Children’s narratives about well-being in the face of difficult life experiences: Renegotiated self-understandings as turning points

Abstract

Children who experience family-related adversity have stories to tell about well-being in the face of difficulties. These stories provide knowledge about how children handle their experiences and make sense of themselves. This study aims to investigate children’s perspectives on experiences that have contributed to their well-being in the face of difficulties, with a specific focus on turning-point narratives. Twenty-two children (aged 6–17) were interviewed, on two occasions each, about themselves and their lives. The findings show that children emphasize protection, support, and knowledge as contributing to their well-being. Furthermore, the findings show that those who narrate turning points do so in relation to three interrelated aspects: identification, directedness, and self-relationship. In their telling, these children are engaged in the project of renegotiating their self-understanding. The core contribution of the study is the notion that a renegotiated self-understanding, in and of itself, may be an important part of children’s well-being. The findings have implications for social work practice because they suggest that children in difficult life situations may benefit from support that offers them a space to examine old ideas about identity and agency in relation to new ones.

Introduction

Everyday life is difficult for children experiencing family-related adversity (Aadnanes and Gulbrandsen, 2018; Hughes et al., 2017; Spratt, 2012), such as parental substance misuse, mental ill health, or child maltreatment. Their childhoods are often characterized by interruptions, negative turning points, and unpredictable family support (Dam and Hall, 2016; Kroll, 2004; Munford and Sanders, 2015). Some recurring themes in research on children’s perspectives on their life situations are guilt, shame, responsibility, fear of stigma, and powerlessness (Fjone et al., 2009; Kroll, 2004; Munford and Sanders, 2015; Saunders, 2018; Tinnfält et al., 2011). Often, children and young people blame themselves for their difficult situations (Michelson, 2022a); Munford and Sanders, 2015), and their sense of self-worth can be damaged by their experiences ((Michelson, 2022b); Downey and Crummy, 2021). Children experiencing family-related adversity, in other words, are forced to find ways to handle and make sense of difficult life experiences in many ways, not least, with regard to their identity and agency.

However, research on resilience (Bunting and Lazenbatt, 2016; Ross et al., 2020) shows that many children come through their difficult experiences and do well as adults. Contemporary understandings of resilience emphasize that it is a dynamic developmental process rather than a fixed trait, and many researchers today argue that resilience fundamentally rests on relationships (Bunting and Lazenbatt, 2016; Fritz et al., 2018). There is a great deal of available knowledge about how adults handle and make retrospective sense of their difficult childhood experiences (Bunting and Lazenbatt, 2016; Patrick et al., 2019). Less is known about children’s here-and-now talk about, and understanding of, possible routes to enhanced subjective well-being in the face of difficult experiences. According to Meretoja (2016), our existence cannot be separated from our self-perception and the ways in which we imagine the past and the future. Here, narratives play an important role. Children’s narratives about themselves and their lives arguably provide important knowledge about how they handle their difficult experiences and make sense of themselves, while still in childhood.

Against this background, the present study aims to investigate children’s perspectives on experiences that have contributed to their well-being in the face of difficulties, with a specific focus on turning-point narratives. Three research questions were formulated: (1) What do children in difficult life situations say about experiences that have contributed to their enhanced subjective well-being? (2) Is it possible to discern any overarching patterns in the children’s talk about well-being, that can be linked to turning-point narratives? (3) If so, what are the common features in children’s turning-point narratives?

Children experiencing family-related adversity

This study focuses on children who encounter, or have encountered, one or several forms of adversity in their family context during childhood. The overarching concept of family-related adversity is used in an effort to encompass both negative familial circumstances (such as parental substance misuse or mental ill health) and child maltreatment. Since negative familial circumstances and child maltreatment often co-occur (Hughes et al., 2017; Spratt, 2012), it makes sense to use an overarching concept to encircle children’s various experiences. Children experiencing family-related adversity form a heterogeneous group and their life situations vary with their family members’ problem/s, individual factors within the child, and social support (Bunting and Lazenbatt, 2016; Hughes et al., 2017; Spratt, 2012). However, this study begins with the assumption that these children have one important thing in common regardless of their differences: their childhoods are affected by someone else’s problematic situation. Previous research (see e.g., Hughes et al., 2017; Spratt, 2012) has shown that childhood adversity may have a negative impact on children’s lives in the present, as well as in the future. This study draws on Johnstone and Boyle (2018), who argue that research should focus on how individuals make sense of adversity, rather than seeking specific causal pathways between adversity and outcomes. The contribution of the present study is a deepened understanding of how children themselves understand and frame experiences that have contributed to their subjective well-being in the face of family-related adversity.

