Children’s agency when experiencing family-related adversities: The negotiation of closeness and distance in children’s personal narratives

Abstract

Children’s perspectives on family-related adversities are important to social work practice and theory. Qualitative inquiry into children’s personal narratives can contribute to a deeper understanding of their project of handling difficult relationships and experiences in the family context. The present study explores children’s agency with a specific focus on how they negotiate difficult family-related relationships and experiences in, and through, their personal narratives. The analysis builds on teller-focused interviews with 22 children aged between 6 and 17 who receive support linked to their experiences of family-related adversities. The findings suggest that children negotiate difficult relationships and experiences in terms of closeness and distance. This is shown in their narrative practice of positioning and repositioning themselves and others in, and through, their telling. The findings are theorized in relation to the concepts of power and misrecognition. Finally, the implications for social work practice and research are discussed with an emphasis on how to promote a non-instrumental attitude to children’s perspectives and experiences within the child welfare system. The present study suggests that this pursuit would benefit from a child-centered and narrative understanding of children and their knowledge.

Introduction

Childhood is affected by the family context and family relationships are important aspects of most children’s lives (Corsaro, 2015). As a societal institution, “the family” has a prominent position in the construction of children and childhood (Näsman et al., 2015). Furthermore, childhood is generally characterized by an imbalance of relational power (Matthews, 2007). The familial generational structure is usually one of asymmetry (Alanen, 2009), and the adults with whom children are in relationships typically have power over them (Matthews, 2007). While “adult power” within the family context can be understood in terms of care, support and guidance (Smith, 2014), it can also be problematic. For example, Johnstone and Boyle (2018) have suggested that the exercise of power becomes problematic when it is used to coerce or silence others. The present study departs from the assumption that familial power relationships have special implications for children experiencing family-related adversities. Here, the position of children within the family context is often characterized by the fact that they, to varying degrees, are dependent on adults who may lack the ability to use their adult power in line with the child’s best interests. The emphasis on the family as children’s “natural arena” (Smith, 2014) can therefore be challenging for children who have familial relationships with adults who struggle with psychosocial problems and/or expose them to various forms of maltreatment.

Children in this position can be understood as relatively powerless since they may lack the resources to escape or avoid harmful adults and circumstances (Johnstone and Boyle, 2018). Nonetheless, children—like adults—are active and meaning-making subjects in every interaction (Prout and James, 2015), and previous research has shown that children use a variety of strategies to deal with adult family members’ problems and their consequences (see, e.g., Fjone et al., 2009; Kroll, 2004; Nesmith and Ruhland, 2008). Little is known, however, about how children understand and negotiate the ambiguity of having family relations with adults who, to varying degrees, may lack the capacity to use their power to care for, support and guide the child. The present study, therefore, aims to explore children’s agency when experiencing family-related adversities, specifically by focusing on the element of negotiation in their personal narratives. The research question is: What do children do, in and through their telling, when negotiating difficult family relationships and experiences in order to handle their situation?

Childhood and family-related adversities

The study focuses on children who encounter, or have encountered, one or several adversities in their family context during childhood. The overarching concept of family-related adversities is used to cover both familial circumstances and child maltreatment. Familial circumstances—such as parental substance misuse, mental ill-health, or criminality—and child maltreatment often coexist (Hughes et al., 2017; Spratt, 2012). Therefore, it makes sense to use an overarching concept to encircle children’s various here-and-now experiences of childhood adversities.

Children who encounter family-related adversities make up a heterogeneous group and their life situations depend on many contextual factors. Nonetheless, there is strong evidence that the experience of childhood family-related adversities is connected to negative consequences in children’s lives, in the here-and-now as well as in the future (see, e.g., Dam and Hall, 2016; Spratt, 2012; Tinnfält et al., 2011). Qualitative research with children as informants has contributed knowledge on children’s understanding of their situation (Trondsen, 2012), children’s strategies for handling their situation (Dam and Hall, 2016; Överlien, 2017), children’s views on disclosure (Tinnfält et al., 2011) and social support (Munford and Sanders, 2020). Munford and Sanders (2020: 53–54) show that young people who have experienced adversity from an early age describe many experiences of misrecognition, such as experiences of being ignored, judged, disrespected, and treated as unworthy, within key domains of their everyday lives. In addition, Aadnanes and Gulbrandsen (2018: 594) show that young people who have experienced maltreatment perceive psychological and emotional abuse and neglect as the most hurtful. A central theme, therefore, is children’s perspectives on how their experiences have affected their own person.

