ABSTRACT
Representations of what constitutes a ‘proper family’ are everywhere in the mass media and form powerful images in children’s literature and in the minds and discourses of the adults who teach, care and take responsibility for children. However, children’s understandings of what family means to them in their own lives are often broad and inclusive (Levin 1995; Moore et al. 1996; Morrow 1998). As Levin’s study showed, children and young people include within the rubric of the term family their parents, siblings, grandparents, step parents and step siblings, and their uncles and aunts but they also include pets and people not usually considered as kin. Morrow’s study of 8 to 11-yearolds suggested that children’s definitions of what counts as family become more complex as they grow older. Nonetheless, as the study by O’Brien and her colleagues suggests, ideological representations of what families ‘ought’ to look like remain powerful influences upon children. (O’Brien, Aldred and Jones 1996).
