ABSTRACT
Both parents and children recognize that early childhood education and care settings and schools are an important source of playmates and friends and are influential in children’s overall welfare. However, it is arguable as to whether this is taken into account in the elaboration of curricula and in the organization of spaces and times in these settings. My aim in this chapter is to give voice to both children’s and parents’ perspectives regarding peers, playmates and friendships. In many ways, this focus reflects the wave of interest in accessing children’s perspectives on their experiences, which has been a central theme of discussion in childhood sociology and the broader social studies of childhood in the present decade (Clark, Kjørholt and Moss 2005; Mayall 2002). The notion of children’s perspectives or children’s voice has come to mean how adults and society try to understand children’s lives, as well as how children themselves experience and describe their lives (Brostrom 2006). Within early childhood education and care specifically, this has been incorporated into pedagogical approaches where both adults and children have ‘a say’ and attention is paid to creating practices that are in tune with children’s way of thinking, communicating and being (Bae 2009; Edwards et al. 1998; Jans 2004; OECD 2006).
