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4 Simple Ways To Teach Really Young Kids About Representation

Senior Wellness & Parenting Reporter, HuffPost

Parents may have the best of intentions when it comes to raising children who understand the importance of representation and who embrace diversity, but the window they have to fundamentally shape their values and beliefs before biases start to form is startlingly brief.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) , by age 2 children start to internalize racial biases. And by the time they’re 12 or so, many kids are basically “set” in their beliefs.

Yet there are relatively simple, practical steps that parents can take to help teach really young kiddos (think babies and toddlers) to appreciate diversity and that may help them as they go out into a world marred by systemic inequality.

Have a little one at home? Here are four strategies to consider right now.

Expose babies to different types of faces.

Experts now know that babies pick up on differences when they’re really, really new. Like, by the time they’re 6 months old , babies brains’ can notice racial differences in the people they encounter.

“We know from infant attention studies that babies can distinguish Black faces from white faces,” said Sandra Waxman , a developmental scientist and professor of psychology at Northwestern University who has spent years studying what babies think and how they learn about the world around them. “They can distinguish females from males.”

And babies show a strong “looking preference” for the types of faces they’re exposed to most often, Waxman said.

That is not to say that babies are biased in any way. Or that the particular looking preferences a baby has at, say, 6 months old are “infused with meaning,” Sandy said.

However, it is something for parents to be mindful of, if for no other reason than it might make you tune into whether your own social network is as diverse and multicultural as you’d really like it to be as your children grow up and do much of their learning by modeling you.

Load them up with diverse books. (Including those in which diversity isn’t the “point.”)

Children’s books still have a long way to go, but publishers have done a better job in recent years of putting out picture books that are filled with characters who are racially diverse , who have disabilities , who have diverse body types , and that feature LGBTQ characters.

“As Rudine Sims Bishop notes, we need ‘window, mirror, and sliding door’ books,” explained Erin Walsh, co-founder of the Spark and Stitch Institute , which teaches parents strategies for navigating a digital world. “Because we need stories in which children can see reflections of themselves, but also look through and see other worlds.”

It’s a mistake if your kiddos’ library seems diverse, but it’s only filled with books about oppression and injustice (“this reinforces narrow understanding of people’s lived experiences,” Walsh explained). It’s also important to read your kiddo plenty of “any child” books, which are diverse but the characters’ identity is not central to the plot.

That may be particularly true of books for babies and toddlers, which are obviously very simple narratively. Representation matters even for the youngest readers, and there’s no reason why, say, board counting books should feature characters who are predominately white.

Look at what they’re playing with.

Given that young children learn so much through play — sharpening language, social, physical and cognitive skills — it is important to try and fill their toy bins with diverse options.

“Children learn and create understanding of the world through play. Many parents focus on shows and books, but children’s toys, dolls, and action figures are opportunities to disrupt stereotypes and/or reflect children’s similarities and differences,” Walsh said.

Babies don’t really tune into what they’re gumming or drooling over, but toddlers and preschoolers certainly notice what they’re playing with every day.

There are limits to all of this, of course. Simply expanding your child’s access to multicultural, gender-neutral toys will not make them immune to broader cultural stereotypes.

“Our job as parents is to make sure they don’t learn bias — but the point of fact is that it’s well nigh impossible,” Wexman said. Try anyway, she urged.

Talk, talk, talk.

Because biases set in sooner than some parents realize, they may be putting off conversations around representation, diversity, equity, inclusion — all of it — longer than you should. Start young. Like, when they’re toddlers or preschoolers .

Waxman said it’s not parents’ fault that their children are living in an unequal world where they will be steeped in racist, sexist and ableist messages. “What is our fault is when we don’t address it,” she said.

And there is plenty of evidence that so-called colorblindness, and other approaches that teach children “not to see difference” do not work . Children do see the ways in which we are all different, and teaching young children not to ask questions sends the message that difference is taboo.

Again, all of these are small steps and a small piece of a much larger puzzle. But they are also actionable, and Waxman said that in many ways with young kids, the goal is simple: Just help “normalize that people are different.”

This story is part of a HuffPost Parents project called I See Me , a series for all parents and kids on the power of representation. We know how important it is for kids to see people that look like them on the biggest stages, from politics to sports and entertainment and beyond. Throughout February, we’ll explore the importance of representation in teaching kids about difference, acceptance, privilege and upstanding.

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Why Representation Matters in Kids' Media

The media we consume has a profound influence on how we see, understand, and treat people, both those within and different from our own race or ethnicity. Decades of research into how ethnic-racial representation in media affects adults has shown that very influential messages are communicated about who a culture views as "normal" and "good" or "different" and "bad." And those representations have real-world implications as we continue to engage with media over time. For kids, media representations may be even more meaningful as they look for cues in their social environment to develop and shape their understanding of ethnic-racial groups.

Our latest report at Common Sense, " The Inclusion Imperative: Why Media Representation Matters for Kids' Ethnic-Racial Development, " looks at current research into the impact of media on how kids build their understanding of race and ethnicity, as well as perspectives from parents and caregivers on how they use media as a tool to teach acceptance and inclusion. Our review integrated over 150 different journal articles, book chapters, reports, and other academic sources to get the best available understanding of how media can influence children's ethnic-racial development. Here is what we learned:

Screen media continues to fall short on its portrayal of diverse races and ethnicities.

Our report reinforces that people of color are underrepresented in movie and TV roles across platforms, and when they are represented, they're often stereotyped. For example, despite being 18% of the population, Latinos only make up 5% of speaking film roles. Characters of color in shows most watched by children age 2 to 13 are more likely to be depicted as violent, and women of all ethnic-racial groups in adult programming are more likely to appear in sexualized roles.

Parents and caregivers agree that the media their kids are watching still largely contains stereotypes of people of color. Most feel that White people are often portrayed in a positive light in the media their children are exposed to; one in four believe that portrayals of Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQIA+ people are more likely to be negative. And among families of color, feelings about current stereotypes in kids' media are even stronger.

You can't understand the effects of media on children's understanding of race and ethnicity without understanding their development.

Importantly, our report shows the importance of considering media as part of children's development, and specifically their ethnic-racial development. From the time they're babies, children are taking in information about ethnicity and race from the people, images, and interactions around them. These experiences inform how children feel about, evaluate, and understand ethnicity-race for themselves and others. Understanding what children know about ethnicity-race at different ages can illuminate the kinds of media that may meaningfully affect them.

Media representation is important to how kids build their perspectives on their own ethnic-racial group, as well as that of others.