Other recurring themes in research on children’s experiences are secrecy and fear of stigma (Fjone et al., 2009; Hill, 2015). The concept of a “family secret” encircles the fact that family-related adversities are often kept hidden and uncommunicated, both within the family and in relation to the surrounding context. Keeping quiet can also be a strategy that children themselves use to relieve feelings of shame and unworthiness (Munford and Sanders, 2020). Hence, many children in difficult life situations never come into contact with the social services (Archard and Skivenes, 2009; Heimer et al., 2018) and there is a risk that they do not get the support and protection they need.

Furthermore, research has shown that when children and their families do come into contact with the child welfare system, children and adults often express different views on what the problem is (Heimer et al., 2018). Knezevic (2017: 471) argues that trustworthiness is unevenly distributed due to structural power relations such as the adult–child relationship. Given the imbalance of power, there is a risk that children’s perspectives are marginalized in favor of adults’ perspectives—both family members and social workers (Heimer et al., 2018; Van Bijleveld et al., 2015). Research on children’s participation within the child welfare system shows that when social workers object to participation, it often stems from a socio-cultural understanding of children as vulnerable and in need of adult protection (Van Bijleveld et al., 2015). In other words, the focus on protection often overrides children’s right to participation (Heimer et al., 2018) which has had the effect that children at risk are not being heard in welfare services. In sum, familial, organizational, and discursive circumstances may deprive children of their right to be heard as well as their need for adequate support and protection.

Theoretical framework

The first theoretical starting point for the present study is childhood sociology (Mayall, 2000; Prout and James, 2015). Childhood is understood as individual and context-bound and children are understood as social and meaning-making subjects (Matthews, 2007; Prout and James, 2015). Here, the concept of agency is relevant. Within the frame of the study, agency is understood as “the creative production of social life” (Prout and James, 2015: 23), and it is used as an overarching concept to encircle children’s practice of acting in and upon social structures in their everyday lives, as well as in their personal narratives. Överlien (2017: 681) argues that children’s subject positions can be constrained by, for example, adult discourses about home and childhood. She stresses the importance of investigating children and their discursive practices and positions regardless of these potential constraints and limitations. Munford and Sanders (2015) have shown that a search for agency is central in young people’s experiences and Heimer et al. (2018) suggest that it is perhaps even more important to focus on children’s agency when they are in vulnerable life situations. An emphasis on children as meaning-making actors with a right to a voice can be helpful in order to avoid conceptualizing them as passive victims.

The second theoretical starting point of the study is a narrative approach to children’s perspectives and voices (Reissman, 2008; Squire et al., 2014). Narratives can be seen as social actions that are created in a context and that draw on joint cultural stories (Atkinson and Delamont, 2006). Individuals’ personal narratives about themselves and their lives reflect earlier dialogue and the voice of the context in which they are situated (Hydén, 2014; Reissman, 2008). This means that children’s experiences of being positioned by others can be heard in their telling. However, children are not passive recipients of adults’ words and actions, but subjects who actively engage in social interactions and relationships (Prout and James, 2015). When telling their story, children also engage in a narrative practice of negotiating relationships and experiences. The present study departs from the assumption that this narrative practice can be studied by focusing the analysis on how children position and reposition themselves and others in, and through, their telling (Bamberg, 1997; Deppermann, 2015).

Method and material

Participants

The study is part of a larger research project focusing on children’s perspectives on experiencing family-related adversities during childhood. Twenty-two children, ¹ aged between 6 and 17, were interviewed about themselves, their relationships and their everyday lives. The participants were all recruited from two Swedish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) offering support to children experiencing family-related adversities. Among other things, this meant that the children all knew about the problems in the family and that they had already received some contextually shaped support in how to frame, understand and handle their situations. According to the participating children’s descriptions, one or several family members struggled with one or more of the following problems: mental ill-health, alcohol- or drug-related problems, criminality and/or incarceration, aggressive/violent behavior, and conflict/divorce. A recurring theme in the children’s personal narratives was the experience of abuse and neglect in various ways. Many, but not all, had ongoing or previous contact with the social services. Two of the participating children lived in a nuclear family with both their biological parents and two lived in foster care. The vast majority lived in extended family constellations—some with sporadic or no contact with the family member that they identified as problematic.

