There has been an increase in research that focuses on female adolescents and adult women concerns relating to body image and dieting concerns. However, research on body and dieting concerns of specifically pre-adolescents is still a neglected area of research in comparison with female adolescents and adult women. Pre-adolescents are either research participants as part of a group, which includes younger children, or part of a group of adolescents. This article addresses the body and dieting concerns of pre-adolescent females (...) as a group on their own. A qualitative study was conducted, and data were collected by using a vignette with semi-structured questions. The data were analysed by using a thematic analysis. The results indicated that although the girls presented a ‘polite’ discourse that all girls should be accepted irrespective of weight, when they were futher engaged with during the interviews this was not reflective of their world view. Negative attributes were projected onto the heavier girl in the vignette, and the discourse of acceptance was linked to feelings of pity and sympathy as fat girls were ‘handicapped’ albeit not because of their own doing. Thin girls were linked to positive traits, such as kind, happy and with leadership potential. The pre-teens in the sample were all very familiar with terms related to food restrictions (dieting), and a number of them had indulged in dieting behaviour to lose weight. The research was conducted in one province in South Africa and provides baseline data for a bigger study, which includes other provinces, as well as girls from rural areas and girls from schools in poorer urban areas. The results indicated that the pre-teen girls have internalised gendered notions of what it means to be female and being thin is integrally linked to what patriarchy has constructed as the ideal female body. Contribution: This article is grounded within the discipline of Psychology. However, the scholarly contribution it intersects with include the disciplines of Public Health, Education and Gender Studies. It provides and engages a discourse at the intersections of the Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines, contributing to knowledge which is interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. (shrink)

Recent research on children's worlds has revealed how gender varies in salience across social contexts. Building on this observation, the author examines a highly salient gendered moment of group life among four- and five-year-old children at a youth soccer opening ceremony, where gender boundaries were activated and enforced in ways that constructed an apparently “natural” categorical difference between the girls and the boys. The author employs a multilevel analytical framework to explore how children “do gender” at the (...) level of interaction or performance, how the structured gender regime constrains and enables the actions of children and parents, and how children's gendered immersion in popular culture provides symbolic resources with which children and parents actively create categorical differences. The article ends with a discussion of how gendered interactions, structure, and cultural meanings are intertwined, in both mutually reinforcing and contradictory ways. (shrink)

Wir diskutieren ethische Probleme der medizinischen Behandlung intersexueller Kinder. Gefragt wird nach dem Stellenwert von Elternwünschen nach eindeutiger Geschlechtszuweisung sowie nach den Konfliktfeldern, die zum einen zwischen konkurrierenden Wunschvorstellungen der Eltern und der behandelnden Ärzte, zum andern zwischen Kindeswohl und Kinderrechten entstehen können. Gegenwärtig wird Neugeborenen mit anatomisch uneindeutigem Genital trotz unsicherer Prognose über die Behandlungsergebnisse oft noch ein Geschlecht zugewiesen und operativ erstellt. Dieses Vorgehen ist von verschiedenen Seiten ethisch heftig kritisiert worden. Kipnis u. Diamond forderten 1998 im „Journal (...) of Clinical Ethics“ ein Moratorium für alle nicht vital indizierten geschlechtskorrigierenden Eingriffe. Diese Forderung orientiert sich am Interesse des zukünftigen Erwachsenen, betont dessen prospektive Autonomie und klammert den Elternwunsch aus. Dieses „Modell des antizipierten Konsenses“ kann jedoch mit Bezug auf Neugeborene und Kleinkinder bedeutsame Aspekte des Eltern-Kind-Verhältnisses nicht angemessen erfassen. Im Aufsatz werden Argumente angeführt, die es aus Sicht einer Ethik der Elternschaft rechtfertigen, ethische Entscheidungen auf der Basis eines beziehungsorientierten Modells zu treffen. In unserem Modell fallen Elternwünsche ethisch ins Gewicht. (shrink)

Wir diskutieren ethische Probleme der medizinischen Behandlung intersexueller Kinder. Gefragt wird nach dem Stellenwert von Elternwünschen nach eindeutiger Geschlechtszuweisung sowie nach den Konfliktfeldern, die zum einen zwischen konkurrierenden Wunschvorstellungen der Eltern und der behandelnden Ärzte, zum andern zwischen Kindeswohl und Kinderrechten entstehen können. Gegenwärtig wird Neugeborenen mit anatomisch uneindeutigem Genital trotz unsicherer Prognose über die Behandlungsergebnisse oft noch ein Geschlecht zugewiesen und operativ erstellt. Dieses Vorgehen ist von verschiedenen Seiten ethisch heftig kritisiert worden. Kipnis u. Diamond forderten 1998 im „Journal (...) of Clinical Ethics“ ein Moratorium für alle nicht vital indizierten geschlechtskorrigierenden Eingriffe. Diese Forderung orientiert sich am Interesse des zukünftigen Erwachsenen, betont dessen prospektive Autonomie und klammert den Elternwunsch aus. Dieses „Modell des antizipierten Konsenses“ kann jedoch mit Bezug auf Neugeborene und Kleinkinder bedeutsame Aspekte des Eltern-Kind-Verhältnisses nicht angemessen erfassen. Im Aufsatz werden Argumente angeführt, die es aus Sicht einer Ethik der Elternschaft rechtfertigen, ethische Entscheidungen auf der Basis eines beziehungsorientierten Modells zu treffen. In unserem Modell fallen Elternwünsche ethisch ins Gewicht. (shrink)

This study examines girl child abuse in an internally displaced people's camp in north‐central Nigeria and the response of community health workers. The conflict in Benue State is caused by religious differences between the natives (Tiv people) and the invading Fulani herdsmen. During these conflicts, women and girls were displaced, and they were kept in internally displaced persons (IDPs) located in different parts of the state. Literature has been extensively written on internal displacement in Nigeria, but none has been (...) able to elucidate the health needs of girls and the various abuses girls and women are suffering in IDP camps. In this study, literature was extended (1) to explore the environment of the girl child in IDP camps, (2) to identify reasons for the abuse of the girl child in IDP camps, (3) to investigate the impacts of the abuse on the girl child in IDP camps and (4) to investigate how healthcare workers could be used to alleviate the plight of girl children in IDP camps. This is a qualitative case study, with data obtained from relevant academic literature and personal observation. The data were analysed using content analysis. Findings reveal that the girl child is suffering from psychological, economic and health challenges due to the various forms of abuse they are going through. Following the devastation in Benue State, healthcare workers from the community relocated to neighbouring states. There is a need to recall those healthcare workers and provide them with the necessary materials to assist girls in IDP camps. Recommendations are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we present the case of a couple who refused to disclose the sex of their child to others, and some of the responses that this case prompted in the international media. We outline the ethical issues that this case raises, and we place it into the more general context of parental preferences regarding the gender (development) of their children and of the impact on children of parental choices in the matter. Based on current knowledge of (...) gender identity development, we identify some of the potential pitfalls of such a course of action and we briefly present some alternative strategies that could be implemented in order to ensure more freedom of gender formation in children. (shrink)