Our review of available research reinforced the idea that media can have both positive and negative impacts on kids' ethnic-racial development. On the negative side, stereotypical portrayals of people of color can promote harmful views about and responses to people of color among White audiences. For example, heavy exposure to the stereotypic portrayals of Latinos on entertainment television is associated with increased belief that these representations are accurate reflections of Latinos in society. Exposure to negative representations can also negatively affect children's future professional aspirations and undermine their sense of self.

But while exposure to negative media depictions of their own ethnic-racial groups can undermine children's sense of self, high-quality children's media can promote positive ethnic-racial attitudes and interactions. For example, among Black elementary school girls, exposure to liked Black TV characters is associated with more positive feelings about their own status, appearance, and happiness. And studies going back decades have shown that programs like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood can have positive effects on children's feelings about their own ethnic-racial group and on interracial relationships.

Adults want more from the media their kids watch.

In a nationally representative survey of over 1,100 parents and caregivers of children from 2 to 12 years old, they repeatedly told us that they believe media is a valuable tool to help their kids understand race and ethnicity. They're looking to media creators to deliver content that better reflects the diversity of the world their kids are growing up in.

They want realistic, non stereotypical representations of their own culture. About six in ten parents (57%) say it is important for their children to see people of their own ethnicity/race in the media they consume. But it's most important to Black parents, 75% of whom say representation is important. Also, 70% of parents want media that exposes children to more about their family's culture, religion, or lifestyle.

They want stories that are inspirational and aspirational. About two in three parents (65%) feel that media has a big impact on their children's professional aspirations, which underscores the importance of providing positive role models for Black, indigenous, and children of color.

They want diversity because it teaches acceptance and inclusion. Almost 6 in 10 (57%) parents say that the media their child consumes has prompted conversations about diversity, and 63% of parents believe that media has an impact on the information children have about people of other races, ethnicities, religions, and cultures

What comes next?

Parents and caregivers are looking for realistic, three-dimensional representations of diverse races and ethnicities that aren't rife with stereotypes or cookie-cutter portrayals. The new rating for diverse representations from Common Sense Media will help families identify quality media that elevates quality portrayals and inclusion. Content creators have a responsibility to improve diversity and elevate inclusion in the media they're creating for young audiences -- even for the youngest viewers. They also have an incredible opportunity to use their power to tell the types of stories that will help us all shape the world we want to live in.

Dana Mastro, Ph.D., professor of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is a co-author of this blog and the report.

Michael B. Robb, Ph.D., senior director of research at Common Sense, and Alanna Peebles, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication, media, and technology at San Diego State University are also co-authors of this report.

Onnie Rogers, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University and the co-author of The Inclusion Imperative: Why Media Representation Matters for Kids' Ethnic-Racial Development . Her research examines, among other topics, how children and adolescents make sense of their racial, ethnic, and gender identities.

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How to explain to kids what diversity means

This interview is from A Kids Book About: The Podcast, with host Matthew Winner and author of A Kids Book About Diversity, Charrnaie Gordon. It has been lightly edited for clarity.   

When we talk about diversity today, we’re talking about the varieties of differences that people have in a community. In her book Charnaie writes, “Diversity is everything that makes you, you! Age, race, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, ability/disability, socioeconomic status, political views or beliefs and so much more!”

I think a lot of people, when they think of diversity, they're thinking of skin color or different cultures. Right?  But it's so much more than that. 

A really important part of diversity is making sure that all people, regardless of our differences, feel welcomed. That’s where a new word comes in: inclusion, the feeling of being welcomed amid diversity.

If we kind of envision a really, truly diverse world, that's talking about all different types of people, right? People with different socioeconomic backgrounds, people with different gender identities, people with different physical abilities and disabilities, different sexuality, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. 

But then when we're talking about inclusion, I think that is just saying that everybody should be represented and everyone has an equal chance to participate and to be heard. So if you kind of think about it in a way, I think I heard somebody describe diversity and inclusion before as kind of like baking a cake. Right? So diversity is all of the ingredients that you need to make this cake. And then once you mix the ingredients all together, that's inclusion.

Diversity is kind of like the “what” and inclusion is the “how”. Combining all of these things together, you end up with this beautiful and hopefully delicious cake in the end that you can, you know, enjoy. But I think that's really an easy way to think about diversity and inclusion. 

I think they're often used in the same sentence or in the same phrase together because they are similar in a lot of ways.

But I think inclusion is just really just making sure that everyone has a voice, everyone can be included, and that diversity piece of it is saying, “Okay, well, who are these people who need to be included? Whose voices do we need to hear from?” 

There’s something so special that can change how you look at the world and your whole life, when you can see yourself reflected in a book, or on TV, or in the heroes who we all look up to. The word for this is “representation,” and it’s another way we celebrate diversity. Charnaie told me about how her life was impacted as a kid after seeing herself represented on TV. 

That moment when The Oprah Winfrey Show first came on. It was a show that came on every day, Monday through Friday at 4:00 PM in my time zone where I lived, and [when I] came home from school, that was the first thing I wanted to watch.

I'd run upstairs—my Nana would already be watching the TV on that channel—and so once four o'clock came around I was glued to the TV watching Oprah Winfrey. 

And I remember those moments so vividly because she was the only, from what I can remember, person of color who looked like me, who was doing things that I could imagine myself doing someday. She wasn't an athlete, right? I watched a lot of basketball growing up too, or just, you know, a lot of sports. So she wasn't in the entertainment industry, as far as being a singer or a rapper. She just was a professional Black woman. And I was just in awe of her and I still am today. I still am. But I think for me, that was just so powerful watching The Oprah Winfrey Show for the 20 years that it was on TV because I saw this woman who looked like myself continue to elevate, continue to inspire just generations of different women, myself included.

But I think that's just so powerful for other people to see, especially people that look like me, to know that they can potentially do these things too. Right? Even if they don't have a ton of money and a ton of fame like Oprah, it's possible.

And it's so funny. It was always on my bucket list to write a book someday and to be an author. Even if I just did one book. That was always my goal on my bucket list of things that I wanted to do; but I thought that I would be doing this much later in life and I never envisioned writing children's books. 

So it's just funny how everything kind of came full circle for me in that way.

For me, and Charnaie, and maybe you too, diversity seems so obvious—so important and good. It’s hard to understand why anybody would not want to live in a space that values diversity. 

I know for myself, I'm just going to continue doing what I've been doing since I started doing this work, right. Continue to talk about the issues that are facing our world and our young people. Continue to talk about and have these tough conversations about things like race and racism, oppression.

I think just continuing to speak up and speak out is really what we need to keep doing in order to hopefully invoke change and try to start changing some of these narratives and some of the issues that we're facing in the world today. It's just a constant, ongoing conversation that just needs to keep happening and happening.