Procedure and ethics

The project was conducted in accordance with the ethical principles recommended for social science in Sweden with approval from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. Recruitments began with meetings with the two organizations to secure support for the project. After gaining access, I visited the organizations on a number of occasions to meet with the children and to present the study. During my visits, the children had the opportunity to ask questions and were given time to consider the invitation to participate. They were informed about the purpose of the study, that it was voluntary to participate and that they had the right to withdraw their consent of participation at any time. Also, they were informed that they could get emotional support from the organization after the interviews if needed. The children who decided to participate then gave their written consent. If they were aged under 15, their guardian(s) were also provided with information and gave their written consent. The design of the study was guided by a child-centered and narrative approach (Kearns, 2014; McNamara, 2011) and the ongoing objective was to make participation intelligible, safe, and meaningful for each child. Each child was interviewed on two occasions, with approximately 1 month between each interview, in order to create a safe space and allow time for the children to talk about potentially sensitive topics. I brought up some topics, questions, and exercises grounded in the overarching interest in the children’s stories about their lives, but engaged primarily in active listening and following their stories (Hydén, 2014). I have a professional background as a children’s counselor, which proved helpful in our conversations. At the end of the first interview, each child was given a notebook and was told that, should they want to, they could use the book to write down any thoughts, questions, or ideas for topics before the second interview. Between the two interviews, I transcribed the first interview and formulated follow-up questions on themes that emerged from the first interview.

Analysis

All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The material was then analyzed through thematic and performative narrative analysis (Reissman, 2008; Squire et al., 2014). First, all material concerning the children’s talk about themselves in relation to the family member that they had identified as problematic was collected. Second, a thematic narrative analysis was conducted, focusing on what the children said about the problems of their family members, the consequences in their own lives, and their everyday practices of handling those difficulties. The material was studied first case-by-case and then side-by-side in order to identify recurring themes. The analysis aimed at discerning themes across the children’s stories rather than themes that could be picked out from stories (Squire et al., 2014). Through this analysis, the theme that became the main focus of the present study was developed: Children’s project of negotiating difficult family relationships and experiences in terms of closeness and distance. Third, a performative narrative analysis was integrated with the thematic narrative analysis (Reissman, 2008). Here, the focus was directed at how the children narrated themselves and their family relationships, that is, their narrative practice. Positioning analysis (Bamberg, 1997; Deppermann, 2015) was used as the main analytical tool. Deppermann (2015) suggests that the concept of positioning can be used to elucidate how individuals deploy and negotiate their identities in, and through, their telling. As stated by Squire et al. (2014: 64), the positions chosen by individuals are “constituents of narratives” and the concept of positioning helps focus the analysis on how individuals draw on discursive resources and relations in their personal narratives. Hence, the focus was directed at how the children positioned and repositioned themselves and others in the stories told as well as in their telling. The interpretative work also concerned the question of why, that is, the possible functions of children’s project of repositioning selves and others in those particular ways. The narratives and text examples presented below have been translated and edited for readability but the meaning has not been altered.

Findings

All participating children describe how their own life has been negatively affected by their family member and/or the difficult situation in one way or another. The analysis shows that the children have been positioned by others (by family members and, discursively, by ideas about children and childhood) and that they negotiate these experiences by orienting between closeness and distance in their telling. The concepts of closeness and distance can be understood as two ends of a continuum across which the children are moving in their telling. An orientation toward closeness is characterized by a narrated will to have a close and loving relationship with one’s family member. An orientation toward distance is characterized by a narrated will to separate one’s life from one’s family member—physically and/or relationally. The findings show that it is often the ambiguity of the situation that forces children to negotiate their family relations in terms of closeness and distance. A few of the children orient “unproblematically” toward closeness in their telling, but a majority seem to engage in a project where they, straightforwardly or ambivalently, orient toward distance. The personal narratives of three children, Hannah, Farhan, and Vicky (pseudonyms), will function as illustrative examples throughout the findings section. Together, they encircle the main themes in all the participating children’s project of negotiating difficult relationships/experiences through positioning and repositioning selves and others in, and through, their telling.