Theoretical framework: A narrative approach

Narrative theory focuses on how individuals constitute themselves through stories about themselves, both life stories (Freeman, 2006) and talk in interaction (Bamberg, 2006). Within the frame of this study, narrative is defined as “an interpretative, dialogical, and performative activity of cultural sense-making that is integral to how we understand our past, present, and future possibilities” (Meretoja, 2016: 82). Drawing on a narrative understanding of identity and agency (Deppermann, 2015; Meretoja, 2017), the study focuses on how children express and negotiate their lived experiences and their identity in, and through, their telling. Deppermann (2015) suggests that positioning in research interviews can be studied in order to understand more about how identities are deployed and negotiated in narratives. Blomberg and Börjesson (2013) use the concepts of the chronological I and time-identities to encompass how narrators categorize themselves in the present. The chronological I, Blomberg and Börjesson suggest, involves a present, a past, and a future self and reveals the narrator’s identity transformation. Narrative agency concerns our ability to make agential choices about how we narrate our lives, our relationships, and the world around us. It also refers to our ability to use, (re)interpret, and engage with culturally available narratives, to analyze and challenge them (Meretoja, 2017). Narrator’s act of positioning and repositioning themselves in, and through their telling, can be understood as expressions of their narrative agency.

A narrative perspective on turning points

Turning points are often understood as critical moments in life: events that may have important consequences for the lives and identities of individuals (Munford and Sanders, 2015). Within narrative theory, turning points have been conceptualized as moments in stories when the teller emphasizes a radical shift in understanding herself and the expected course of her life (Reissman, 2008). According to Mishler (2006: 41), turning points are examples of “the continuous process we engage in of reconstructing the meaning of past experiences and remaking ourselves in both small and big ways.” The past, Mishler argues, is not set in stone. Instead, we are constantly reframing the meaning of past experiences within the context of our current lives. Within the frame of the present study, turning points are understood in accordance with Mishler’s (2006) emphasis on individuals’ processes of constructing and reconstructing meaning through the telling of their life experiences. That is, a narrative understanding of turning points. The understanding of turning points as critical moments in individuals’ lives (Munford and Sanders, 2015) is also acknowledged in, and sometimes used in parallel to, the narrative understanding of the concept.

Method

Procedure and ethics

This study is part of a larger research project and builds on repeated interviews with 22 children ¹ (aged 6–17). The participants were recruited from two Swedish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) offering support to children in families where adults struggle with psychosocial problems such as alcohol or drug misuse, mental ill health, and/or criminality. The research project, as a whole, had a child-centered design, and the process was guided by a child perspective (Kearns, 2014; McNamara, 2011). The ongoing objective was to make participation intelligible, safe, and meaningful for each child. Recruitment began with meetings with representatives from the two organizations to secure support for the research. I have had professional relationships with both organizations in the past, which facilitated the access process. Thereafter, I visited the organizations on several occasions to meet with the children and present the study. The children were informed about the purpose of the study, that it was voluntary to participate and that they had the right to withdraw their 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 gave their written consent. If they were under 15 years of age, their guardian(s) also received information and gave their written consent ² . The interviews took the form of teller-focused interviews (Hydén, 2014) and each child was interviewed on two occasions. They were encouraged to tell the story of themselves and their lives with reference to difficult experiences within the family context as well as experiences that had contributed to their subjective well-being in the face of those difficult experiences. The topics for the first interview focused on the child as a person, their family situation, the child’s social context, and relationships outside the family. The second interview consisted of two parts, the first addressing topics such as change, turning points, and meaning, while the second was an individual follow-up where I asked about things that had made me curious in the first interview. Many of the children introduced their own topics, in both the first and the second interview. The length, content, and form of the interviews varied to some extent with the children’s ages, wishes, and needs.

