‘And Hairdressers are Quite Seedy…’: The Moral Worth of Childcare Training

Abstract

This article draws on initial interviews with students on childcare courses at levels 2 and 3 in two Further Education colleges in Greater London. The authors argue that the morally worthy nature of childcare makes it an excellent site in which students who had often operated at the margins of their schools, sought to reinvent themselves as mature and responsible students both in their placements and at college. In this they appear to embody the claims of those theorists that argue for the opportunities available for individuals, freed from traditional ties, to create their own biographies. The authors draw attention to the amount of labour on themselves that this reinvention involved for the students, and consider the extent to which students can be understood as having chosen childcare.