Being positioned by others: The personal narratives of Hannah, Farhan, and Vicky

Our first narrator, Hannah (16), identifies her father as the problem bearer. She describes him as mentally ill and narrates him as a very demanding person. Hannah lives with her mother and siblings and is trying, to the best of her ability, to avoid all contact with her father. When Hannah is asked to describe her situation, she says:

Well, it’s like…my dad has never been very kind to me. He’s treated me really bad and he’s treated my siblings much better. And, like, he’s told me that I am ugly, that I am bad at things. Sometimes he comments that I eat too much.

Hannah narrates her father as an unfair person who treats her differently from her siblings. She says that she “sometimes feels like the ugly duckling,” which can be understood as an example of how she attributes her low feelings of self-worth to her father’s words and actions. Among other things, Hannah’s personal narrative illustrates an experience that many of the participating children account for: The experience of being positioned as a problem bearer by one’s family member.

Farhan (16) is our second narrator. He identifies his uncle, and former caregiver, as the problem bearer. According to Farhan, his uncle’s “religious beliefs” were the reason why he limited Farhan’s freedom and exposed him to violence. Farhan got help from the social services 2 years ago and now lives in foster care. He narrates his uncle as someone who has “not been very nice” to him and who constantly distrusted him. He attributes his former low self-confidence to his uncle and says that since he moved to his foster home his life “has gone from hell to paradise.” Throughout his telling, Farhan emphasizes the difficulties that stemmed from being mistrusted by his uncle. For example, his uncle always suspected him of hanging out with girls when, in fact, he went to after-school activities to study:

He just didn’t believe me. So, I told him “But you can come with me to school, ask the school. You can go to the after-school activity and ask for me. If they say that I am not there, then you can do whatever you want, then I am in the wrong!” But he never did. He didn’t want to listen to me. He thought he was right the whole time. But he wasn’t.

Farhan expresses how he tried to reason with his uncle without success. Among other things, Farhan’s personal narrative illustrates an experience that many of the participating children account for: The experience of being positioned as untrustworthy by one’s family member.

Our third narrator, Vicky (16), identifies her father as the problem bearer and describes him as “an alcoholic.” Vicky’s mother is dead and Vicky lives in foster care. She narrates her father as an “annoying” person. She describes how she got so tired of him always being “drunk and aggressive” that she stopped having any contact with him 3 years ago. Still, she also seems to understand her current situation as a consequence of her father’s problems. She says:

He has chosen alcohol before me and my brother so many times. It feels like you’re not important, you’re not important enough for him to stop.

Vicky also says that “not even his children are more important than alcohol.” In other words, she seems to make sense of her father as someone who has chosen not to prioritize her and her brother. Among other things, Vicky’s personal narrative illustrates an experience that many of the participating children account for: The experience of being positioned as unimportant by one’s family member.

Negotiating through repositioning

The analysis suggests that the participating children have previous experience of being positioned by others in problematic ways and that they use their personal narratives to deal with this experience in various ways. Their narrative agency can be heard in their project of negotiating closeness and distance by repositioning themselves, and their family members, in and through their telling. Hannah’s, Farhan’s, and Vicky’s personal narratives will illustrate the two main practices observed: repositioning selves and repositioning others.

A first example is provided by Hannah. In the following example, she is in the middle of telling a story about how she has recently decided to stop answering her father’s texts. This has caused a strong reaction in her family, not least from her father:

Sometimes he texts me but I never answer. Because I’m so fed up with him. And yes, he got angry with me, about two weeks ago because of it. He said I was immature, that I should behave better, that I am stupid for not answering his texts. So, I told him: “I have my own life, I’ve got school, I’m tired when I get home from school. I work three days a week, I’m tired, I don’t have the energy to send another text.”

