Does My Childhood Count?

Children's spaces reveal the visibility of 'adult' hypocrisy if one knows how to observe. Children's voices are often disregarded and dismissed, perceived as unintelligible individuals who require adults to make decisions for them. Yet children's spaces are highly politicized. While global discourses on children's rights call for fair and equal childhood experiences, we have yet to see all children living equally. The effects of existing colonialism, racism, sexism, and other 'isms' seep into the childhoods our children live. In today’s discourse, a particular type of childhood dominates and is valued, despite efforts to embrace diversity among children. The childhood experienced by a child from a Western middle-class, white, heterosexual, and non-disabled family is favored and considered the norm. Therefore, this paper aims to establish a theoretical framework called 'white childhoods.' This framework examines the prevailing understanding of childhood and its impact on the realities and experiences of ‘othered’ childhoods. In ‘white childhoods,’ the experiences of ‘othered’ children are ignored, and their strengths are diminished compared to dominant white forms of childhood, shifting the narrative to what those children lack rather than what they possess. This paper is built on conversations, observations, and stories collected in a non-systematic, non-objective way from a researcher's subjective perspective belonging to the ‘othered’ part of the world. Thus, it incorporates ‘othered’ knowledge deemed invaluable for the scientific community and knowledge production. The paper resists and highlights the ‘data’ that falls through the cracks within the white knowledge framework due to its chaotic nature. The essay is written in speculative imagination, featuring imaginary interviews with children based on actual conversations, observations, and stories told by migrant children and families in the 'Global North.' Such 'data' arise when Western methodology ends, and through those stories, we establish the 'white childhood' framework.