The participants

All of the participating children had family relationships with adults who were struggling with one or more psychosocial problems. Five of the participants were boys and 17 were girls, and six were under 15 years of age at the time of the interviews. Nine of the children were either born outside Sweden themselves or had one or both parents who had been born outside Sweden. Two of the participating children lived in a nuclear family with both their biological parents and two lived in foster care. However, the vast majority lived in extended family constellations—some with sporadic, or no, contact with their problematic family member. At a group level, the children described their family members as struggling with one or several of the following problems: mental ill health, alcohol or drug problems, criminality and/or incarceration, aggressive/violent behavior, and conflict/divorce. A recurring theme in the children’s stories was the experience of abuse and neglect within the family context in various ways. The majority of the children described a situation involving one or two problematic family members, while a smaller group described a situation with up to six problematic family members.

Analysis

The transcribed interviews were analyzed in four interrelated steps. Firstly, the material as a whole (n = 22) was sorted and categorized in order to identify central themes in the children’s overall talk about themselves and their lives. The material was studied first case-by-case and then side-by-side. This initial process yielded the overarching theme for the present study: children’s narratives about well-being in the face of family-related adversity. Secondly, all the talk about experiences, events, and processes that had contributed to enhanced well-being was thematically analyzed. During this process, it gradually became clear that some interviews contained turning-point narratives and talk about well-being to a greater extent than others. Thirdly, the analytical lens was directed towards those particular narratives (n = 10) and a performative narrative analysis (Reissman, 2008) was conducted. The focus was directed towards children’s narrative agency (Meretoja, 2017). By studying how the children positioned themselves in relation to others within the stories told, in relation to me, and in relation to themselves (Bamberg, 2006), I focused the analysis on how they negotiated their past, present, and future identities and agency in relation to their difficult experiences. Fourthly, the focus was redirected towards the material as a whole (n = 22) and I examined the question of why some, but not all, of the children shared this particular kind of narrative.

The text examples presented below have been translated and edited for readability, but the meaning has not been altered. Any personal information that could risk revealing the identity of the children has been omitted or changed. Fictional names are used.

Findings

The findings are presented in three parts. Firstly, all the participating children’s (n = 22) talk about experiences that have contributed to their well-being is presented. Secondly, the focus is directed towards the smaller number of personal narratives (n = 10) centered around turning points. Thirdly, these turning-point narratives are analyzed in relation to the rest.

Children’s views on experiences that have contributed to well-being

Even though the participating children describe a variety of negative consequences due to their family members’ problem/s, they all also recount experiences, events, and processes that have contributed to their enhanced subjective well-being, in both small and large ways.

Protection from harm

Firstly, and depending on the severity of the adversity within the family, the fact that the problematic situation has somehow come to an “end” is highlighted as important. For many, interventions by school and the social services have played a crucial role in their overall orientation toward enhanced well-being. An illustrative example is given by Jovanni (16), who has been exposed to physical violence and threats within his family context. When telling his story, Jovanni says:

So, one day at school, everything just popped into my head. I just sat down on a bench and started crying. Everyone got really worried, like “what’s going on?” “do you need help?” So, I told them all about it and they thought I should talk to the school counselor. And I started talking to the counselor and told her everything and from that, I got help moving out. I met a social worker and then I could move out.

Jovanni narrates a rather explicit turning point that led to change in his life: he told his story and got help from social services. Many of the participating children, however, have decided to distance themselves from their family members of their own accord, with no intervention from social services. Cecilia (16) lives with her mother and she describes her father as having problems with both alcohol and mental ill health. She says:

Cecilia: Well, my dad moved around a bit but I spent all of my time at my mom’s. I lived at my mom’s and then I visited him on weekends. And then, the older I got, the less time I spent with him (laughs).

Interviewer: Yes?

Cecilia: Yes, that’s how it came to be

Interviewer: Tell me a bit more about that, what might be the reasons for that?

Cecilia: I don’t know, perhaps I became more aware of what was going on, the older I got? Aware of his actions and aware of what was going on. That must have been it.

Both Jovanni and Cecilia highlight protection, in one way or another, as being important to their well-being. Protection, however, does not by default mean that the problems cease to exist. At a group level, the children state that difficult relationships with family members and negative consequences are still very much present in their lives.

Adequate social support

Secondly, the participating children emphasize that supportive relationships with adults and peers, as well as supportive contexts in general, are important to their well-being. Natalie (16), who describes both her parents as struggling with psychosocial problems, gives an example:

Natalie: There’s my trainer, Michael. He’s become a kind of “extra dad” to me. We have a close relationship.