Here, Hannah gives an example of how her act of creating distance is contested by her father. She has to negotiate her will to prioritize her own needs with her father’s expectations. Her narrative illustrates that her father has positioned her as a problem but that she, on the other hand, repositions herself as an agent who is making decisions in line with her own needs.

Another example of how children negotiate the situation by repositioning themselves is provided by Farhan. When thinking back on his difficult experiences at his uncle’s house he says:

It is a bad thing that he has treated me like this but the upside is that I became such a good person. I don’t think that I would have been the person that I am today if I had stayed at his house. I don’t think so.

Here, Farhan seems to make sense of his difficult experiences in the past by focusing on the fact that they led to a better life in the present. He attributes the change to the fact that he has moved away from his caregiver—that is the reason why his life is a better one now. The negotiation, in other words, lies in how Farhan negotiates his own identity in relation to his difficult experiences. In his telling, he repositions himself from a victim to a survivor.

Another fairly prominent practice in the children’s narratives is the act of repositioning others in one way or another. Vicky is repositioning her father from “parent” to “person” through her telling. She says: “His name is Jonny so I just call him Jonny. I feel he has lost his right to call himself a dad.” Here, Vicky highlights the fact that her father does not meet the requirements of fatherhood. In the following example, she tells a story about when her father was drunk and aggressive on the phone:

Vicky: And then I told him, because I could hear that he was drunk, I said “If you keep on drinking, then you are not my dad anymore. You don’t have the right to call yourself a dad if you can’t even be there for me.” But, he probably doesn’t remember, because he was so drunk. But, I think he knows, anyway, what I mean, what I feel about him.

Interviewer: How did it feel after you said that to him?

Vicky: It felt like a little relief.

Interviewer: What was it… what do you think made it a relief?

Vicky: Because then he was finally out of my life.

Here, Vicky has to negotiate the fact that her father is not there for her as a father should be. While perhaps struggling with feelings of abandonment, Vicky does something with the relationship by orienting toward distance. Through her telling, she takes control of the narrative. The “relief” can be understood as an expression of the absence of negotiation, in that creating narrative distance can function as a means of avoiding negotiation. Vicky questions her father’s ability to do fatherhood. It is the fact that he cannot “be there” for her that deviates from the idea of what a parent does. Vicky narrates the event as a turning point and says that it has made a difference in her own life:

Vicky: Well, he doesn’t affect me that much anymore

Interviewer: No

Vicky: If he is sober well, good for him. I will wake up tomorrow feeling great. And if he isn’t sober, I will still wake up tomorrow and feel great. He doesn’t affect me at all

Interviewer: He doesn’t affect you at all

Vicky: Like… the only thing he could do right now, to make things better, is to get in touch

Vicky narrates herself as someone who has been able to disconnect her well-being from that of her father and his drinking. By repositioning him, she makes him less important in her life. In the final sentence, however, she opens up the possibility of regaining a relationship in the future. This could be understood either as a struggle or as an ability to accept uncertainty. Perhaps, Vicky is handling two projects at the same time: the project of taking care of herself and the project of being open to change in the future.

Like Vicky, Hannah is negotiating the relationship by repositioning her father. She says that “when people ask me if I have a dad, I say yes, but I could never say that he is a dad.” She continues:

Hannah: I try to remove him from my life because I don’t want him here

(pause)

Interviewer: You don’t want him here

Hannah: No, it’s like, when people ask me what I see in him, the only thing I see is…I can’t even call him dad in certain situations. Because he has hurt me so much. And it’s like, why should I, he has no… he doesn’t deserve the role as a dad.

The negotiation lies in the fact that Hannah has to manage other people’s expectations of the relationship while orienting toward distance. By narratively removing her father from his position as “dad,” Hannah seems to make it a bit easier to remove him from her life. By critically examining what parenthood is, and is not, she can rationalize this choice to herself and others. She highlights the fact that her father has hurt her as the main reason why he does not meet the requirements of what a father “is.”

Ambivalence in children’s talk

To Farhan, it seems fairly easy to keep his physical distance from his uncle. He says that “he doesn’t want to see me and I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to talk to him or anything.” As with a few of the other participating children, Farhan expresses certainty in his orientation toward distance. However, most of the children express ambivalence in their telling. One reason for the ambivalence could, of course, be that children also feel love and affection for their family members. However, two other observations concerning children’s ambivalence are presented below: adults’ ambivalence and surrounding ideas about parent–child relationships.