This is a study of the development of student agency from a gender perspective in a Finnish classroom. The data originates from an ethnographic research project in an elementary school classroom engaging in a play pedagogy project called a “playworld.” The article has two purposes. The first is to examine the potential of imagination and improvised fantasy play in the development of agency. The second is to investigate the role of gender as a social category in shaping the students’ possibilities (...) for agency in the play pedagogical setting. The creative use of imagination is at the center of the playworld pedagogy. However, it has rarely been studied in relation to the potentially uneven or stereotypic consequences of cultural tools, symbols, and categories. The analytical focus is on the gender-related categorization of a ‘horse girl’ and the role it played in the development of the agency of two seven-year-old girls as they participated in the playworld. I have used a multidisciplinary analytical framework to sensitize myself to the data. In the article I combine Vygotsky’s ideas of double stimulation, Sacks’ categorization analysis and, Holzkamp’s concept of action potence . The results show that the playworld pedagogy that explicitly aimed at developing children’s agency and collaboration was strongly gender categorized and thus was constraining for the girls in this study. On the other hand, the girls’ unplanned fantasy play, which took place on the sidelines of the classroom activity, contained important agentive elements. It gave the girls a sense of agency crucial to their enactment of agency in the wider playworld setting. It is argued that the girls were able to become agentive players in the activity through questioning the gendered categories openly in the classroom. (shrink)

To the woman, God said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in child bearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”Genesis 3:16There is now a well-established body of literature documenting the pervasive inadequate treatment of pain in this country. There have also been allegations, and some data, supporting the notion that women are more likely than men to be undertreated or inappropriately diagnosed and treated for (...) their pain.One particularly troublesome study indicated that women are more likely to be given sedatives for their pain and men to be given pain medication. Speculation as to why this difference might exist has included the following: Women complain more than men; women are not accurate reporters of their pain; men are more stoic so that when they do complain of pain, “it's real”; and women are better able to tolerate pain or have better coping skills than men. (shrink)

‘Teachers expect parents to teach you. Parents expect teachers to teach you. So actually you learn nothing and nobody wants to talk about it’. This quote from this research study is an adolescent girls’ cry for liberation from the silence related to sexuality because of the general reluctance of adults to talk to them about it. Given the growing concerns raised about the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents in South Africa, the aim of this study was to conduct research (...) with adolescent girls as subjects in order for girls’ voices to enhance adult researchers’ understanding of children’s need for support and guidance in the context of sexuality education. The purposively selected sample included 75 participants from three diverse high schools in the Western Cape. The research was conducted using a phenomenological approach that values the lived experiences of participants as significant in contributing to the knowledge on adolescent sexuality. A qualitative interpretative research design was applied to collect the data. This article argues that adults cannot help adolescents in their sexual emancipation – to be free – if they themselves are not free. If they were free, they would have been able and willing to engage with adolescents in every aspect, which includes their sexuality. Including adolescent girls as partners in transforming sexuality education is presented as a core principle for the sexual emancipation of both adolescent girls and adults. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:94 Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Hannah Baker Saltmarsh Hannah Baker Saltmarsh This Girl I Lost Touch With This girl, who was afraid to enter a room— a girl born in the woods, on moss, whose family dreamt under quilts, who wore dresses that matched anything fabric in the house, even the dresses without loneliness— I held her hand in the corridor-dark until (...) the speaking-in-tongues at the community college dispersed into prayers with too many gerunds and too much fervor that wouldn’t adjust if you got a thousand dollars in the mail or jury duty, faith subtle as a crucifix the size of God on the highway. I waited with her until it was over, although the prayer group was never really over. Over rooms of crowded, faith-based humidity, she loved corridors of woods, the rushes of running away. This girl and I, we were cult-lured, but then the leader stepped down—was it porn, alcohol? He drove us around in a red jeep without doors— the first time I drove in a man’s car, I was eighteen so I fell in love: looking straight ahead together, arm hair touching, the cathedral of autumn anticipating a shape to hold you, the wind that you sometimes hollered over. What happened I can’t see, but when he left the group, I left: the death of visions. Hannah Baker Saltmarsh 95 This girl could long for a man in her fingernails, and, without talking, take a man from his pregnant wife’s side, have his even newer children, this girl who wouldn’t go in a room all alone, walked right in, somewhere we’ve not been, and never left. Monostich in Praise of Four Missed Foul Shots in a Row, Ending with a Line by Shaquille O’Neal —Orlando Magic vs. Houston Rockets, Game 1, NBA Final, 1995 Each mistake at the foul line longs to be its own distinct trip-up, divorced from the tragic-comic failure automatic-reflex of a protagonist on a shame-rampage; each delicate flaw of glass, net, rim wants to be denied once at the charity line, once and only once of red-lipsticked points, the naive purity of one aberrant error in calculation—not bring bleacher-crowds to their feet, posterless hands in the vaulted air before tallying Nick Anderson up as Brick Anderson, most hated NBA player of all time, and by his own fans not believing their own eyes as a series of empty arcs toward scoring dovetails into quadruple humiliations and a goofy smile of gutted hopes and boyish fear-tangled awe that any brain so practiced (for this and what else?) could fail so many times in a row, each fail better and Beckett-harder until the last exit out of obliterating loss is part of the abyss too, unless you are quick on your feet for sports broadcasting... but there is no end to swindled championships if you are a man who’s never had to face the extinction of his early twenties or suck the aftertaste of multi-millionaire juice cocktails poured with a legend’s touch, but in the soapy-sweet glass of your Dixie cup liquor, however close to the sound of Shaq’s name spoken in every language, stares your same lovesick reflection in the welt of that shot-glass mirror, mouthing the bitters of paranoid distraction, unripe manhood, aged ingratitude, and a starless Orlando Magic blue diamond broomed over by nursery-rhyme witches brushing out the cobweb-haze because the crowd is always the same crowd calling you swept... each fumbling error of pressure you let get to you, if only it could be a plotless, lyric monostich without arc, not driven to the plot that is your grave, where the unfaithful, the murderers, liars, and cheaters are defined by threads, no, snapped pieces, of seconds and, as Dante would have it, sorted in hell by a singular thought or deed so 96 Hannah Baker Saltmarsh transformative as to name you; the blue and white jersey on the floor, fists and feet, knees and elbows vacuumed in tantrum, hyped up in the court glare and... (shrink)

