Maisy playing more domestic roles. For instance, once Maisy played with a kitchen set with a few other girls and spent significant time cooking suitable foods for the others’ diets and discussing the ingredients needed. Through her actions, Maisy (re)produced domestic girlhood through domesticated nature(s).

I have shown how Maisy (re)produced genres of consumerist and domestic girlhood through non-nature(s) and domestic nature(s). However, Maisy could also behave in ways that contradicted these genres. For instance, once during a sunny and cold winter’s day, Maisy played in the snow with the other children, making snow angels and burying her face in the snow. Maisy could, then, also perform more nature-tuned outdoor childhoods, even if verbally she often refused them.

(Re)producing Mahad

The following excerpt is a depiction of Mahad and John’s animal play. The play stands in stark contrast with Maisy and Aila’s animal play (excerpt 2).

Mahad and John are playing with dinos.

– –

“You eat meat.”

“You also eat meat.”

“All these dinosaurs eat meat.”

“You are getting ready to attack.”

“They are all getting ready to attack.”

– –

Mahad and John sit at the table next to each other. They place a shark, a dragon, and two-legged tyrannosaur-like dinosaurs in a row on the table. Then they set stegosauruses and long-necked dinosaurs who have four legs in a row opposite them. The creatures stand in rows facing each other. Mahad is holding a horse toy. He also puts that in the row with the four-legged dinosaus.

– –

John: “The war is about to begin.”

Mahad says with a sheep: “Oh, I don’t want to fight.”

John: “You don’t have to fight if you don’t want to.”

Then the war begins. The two make the animals attack each other. Then they pretend that the tyrannosaurs eat the four-legged dinosaurs on the opposite side. “Yum yum yum,” they say, and hold the tyrannosaurs in their hand, putting their heads near the four-legged dinosaurs lying on the table, wiggling the dinosaurs to show they are moving and eating. The two-legged dinosaurs clearly win the war.

[excerpt 3]

In this play, Mahad and John (re)produced militant and carnivorous boyhood(s) through the savage nature(s) of dinosaurs. The play’s theme was obviously violent, even if there were glimpses of kindness when, for instance, the sheep was allowed to withdraw from the war. Violent play is sometimes viewed as expected, ‘natural’ behavior, especially for boys, and the approach kindergartens take to such play varies across settings (Heikkilä, 2022; Rosen, 2015). At the eco-kindergarten, I did not observe educators limiting any violent play based on their chosen theme if no child was getting hurt. However, militant play was not encouraged either. The educators allowed the children to choose their play themes fairly freely during free play time. Mahad often played with dinosaurs, either alone or with friends.

According to my notes, Mahad’s dinosaur play always included violence. One of the reasons for the occurrence of violent dinosaur play might be the perception of (some) dinosaurs as ‘naturally’ violent animals—as savage nature. The portrayal of carnivorous dinosaurs as terrifying beasts has been effectively popularized by films like the Jurassic Park series. Although children’s media representations of dinosaurs have partly dispersed the association of dinosaurs and savagery (see e.g., Andrianova, 2023), all the dinosaur play I recorded at the eco-kindergarten was violent. Because of this ‘natural’ violence of dinosaurs, Mahad and John’s play could be interpreted as a successful learning situation where the children identified which animals eat which. However, when compared to the play of Maisy and Aila with the same animal set (excerpt 2), the gendered choices appear obvious. The choice of Mahad and John to side with the carnivore dinosaurs is easy to read as boosting the ideal of proper men eating meat (see e.g., Aavik, 2023). The savage nature(s) of dinosaurs contributed to Mahad and John’s (re)production of the human genres of militant and carnivorous boyhood(s).