It doesn't stop when there's a guilty verdict in a trial, it doesn't stop when people, you know, go to jail for things that they have done. The work doesn't stop. And I think that's really the message—we have to keep fighting. We have to keep going. We have to keep embracing other people that may look or act differently than us. We just have to get back to kindness and keeping our mouth closed when we may not necessarily have the kindest things to say, right?

Or it's just making a choice to not tear somebody down, not continuing to tear people down on purpose.   

It can take a lot of work to practice kindness and to fight for diversity, to ask those questions, and even more to fight for space so you have an equal chance and voice too. But it means that we’re making the world better for everyone. 

I look at some of the younger children from the present day generation and I feel hopeful when I look at them or when I hear from them. And when I see them. Raising their voices to be heard and just speaking up is just so empowering and it makes me happy to watch them in action; and hope that that is what our future will look like or their future will look like.

Just for the betterment of the world, I think. We're so far away, I think, from having this harmonious world and environment where everybody gets along and there's no more fighting. We've been fighting. We've been in this fight for centuries and while it has gotten better in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways it hasn't. So there's always so much work to do, but envisioning that and thinking about that does make me joyful and fills me with lots of hope. 

Each week on A Kids Book About: The Podcast, we talk about the big things going on in your world with a different author from our A Kids Book About series. This week we have Charnaie Gordon, author of A Kids Book About Diversity .

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The importance of children’s representation in literature and media

Children’s representation is a key issue for child development and growth, and it has taken different forms over time. Children’s literature has played an important role in the discovery of the external and inner world of children , but the lack of representation of some ethnical groups has also represented a big challenge which is still far from being satisfied. In this sense, media have tried to fill the gap, falling into the same stereotypes which affected the literature’s world. Nevertheless, there are some actors who could still promote a shift in culture. 

Why children’s representation matters

Children shape their reality according to the models they build with many bricks: stories, songs, films, plays, experiences and many other factors which help them in codifying the reality into common patterns to be reproduced. Through these elements, they discover how the world they live in and themselves, too. 

In particular, stories play an important role in children’s representation: they provide information and models, they guide the reader through the discovery of the world, both real and imaginary, and they convey values such as friendship, empathy, courage, sense of belonging, emotions and diversity which are essential for child development and growth. 

At the same time, what stories and books taught to children before is now replaced by media content and this is why children’s representation should take into account both aspects: literature and media. 

Children’s representation in literature and media plays a significant role in child development and growth because it helps children to understand the reality they live in or to discover other cultures, giving them the opportunity to develop empathy and respect for cultural differences. Children’s representation is important to how kids build their perspectives on their own ethnic-racial group , as well as that of others (Rogers, 2021). In this sense, children’s representation has a double dimension: on one hand, it support the discovery of an external dimension, and on the other, it provides inputs for the discovery of the inner dimension.

But what happens if children don’t find representations about themselves or the reality in which they live? 

The consequences of the lack of representation

“Children, especially in the early years, are like little sponges, absorbing all the information around them and then actively making sense of it.” – Hunter, 2018

In this sense, the lack of representation of the reality in which they live may also affect them in a long-term perspective and under many points of view. For instance, research shows that a lack of representation in media can lead to negative psychological outcomes for those with identities that are underrepresented or negatively portrayed (Tukachinsky, Mastro, &Yarchi, 2017). Exposure to negative media depictions of their own ethnic-racial groups can undermine children’s sense of self, whereas high-quality children’s media can promote positive ethnic-racial attitudes and interactions (Rogers, 2021).

A study on the effects of television on elementary-aged children shows a negative correlation between TV exposure and lower self-esteem for Black girls and boys and White girls, but it also emphasized a positive correlation between TV exposure and higher self-esteem for White boys (Martins & Harrison, 2012).

The same findings are shown by the research that underlined how identifying with popular characters with the same identities in mainstream media leads to higher self-esteem on several dimensions (Ward, 2004). The scientific literature about the effects on children’s well-being supports the importance of realistic, diverse and inclusive representation in children’s media.

Moreover, if children do not perceive themselves as represented by the media or the literature they consume, they may also begin to feel invisible, unimportant (Levinson, 2020) or less important than others. The risks related to this aspect play along with the reaffirmation of a single narrative which is based on stereotypes , and which hinder the possibility for individuals to achieve their goals and dreams on the basis of their personal capacities and aspirations. And if children do not perceive themselves as architects, teachers or engineers they may not perceive these carriers in the future. 

If children do not have the possibility to see people with their identities and features being portrayed in a positive way, they may rely on the assumption that their identity is fully represented by those stereotypes which define who they are. The “problems with stereotypes is not the fact they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story”. That is what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie defines by the “danger of a single story” (Adiche, 2019). 

The state of art in children’s literature

The affirmation of the importance of children’s representation in literature can be linked to one important milestone which goes back to 1990 when Rudine Sims Bishop codified the “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” metaphor in order to describe the role of children’s literature. According to Bishop, window books “[offer] views of worlds that may be real or imagined,” and “are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created by the author” (1990). 

In mirror books, “we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience,” which, Bishop argues, is a “means of self-affirmation” (Bishop, 1990). In this sense, children’s literature can represent a mirror for the society, both reflecting the reality we live in and “projecting how we want our children to be” (Dahlen, 2020). 

Since then, children’s representation in literature has gained more and more importance and the definition of “representation” has changed over time according to the reality which it was changing, too. For a long time, the children’s literature world has been what Nancy Larrick called “all-white” (Larrick, 2020), but with time, more and more characters representing different ethnicities started to enter the scene of children’s books as a response of the lack of representation.

This was possible thanks to the increase in demand on the part of the consumers, but also thanks to an entire generation of authors who grew up with no reference to such diversity and who wanted to contribute to a shift in culture.

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education analysed the percentage of children’s books written by and/or about non-white people from 1985 till today. In the period between 1985 and 2015, the percentage of children’s books written by and/or about non-white people fluctuated between 9 and 14 percent (Dahlen, 2020).

In 2016, the “about” percentage reached 22 percent, but this increase in representation also showed a dark side: as many white authors created more characters of colour and with ambiguous ethnicities, e.g. brown-skinned, they promoted also stereotyped characters which fostered false perceptions about the ethnicities they represented. This aspect was also underlined by the 2016 “by” percentage which amounted to only 13 percent, significantly lower than the 22 percent “about.” 

In the period between 2018 and 2020, the percentage of children’s books written by non-white people fluctuated between 23.79 (2018) and 28.56 percent (2020), whereas the “about” percentage fluctuated between 29.64 (2018) and 30.25 percent (2020) (CCBC’s website). 