This study looks at the lives of the most famous "wild children" of eighteenth-century Europe, showing how they open a window onto European ideas about the potential and perfectibility of mankind. Julia V. Douthwaite recounts reports of feral children such as the wild girl of Champagne (captured in 1731 and baptized as Marie-Angelique Leblanc), offering a fascinating glimpse into beliefs about the difference between man and beast and the means once used to civilize the uncivilized. A variety (...) of educational experiments failed to tame these feral children by the standards of the day. After telling their stories, Douthwaite turns to literature that reflects on similar experiments to perfect human subjects. Her examples range from utopian schemes for progressive childrearing to philosophical tales of animated statues, from revolutionary theories of regenerated men to Gothic tales of scientists run amok. Encompassing thinkers such as Rousseau, Sade, Defoe, and Mary Shelley, Douthwaite shows how the Enlightenment conceived of mankind as an infinitely malleable entity, first with optimism, then with apprehension. Exposing the darker side of eighteenth-century thought, she demonstrates how advances in science gave rise to troubling ethical concerns, as parents, scientists, and politicians tried to perfect mankind with disastrous results. (shrink)

_A thoroughly revised edition of the classic resource for understanding gender differences in the classroom_ In this profoundly significant book, author Michael Gurian has revised and updated his groundbreaking book that clearly demonstrated how the distinction in hard-wiring and socialized gender differences affects how boys and girls learn. Gurian presents a proven method to educate our children based on brain science, neurological development, and chemical and hormonal disparities. The innovations presented in this book were applied in the classroom and (...) proven successful, with dramatic improvements in test scores, during a two-year study that Gurian and his colleagues conducted in six Missouri school districts. Explores the inherent differences between the developmental neuroscience of boys and girls Reveals how the brain learns Explains when same sex classrooms are appropriate, and when they’re not This edition includes new information on a wealth of topics including how to design the ultimate classroom for kids in elementary, secondary, middle, and high school. (shrink)

Microsystems are described as contexts formed by a subject, their roles, interactions, and a specific physical space and time, such as housing and the school environment. Although several studies suggest the importance of studying this type of environment and its repercussion on children's development, in a Latin American context few studies integrate the interaction of two primary settings in the development of executive functioning. The present study explores the effects of the quality of housing and school environments on the (...) perception of stress, decision making, and planning among children. A total of 114 children (43% girls and 57% boys, Mage = 10.57) from a primary school located in a community classified as poor participated in the study. It was measured: environmental quality of classrooms, housing, stress and executive functioning of children. The results reveal a model linking environmental quality levels in children's homes and schools and executive functioning. We also obtain a mediating role of stress between microsystems and performance, finding a deficit in executive performance when children experienced higher levels of stress as a result of poor environmental quality both in their homes and in their schools. (shrink)

Emotion is closely associated with language, but we know very little about how children express emotion in their own writing. We used a large‐scale, cross‐sectional, and data‐driven approach to investigate emotional expression via writing in children of different ages, and whether it varies for boys and girls. We first used a lexicon‐based bag‐of‐words approach to identify emotional content in a large corpus of stories (N>100,000) written by 7‐ to 13‐year‐old children. Generalized Additive Models were then used to (...) model changes in sentiment across age and gender. Two other machine learning approaches (BERT and TextBlob) validated and extended these analyses, converging on the finding that positive sentiments in children's writing decrease with age. These findings echo reports from previous studies showing a decrease in mood and an increased use of negative emotion words with age. We also found that stories by girls contained more positive sentiments than stories by boys. Our study shows the utility of large‐scale data‐driven approaches to reveal the content and nature of children's writing. Future experimental work should build on these observations to understand the likely complex relationships between written language and emotion, and how these change over development. (shrink)

Children, the image of the child, and the gendered figures of the girl and the boy are thematics that run through the work of Deleuze and feature prominently in his joint writing with Guattari. However, there are many different children in Deleuze's writings. Various child figures do distinct things in Deleuze's work. In this article, I argue that his work on children can be utilized to rethink popular, teleological notions of childhood and growing up.

This article examines preadolescent girls in a group setting as they coconstructed heteronormativity. The authors contend that heteronormativity is not the product of a coming-of-age transformation but instead an everyday part of life, even for very young social actors. It emerges from the gender divide between boys and girls but is also reproduced by and for girls themselves. In the Girl Project, the authors sought to understand younger girls’ interests, skills, and concerns. They conducted nine focus groups with 43 (...) elementary school girls, most of whom were age nine or younger. They observed these girls as they defined “girls’ interests” as boy centered and as they performed heteronormativity for other girls. This article contributes to filling the gap in research on gender and sexuality from children’s own points of view. (shrink)

The gendered marketing of children’s toys is under considerable scrutiny, as reflected by numerous consumer-led campaigns and vigorous media debates. This article seeks to assist stakeholders to better understand the ethical and scientific assumptions that underlie the two opposing positions in this debate, and assess their relative strength. There is apparent consensus in the underlying ethical foundations of the debate, with all commentators seeming to endorse the values of corporate social responsibility and gender equality. However, the debate splits over (...) three critical points of empirical disagreement: whether gendered toy marketing influences children’s toy preferences or simply reflects boys’ and girls’ fundamentally different interests; whether the effects of gendered toy marketing are negative, neutral or beneficial; and whether a shift to gender-neutral marketing would be economically viable. We assess the three points of disagreement against the available evidence and shared ethical principles underlying the debate, and conclude that current defences of gendered toy marketing fail. (shrink)