Mahad also seemed to identify with dinosaurs and other beasts outside of play situations. Before Mahad and John’s play described above, Mahad had remarked that “humans have two legs, animals have four legs,” predicting the boys’ classification of the animals into two-legged and four-legged groups and their siding with the two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs. At another time when the children were making masks, Mahad crafted big teeth and said: “I have big teeth. A lion has big teeth. A dinosaur has big teeth.” In this chain of association, Mahad identified himself with lions and dinosaurs. Mahad appeared to want to understand himself through such imposing carnivores, which also influenced his eating habits. When beef was offered during lunch, Mahad was troubled because he was not allowed to eat meat from cows. On such days, Mahad took only a tiny portion of the alternative, usually vegetarian food. However, when suitable meat was offered, Mahad ate more. Mahad (re)produced the human genre of carnivorous boyhood also outside of play.

Mahad’s admiration of beasts might have been influenced by children’s media content where wild carnivores are sometimes granted a more human-like status compared to herbivores (Stewart and Cole, 2009: 467). The media enables all kinds of animals to be presented as ‘human-like.’ At the eco-kindergarten, it was clear that cuter animals attracted girls and more bestial animals attracted boys. Children’s different animal preferences were also articulated in the following situation where one of the educators read a children’s book about “The ugly five” animals of Africa: wildebeest, warthog, spotted hyena, lappet-faced vulture and marabou stork (Donaldson and Scheffler, 2017).

After the book is finished, the kids are allowed to raise their hand and speak. Hillevi (educator) keeps the last double-page of the book open (the pages show the animals with their offspring).

– –

Noora points at some animal and says: “I think those look cute.”

Hillevi: “You mean those cubs look cute? Maybe as adults, too?”

Noora: “Yes.”

Maisy points at something and says: “In my opinion, it’s ugly.” Hillevi asks why. Maisy replies “Its eyes and teeth look bad.”

Hillevi repeats Maisy’s words and says “Maybe a little scary too, a little bad and scary?”

Mahad: “You know what, how can they actually speak?”

Hillevi: “Do they actually speak Finnish or some other human language?”

Mahad says something about the Congo and Africa.

Hillevi: “How can they speak in this book?”

Mahad: “In a book they can speak…”

Hillevi: “It’s in a book, imagination. They don’t really speak any human language. But animals have their own languages through which they communicate.”

Someone says one of the animals looks a little dirty, and that they don’t like it.

Hillevi: “Hey, may I say one more thing. Eyes and ears here.”

“Maybe in a human’s opinion, such animals may look a little dirty, scary, (I fail to catch everything she says), nasty… Maybe according to the animals themselves, they look just fine.”

– –

Hillevi says that the animals don’t necessarily look like “pets or ordinary animals. These are African predators.”

Hillevi: “Animals like these live in African nature, but in Finland there are different animals. These animals like it hot and dry.”

“There are many animals, some of them maybe cute in humans’ opinion.”

“But they all are equally important there in African nature.”

Hillevi closes the book.

[excerpt 4]

The excerpt reveals constructions of nature and children’s different attitudes toward them. When concluding the discussion with the children, Hillevi contrasted African and Finnish animals and environments. She differentiated between the book’s animals “who like it hot and dry” and the “different animals” in Finland who presumably enjoy a cold and wet climate. She also made distinctions between “pets and ordinary animals” and the “African beasts” of the book. By calling all of the book’s species “beasts,” Hillevi misrepresented them as predators. In reality, only the spotted hyena hunts, whereas the lappet-faced vulture and marabou stork are scavengers, and the wildebeest and warthog are mostly herbivores. Although Hillevi was careful in valuing the importance of each animal “there in African nature,” she simultaneously reinforced a racist idea of Africans as more bestial (see e.g. Baumeister, 2021). With the help of the book, Hillevi presented African nature as exotic and bestial, contrasting it with Finland’s domestic ordinariness (see also Layne and Alemanji, 2015).

Children related to the book’s animals differently and thus (re)produced themselves distinctly through the wild nature(s) the animals represented. I think that wildness characterizes these animals the best because it includes both exoticness and bestiality. However, the book also associated domesticity with the animals by depicting them as caregivers to their children. Noora grasped this domesticity by pointing out the cuteness of the cubs, echoing the link between cuteness and girlhood in evidence at the eco-kindergarten. Maisy shifted attention back to the animals’ bestiality by addressing the “bad” teeth and eyes of one of the animals. Mahad was not interested in evaluating the appearance of the animals but wondered about their speech and language abilities. Unlike Noora and Maisy, Mahad showed interest in the wild nature(s) of the animals.

