Hearing the Voices of Children Revisited? Silencing and the Generational Order

20 years ago, Christine Hallett and Alan Prout published their seminal edition “Hearing the voices of children”, which called for a recognition of children by welfare state policies and research. They claimed that listening to the children would allow for a widening and strengthening of children’s participation. Since then, sociology of childhood has shown in a great many details, that children have a perspective on the issues that concern their lives, that they are able to speak up about it and engage in said issues.

Starting from the methodological standpoint that children are able to voice their concerns, we propose to focus on silencing as fundamental to the generational order, rendering voice an unequally distributed right. How are the various gate-keeping processes of the generational order utilized (by adults as well as children) to respond children, effectively turning down their volume or separate the children? What follows from the insight, that hearing the voices of children may not be the problem after all, but the responses in the light of generational inequalities?

For this session, we invite papers that raise questions on the fate of children’s voices in empirical settings, e.g.

• What are the effects of children’s voices in families, schools, and wider public arenas?
• How do adults (and children) respond to children’s voices and how are they able to fend off consequences challenging the generational order?
• How do childhood institutions respond to children’s voices, especially in situations that would call for a change in their programs and routines?