One of the most robust findings in psychopathology is the fact that specific phobias are more prevalent in women than in men. Although there are several theoretical accounts for biological and social contributions to this gender difference, empirical data are surprisingly limited. Interestingly, there is evidence that individuals with stereotypical feminine characteristics are more fearful than those with stereotypical masculine characteristics; this is beyond biological sex. Because gender role stereotypes are reinforced by parental behavior, we aimed to examine the relationship (...) of maternal gender stereotypes and children’s fear. Dyads of 38 mothers and their daughters were included. We assessed maternal implicit and explicit gender stereotypes as well as their daughters’ self-reported general fearfulness, specific fear of snakes, and approach behavior toward a living snake. First, mothers’ fear of snakes significantly correlated with their daughters’ fear of snakes. Second, mothers’ gender stereotypes significantly correlated with their daughters’ self-reported fear. Specifically, maternal implicit gender stereotypes were associated with daughters’ fear of snakes and fear ratings in response to the snake. Moreover, in children, self-reported fear correlated with avoidance of the fear-relevant animal. Together, these results provide first evidence for a potential role of parental gender stereotypes in the development and maintenance of fear in their offspring. (shrink)

Few studies have examined how groups of individuals enact different patterns of gender relations within and across contexts. In this article, I draw upon nine months of fieldwork and 15 semistructured interviews conducted with eight- to 10-year-old swimmers on a co-ed youth swim team. During focused aspects of swim practice, gender was less salient and structural mechanisms encouraged athletes to interact in ways that illuminated girls’ and boys’ similar athletic abilities, undermining categorical, essentialist, and hierarchical gender beliefs pertaining to athleticism. (...) However, in the swimmers’ unfocused free time, the salience of gender was high and structural mechanisms encouraged swimmers to engage in “borderwork.” In this context, similarities between the genders were obscured and girls and boys instead interacted in ways that affirmed essentialist and categorical—but nonhierarchical—meanings of gender. By paying attention to structural mechanisms and the variable salience of gender, we can thus see the various conditions under which children deploy different patterns of gender relations, and how less oppressive gender relations can potentially “spill over” from one context to the next. (shrink)

The landmark book Boys and Girls Learn Differently! outlines the brain-based educational theories and techniques that can be used to transform classrooms and help children learn better. Now The Boys and Girls Learn Differently Action Guide for Teachers presents experiential learning techniques that teachers can use to create an environment and enriched curriculum that take into account the needs of the developing child's brain and allows both boys and girls to gain maximum learning opportunities. This important and easy-to-use guide (...) is based on the latest scientific scholarship on the differences between boy's and girl's brains, neurological development, hormonal effects, behavior, and learning needs and offers information on what all children need to be able to learn effectively. Michael Gurian and his colleagues applied these recent discoveries in the field during a two-year Gurian Institute pilot program in Missouri that led to measurably better academic performance and improved behavior. (shrink)

At last, we have the scientific evidence that documents the manybiological gender differences that influence learning. Forinstance, girls talk sooner, develop better vocabularies, readbetter, and have better fine motor skills. Boys, on the other hand,have better auditory memory, are better at three-dimensionalreasoning, are more prone to explore, and achieve greater abstractdesign ability after puberty. In this profoundly significant book, author Michael Guriansynthesizes the current knowledge and clearly demonstrates how thisdistinction in hard-wiring and socialized gender differencesaffects how boys and girls learn. (...) Gurian presents a new way toeducate our children based on brain science, neurologicaldevelopment, and chemical and hormonal disparities. The innovationspresented in this book were applied in the classroom and provensuccessful, with dramatic improvements in test scores, during atwo-year study that Gurian and his colleagues conducted in sixMissouri school districts. (shrink)

At last, we have the scientific evidence that documents the many biological gender differences that influence learning. For instance, girls talk sooner, develop better vocabularies, read better, and have better fine motor skills. Boys, on the other hand, have better auditory memory, are better at three-dimensional reasoning, are more prone to explore, and achieve greater abstract design ability after puberty. In this profoundly significant book, author Michael Gurian synthesizes the current knowledge and clearly demonstrates how this distinction in hard-wiring and (...) socialized gender differences affects how boys and girls learn. Gurian presents a new way to educate our children based on brain science, neurological development, and chemical and hormonal disparities. The innovations presented in this book were applied in the classroom and proven successful, with dramatic improvements in test scores, during a two-year study that Gurian and his colleagues conducted in six Missouri school districts. (shrink)