The CCBC statistics show a slow increase in diverse books over the past decade, with more drastic changes in more recent years. According to Lee & Low’s 2018 infographic, the numbers rose from 10 to 14 percent between 2013 and 2014, and then “jumped” to 20 percent in 2015, 28 percent in 2016, and 31 percent in 2017 (Corrie, 2018). These data depict a positive trend which is still far from representing the reality American children live in which half of the country’s children are non-white (Dahlen, 2020).

Lee & Low’s infographics demonstrate that the “diversity gap” is not a problem specific to children’s literature, but to power and media industries generally. Their Lee & Low’s 2018 infographic used the 2017 CCBC data and communicated that only 7 percent, or 288 of 3700 books surveyed, were written by Black, Latinx, and Native writers (Corrie, 2018). In this sense, literature and media have a common element which hinders a truthful representation of the reality that children live which is represented by power. 

The role of the media in children’s representation

Media play a key role in the life of children and young people which has increased over time. In 2019, young people spent an average of 2 hours per day watching television shows (Rideout, 2019) and by the Covid-19 pandemic , the use of media contents has increased given its multiple purposes: entertainment, connection, education , creativity and link with the external world (Rideout, 2021). 

Given this context, it is important to consider the main effects of such early and constant media exposure in relation to the positive or negative impacts of children’s representation. An important contribution to answering this question is offered by the Cultivation Theory which states that exposure to media helps to shape thoughts, perceptions, and behaviours, and viewers adopt the assumptions and beliefs of media content as reality (Gerbner & Gross, 1976).

Children are particularly vulnerable to media messages and use what they see in media to create their beliefs about themselves and others. Therefore, the media industry holds great power over the socialization and self-concept of young people (Levinson, 2020) and they play a significant role in children’s representation. 

An interesting report on North American children’s (up to age 12) television content highlighted the recurrent use of stereotypes and the scarce correspondence to the reality in which children live (Lemish& Johnson, 2019). For instance, 65 percent of characters were white, and female characters were more likely to be non-white or racially ambiguous than male characters. Also, 38 percent of characters were women or girls, while almost 51 percent of the US population is female.

Apart from that, female characters were twice as likely to solve problems using magic while males were more likely to solve problems using science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or their physicality (Levinson, 2020). Moreover, only 1 percent of the characters showed signs of physical disability or chronic disease , even if 20 percent of the population lives with a disability (Okoro et al., 2018) and only 2 percent of the characters presented a lower socioeconomic status, whereas about 20 percent of the American children live below the poverty line (NCCP). 

The latest report at Common Sense, “The Inclusion Imperative: Why Media Representation Matters for Kids’ Ethnic-Racial Development”, has highlighted the underrepresentation and the stereotyping of people of colour in movies and TV roles(Rogers, 2021). For instance, despite accounting for 18 percent of the population, Latinos only make up 5 percent of speaking film roles. Characters of colour in shows most watched by children between 2 and 13 are more likely to be depicted as violent and women of all ethnic-racial groups in adult programming are more likely to appear in sexualized roles (Rogers, 2021).

According to the perceptions of the parents and caregivers involved in the research, white people are often portrayed in a positive light in the media their children are exposed to, whereas one in four believe that portrayals of Black, Hispanic and LGBTQIA+ people are more likely to be negative (Rogers, 2021).

The above-mentioned studies show how children’s representation in the media does not reflect the reality in which children live but, on the contrary, it promotes a narrative which is based on stereotypes and predefined roles in which children may identify. Once again, the media risk promoting a “Single story” (Adiche, 2019). 

Who are the main stakeholders to promote a shift in culture?

Promoting a shift in culture in children’s representation in literature and media is essential in order to fulfil children’s right to “discover and develop their personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential” ( Article 29 (1), lett. a) CRC ). To achieve this goal, all the actors involved in the life of a child play a significant role.

First of all, publishers and librarians contribute to the cause by selecting which books to print and sell. In this way, they can influence the possible choices that consumers can make. In a globalized and interconnected world , it is easier and easier to have access to different sources of information, but this also depends on the open-mindedness and awareness that these actors have about the importance of children’s representation. 

With this respect, also consumers have the power to influence what the market offers them, both in terms of books and media content. In particular, parents are more and more attentive to the content their children consume and they ask media creators to deliver content that better reflects the diversity of the world in which their kids are growing up (Rogers, 2021). 

In this sense, also authors and creators have the power to influence the contents they produce in order to better represent the reality in which children live and to inspire them thanks to their privileged role. They provide “windows” (Bishop, 1990) to the external world and they guide children to the discovery of the world and themselves, too. 

Last but not least, children are the key actors to promote a shift in culture which is more representative of the reality in which they live and more respectful of their identities , needs, thoughts and aspirations. The best way to achieve this goal is to start talking about their stories and to include themselves in the stories they imagine, because each single story is important and needs to be told. 

Humanium is at the forefront in supporting the diversity and inclusiveness of all children all in order to make their voices heard. We advocate for a world where children’s rights are respected and protected, and we work to assure that children of all backgrounds, genders and ethnicities are represented by the media and the literature equally! Discover how to stand up for children’s rights,  join our community ,  interact with our work , and share our mission through our  website ,  Facebook page  or  newsletter !

Written by Arianna Braga [1]

For More Information:

Books by and/or about Black, Indigenous and People of Color (All Years)

Lee & Low’s 2018 infographic

References:

Adichie, C. (July, 2019). The danger of a single story. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en , accessed on 16 February 2022.

Convention on the rights of the child (1989) Treaty no. 27531. United Nations Treaty Series, 1577, pp. 3-178. Retrieved from https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1990/09/19900902%2003-14%20AM/Ch_IV_11p.pdf , accessed on 16 February 2022.

Corrie, J. (10 May, 2018). The Diversity Gap in Children’s Book Publishing, 2018. Retrieved from https://blog.leeandlow.com/2018/05/10/the-diversity-gap-in-childrens-book-publishing-2018/ , accessed on 15 February 2022.

Dahlen S.P. (2020). “We Need Diverse Books”: Diversity, Activism, and Children’s Literature. In: op de Beeck N. (eds) Literary Cultures and Twenty-First-Century Childhoods. Literary Cultures and Childhoods. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32146-8_5 , accessed on 16 February 2022.

Gerbner, G., Gross, L., (June, 1976). Living with Television: The Violence Profile,  Journal of Communication , Volume 26, Issue 2, June 1976, Pages 172–199. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1976.tb01397.x , accessed on 17 February 2022.