Interviewer: What is it about him that you appreciate?

Natalie: Well, he’s so kind and calm. We haven’t talked that much but he’s always there for me and I know that if something were to happen I can always call him. And I know that he would always be there for me.

Many of the children, like Natalie, return to the idea of supportive people as “extra parents” and supportive contexts as “extra families.” They also highlight trustworthiness and kindness as important. Nelly (7), who describes a life situation where her father is struggling with alcohol and drug problems, gives an example of how small encounters with kind adults can also make a difference:

Nelly: We have a flower shop at home. And there’s this really, really nice girl who works there. Yesterday, she was like “How old are you, I’ve always wanted to ask you” […] She’s really, really kind to me and I can imagine her as someone who sits down and talks to the children. Because she talked to me and she was like (in a soft voice) “How old are you? What’s your name?”

Interviewer: So, how did you feel when she asked you those questions?

Nelly: Well, it actually felt good because she asked me kindly. If someone said (in a harsh voice) “What’s your name?!” I would just walk away.

A common thread in the children’s descriptions of adequate social support, as illustrated by Natalie and Nelly, is the experience of being listened to, being recognized, and forming relationships with trustworthy adults.

Contact with new knowledge and ideas

Thirdly, contact with new knowledge and ideas is highlighted as important to the children’s orientation toward well-being. The mother of Valentina (14) has been in prison, and when Valentina is asked about what she has learned from receiving support within the support organization, she says:

We have to stop feeling ashamed. It’s not the children’s fault, for real. And that’s what I’ve realized this year. It’s not the children’s fault. It’s not my fault, it’s not my brother’s fault. We didn’t commit those crimes, our parents did. And they’ll have to stand for it. It’s their choice.

Valentina’s account is an illustrative example of how new ideas about identity may help children to make alternative sense of their experiences. Another example is given by Gabi (16), who lives every second week with her mother, whom she describes as “an alcoholic.” Here, Gabi focuses on experiences that have helped her rethink how to handle problems in life. She says:

I don’t know, but when you feel bad it’s easy to just be like “yes, I feel bad,” but instead you have to think “why do I feel bad?” And if you come up with something, you have to ask “how can I solve this?” Or perhaps “is there a way to solve this?” Ask yourself “can I solve it by myself or do I need help?” That’s what it’s all about.

Gabi’s account is an example of the importance of learning how to cope with difficulties. All in all, knowledge about children’s rights, parental psychosocial problems, common reactions to difficulties, and self-care is highlighted as important to well-being. In sum, all of the 22 children account for at least one event, experience, or process that has contributed to their well-being. Often, they describe many. However, when studying their narratives at a group level, one primary pattern can be discerned: about half of the children (n = 10) describe turning points toward enhanced subjective well-being in a more explicit way. Their narratives are centered around the message that life is better now compared to before. Given the overarching interest in children’s orientation toward subjective well-being in the face of difficulties, these narratives call for deeper analytical attention.

Turning-point narratives: Identification, directedness, and self-relationship

The analysis of the turning-point narratives shows that the children (n = 10) all relate to three central aspects in their talk about positive life changes and well-being. These concern how children identify, how they direct their attention, and what they say about their relationship with themselves. These aspects will now be the focus of attention.

Identification: Who am I?

The first aspect, identification, concerns how the 10 children orient between different available positions in their self-narration. The common thread is that this group of children, to a larger extent than the other, explicitly state that they understand themselves differently “now” compared to “before.” A first example is given by Gabi. In her talk, Gabi elaborates upon different ways of positioning herself:

Well, I can feel that my mom’s problems, they’ve affected me and changed me as a person too. Like, I’m… perhaps a bit more mature, that’s what I’ve been told anyway. And perhaps that’s because I had to grow up faster, because I had to take care of my mom. And I see that as…I don’t know, it was hard back then, but now, I don’t see it as a bad thing. So that’s good… I mean, it’s not good that I have this experience but it’s good that I kind of got something out of it. Even if it is a negative thing, it made me a better person.