At last, we have the scientific evidence that documents the manybiological gender differences that influence learning. Forinstance, girls talk sooner, develop better vocabularies, readbetter, and have better fine motor skills. Boys, on the other hand,have better auditory memory, are better at three-dimensionalreasoning, are more prone to explore, and achieve greater abstractdesign ability after puberty. In this profoundly significant book, author Michael Guriansynthesizes the current knowledge and clearly demonstrates how thisdistinction in hard-wiring and socialized gender differencesaffects how boys and girls learn. (...) Gurian presents a new way toeducate our children based on brain science, neurologicaldevelopment, and chemical and hormonal disparities. The innovationspresented in this book were applied in the classroom and provensuccessful, with dramatic improvements in test scores, during atwo-year study that Gurian and his colleagues conducted in sixMissouri school districts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When Little Girls Become Junior Connoisseurs:A Cautionary Tale of Art Museum Education in the HyperrealMelinda M. Mayer (bio)Introducing the TaleA young girl about eleven years old appeared on the TV screen. She stood in an art museum expounding upon the painting hanging behind her. She talked about the artist and what the image portrayed. With an air of elitist prissiness that suited the museum environment, the girl (...) delivered her presentation to a group of schoolmates. As I and the other art museum educators assembled in the conference room where the video was shown learned, the girl had participated in a program at a prominent art museum in which students from her school came to the museum many times during the school year. This repeat-visit program culminated with these youngsters demonstrating what they learned about art by giving a talk on a single artwork to friends, family, or other classmates. The girl's recitation of art historically correct information was impressive. She sounded just like a junior art historian. Yet, something was missing. The little girl appeared to copy the style of art historical talk more than its content. I turned to the colleague sitting next to me and wondered, "Did that girl learn how to make meaning or how to talk like a curator?"Despite the several years that have passed since the conference, the image of that little girl lingers in my mind. A repeat-visit school program is what an art museum educator working with school tours desires.1 All an art museum educator can hope to impart on a one-shot tour is a simple exposure to art and the museum. Hopefully, that one encounter will result in a lifelong appreciation of art and art museums, but that is a tall order for one field trip. Repeat-visit programs, by contrast, allow knowledge and skills related to art to be presented in the school and museum and reinforced in subsequent sessions. Students can learn to meaningfully interpret the content [End Page 48] of works of art as well as make personal connections with them.The girl in the video, however, did not appear to be engaged in meaning-making. No hint that the painting had metaphorically come off of the museum wall and moved into her life experience appeared in the girl's presentation. Instead, she successfully imitated the manner of an art historian.In the essay "The Precession of Simulacra," the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard theorizes that reality or meaning no longer exist.2 Like the Moebus strip, which when split generates a duplicate of itself, what we experience as reality in this increasingly mediated age in which we live is no more than the repeated circulation of models or simulacra. Rather than models emerging out of real phenomena or originals, they beget themselves—models precede models. Any notion of reality implodes in the circulation of these simulations. Reality becomes what Baudrillard calls the hyperreal—simulation generating simulation. What does this imply for visual art? Interpretation of meaning in artworks would not reveal some represented truth of human experience; instead it would be the repetition of interpretive forms masking that there is no reality to represent. The talk by the little girl in the video indicated that art museum education, at least in that program, had become the perpetuation of a model of inquiry. Rather than making meaning, the girl reproduced the aesthetics of art history interpretation. Even under the ideal circumstances of a repeat-visit school program, the girl became the perfect model of a petite connoisseur.Although the video depicts one little girl in one art museum program, is there not a cautionary tale here for the field of art museum education?3 When visitors to art museums, including children on school field trips, participate in educational programs, are they engaging in meaning-making or an experience in the hyperreal? In theory art museum educators espouse facilitating meaning-making as their mission; however, in practice are they falling into a vortex of recycling the models of art historical interpretation they assimilated during their own education? Do they replicate the form of the model rather than the substance of interpretation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Parenting Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Through the Transition to AdulthoodAnonymous One, Anonymous Two, Lorri Centineo, Anonymous Three, Virginia Clapp, Catherine Cornell, Nancy Coughlin, David McDonald, Mark Osteen, Laura Shumaker, Julie Van der Poel, Anonymous FourMy Son's Life with Autistic Spectrum DisorderAnonymous OneThis is the story of how my son, David, has tried to become independent. David is now 25–years–old. His immediate family is his dad, a brother (...) (age 22) and myself (his mother). He was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when he was 13. We looked up all the information and decided not to make a big deal of it. Looking back, he displayed all the classic signs of a high functioning autistic disorder. Would he have been diagnosed with the new DSM 5 guidelines? He probably would have. His life would be much, much different if he had been diagnosed at an early age.I'll start with David at age 13 when he was able to harness his big interest in computer science into a career for himself. He was expelled from middle school for threatening some kid that had been picking on him all year. He had a meltdown and wasn't able to communicate his side of the story and that was it.During the summer of that year he took classes in computer engineering (Microsoft) and became an engineer when he was 13. At that time it was quite an accomplishment because he was the youngest person in the United States to do so at such a young age. (By the way, the administration of the school that expelled him sent him a congratulatory card when he was written up in the paper).His father and uncle are in business running a computer company so David had a ready–made job waiting for him when he graduated from high school and was able to keep it during difficult times. David finished high school (mainstreamed special education as emotionally disturbed) and he also received another engineering certification (Cisco).I have to mention here that I truly did not understand what it was like for my son until one day when he was in high school, as I was lecturing him again for some stupid reason, he said, "You don't know how hard it is for me to not sit in a corner and rock every day." Think about that. ASD individuals get up and keep going every day when they know they are going to be misunderstood and picked on. They all deserve a medal for bravery.David became really upset that he had never had a date and that girls were not even interested in talking to him. He started cutting himself and shaving his head. That got him some attention from the stoner group. He had someone to sit with at lunch anyhow. Parents, I think it's better to have no friends than the wrong friends. They introduced him to drugs.We did not mention any trouble David was having to any relatives. We had lived 800 miles from our families in a very unspoiled part of northern America. In hindsight this was not good either. [End Page 151]Another thing, and I think every parent will agree with this—teachers, school staff, health care industry staff, doctors and every one that comes into contact with an ASD individual—take the time to get to know them. It may be difficult and some may appear non–caring and rude. You must overlook this and look to the person underneath. They are great people. They have been through stuff and it means so much to them. Like I said—parents, you know this. Please remember it when times get tough.During David's senior year he started work release so he could start earning money to buy a car and move out as soon as he turned 18. Things were made easy for David since the company was owned by his father and his uncle and I worked there also. David enjoyed the work but had the occasional meltdown and had difficulties fitting in with other employees. He wasn't able to communicate... (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion of how the gender gap in foreign and security policy issues can be explained by examining how early the gender differences manifest themselves. All told, 251 Swedish children between the ages of six and nine were interviewed about their views on foreign aid, refugee policy, weapons exports, armed resistance, self-defense, and concern or fear about the outbreak of war. Opinion differences between boys and girls were then compared to the differences between (...) adult men and women. The results showed that the differences between boys and girls were very small or nonexistent. Only in the question of fear about the outbreak of war did girls differ significantly from boys, displaying a much higher degree of worry. In the conclusion, these results are discussed in relation to different theories about the causes of the gender gap in foreign policy issues. (shrink)

Children’s numeracy competencies are not only relevant for their academic achievement, but also later in life. The development of early numeracy competencies is influenced by children’s learning environment. Here, the home numeracy environment and parent’s own beliefs about mathematics play an important role for children’s numeracy competencies. However, only a few studies explicitly tested these associations separately for mothers and fathers. In our study, we assessed mothers’ and fathers’ mathematical gender stereotypes, self-efficacy and their beliefs on the (...) importance of mathematical activities at home, and tested their associations with parents’ numeracy activities and children’s numeracy competencies in a sample of N = 160 children with an average age of M = 59.15 months. Both, fathers and mothers regarded boys as being more competent in mathematics than girls. Fathers when compared to mothers reported a greater mathematical self-efficacy. Further, only mothers’ self-efficacy was associated with the frequency of numeracy activities with the study child. In contrast, only fathers’ beliefs on the importance of mathematics was associated with their numeracy activities which, in turn, predicted children’s numeracy competencies. However, the non-invariant constructs and varying results lead to the question whether a revision of existing scales assessing parental beliefs and home numeracy activities is needed to investigate differences of mothers and fathers and their potential associations with children’s numeracy outcomes. (shrink)