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Huyck, D., Park Dahlen, S., Griffin, M. B. (September 14, 2016). Diversity in Children’s Books 2015 infographic. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/picture-this-reflecting-diversity-in-childrens-book-publishing/  

Huyck, D., Park Dahlen. (June 19, 2019). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Madeline Tyner. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/ , accessed on 15 February 2022.

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[1]  I would also thank Professor Sarah Park Dahlen for her valuable insights and comments on the topic which enriched this article.

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Representing Children

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• Jonathan Josefsson 9 ,
• Bengt Sandin 9 ,
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• Sarada Balagopalan 11  

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In this introductory chapter we situate children’s rights and representation in a context of childhood politics. The question of children’s representation is particularly timely in today’s world not only because of demographic shifts and the increase of the generation under 18 years of age but also because of the global challenges we face. Despite making up half of the world’s population, children and youth have in many respects been denied the capacity to represent their interests, particularly on matters of political import. However, it is clear that young people in many contexts have been understood as either competent contributors to politics with a legitimate claim to represent themselves, or in other cases, have been regarded as posing a considerable risk to society and stability. In the chapter we start by outlining three key elements of children’s representation. Firstly, we suggest that children’s representation consists of how children as a group, or the child and childhood as a figure, is portrayed or described. Second, children’s representation involves speaking or acting on behalf of children or children’s state of being so represented and [Author1] thus involves a performative act. Thirdly, children’s representation is an act of, and the result of, politics and political struggles around childhood. In the following sections we present and discuss the contributions of the volume in relation to the main themes of the book; Childhood politics: from rights and participation to representation, children’s representation and the international politics of children’s rights, and, children’s representation in times of inequalities and injustices.

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Introduction: Lived Citizenship, Rights and Participation in Contemporary Europe

The figure of the child in democratic politics

Daniel Bray & Sana Nakata

Children’s Citizenship in Twenty-first Century Societies: Key Notes from the South

The Oscar winning documentary film Born into Brothels , written and directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, received critical public acclaim and was praised by many children’s rights advocates at the time of its release in 2004. The film seductively weaves together a narrative of compassion together with showcasing the actions taken by Zana Briski, a New York-based photographer, to remove children of sex workers from Sonagachi, a red-light district in Kolkata, India, from their debilitating environments. Despite their alleged neglect by their sex worker mothers, who are depicted as being both incompetent and indifferent to their offspring, the documentary does not represent children of sex workers as passive beings. Rather, Briski teaches them to use a camera and with this tool the children share their lives as active speaking subjects who, thanks to their own creativity and the lessons learned from Briski, make great photographs that document how they see their lives. Convinced of their potential, Briski takes the role of spokesperson for the children and explores possibilities of enrolling these children in a boarding school. Located at a safe distance from the red-light district of the city, this boarding school would help ensure that the children will not return easily to the brothels where their families live. A few years later, an alternative reading of the situation of children of sex workers from Sonagachi is presented in the 2011 documentary film We are foot soldiers (which is the English translation of ‘Amra Padatik’) directed by Debolina Dutta and Oishik Sircar who also published an article on their film in Childhood (Sircar & Dutta, 2011 ). Even if Born into Brothels portrays children as competent photographers, We are foot soldiers criticises the way the film represents children of sex workers primarily as helpless victims. The struggle over how these children get represented concerns how their portrayal in Born into Brothels relies upon the idea that a ‘saviour from outside’ is required to represent children’s interests and ensure they get an education and thereby improve their future life chances. We are foot soldiers offers a counternarrative by representing children of sex workers as active agents rather than merely passive recipients of welfare interventions by others. Also, through sharing their daily practices of resilience and resistance, which they believe were not portrayed in Born into Brothels , they argue that the rights and interests of children of sex workers are better represented by an advocacy group run by children themselves. This advocacy group not only speaks and acts on behalf of themselves and other sex workers’ children in Sonagachi to reduce the stigma that their mothers and they themselves face while enrolling in school, but they also work in solidarity with other children elsewhere in the world (Sircar & Dutta, 2011 ).

The struggle over the representation of children of sex workers denotes two central dictionary definitions of the word ‘representation’, namely, as ‘a description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way’, and, as ‘the action of speaking or acting on behalf of someone or the state of being so represented’ (Oxford Languages, 2022 ). First, a key element of children’s representation consists of how children as a group, or the child and childhood as a figure, is portrayed or described. Certain populations of children—like children of sex workers who live in a red-light district in a megacity in the Global South—often serve as iconic symbols of poverty with their descriptive, visual and portrayals reinforcing multiple stereotypes and attendant logics of compassion. As has been demonstrated by childhood scholars before, the aesthetic depictions and dominant discourses of children and childhood have throughout the history in various ways been deeply intertwined with major political, social, and cultural processes of change (Ariès, 1962 ; Balagopalan, 2014 ; Bessant, 2021 , p. 1ff; Bernstein, 2011 , James & Prout, 2015 , p. 202; Hallett & Prout, 2003 ; Nakata & Bray, 2020 ; Sparrman, 2017 ; Higonnet, 1998 ; Rose, 2016 ; Hallberg & Sandin, 2021 ). The portrayals and depictions of children and childhood have in this way always been embedded in institutional and political practices to achieve political or organizational aims (Rose, 2016 ) and display how emotionally charged images of children can both mobilise popular support and reveal different and conflicting ways of representing children (Berents, 2020 ; Burman, 1994 ; Peacock, 2014 ). In the case of Briski’s documentary, it demonstrates the ways that agential depictions of children also can be used to consolidate, rather than decenter, the victimization of children. Conversely, the portrayal of a group of actively engaged children such as the members of Amra Padatik , the collective of children of sex workers central in Sircar and Dutti’s film, needs to take into account the social and economic conditions in the red-light district. Yet, the portrayal of children as subjects of rights does not erase their vulnerabilities.

Second, children’s representation involves speaking or acting on behalf of children or children’s state of being so represented and thus involves a performative act (Holzscheiter, 2016 ). Representation in its performative sense, that is, when people ‘speak or act on behalf of’ someone or something (Alcoff, 1991 ; Saward, 2010 ; Pitkin, 1967 ), can refer to formal and institutionalised structures as found in for example representative democracies (Urbinati, 2006 ) or international organisations (Holzscheiter, 2016 ), but can also be used in reference to family settings, NGOs and the realms of global politics and social media networks, to name a few (Disch et al., 2019 ; Saward, 2020 ). Children often rely on a person or a group of people who speaks on their behalf and who represents them, for instance, in legal or political affairs. Children’s representatives can be influential (usually adult) individuals like Zana Briski but they can also be a group of children who represent other children, as in the case of the organization Amra Padatik . This aspect of representation is closely linked to children’s rights and participation and to the shifting complexities and dynamics that mark the institutionalization and formalization of children’s voices (James, 2007 ).

