Children’s beliefs about care

As we noted in Chapter 1, care has a clear moral dimension, in the sense that people often feel under an obligation to provide it. However, in practice, they do not simply act upon a sense of obligation or set of absolute principles. They negotiate ‘guidelines’ as they apply in particular conditions and situations (Finch 1989). Like adults, children are active participants in caring relationships both as receivers of care and givers of care. Their participation in care relations occurs moreover in public domains as well as in the private sphere of family life. In this chapter, we consider children’s moral or normative expectations and beliefs about care and caring relations as they relate to different contexts, including the public domain of the school and the market place and the private sphere of family life. In this endeavour, we used the vignette method. It was developed by Finch and Mason (1993) in their study of adult family obligations, to examine in a systematic way children’s beliefs about the ‘right and proper thing to do’ with respect to care and care relations in particular contexts and under a set of controlled conditions. In two vignettes, a focus concerned guidelines which children considered they should exercise in negotiating social relations – both with other children and with adults. Two vignettes focused on children’s normative views about adults as givers of care, while one vignette suggested care may be a matter of reciprocity between adults and children.