First, the children seem to have a more ambivalent attitude toward family members who are themselves understood as ambivalent by the child. In other words, if the adult is presented as unpredictable and as someone who is giving mixed signals, such as showing affection one day but not the other, children too seem to end up in an ambivalent situation. Vicky, who is fairly clear on her views about her father in the first interview, nuances this in the second interview when she, as mentioned above, opens up the possibility of having a relationship in the future. In a conversation about good and bad choices, she says:

One choice I made is when I stopped talking to my dad and blocked him everywhere. Because I got so tired of him calling me in the middle of the night, drunk. So, I blocked him everywhere, and that was a good choice then. But now, he is “sober” [makes quotation marks], he says.… So now, I have opened, like, I’ve unblocked him. So, I’ve like given him a second chance and that is something that I am proud of, that I dared to give him a second chance (pause). Well, it didn’t turn out that good since he doesn’t care enough to get in touch. But, now he’s got the opportunity to get in touch…and it feels good that I, at least, did what I could.

Vicky seems to have negotiated the relationship in terms of risk and decided that she is willing to give her father a second chance even if it involves the risk of being hurt again. In her last sentence, she says that it feels good that she did what she could. Here lies her narrative agency as she positions herself as someone who is not powerless in the situation. When asked if she is going to contact her father again, Vicky says: “I’m going to wait and see if he realizes that he should get in touch. When he feels that his daughter is important.” Here the ambivalence is quite explicit but it can be understood in different ways. One way to interpret Vicky’s account is that she is secretly longing for her father to get in touch. Another way would be that she is capable of taking care of herself and having hopes for the future at the same time.

Second, ambivalence can be heard in the stories where the children seem to struggle with different kinds of family-related and/or societal ideas about what a parent–child relationship “should” be like. Some of the children, such as Hannah, describe a family context where it is “expected” that all family members will live up to their respective roles. When Hannah decided to stop answering her father’s texts, her relatives reacted:

First, they kind of understood but then my dad came around and started feeling sorry for himself. So they got angry with me again. Like “You just don’t do a thing like this to your dad, you just don’t!.” But they don’t understand what he has done to me.

Hannah has decided that she does not want to have any contact with her father, but since her family has trouble accepting this decision, she is in an ongoing process where she has to defend her decision and stand her ground. Here, Hannah positions herself as quite vulnerable as she is standing all alone in the face of the anger of several family members. If it were not for her family members’ resistance, there would perhaps not be any ambivalence in her talk. In addition, when talking about her father’s words and actions, Hannah connects her situation to that of others by saying: “He has hurt me so much, and that is something that children usually don’t experience.” Through this account, she expresses an awareness of the “unusualness” of her situation. She also implicitly connects to the cultural idea of parent–child closeness and states that her experience differs from this ideal. When narrating her experiences in this way, Hannah pinpoints a central theme in children’s lives when encountering adults’ problems within the family context: the challenging experience of being positioned, by others, as deviating from socio-cultural norms of what a family “is.” Here, the ambiguity of children’s situation becomes clear, that is, the ambiguity of having family relations with adults who, to varying degrees, may lack the capacity to care for, support, and guide the child. Several of the children in the present study account for the difficult balancing act of distancing themselves from their parents in a context where parent–child relationships are considered to be the most important ones.