In addition, the two films’ conflicting viewpoints of children and childhood also indicate the political dimension of children’s representation. Put another way, representing children is not only linked to portrayals and performances, but also politics, where the act of speaking in and of children and childhood is both an act, and the result, of political struggle. Children’s representation as portrayals and performances reflects existing formalized processes as well as long-term political changes and historical conflicts between different interests and ideologies (Berents, 2020 ; Holzscheiter, 2016 ; Peacock, 2014 ). Different actors struggle to claim the authority to define the portrayal of children as, for example, dependent or as autonomous subjects, or both, and use these for different political purposes with sometimes unintended consequences (Hallberg & Sandin, 2021 ). In the context of portraying children of sex workers, it is suggested that they should represent themselves rather than rely on a ‘saviour from outside’. We are foot soldiers focuses on the political organization developed by children of sex workers. These children’s efforts to politicize their struggle for dignity not only for themselves, but also for their mothers requires them to demand attention on distinctly different terms than those offered by the mainstream narrative of victimization. More generally, political conflicts, and for that matter, consensus building, around children and childhood illustrates how children recurrently play a constitutive role as temporary outsiders who present both risk and renewal to the demos (Nakata & Bray, 2020 ). Young people’s involvement in social movements, mass mobilisation and extra-parliamentary action against inequalities and injustices have a long history and speaks to the importance of closer engagement with children’s political representation for our understanding of politics as such (Bessant, 2021 ; Cummings, 2020 ; Dar & Wall, 2011 ; Hinton, 2021 ; Josefsson & Wall, 2020 ; Nakata, 2008 ; Wall, 2021 ). The struggles around securing more accurate or genuine representation of children and youth often entails organizing for self-representation to shift existing regimes of power. It further reveals the intimate interdependence between portrayals, performances, and politics in our understanding of children’s representation.

The Challenge of Children’s Representation

The question of children’s representation is particularly timely in today’s world not only because of demographic shifts and the increase of the generation under 18 years of age but also because of the global challenges we face. Despite making up half of the world’s population, children and youth have in many respects been denied the capacity to represent their interests, particularly on matters of political import. However, it is clear that young people in many contexts have been understood as either competent contributors to politics with a legitimate claim to represent themselves, or in other cases, have been regarded as posing a considerable risk to society and stability. Indeed, you would have to think very hard to come up with a political question that does not involve young people as central objects or agents of change. Whether it be young people organizing against the exploitative extraction of resources in indigenous areas in India (Gergan & Curley, 2021 ), Canada and the USA (Ibid), shaping the struggle for democracy as part of the Arab Spring (Honwana, 2019 ), unifying against climate change (de Moor et al., 2021 ) and migrant policies in Global North countries (Josefsson, 2017 ) and against gun violence, racism and policing regimes in the USA (Hinton, 2021 ), their increased participation in the political sphere has helped produce new, and emergent modes, of formal and informal representation within these global, national and local efforts.

However, these questions about children’s representation, and in particular the politics involved, are not new. The debate on child labour, including how to depict or tell the story of working children as well as who is entitled to speak and act on their behalf, offers a telling example, from the late nineteenth century, of the close connection between portrayals, performances and politics of children’s representation. In 1899, the newsboys of New York went on strike because the Evening World and Evening Journal had decided to lower the pay and the terms for the newspapers that the newsboys sold. The press at that time reported on the wage struggles but also illuminated the independent culture of this class of child workers and their vocal and prolific leadership in demanding their rights and fair pay. The voices of the children were, in these press stories, represented by children themselves ( New York Times, July 25, 1899; New-York Tribune, July 21, 1899 ). At this same time, around the turn of the century, imageries of the street urchins became an important tool for the child saviours calling attention to the deplorable and degrading living conditions of street children and child labourers. Photos by Jacob Riis and later by Lewis Hines influenced legislation and reforms as well as nurtured the ambitions of generations of child saviours, professionals, philanthropists, non-governmental organisations and government agencies that spoke out and represented the interests of children in what Ellen Key described and hoped to be a century of the child (Riis, 1971 ; Dimock, 1993 ; Aronsson & Sandin, 1996 ; Platt, 2009 ). Whereas the newspapers depicted agentive young street vendors who could very well speak on behalf of themselves, iconic photographs of passive victims of child labour later offered visual justifications for well-meaning adult outsiders to act on behalf of children. Some hundred years later, at the end of the twentieth century, images of children as active citizens went hand in hand with the promotion of children’s participation rights including in political matters. In 1996, in line with these changing childhood images, a group of Danish children aged 10–12 protested in front of a government commission against the implementation of an EU directive for newspaper delivery work that would outlaw child labour between 10–13 years of age. About 3200 children would lose their work. The delegates of the commission expressed their sympathy for the cause and agency of the children that wanted to work. However, different political arguments were deployed to limit children’s representation as they declared that the Danish government was bound by a broader agreement with the EU that restricted their ability to meet the demands of the newspaper boys. The Danish parliament had no authority over the matter, they claimed, and could not politically represent the voices of these children given their international obligations (de Coninck-Smith et al., 1997 , 7).

A well-known example from the Global South of contestations over the way how children should be represented is the leadership of young school children in protest marches against the South-African Apartheid regime during the 1976 Soweto uprising (See Twum-Danso Imoh, this volume). In this case, the South-African government at that time did not consider that the protesters had a legitimate political right to voice an opinion which questioned the regime’s racist foundations. The protest was violently suppressed, and the participants were described as undisciplined troublemakers rather than as political activists. This view on the young activists radically changed once the Apartheid regime had ended and 16 June was declared a public holiday to commemorate the actions undertaken by the ‘young heroes’ during the 1976 Soweto uprising (Hanson & Molima, 2019 ). Since 1991, on the initiative of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), 16 June was proclaimed the Day of the African Child. Even though it commemorates the political courage of the school children who participated in the demonstrations held in 1976, it has been turned into a continent-wide advocacy event for the promotion of children’s rights to education, rather than to recognise children’s political representation.

Children’s representation has, hence, developed into a site of contestation and power over who represents whom, what, when and where. The opposing viewpoints about representation that we have discussed above provide a point of departure to explore the linkage between children, representation, and politics, which is the focus of this book. The controversies around the representation of children actualise the political character of different means of representing children by different agents and institutions across multiple contexts and during various moments in time. Given the intimate entanglement between portrayals, performances, and politics in representing children, how do contemporary representations of children and childhood differ from, and build on, the past? What underlies the current political representational efforts of young people and what are their effects?