Gabi argues that, although difficult, her experience has been a significant and cherished part of who she came to be. In her telling, she re-positions herself over time and, through this narrative practice, she seems to be making alternative sense of her experiences. By acknowledging both negative and positive consequences of her experience, she formulates a nuanced understanding of her situation: the experience is difficult, and it has contributed to who she is today. Gabi positions herself as a survivor rather than a victim which seems to have a bearing on her well-being. Another example is given by Lisa (16). She, too, narrates a shift in identification, and during the interviews she elaborates upon how she can make her difficult experience (having a father in prison, a few years ago) into something useful. During the two interviews, she develops the idea that her experience can be used as a kind of commodity, a product that will be helpful in her plans to apply to high-quality universities abroad:

And I think that, if I’m to “sell” myself, it will make me appear as an interesting person. Like, a Swede who wants to study in America, who speaks English fluently, who has had a parent in prison and wants to study law. Because law is connected to being a lawyer, you know. So, I think it can really help me. It’s not just… I’ve had a lot of opportunities because of it too. So, I don’t see it as just a negative thing anymore.

Lisa, too, seems to handle and make sense of her difficult life experience by turning it into something that has also been a positive thing. By repositioning herself away from being a victim toward someone who is in possession of a valuable product, she seems to be making alternative sense of her difficult experience. Furthermore, through her talk, Lisa illustrates how children’s ideas about their past, present, and imagined future selves interact in the interview situation. It seems as though Lisa’s imagined future self is helping her to handle and make sense of her past experiences in the present.

The 10 children who state that life has taken a turn for the better all seem to be aware of, and negotiate, the dialectic of agent versus victim in one way or another. The common thread in their telling, as illustrated by Gabi and Lisa, is that they seem to have found alternative ways of positioning themselves over time which, in turn, has a bearing on their subjective well-being.

Directedness: Where should I focus my attention?

The second aspect, directedness, concerns how the 10 children orient between other-directedness and self-directedness in their telling. Here, too, there is a difference between the group of children who explicitly state that life is better now than before and the group who does not. The first group emphasize that they have shifted their focus from others’ needs and emotions to their own in one way or another. The second group does not talk about this kind of shift. The personal narratives of Siri (16) and Emma (15) function as illustrative examples of this shift in directedness. Siri describes her mother as “mentally ill and a suspected drug user” and she states that she has decided to distance herself from her mother. In the following, Siri talks about how it felt when she realized that her mother was not her responsibility:

Well, it was tough (pause). Because I, like I said before, I’d always thought that if something happened to her, it would be my fault. Because I chose to harm her basically, or hurt her (pause). But, like, when it hit me, I thought… Well, I chose to do it for my well-being, I didn’t choose her, because I wanted to focus on myself. I wanted to focus on how I could, like, feel better physically and mentally.

Siri describes how she had to negotiate between the old idea of other-directedness and the new idea of self-directedness. Her talk is centered around the fact that different ideas about directedness can collide and, therefore, be rather difficult to handle and make sense of. Not only responsibility, but control too, is at stake when redirecting one’s attention. Giving up responsibility may also mean losing a sense of control which, in turn, can be challenging. Emma describes how she was exposed to physical violence and maltreatment when she lived with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. At the time of the interviews, Emma lives in a foster family and she says that she is a “changed” person. When talking about the professional support she has received, she says:

Emma: I’ve learned that toxic people make me feel like shit. And everyone around me back then was bad, destructive people. So, I got rid of everyone (laughs).

Interviewer: You got rid of everyone?

Emma: Got new ones.

Emma foregrounds her agency and narrates her present self as someone who has chosen her relationships in line with her well-being. When asked what the word “toxic” means to her, Emma replies that a toxic person is “destructive and very bad for you.” She continues:

Emma: I’ve met so many bad people. You can learn pretty… eventually you learn how to recognize them, almost immediately. They have certain behaviors.

Again, Emma narrates herself as a person who has learned from past experiences and made decisions based on these experiences. Although it was painful then, Emma has learned how to recognize “toxic people” in her life. Her talk can be interpreted as having implications for her imagined future because she formulates this knowledge as a kind of skill. It is reasonable to believe that the thought of this acquired skill is reassuring for the future.

The common thread, as illustrated by Siri and Emma, is an awareness of the fact that it is possible to redirect one’s attention away from others toward oneself. The children who talk about life’s turn for the better also seem to have made a shift regarding their hopes for the future: Instead of focusing on a future in which their family member has recovered, they imagine a future in which they, themselves, are in focus. This awareness, the analysis shows, is not present (at least not explicitly) in the personal narratives of the children who do not talk about life’s turn for the better.

