Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes?

316 Pages·2018·28.057 MB·English

by  Rachel Rosen, Katherine Twamley (eds.)

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‘Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes? asks an impossible question, and then
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‘This provocative and stimulating publication comes not a day too soon.’ ‒ Gerison Lansdown, l
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‘A smart, innovative, and provocative book.’ ‒ Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University n d Feminism
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‘This volume raises and addresses issues so pressing that it is surprising they are not already at dt

the heart of scholarship.’ ‒ Ann Phoenix, UCL Kh
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Feminism and the Politics of Childhood offers an innovative and critical exploration of perceived n
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commonalities and conflicts between women and children and, more broadly, between various T
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forms of feminism and the politics of childhood. This unique collection brings into dialogue
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authors from a range of social science disciplines, activist organisations, and theoretical mt
perspectives. They address topics such as gender, generation and intergeneration, relationality, lei
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power, exploitation, solidarity, and emancipation in a variety of situations, including refugee
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camps, care labour, domestic violence, and childcare and education.

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The authors focus on local contexts as well as their global interconnections, and draw on diverse f
theoretical traditions such as poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, posthumanism, postcolonialism,
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political economy, and the ethics of care. Together the contributions offer new ways to
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conceptualise relations between women and children and to address injustices faced by both
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Rachel Rosen is Senior Lecturer in Childhood in the Department of Social Science at the UCL h Friends or Foes?
Institute of Education.
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Katherine Twamley is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in the Department of Social
Science at the UCL Institute of Education. d
Edited by
Rachel Rosen and Katherine Twamley
Cover image:
© Britt Permien
Free open access versions available from Cover design:
www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press www.ironicitalics.com
Feminism and the Politics

of Childhood
‘This ground-breaking work straddles the divide between theory, prac-
tice, and activism. By reflecting on the mother-child relationship and ana-
lyzing care work in capitalist and patriarchal societies, this book provides
a powerful counter-narrative to the pervasive individualistic social ontol-
ogy that permeates Western academia. The authors’ approaches are sen-
sitive to the legacy of colonialism and the divides between feminism/s.
The ideas and problems explored in this book are both inspiring and
provocative.’
Rachelle Bascara,
Filipino Domestic Workers Association, UK
‘Insightful, provocative and evocative, Feminism and the Politics of
Childhood: Friends or Foes? challenges readers to grapple with the uneasy
ideological and political tensions arising whenever those positioned as
children and as women commingle. Rosen and Twamley, together with a
strong array of contributors, invite active and sometimes messy engage-
ment with varieties of feminisms and childhoods so as to enable public,
connected and relational ways of knowing, telling and doing. A must-
read for scholars and activists alike.’
Daniel Thomas Cook,
Rutgers University—Camden, USA
‘This book is genuinely ground-breaking. It spans disciplinary bounda-
ries to foreground fundamental issues of care, relationality and justice,
forging fresh and exciting new directions in conceptual theory and polit-
ical action. The dialogical style and collaborative ethos underpinning its
production is original and uplifting, making it an expansive, ambitious
and exhilarating read.’
Val Gillies,
University of Westminster, UK
‘Traveling the fraught borderlands between women and children, women’s
studies and childhood studies, Feminism and the Politics of Childhood:
Friends or Foes? asks an impossible question, and then casts prismatic
light on all the corners of its impossibility – illuminating the temporali-
ties and spatialities of the vexed and beautiful relational politics around
love and labour, power and violence, care and antagonism, empire and
liberation, social movements and interdependence. With contributions
from a truly international group of authors in formats including photo
essays, interviews, narratives and scholarly articles, these pages are filled
with beautiful, provocative, important conversations about the fluid and
differentiated relations among and between women and children, world-
making in their effects and possibilities.’
Cindi Katz,
City University of New York Graduate Center, USA
‘This provocative and stimulating publication comes not a day too soon.
Exploring the profound complexities embedded in the woman and child
relationship, it challenges the reductive instrumentalisation of women as
simply a means of realising children’s rights, and makes a powerful case
for recognition that the perpetuation of a hierarchy of rights impedes
justice and dignity for both women and children.’
Gerison Lansdown,
Chair, Child to Child, UK
‘A smart, innovative, and provocative book, Feminism and the Politics
of Childhood explores the confluences and disjunctures between fem-
inist studies and childhood studies by disaggregating the “woman
and children/womanandchild” dyad. It breaks new ground theoreti-
cally and methodologically by foregrounding the political economy
of the unequal distribution of need and vulnerability in struggles
for social justice for women and for children in diverse geopolitical
landscapes.’
Chandra Talpade Mohanty,
Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
Syracuse University, USA
‘It is a rare book that can be said to inaugurate a new field of study.
Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes? raises and
addresses issues so pressing that it is surprising they are not already at
the heart of scholarship on feminisms and the politics of childhood. It
draws on an impressive range of empirical, theoretical and practice
material from different perspectives, disciplines and everyday practices.
In doing so, it enables potentially antagonistic positions to be aired and
refuses to reduce women and children to equivalences or to flatten dif-
ferences between women and between children. Together, the chapters
make a cutting-edge, critical intervention that readers will enjoy dipping
into, but that will repay close and repeated reading.’
Ann Phoenix,
Thomas Coram Research Unit – UCL, UK
The Jane and Aatos Erkko Professor at the Helsinki University
Collegium for Advanced Studies from 2016–2018, Finland
‘This stimulating book explores the relations between women and
children in a contextualised way that is conceptually challenging and
methodologically innovative. The product of a subtle and rich intellec-
tual debate, the book fully embodies its driving inspiration: to foster a
“generous encounter” of mutual learning between feminism and child-
hood studies, and between academia and the world of political and
social activism.’
Ana Vergara Del Solar,
Universidad Diego Portales, Chile
Feminism and the

