The Paradox of Constrained Well‐being: Childhood Autonomy, Surveillance and Inequality*

Abstract

With some exceptions, children’s lives in the United States and other developed nations have become more intensely surveilled over the last 30 years, thanks to the intensification of parenting, the spread of surveillance technology in schools, and increased restrictions upon children’s use of public space. Yet childhood scholars argue that children’s autonomy and self‐efficacy are important not just as basic human rights, but also because they help children improve coping skills, learn better, and, and become trusting and trustworthy. Existing scholarship, then, might predict that trends of heightened surveillance negatively impact children’s well‐being. Instead, contemporary children are doing better, as measures of abuse and assault, physical health, educational achievement, and other outcomes attest. Given childhood studies scholarship, how do we understand children’s decreasing autonomy and increasing well‐being? We call this puzzle the “paradox of constrained well‐being.” We explore four possible explanations: stratification of childhood, safe bondage/risky freedom, mental‐health‐as‐SOS‐signal, and mental‐health‐as‐harbinger. Presenting evidence, we evaluate the capacity of each to explain the paradox of constrained well‐being. We conclude by suggesting all four have considerable purchase, and that our penchant for easily measurable and reportable metrics blinds us to the costs of constraints on children’s agency, liberty, mental health, and equity.

“You Selling?”: Snack Sales and the Construction of Deviance in a High School

“…By criminalizing student behaviors, schools may actually increase the likelihood that their students engage in deviant behaviors throughout the lifecourse, whether due to labeling, peer networks, or both (Duxbury & Haynie, 2020;Payne & Welch, 2016;Rios, 2011). Moreover, children experiencing the types of punitive treatments detailed here are also more likely to experience surveillance and criminalization outside of school, perpetuating the classed and racialized stratification of childhood wellbeing (Dinsmore & Pugh, 2021). Adult responses to youth behaviors can stigmatize activities that are otherwise permitted, or even lauded.…”

“…Once compiled, I realized that students and adults judged the activity quite differently-as something quotidian versus something risky. Ultimately, this revealed snack sales as one way that youth at Hamilton-like other marginalized youth-experience criminalized childhoods (Dinsmore & Pugh, 2021).…”

The intensification of parenting and generational fracturing of spontaneous physical activity from childhood play in the United Kingdom

“…Although the heightened mistrust of strangers may be more of a media-inflated than evidence-supported risk (Dinsmore & Pugh, 2021), in practice this fear was experienced as real by parents of dependent children and only reconcilable through their involvement in or supervision of children's outdoor play, which they intentionally shaped around physical activity, It's really important to make physical activity fun… in a family environment without making them realise they're even doing it… it's a laugh, go down the park and throw a Frisbee… getting out there and getting the heart pumping (Yasmin, born 1989) The expectations of contemporary parenthood to protect children from the purported risks of excessive outdoor freedom and provide children with sufficient physical activity opportunities for health benefits each represent an intensification to parenting. When understood in tandem, trying to meet both demands created a practical tension for parents (Bristow, 2014).…”

“…Subsequently, the notion of intensive parenting has predominantly been used to make sense of the constraints, anxieties and practical conflicts of contemporary parenthood according to class (Lee, 2021), gender (Shirani et al., 2012) and nation state (Faircloth, 2020). As a key hallmark of the intensification of parenting concerns how parents are now positioned as and feel increasingly responsible for their children’s outcomes (Faircloth, 2014; Sivak, 2018), some researchers argue that parenting and childhood have gradually aligned to the extent that they now mirror one another (Dinsmore & Pugh, 2021). Smyth and Craig (2017, p. 109) see contemporary parenting and childhood as ‘two sides of the same coin’ due to the implications for childhood that have originated from the intensification of parenting.…”

Civic Engagement and Latina Immigrant Mothers' Remote Learning Involvement DuringCOVID‐191

“…Immigrant Incorporation and School Contexts: Barriers to School Involvement for Latino/a Immigrant Parents As racialized minorities, Latino/a parents can come across individuals and institutions that limit their incorporation in schools and broader society (Dinsmore and Pugh 2021;Massey 2007;Portes and Rumbaut 2014;Telles and Ortiz 2008). Studies establish that Latino/a parents want to be involved in their children's schooling (Ada and Zubizarreta 2001;Cuevas 2021;Delgado-Gaitan 1994;Hill and Torres 2010;Manzo and Deeb-Sossa 2018;Quiocho and Daoud 2006;Tinkler 2002;Vald es 1996); however, experiences with discrimination, unfair treatment, and bias leave Latino/a parents feeling shut out of their children's education and school-based activities.…”