Self-relationship: Am I worthy?

The third aspect, self-relationship, concerns how the 10 children orient between negative and kind thoughts about their own self. To a greater extent than the other group, this group of 10 children highlight that their relationship with themselves is better now than before. The personal narrative of Andrea (16) illustrates the point. Andrea describes a life situation in which she is receiving support due to her father’s alcohol problems and aggressive behavior. She also talks a lot during the interviews about her own struggle with mental ill health. Andrea says that her life has taken a turn for the better recently. When asked about how she understands this change, she says:

It was when I started to realize that it is going to get better. And it doesn’t help to be… like hurting myself and punishing myself. It doesn’t make anything better. I have to take care of myself and dare to challenge myself to get somewhere.

In her telling, Andrea draws upon ideas about self-compassion, that it is important to be kind to oneself when experiencing difficulties. In her narrative act of differentiating between her past and present selves, she says:

I felt like “It’s gonna be like this my whole life and it just isn’t worth it.” And I was stuck in the bubble the whole time.

Here, Andrea describes her process of re-imagining her future: her past self-thought of the future as just a continuation of a difficult life situation. Her present self has created new experiences through new interactions, which has altered her thoughts about the future. In comparison with the other group of children, the common feature is that the children who state that life is better now than before seem to have achieved a shift in their self-relationship.

However, ambivalence is part of their talk too. It seems as though contextually shaped ideas about self-compassion and acceptance are attractive but sometimes difficult to internalize. Here, Gabi reflects upon well-being and choice:

So, I don’t know, it’s so difficult because people are like “you’re in charge of your own well-being” like, you decide if you’re positive or negative but, I mean, that’s not always the case.

Here, Gabi is problematizing an idea that she has come into contact with: the idea that individuals have full power over their own well-being. According to Gabi, it is not that simple. She then negotiates the idea by saying:

Well, I think…I don’t think you can choose to feel good or bad but you can, of course, make choices to feel better.

Here, Gabi is redefining what “choice” refers to: it refers not to emotions, but to actions. She makes alternative sense of the notion of choice, which, in turn, seems to have a bearing on her self-relationship.

In sum, the children who share turning-point narratives do so in relation to three interrelated aspects: identification, directedness, and self-relationship. These three aspects all appear to be part of the same overarching process: children’s project of renegotiating their self-understanding. The common thread is that the children are engaged in the project of renegotiating their self-understanding which, in turn, seems to have a bearing on their well-being. Now, the question becomes: why are some of the children, but not all of them, engaged in this project?

Who narrates a shift in self-understanding and who does not?

In this final part of the findings section, the narratives that are centered around a shift in self-understanding are analyzed in relation to those that are not. The focus is upon four aspects that might explain why some of the children, but not all, describe a renegotiated self-understanding.

Life circumstances

Do the children’s life circumstances have a bearing on their ability to renegotiate their self-understanding? Most of the children who recount turning-point narratives do, indeed, have some temporal or spatial distance from the problematic situation. Accordingly, many of the children who do not center their narrative around a renegotiated self-understanding describe rather complicated life situations and struggles with their own mental ill health. Hence, there is reason to believe that children who find themselves in very complicated life situations have limited ability to narrate themselves in this particular way. However, it is not as simple as to say that all the children narrating a shift in self-understanding are doing just fine. They still describe negative consequences in their present life situation and they, too, recount experiences of violence, neglect, and adults’ problematic exercise of power. The difference is that they also describe an insight, and this insight seems to function as a counter-balance to the problems and their consequences.

Age

The children who describe a shift in self-understanding are in their mid or late teens. This may explain why the youngest children in this study (6–7 years) do not express any shift in self-understanding. However, it does not explain why some of the narratives of older children also lack this kind of account. Instead, and as outlined above, there is reason to believe that, regardless of age, children living in the midst of problems have limited abilities to handle and make sense of their situation, or to dream about a brighter future.

Need

Not all children need to renegotiate their self-understanding in relation to their family situation. Some of the participating children describe life situations that are difficult, but not in terms of their self-understanding. For example, some of the children who have a family member in prison describe difficult feelings, such as longing and loss, but they do not reflect upon their life situation in terms of a potentially harmful self-understanding.