In this book, we offer an interdisciplinary analysis of the complexities, and affordances, that have marked, and continue to affect, children, childhood and representation as ‘portrayals’, ‘performances’ and ‘politics’. It builds on the widespread recognition that traditional forms of democratic representation having excluded the participation of children (Bessant, 2021 ; Schrag, 1975 ; Wall, 2012 , 2021 ), as well as acknowledges how depiction of children as right bearers and right subjects has influenced the political discourse about children. However, while new forms of representing children and their rights have certainly shaped new political avenues through which young people have been represented, these have also been deployed to control and govern the younger generation (Sandin, 2012 ; Holzscheiter et al., 2019 ; Wells, 2011 ). This tense interplay between young people who assert their political subjectivity, but who are simultaneously entangled in processes that seek to craft them into governable citizens reveals children’s political representation less as a panacea and more as a fraught exercise. The book attempts to raise fundamental questions around earlier discursive constructions of young people’s agentic actions by exploring children and childhood through the concept of representation.

This book claims that the lens of representation can bring new facets into our thinking that differ from the concept of children’s rights and participation that have been dominant in childhood studies and other fields (Reynaert et al., 2009 ; Lundy, 2018 ; Tisdall, 2008 ). By treading on grounds well-travelled by scholars in Childhood Studies in its broadest sense including those within the disciplines of history, sociology, politics and children’s geography we have assembled a set of different scholarly contributions to highlight the critical importance of representation to our understanding of children and childhood. Our interest in children’s representation complements also a revitalized scholarly debate about the concept of political representation where theorists have been stretching out our concepts about when and how political representation take place (Brito Vieira, 2017 ; Disch et al., 2019 ; Saward, 2020 ; Urbinati, 2006 ). In these discussions, children as a category has been relatively absent in comparison with the interest in categories such as gender, ethnicity and class. As we argue, in times of societal and political transformations, these various forms of representing children have become central to offer visions and directions, as well as long-term legitimacy and sustainability. The representation of children and youth, however, does not only come with promises, renewals and hopes, but is also accompanied by risks, reproduction of existing injustices and instability. Given this, questions around who is representing young people and what claims are being made by these representatives become key.

In order to explore how the lens of children’s representation might be used to enhance our understanding of children, youth and politics, we have collected a series of papers based on empirical and theoretical research in over seven countries. These chapters address a wide range of current social and political challenges where the representation of children and childhood has become sites of contestation that need further empirical and theoretical exploration. By collecting essays on several historical and contemporary subjects that affect children’s lives, including migration, democracy, child labour, street children, poverty, welfare, education and child rights legislation, the volume engages with the very fundamental challenge of how to represent a group of people in democratic societies and global politics, and more specifically, how to represent children and young people.

The book is composed of thirteen chapters that are arranged in three sections. The chapters in the first section look back at the emergence of ideas around children’s rights, participation and representation and studies how these concepts have been used, transformed and critiqued in various parts of the world. The chapters presented in the second section broadly trace the effects of the global circulation as well as limitations of children’s rights discourses in international politics. Section three gathers chapters that are concerned with children’s political representation in relation to structures, processes and experiences of inequalities and injustices.

Childhood Politics: From Rights and Participation to Representation

Young people have over the last decades received significant attention in global politics. Mass mobilisation by children and youth in various parts of the world in recent years illustrate how young people are not only affected by political processes, but also actively shape these very dynamics (Bessant, 2021 ; Cummings, 2020 ; Josefsson & Wall, 2020 ). The engagement of, and for, children and youth in politics constitutes a continuum of longer and multifaceted historical processes where young people have claimed rights and also gained significant formal recognition as rights holders. In this sense the social, cultural, symbolic and political representations of young people during the twentieth century have made possible new systems of welfare and governance of rights for those under the age of majority (Holzscheiter et al., 2019 ; Nakata, 2015 ; Wells, 2011 , 2021 ). Yet, as the contributions of this volume show, while this development clearly opened up new avenues for the protection of young people and their opportunities to participate in matters affecting them (see e.g. the chapters by Balagopalan, Josefsson, Sandin, Twum-Danso Imoh in this volume), the ways in which children and youth get represented have largely been shaped by the emergence of separate and exclusive domains for children and youth (Reyneart et al in this volume).

The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter: CRC) by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989 marked what commonly is referred to as a culmination of over 100 years of discourse on international children’s rights (Stearns, 2017 ). The child rights movement has been led by charitable organisations and middle-class philanthropists and governments seeking to improve the conditions and welfare of children, initially in national and local contexts, and later, further afield with as part of a global outreach (Fass, 2011 ; Twum-Danso Imoh, 2012 ). The Convention represented a turning point in how children were perceived in international social policy by elevating children from ‘objects of adult charity’ to independent rights holders (Veerman, 1992 ; Twum-Danso Imoh & Ansell, 2014 ). Such discourses and policies developed in conjunction with a global history of colonial exploitation and expansion, two major world wars, the building of welfare states and rise of neo-liberal economies, the challenges of a post-colonial reconstitution of identities, societies and nations, both in the Global South and the Global North. Yet, the recognition of children as rights holders was also driven by fundamental regional, national and local transformations that developed distinctively before, and after, the breakthrough of the international discourse of children’s rights in the latter part of the twentieth century (see Sandin and Twum-Danso Imoh in this volume). The development of welfare regimes of different characters including the growth of foreign aid, missions, philanthropies and management of distant domains to the liberation, control, and governance in the Global South are some examples of how the emergence of young people’s rights, participation and representation are tied into specific historical and political processes (Balagopalan, 2019 ; Honwana, 2012 ; Kasanda, 2019 ; Marshall, 2004 , 2013 , 2014 ; Nehlin, 2009 ; Pickard & Bessant, 2018 ; Roberts, 2015 , Twum-Danso Imoh & Okyere, 2020 ; Vallgårda, 2015 ).