Mahad’s different reaction to the book’s animals compared to that of the other children led me to ponder his (re)production of humanness through natures that are not necessarily savage to the same extent as the dinosaurs in his play. I have notes of Mahad relating to calmer forms of nature. On the day of excerpt 4, Mahad also mentioned Africa when the children were taught about mangos: He said that he liked mangos and thought that they grew in Africa where it is warm. On another occasion, an educator told me that Mahad had responded to a question about his imagined future profession by stating that he is “going to be a tree because it is so boring to be a human.” Mangos and trees are forms of nature that can be categorized as both wild and domesticated, among other possibilities, but savagery fits them poorly. Even if I have shown here how Mahad (re)produced genres of militant and carnivorous boyhood(s) through savage natures, he could also behave in very different ways through other natures.

Concluding discussion: Was ‘Man’ challenged?

The analyses in this article show how Maisy engaged in (re)producing human genres of consumerist and domestic girlhood(s) through non-nature(s) and domesticated nature(s), and how Mahad engaged in (re)producing human genres of militant and carnivorous boyhood(s) through savage nature(s). However, the paper also describes alternative avenues the children took in relation to nature(s): Maisy could connect with outdoor nature(s) in joyful ways and Mahad could also show interest in calmer forms of nature. The findings suggest that children may (re)produce their humanness in a variety of ways through associating with distinguishable constructions of nature. In the following, I contemplate the ecological implications of my findings in relation to the overrepresentation of the ‘Man’ genre of human that is alleged to underlie global environmental degradation (Wynter, 2003; Wynter and McKittrick, 2015: 20–24).

My view is that Maisy and Mahad both reinforced and to some extent challenged ‘Man.’ Mainly, they adjusted to some of the naturalized capitalist and gendered societal orders: Maisy to femininity as consumerist and domestic, and Mahad to masculinity as militant and carnivorous. They both (re)produced some of the naturalized “descriptive statements” (Wynter, 2003) of which the ‘Man’ genre of human can be seen to consist. Nevertheless, it needs to be recognized that both children also acted in ways that contradicted these tendencies.

The ecological ramifications of the (re)productions of these genres of human are illuminated when thinking with the types of nature(s) through which the genres were (re)produced. Here I find some hope for challenging ‘Man’. I have argued that Maisy mainly distanced herself from wild nature(s) but also tended toward some types of domesticated nature(s). In many ways, Maisy wanted to remain apart from nature, but her interest in cute and/or domesticated animals also shows care for nature. However, this care could be possessive and was only directed at animals that she considered cute enough (see Cole and Stewart, 2014: 109). In the case of Mahad, I have argued that he associated himself with mainly savage and wild forms of nature, especially dinosaurs and other bestial animals. Unlike Maisy, Mahad did not distance himself from nature(s) but could embed himself in the savage nature(s) of dinosaurs. Mahad showed budding interest in other animals’ standpoints, but this was selective—carnivores were preferred over their prey (see Stewart and Cole, 2009: 467). The ecologically negligent genre of ‘Man’ was partly challenged through attunement to some types of nature(s), though at the expense of others.

This study shows that centering childhood(s) in Anthropocene childhood research can be a viable way to explore how children contribute to (re)producing humanness and how they might challenge the ecologically devastating overrepresentation of ‘Man.’ Unfortunately, I found that the threat to ‘Man’ at the eco-kindergarten under study was negligible. My findings support the idea that more attention should be paid to interhuman differences in environmental and sustainability education (Maina-Okori et al., 2018) and to how different identities may incorporate distinguishable relations to nature(s). Children’s self-making does not occur in an ahistorical sociocultural vacuum but may follow deeply rooted discourses of childhood(s) and nature(s) that specify how different children should relate to distinct natures. If Anthropocene childhood studies wants to effect change in the Anthropocene, more scrutiny is needed on the myriad of childhoods and natures. This requires not only decentering ‘the child’ but also centering childhood(s).