Support context

The children in this study were recruited from two different support organizations, which take somewhat different approaches to children’s needs and rights. While organization A has a family-oriented approach and offers support to the whole family, organization B only offers support to children themselves (from 13 years). Ideas about children as agents, children’s right to focus on themselves, and children’s self-relationship are more prominent within the support context of organization B. Indeed, most (but not all) of the children who describe a renegotiated self-understanding as outlined above are receiving support within organization B.

Discussion

This study set out to investigate children’s perspectives on experiences that have contributed to their well-being in the face of difficulties, with a specific focus on turning-point narratives. The main findings of the study are that protection from harm, adequate support, and contact with new knowledge and ideas are important, and constitute basic contributing factors to children’s well-being. The study shows that some children center their narratives around turning points to a greater extent than others. These turning-point narratives concern the aspects of identification, directedness, and self-relationship. The findings suggest that a renegotiated self-understanding, in and of itself, may be an important part of children’s orientation toward subjective well-being in the face of difficulties. In this closing part of the article, the main findings will be discussed in relation to narrative theory and social work practice.

Renegotiated self-understanding as a narrative turning point

The common feature in the children’s turning-point narratives is that they all concern biographical change (Deppermann, 2015), with a specific focus on a shift in self-understanding. Even though the children’s life experiences differ, those particular narratives follow a similar path: from a difficult past—through some kind of shift in self-understanding—to a better present, which also has implications for the future. Grounded in the analysis of the children’s narratives, a main reason why some experience that life is better now than before is that they understand and make sense of themselves in a different way now than before. From a narrative perspective, turning points are examples of teller’s continuous process of reconstructing meaning and remaking themselves (Mishler, 2006). Hence, the study suggests that children’s projects of renegotiating their self-understandings are examples of narrative turning points: they are enacted in the here-and-now of the interview, they point back to experiences, events, and processes in the past and they seem to have a bearing on children’s (imagined) future selves. On a thematic level, all participating children—to varying degrees—highlight protection from harm, adequate support, and new knowledge as important to well-being. On a performative level, there is something more to some of the children’s accounts. What these children do, in their telling, is that they emphasize a difference between past and present self-understandings (Blomberg and Börjesson, 2013), they reposition themselves and others, over time and across contexts (Deppermann, 2015) and they use the idea of their future self as a resource in the present (Blomberg and Börjesson, 2013). All in all, it seems as if their ability to understand, and narrate themselves, as agents with rights and needs may be part of the explanation to the orientation toward subjective well-being albeit in difficult life situations. To sum up, this study does not suggest that only older, or a few narratively gifted children, have the ability to renegotiate their self-understanding. Rather, the study suggests that life circumstances and supportive contexts are much more relevant than individual factors within the child. In other words, the ability and the need to renegotiate one’s self-understanding depend mainly on contextual factors. The narrative practice of renegotiating one’s self-understanding is not something that just “happens” within children as they grow older, it happens because they have come into contact with the idea that it is possible.

Implications for social work practice and research

Children experiencing family-related adversity form a heterogeneous group and their needs and abilities vary with family situation, social context, and age. Previous research has shown that some of the main contributing factors to children’s resilience are meaningful relationships, high levels of social support, the children’s agentic scope, and their sense of belonging (Fritz et al., 2018). Grounded in the analysis of 22 children’s narratives, this study suggests that a shift in self-understanding may also be an important, and interrelated, part of children’s orientation toward enhanced subjective well-being in the face of family-related adversity. Hence, this study can be read as an answer to the call for the use of narrative in social work practice (Bunting and Lazenbatt, 2016). Here, social workers in all areas of society may play an important role. As previously stated by many researchers (McKenzie-Mohr and Lafrance, 2017; Munford and Sanders, 2015), social workers are a key source of support in developing narrative practices to handle past and present challenges, as well as imagining alternative futures. This study adds to previous research on childhood adversity and resilience by contributing knowledge drawn from children’s here-and-now talk about, and understandings of, possible routes to enhanced subjective well-being. This knowledge is arguably relevant to the attempts to match support with children’s needs and perspectives. The core contribution of this study is the notion that children may need to be given the opportunity to examine old ideas about identity and agency in relation to new ones. This opens up opportunities for a shift in self-understanding that may have a bearing on children’s subjective well-being—in the here-and-now of childhood and in the future.