Successful tutoring depends in part on child tutors’ ability to recognise and interpret accurately signals of misunderstanding by their tutees. Age- and gender-related differences were investigated in a study which exposed 80 children to a video-recorded episode involving a target child receiving ambiguous instructions in her attempts to move a model car along a designated route on a playmat roadway from one destination to another. The results showed that explicit, general and facial modes of displaying puzzlement by the target (...) child were judged as equally powerful expressions of degree of puzzlement, but 8-10 year olds judged the target child as significantly more puzzled than did 7 year olds. Older children were also more likely to attribute the puzzlement of the target child to the ambiguous instructions than to her verbal or facial expression of puzzlement. Girls were generally more accurate than boys in judging facial expressions and less likely than boys to give wrong or alternatively ambiguous responses when given the opportunity to correct the video-recorded ambiguous instructions. The results throw some light on the developing sensitivities of boys and girls in recognising and attributing failures of understanding by other children. (shrink)

The large numbers of children working in developing countries continue to provoke calls for an end to such employment. However, many reformers argue that efforts should focus on ending the exploitation of children rather than depriving them of all opportunities to work. This posture reflects recognition of the multiplicity of needs children have and the diversity of situations in which they work. Unfortunately, research typically neglects these complexities and fails to distinguish between types of labor market jobs, (...) dismisses household chores as irrelevant, and conceptualizes children’s needs largely in terms of the education they require for successful careers. Based on data collected in schools in Franca, Brazil, where children often combine school with work in the shoe industry, this study first examined the implications of labor market jobs and household work for their health, life satisfaction, and education. Analyses suggested that both forms of work negatively affected children’s welfare, but the effects of household work were more extensive, especially for girls. The second part focused on children with labor market jobs and examined how facets of their jobs as well as their after-work household duties affected their welfare. A lack of discretion on the job undermined the health of both boys and girls, higher pay adversely affected boys’ education, and housework had detrimental effects on all indicators of girls’ welfare. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for further research and suggests the needs for attention to different forms of work activities within families. It concludes with suggestions for multinationals sourcing in developing areas that go beyond the usual calls for ridding their facilities and supply networks of child workers. (shrink)

The aim of this research was to explore the elements that configure the quality of care among three Mexican same-sex planned families: two female-parented families (through donor insemination) and a male-parented one (through adoption). The first family consisted of two mothers and a 3-year-old daughter; the second one had two mothers and a 1.5-year-old set of boy twins and the third family consisted of two fathers and a 2-year-old girl. It was assumed that Ainsworth’s notions of quality of care (...) organization are useful in order to understand caregiver-child attachment relationships, regardless of the parents’ sexual orientation. A collective case study was selected due to the fact that these families shared their “unconventionality” (i.e. parents were not heterosexual) and the fact that they were planned, but each one constituted a particular case with a unique configuration. Four trained independent observers used the q-sort methodology (Maternal Behavior Q-Sort and Attachment Q-Sort) to describe parents’ and children’s behavior, respectively. The findings showed that parents were highly sensitive and all children used them as a secure base. To provide an in-depth examination of which elements configure the quality of care, a semi-structured interview with each parent was carried out. Through a thematic analysis, an over-arching theme named Affections and Emotions was identified, together with six subthemes: 1) Creating an affective environment; 2) Being available; 3) Acknowledging and expressing emotions; 4) Perceiving, interpreting and responding adequately to the child’s real self; 5) Taking the child’s perspective into account; and 6) Agreeing on roles and dividing the tasks. In order to showcase the particular configuration of gay parenting, the male-headed family narrative is reported in detail, because gay parents have been perceived as violating traditional gender roles as well as the hegemonic model of masculinity. The findings were consistent with the notion of quality of care as proposed by Ainsworth and her collaborators. The implications of the methodological device and research regarding same-sex planned families are discussed so as to understand the organization of the caregiving environment. (shrink)

It is hypothesized from within an evolutionary framework that females should be less invested in peer relations than males. Investment was operationalized as enjoyment in Study 1 and as preference for interaction in Study 2. In the first study, four- and six-year-old children’s enjoyment of peer interaction was observed in 26 groups of same-sex peers. Girls were rated as enjoying their interactions significantly less than boys. In the second study, six- and nine-year-old children were interviewed about the individuals (...) with whom they spend time in their homes and neighborhoods and about the individuals who participate in their favorite activities. The proportion of individuals named by children who were peers was significantly lower for girls than boys both in children’s neighborhoods and in children’s favorite activities. Results strongly support the hypothesis that females and males have evolved differential preferences for interaction with peers. (shrink)

One of Kant’s famous questions about being human asks, “What may I hope?” This question places individual life within an encompassing horizon of human history and speculates on the possibility of perspectives beyond death. In our time mortality is generally repressed, though the development of personal consciousness is closely linked to realization of one’s finitude. This raises especially urgent questions for children, and they are left to deal with them alone. From the time awareness begins, knowledge that death can (...) occur at any moment is one of the a priori determinants of being alive; that is, life is structured in advance by its future pastness. . According to Max Scheler, death reveals itself as a necessary and manifest constituent of all possible inner experiences in the life process. The cultural and individual interpretations of death’s meaning and consequences derived from this insight opened up an ample space for imagined possibilities of “continued existence,” which affected approaches to life. In our research project “Inochi – The Concept of Life after Death in Children’s Construction of the World. A German-Japanese Comparison,” carried out with German and Japanese research support, we examine concepts developed within the community of inquiry concerning “the individual’s afterlife” as soul, angel, animal, star, etc. In this we want to examine whether a globalized media environment leads to a cultural convergence in children’s ideas, and whether there are differences between views of girls and boys. Relevance of ideas about death is seen in the example of Japanese children who, believing in reincarnation chose “killing oneself” with relative frequency as a problem-solving strategy. Our contribution will present children’s imaginings using the drawings they created within this framework, since these can be interpreted as expressions of “narrative philosophizing,” especially for the Japanese children. Here we follow Mark Johnson who says” Human beings are imaginative synthesizing animals” . These imaginations make up a large part of our understanding, not just our beliefs, but rather our socially constructed way of being in and inhabiting a world. (shrink)

