Recognising the embedded child in child protection: Children’s participation, inequalities and cultural capital

Children’s right to participation in child protection decision-making is supported by moral imperatives and international conventions. The fragmented implementation of this right reflects a conflicted discursive terrain that attempts to incorporate both children’s agency and their need for protection. This article uses two theoretical lenses to further examine this terrain: child welfare inequalities and cultural capital. These theories highlight how social inequities and cultural capital relating to culture and class affect participation processes and outcomes. An unintended consequence of constructing children within a traditional liberal account of rights is reduced recognition of the culturally contested nature of an individualistic construction of children. Constructing children in this way excises children from their social backgrounds and promotes the notion of a ‘universal child’. With a particular focus on class, culture and professional paradigms, I argue that the ways children’s views are elicited, the content of those views, and how they are interpreted, are subject to a set of professional assumptions that take little cognisance of the social backround of children. This includes norms relating to class and culture, and the oppressive structural relations relating to those two factors including racialisation. Concepts such as attachment theory, the ‘adultification’ of children of colour, the diminishing of Indigenous concepts of children and childhood, and the pre-eminence of the ‘concerted cultivation’ middle class parenting style are some ways this lack of recognition is enacted. The child’s cultural worldview and manner of expressing it may clash with professional cultures that prefer and reward verbal expression, independence, and entitlement when negotiating preferences with representatives of powerful social institutions (such as child protection systems). Many children may not comply with this expectation due to cultural and class socialisation processes, and the oppressive histories of child protection systems. As most child protection organisations must engage in constant translation of children’s cultural capital to ensure participation, devolving authority and resources to affected communities may better serve children's rights to participation. Communities reflecting children’s own may be more able to offer full recognition to children and enable theirparticipation more effectively.