Politics of Childhood
Friends or Foes?
Edited by Rachel Rosen and Katherine Twamley
First published in 2018 by
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press
Text © Contributors, 2018
Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in the captions, 2018
The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.
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Rosen R. and Twamley K. (eds.). 2018. Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends
or Foes? London: UCL Press. DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787350632
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For women and children everywhere,
in our struggles for social and economic justice.

Foreword
We are very pleased to welcome the publication of this book, which

investigates an important (but neglected) field for study: how and how
far feminism can take account of children and of childhood, and simul-
taneously what childhood studies and activism aimed at improving
children’s status can learn from feminism. The 18 papers result from a col-
laborative process of learning and refining. Starting with a two-d ay sym-
posium at which some of the chapters in this volume were presented and
discussed, the editors and contributors have reviewed the papers and so
ensured thorough, valuable and nuanced discussions of the intersections
between gender and generation. This book makes an important contri-
bution to improving understandings of interrelations between women’s
studies and childhood studies, and their related social movements.
The re- emergence of feminism from the 1960s onwards was
matched by a new interest in childhood viewed as a social phenomenon.
Both movements have been concerned with social and political s tatus and
have fought for the recognition of rights. Furthermore, whilst women
have sought to problematise social assumptions about their relations
with children, childhood studies have sought to extract children, theor-
etically, from ‘the family’ and to site them as a social group with their own
interests, and to attend to their specific interrelations with macro forces.1
Our contribution here is to provide a viewpoint drawing on the
history of the women’s movement and its work with and for children.
This fascinating (but largely forgotten) social history predates, contrib-
utes to and in some ways challenges modern discussions of feminism and
childhood.
A key theorist for this viewpoint was Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
In her novel Herland, first published in 1915, three young men find
themselves in a society where there are no men. This is a society run by
wise, active, competent women, who plan an ordered community, self-
sufficient in all necessary resources, and who do all the work needed to
maintain it. Children are central to the design and workings of society.
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