ObjectivePeer victimization is a substantial early life stressor linked to psychiatric symptoms and poor academic performance. However, the sex-specific cognitive or behavioral outcomes of bullying have not been well-described in preadolescent children.MethodsUsing the baseline dataset of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study 2.0.1 data repository, we evaluated associations between parent-reported bullying victimization, suicidality, and non-suicidal self-injury, as well as internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems, cognition, and academic performance.ResultsOf the 11,015 9-10-year-old children included in the analyses, 15.3% experienced bullying (...) victimization, as reported by the primary caregiver. Of these, boys were more likely to be bullied than girls. Children who were bullied were more likely to display NSSI or passive suicidality and active suicidality. Bullied children also had lower cognitive scores, greater behavioral problems, and poorer grades. Across all participants, boys had poorer grades and greater behavioral problems than girls; however, bullied boys had greater behavioral problems than girls in several areas. Compared to their non-bullied peers, bullied children with greater non-suicidal self-injury or suicidality also had greater behavioral problems and poorer grades.ConclusionThese findings highlight the sex-specific effects of bullying, and the negative associations of bullying victimization with cognitive performance, behavioral problems, and academic performance. Future longitudinal studies will identify the natural history and neural correlates of these deficits during adolescence. (shrink)

When faced with transgressions in their peer groups, children must navigate a series of situational cues (e.g., type of transgression, transgressor gender, transgressor intentionality) to evaluate the moral status of transgressions and to inform their subsequent behavior toward the transgressors. There is little research on which cues children prioritize when presented together, how reliance on these cues may be affected by certain biases (e.g., gender norms), or how the prioritization of these cues may change with age. To explore (...) these questions, 138 5- to 7-year-olds (younger children) and 8- to 10-year-olds (older children) evaluated a series of boy and girl characters who partook in physical or relational aggression with ambiguous or purposeful intent. Children were asked to provide sociomoral evaluations (i.e., acceptability, punishment, and intention attribution judgments) and social preferences. Transgressor gender only impacted children’s social preferences. Conversely, aggression form and transgressor intent shifted children’s sociomoral judgments: they were harsher toward physical transgressors with purposeful intent over those with ambiguous intent but made similar evaluations for relational transgressors regardless of intentionality. The present results suggest that gender is perhaps not uniformly relevant to children across all contexts, as other cues were prioritized for children’s sociomoral judgments. Since children likely have less familiarity with relational aggression compared to physical aggression, it follows that intent would only shift judgments about physical transgressors. This research provides insight about how children simultaneously navigate multiple cues in aggression contexts, which is likely reflective of their real-world experiences. (shrink)

TWEEN POP examines the creation of the "tween" in the early 2000s as a gendered and raced consumer audience. The tween, aged nine to twelve, and usually thought of as a white girl, occupies a temporality between childhood and adolescence: she has aged out of children's products but is too young to fully engage in marketing directed at teenagers. But, as Tyler Bickford argues, this seemingly narrow market grew to broadly include four to fifteen year olds, with producers (...) and marketers pulling upwards and downwards by creating material that would attract younger viewers and teenagers, thereby creating a demographic that expanded, rather than limited, the traditional reach of child and teenage markets. According to Bickford, the key to this expansion was pop music, as it provided an intensity of experience that mirrored childhood in its investments in emotional authenticity, cultural value, and relational intimacies. In other words, pop music needed to be both intimate and public--a tension that Bickford argues defined the tween's positionality as well--and tween pop did so by pairing the mainstream pop of adulthood with images and lyrics suitable for younger audiences. Throughout the book, Bickford reveals how childhood's status as a private domestic position outside of politics was not a hindrance to the cultivation of children as a mass audience but rather was the very foundation of that project. By creating an intimate public of tween pop, the tween music industry was able to position tweens as still within the private domestic sphere of family life, but connected in a broader public of other tween-pop-listening tweens. Chapter 1 looks at Kidz Bop music videos to argue that the tween music industry framed childhood domesticity as complementary to participation in a public culture. Chapter 2 focuses on Disney Channel's popular music programs' efforts to engage older children, particularly older girls, in their marketing tactics. Chapter 3 analyzes the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana and its foregrounding of tensions between girlhood, public culture, and family. Chapter 4 attends to how whiteness served as central to the tween construction of innocence and childhood. Bickford concludes the book by periodizing the tween moment as the decade from 2001 to 2011, and then outlines the developments in popular culture for children since that time. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnomusicology, feminism and gender studies, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Facial emotion recognition (FER) deficits interfere with interpretation of social situations and selection of appropriate responses. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms are independently associated with social difficulties and might exacerbate the influence of deficient FER, because children with ADHD symptoms have fewer compensatory resources in social situations when they misinterpret emotions. Very few studies have tested this hypothesis in a community context, where child ADHD symptoms vary on a continuum. The current study extended this work by utilising a community sample (...) (N = 87) of boys and girls in middle childhood (M = 7.83 years) and testing for moderation of FER effects separately by ADHD symptom type (ADHD-I = inattentive, H = hyperactive/impulsive, C = combined) using linear regression. While lower FER was associated with more social problems, this relationship was qualified by the presence of ADHD symptoms. Specifically, only children with relatively high ADHD symptoms in our community sample showed this inverse relationship, which was clearest among children with elevated ADHD-C or ADHD-I symptoms. No gender differences were observed. These results support our primary hypothesis, extend prior findings to boys and girls in the community, and have implications for understanding how ADHD symptoms and FER influence youth social deficits. (shrink)

Questions represent a crucial tool of interaction between parents and children from a very early age. This study aims to investigate which function – argumentative or explanatory – most characterizes Why-questions asked by children to their parents in a natural setting such as mealtimes at home. Why-questions asked by 13 children – eight girls and five boys aged between three and seven years – coming from 10 middle- to upper-middle-class Swiss and Italian families with a high socio-cultural (...) level were analyzed. In the corpus, the explanatory function largely characterizes children’s Why-questions. Questions we observed play fundamentally an educational role, since they favor the acquisition of new information and the transmission from parents to children of parental behavioral models. The argumentative Why-questions, less frequently asked by children in our sample, are also important from an educational point of view. By these questions children challenge their parents to make clear the reasons behind their opinions, suggestions, rules and prescriptions, which are often largely implicit. Altogether, the results of this study indicate that both the explanatory and argumentative types of children’s Why-questions have a knowledge-seeking function, that is, children asking such questions are seeking knowledge of something. (shrink)

The ‘Marwa’ elementary school (pseudonym) – an Israeli public school on the border between Israel and the Palestinian Authority – is a unique educational institution in that, despite being not religious, it only accepts from Grade 1 through to Grade 6 girls. Several years ago, the principal decided to implement a Philosophy with Children (PwC) programme as an alternative pedagogy. This paper surveys how the educational faculty regarded the introduction of this curriculum and how it contributed towards the development (...) of philosophical discursive skills, a classroom atmosphere of friendship and caring, and critical and creative thinking competence amongst the students. (shrink)