Discussion

Distance narratives, power, and misrecognition

The present study shows that children who experience family-related adversities need to negotiate difficult relationships/experiences in terms of closeness and distance. A main finding of the study is that the children who describe their family members as authoritarian, aggressive, controlling, or uninterested are the ones expressing the strongest orientation toward distance. Children who orient toward distance, as illustrated by Hannah, Farhan, and Vicky, often talk about how they cannot be themselves, that their freedom is limited, that life is unfair and that they have difficulties trusting others. Children’s “distance narratives,” in other words, seem to call for a discussion on children’s agency in relation to the concepts of power and misrecognition. Arguably, familial power relationships have special implications for children experiencing family-related adversities. Children’s position within the family context is often characterized by the fact that they, to varying degrees, are dependent on adults who may lack the ability to use their adult power in line with the best interests of the child. Power comes in many forms (Johnstone and Boyle, 2018) and the present study suggests that when adults use their power to coerce children, to position the child as a problem bearer, or to withhold recognition, children may handle the situation by turning away from it. Munford and Sanders (2020) draw on Honneth (1995) to describe the experience of misrecognition as experiences of disrespect, lack of love and care and not having one’s voice heard or valued. In other words, encountering acts of misrecognition seems to challenge children’s fundamental sense of human value. Thus, the core contribution of the study is the notion that adults’ exercise of power becomes problematic for children when it involves the experience of being misrecognized in various ways. The stories of Hannah, Farhan, and Vicky show that no matter the type of adult’s psychosocial problems, the common thread is a challenged sense of human value. When the adult–child interaction involves acts of misrecognition, it becomes urgent for children to negotiate the relationship in terms of closeness and distance. The collective narrative that emerges in this study is a story about reasonable responses to misrecognition.

Implications for social work practice and research

The present study contributes knowledge on what children say if they get an opportunity to share their personal narratives about difficult relationships and experiences in the family context. This is relevant to social work practice since previous research (Archard and Skivenes, 2009) has shown that social work with children often is characterized by an instrumental attitude to children’s views. Often, children are not involved in the decision-making process. Albeit perhaps listened to, their views are instead discounted or ignored. Archard and Skivenes (2009) emphasize children’s right to a voice in its own right. They point to the importance of supporting children in developing their own opinion, instead of dismissing them as being loyal to their parents or ignorant of alternative ways of living. The present study calls for social workers to engage in listening more deeply to what, and how, children tell about experiences of misrecognition as well as strengths. Adults working with children in difficult life situations need to use their power to create a space for those narratives. Here, an understanding of children as knowledgeable subjects (Heimer et al., 2018) is imperative. As narratives are important meaning-making devices (Överlien, 2017), they contribute relevant information about children’s situations and perspectives. When social workers listen to children’s personal narratives, they gain knowledge about how children position themselves and others in and through their telling. This is information about how children themselves perceive and make sense of their situation, and thus important information about their needs.

Överlien (2017: 687) argues that “a discourse of victimization leaves little room for action.” Here, the question of age becomes relevant. It is a common assumption that younger children more or less lack the ability to narratively reflect on themselves and their experiences. However, perhaps this is a question of support context rather than age. The present study suggests that also younger children would benefit from receiving support within a context that encourages them to find their voice and that offers them actual opportunities to investigate their views and experiences. Social support grounded in an understanding of children as social and meaning-making actors, albeit in difficult life situations, might be helpful to children in their pursuit of finding alternative understandings of their situations and needs. The present study suggests that this kind of social support should be offered to children sooner—both with regards to their age and with regards to their life situation.

Study strengths and limitations

The strength of the study is that it builds on repeated interviews with a relatively large number of children. The focus on children’s experiences, rather than adults’ problem categories, may also be understood as a strength as it highlights the child’s perspective. However, the fact that all the participating children were already receiving professional support has relevance for the stories told. This, in turn, has implications for the transferability of the study. Children who are not involved with the child welfare system and/or support organizations may make alternative sense of their situation and their agency may well be expressed in alternative ways. In other words, the opportunities for children to control their own lives in the rather explicit manner described in the present study are context-bound. That said, the findings of the study should be relevant to children in similar situations as well as social work practitioners since they offer a framework for understanding children’s narrative agency in relation to the power of adults.

Conclusion

The study explored children’s agency when experiencing family-related adversities, specifically by focusing on the element of negotiation in children’s personal narratives. It asked the question: What do children do, in and through their telling, when negotiating difficult family relationships and experiences in order to handle their situation? The main finding is that children need to negotiate difficult relationships and experiences in terms of closeness and distance when the interaction involves acts of misrecognition. This is shown in their practice of repositioning themselves and others in their personal narratives. Children’s negotiation of closeness and distance may function as a means to gain power over that which perhaps is the only thing possible to control in a difficult life situation—one’s personal narrative.