Jumping off and being careful: children's strategies of risk management in everyday life

Abstract

This article addresses the complexity of children's risk landscapes through an ethnography of 10-to 12-year-old Danish children. The data revealed how children individually and collectively engaged with risk in their everyday activities. The children assessed risks in relation to their perceptions of their health as strength and control, negotiated the conditions of playing, and attuned their responses to situations of potential social and physical conflict. In the paper this risk engagement is illustrated in a variety of contexts: children's decisions to wear or not to wear a bicycle helmet; playing and games and routine pushing and shoving at school. In looking after themselves, children negotiate rules of participation and they safeguard personal and collective interests. Gender differences in these processes are addressed and discussed. The article argues that risk engagement is an important resource through which children also learn from their own mistakes. This is a necessary learning process when children engage with their personal health and safety. The article critically discusses different sociological frameworks and shows the significance of the study for the growing literature on understanding the meaning of risk in childhood.

Adolescents’ Perceived Safety and Security in Public Space—A Swedish Focus Group Study with a Gender Perspective

“…That their own traffic risk management is often perceived to be so good it negates traffic risk is mirrored in other studies (Christensen and Mikkelsen, 2008;Green and Hart, 1998). One consequence is that if they are involved in a traffic incident, it is implicitly their own fault.…”

Change of School Playground Environment on Bullying: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…10,11 From a young age, children seek risk when they play and use their judgment to assess risk and potential injury. 12,13 Children want risk; playgrounds are said to be "boring" if no risk is involved. 14 However, little research has examined the pros and cons of greater risk and challenge in play.…”

Changes in Childhood Risk Taking and Safety Behavior After a Peer Group Media Intervention

“…Green (1997) found that physical risk taking is an important factor in the creation of boys’ social identity. Results of a recent ethnographic study suggest that girls are risk takers when social domains are included and that children’s risk engagement and risk taking are a balancing act between risk willingness and self-care within the context of social relationships, emotional excitement, and connections and activities with other children (Christensen & Mikkelsen, 2008). Possibly the intervention was not motivating enough to lower risk-taking behavior because it did not attend to the social identity and perceptions of other peers in the group.…”