Children’s math self-concepts—their beliefs about themselves and math—are important for teachers, parents, and students, because they are linked to academic motivation, choices, and outcomes. There have been several attempts at improving math achievement based on the training of math skills. Here we took a complementary approach and conducted an intervention study to boost children’s math self-concepts. Our primary objective was to assess the feasibility of whether a novel multicomponent intervention—one that combines explicit and implicit approaches to help (...) class='Hi'>children form more positive beliefs linking themselves and math—can be administered in an authentic school setting. The intervention was conducted in Spain, a country in which math achievement is below the average of other OECD countries. We tested third grade students (N= 180;Mage= 8.79 years; 96 girls), using treatment and comparison groups and pre- and posttest assessments. A novelty of this study is that we used both implicit and explicit measures of children’s math self-concepts. For a subsample of students, we also obtained an assessment of year-end math achievement. Math self-concepts in the treatment and comparison groups did not significantly differ at pretest. Students in the treatment group demonstrated a significant increase in math self-concepts from pretest to posttest; students in the comparison group did not. In the treatment group, implicit math self-concepts at posttest were associated with higher year-end math achievement, assessed approximately 3 months after the completion of the intervention. Taken together, the results suggest that math self-concepts are malleable and that social–cognitive interventions can boost children’s beliefs about themselves and math. Based on the favorable results of this feasibility study, it is appropriate to formally test this novel multicomponent approach for improving math self-concepts using randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. (shrink)

The large numbers of children working in developing countries continue to provoke calls for an end to such employment. However, many reformers argue that efforts should focus on ending the exploitation of children rather than depriving them of all opportunities to work. This posture reflects recognition of the multiplicity of needs children have and the diversity of situations in which they work. Unfortunately, research typically neglects these complexities and fails to distinguish between types of labor market jobs, (...) dismisses household chores as irrelevant, and conceptualizes children’s needs largely in terms of the education they require for successful careers. Based on data collected in schools in Franca, Brazil, where children often combine school with work in the shoe industry, this study first examined the implications of labor market jobs and household work for their health, life satisfaction, and education. Analyses suggested that both forms of work negatively affected children’s welfare, but the effects of household work were more extensive, especially for girls. The second part focused on children with labor market jobs and examined how facets of their jobs as well as their after-work household duties affected their welfare. A lack of discretion on the job undermined the health of both boys and girls, higher pay adversely affected boys’ education, and housework had detrimental effects on all indicators of girls’ welfare. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for further research and suggests the needs for attention to different forms of work activities within families. It concludes with suggestions for multinationals sourcing in developing areas that go beyond the usual calls for ridding their facilities and supply networks of child workers. (shrink)

In the present study it has been examined how children?s creative writing tasks may contribute to teachers? understanding of children?s values. Writings of 300 elementary school children about what they would do if they were the boss of The Netherlands were obtained and seemed to reflect different types of values. Most children were concerned with charity. Also, writings concerned materialist values and socio?political topics, such as human rights, power and tolerance. Analyses of group?specific differences showed girls (...) to write more about charity and health when compared to boys. Children from low socio?economic backgrounds wrote less about environmental issues compared to children from middle and high socio?economic backgrounds. Children from ethnic minority backgrounds who wrote more about obtaining goods for themselves and less about environmental issues than Dutch?origin children. In addition, age differences were found in line with an increase in social and moral development. These differences are discussed in light of differential socialisation practices. (shrink)

We examined the development of children's understanding of beliefs and emotions in relation to parental talk about the psychological world. We considered the relations between parent–child talk about the emotions of characters depicted in a picture book, false belief understanding and emotion understanding. Seventy-eight primarily Caucasian and middle-class parents and their 3- to 5-year-old children participated (half boys and half girls). The emotions talked about were relatively simple, but the complexity of the situation varied in terms of whether (...) or not an understanding of beliefs was required to understand the emotion. Talk about the belief-dependent aspects of the emotions of picture book characters predicted children's false belief understanding, whereas talk about non-belief-dependent aspects of these emotions predicted children's emotion understanding. We argue that these data suggest that the development of children's understanding of beliefs and emotions is intertwined with learning to talk about the psychological world. (shrink)

This article critically analyses correspondence and decisions regarding children/young people who were included in the Canadian child migration schemes that ran between 1883 and 1939, and those who were deemed ‘undeserving’ and outside the scope of the schemes. Drawing on critical realist ontology, a metatheory that centralises the causal non-linear dynamics and generative mechanisms in the individual, the cultural sphere, and wider society, the research starts from the premise that the principle of ‘less or more eligibility’ lies at the (...) heart of the British welfare system, both now and historically. Through analysing case files and correspondence relating to children sent to Canada via the Waifs and Strays Society and Fegan Homes, I shed light on the complex interplay between morality, biological determinism, resistance, and resilience in decisions around which children should be included or excluded. I argue that it was the complex interplay and nuance between the moral/immoral, desirable/undesirable, degenerate, and capable/incapable child that guided practice with vulnerable children in the late 1800s. In judgements around ‘deservedness’, related stigmas around poverty and ‘bad’ behaviour were rife. Within this, the child was punished for his/her ‘immoral tendencies’ and ‘inherited traits’, with little regard for the underlying reasons for their behaviour and ‘mental deficiencies’. (shrink)

We observed that despite international declarations on child-rights, outsourced domestic girl-child labour still persists. Raising the question whether outsourced domestic girl-child labour constitutes hermeneutical injustice, we respond affirmatively. Relying on two indigenous victimology-narratives that are newspaper reports, we expose some of the horrors that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer. Comparing these reports with other victimology-narratives of hermeneutical injustice as reported by Miranda Fricker and Hilkje Hänel, we argue that the victims of outsourced domestic (...) class='Hi'>girl-child labour suffer a hermeneutical gap and hermeneutical interference; and that the perpetuators of this practice, help to foster what we call ‘hermeneutical obstruction’. We recommend different counteracting measures such as: a radical feminization of educational curricula, which will allow for the introduction of the relevant hermeneutical resources that female children need in making sense of their experiences, into the classrooms and other places of learning; establishing feminist liberation agencies in all schools, religious institutions and hospitals, as ways of increasing the level of awareness about the rights of the girl-child in children and adults; feminizing legislation and legislative processes, to allow for the enactment of laws to protect the rights of the girl-child; and campaigning for a more rigorous enforcement of child-rights laws. (shrink)