Against this backdrop, we find good reasons to pay closer attention to how different historical trajectories have informed the growing responsibility of states to protect and represent children during the twentieth century. The role of the state to represent children and their rights evolved as a result of the interaction between social, legal and political spheres of public authority such as education, poor relief and social welfare, labour law, family law and criminal law. The emergence of childhood politics and the representation of children must be understood in relation to the role of parents and governments, as demonstrated in Bengt Sandin’s chapter in this volume (Sandin, Chap. 2 ). Sandin shows how children’s rights were redefined by Swedish legislators in different branches of government from the late nineteenth century and onwards, a redefinition that continued during the 1960s and 1970s with the prohibition of corporal punishment in the family in 1979. He argues that the adoption of the new legislation was a consequence of fundamental changes in the role of the Swedish state during this period in representing, protecting, and controlling children in institutions such as orphanages, reformatories, childcare and penal institutions under government responsibility as well as in schools and in the family. It was built on the concomitant establishment of a new type of relationship between children, the family and the state and on the advent of a multicultural society. In this sense, the chapter illustrates how state action to represent the voice and rights of others, in this case children, is always relational and intimately connected to the work of individuals, groups and various institutions. However, this means that different parts of the state apparatus or organisations outside the national state can act and have acted without coordination and with the aim of solving varying and sometimes conflicting political issues. It is this complex interaction between parental rights and responsibilities, children’s autonomous rights and the responsibility of the state and government agencies that makes it necessary to examine representation as an important and transforming social phenomenon. Yet, the kind of national roots underpinning the issue of representing children and their rights in politics that Sandin describes certainly also ties into international relations, histories and orders of power.

The international diffusion of children’s rights is an expression of the intricate interplay between political traditions of how to represent children by different modes of governance, legal traditions, gender relations and family roles. Children’s rights and the representation of children must thus be understood as situated and as a resulting outcome of intermingling the notions of freedom, liberation and control of children innate in different forms of governance (Balagopalan, 2019 ; Fay, 2019 ; Hanson & Nieuwenhuys, 2013 ; Holzscheiter et al., 2019 ; Twum-Danso Imoh et al., 2019). A key component from the 1970s and onwards of the idea that children had fundamental human rights was expressed in the emphasis that children had the right to participate in matters that affect them. It was significant because earlier international children’s rights discourses and programmes, it was argued, had mostly ignored children’s voices or did not treat children’s voices with sufficient deference, even in their efforts to ensure their welfare and well-being (Hallett & Prout, 2003 ; James, 2007 ; Lundy, 2018 ). The CRC aimed at responding to this deficit by not only including protection and provision rights within its contents, but by also providing for the participation rights of children. However, the limits of such participation rights become evident when we apply the lens of representation to the concept as Afua Twum-Danso Imoh does in her chapter in this volume (Chap. 3 ). Despite the vision behind the CRC and the excitement that the participation principle evoked around the world, it was, from the outset, limiting in its capacity for genuine transformational impact. This is primarily due to the fact that while the CRC foregrounds the importance of children’s views and involvement in decision-making, it also ensures that adults remain in control in deciding the terms relating to who participates, how they participate, the topics on which they participate and ultimately, the outcome of participatory initiatives. Thus, in this way, the control of children’s participation rights is firmly handed to the management of adults. As a result, what emerges within the CRC is a persisting understanding of children’s rights as being a gift of adults which they then give to children—whether this gift is linked to children’s care and protection rights or their participation rights. This limitation surely then raises questions about the extent to which the CRC, a treaty regarded as representing a landmark due to its perception of children as subjects—rather than objects—of rights, represents a genuine shift from earlier human rights laws and social policies which explicitly depicted children as objects of rights dependent on the charity of adults. In her chapter, Twum-Danso Imoh calls for the need to look outside this dominant child participation framework in search for examples of genuine forms of transformative child participation and representation. An example of the transformative impact of what may be considered non-CRC-framed children’s participation is provided through an analysis of the role of children in the struggle to end apartheid in late twentieth century South Africa through actions for self-representation.

In the next chapter, Sarada Balagopalan explores the interrelationship between rights, participation and representation in the context of education in contemporary India. With several states in the majority world having passed legislation around free and compulsory education and millions of marginal children are now enrolled in schools, the question of how we frame children’s participation in their right to education assumes considerable significance. By drawing together discussions around children’s representations, participation and educational equity, Balagopalan critically opens up the particular dynamic that has helped produce educational equity as a continually deferable goal. In her chapter, she argues that the dominant representations of first-generation learners as economically marginal children are variously, as well as continually, leveraged to justify their presence within unequal and deeply segregated school spaces. To help problematize this narrative of assumed victimhood, she studies a set of court cases adjudicated in the Delhi High Court between 1997–2001 that foreground the state’s role in perpetuating existing inequalities through highlighting the effects of these dominant constructions of the experiences of first-generation learners in school. By countering a simplistic narrative around these children’s presence in schools as an adequate measure of their participation, these Delhi High Court cases help foreground the critical and structural role the state is required to assume to fulfil these children’s equitable exercise of their right to education. Moreover, by highlighting their identity as learners, and not as marginal children who are recipients of state welfare services, these cases help expose how schooling for this population circulates as a critical compensatory technology that is no longer about guaranteeing educational equity.

In a related focus on courts and children’s legal representation, though in a distinct geographical setting, namely Europe, Nataliya Tchermalykh’s chapter focuses on the role of the courts and professional lawyers to critically engage with children’s access to rights and justice. She notes how in the twenty-first century, despite the near-universal ascendance of children as independent actors and rights bearers, which have been reinforced by the CRC, children universally lack legal capacity to autonomously act upon these rights in a court of law. In this context, the indispensability of adult legal actors as conduits to children’s access to justice is an undeniable reality. Through a set of court cases, Tchermalykh shows how the courtroom success of a case does not necessarily mean social justice for the aggrieved children; conversely, failure in the courtroom does not necessarily mean alienation and desperation. For children, legal experiences may play an emancipatory role, as it decentres and challenges the unidirectional model of the law (from state to citizen), delineating legal processes as merely top-down mechanisms for social control, that cannot be challenged from the bottom-up. An exercise in legal reasoning that challenges dominant discursive, epistemological, and political norms may, under certain conditions, lead to evidence that illuminate the potential reversibility of the processes of domination and exclusion, and demonstrate a more interactive approach to the law. Yet this should not be interpreted, according to Tchermalykh, as a statement that courts and litigation are the only, or even the central, means to achieve more justice for children. Rather, this chapter considers children’s lack of legal standing as an important exclusionary factor, and therefore, frames children’s representation by adequate legal professionals as one of the important dimensions of their access to justice. Furthermore, it considers legal professionals, representing children in both domestic and international arenas as active actors of the development and interpretation of children’s rights.

Similar to the four chapters that constitute the bulk of this section of the book, several other chapters in the volume explore more closely the interrelationships between rights, participation and representation. The chapters discussed above are mainly based on local contexts and help demonstrate the intimate connection between rights, notions of child participation and forms of representation in specific historical processes. However, as we well know, these questions often intertwine with, and are seldom separable from, the global and transnational arena in which these discourses, policies and practices circulate, develop and in which the success of their national implementation get measured. The following section presents a set of chapters that focuses more distinctively on these processes of international politics of childhood and children’s rights and discusses a few of its myriad effects on the portrayals, performances and politics of children’s representation.

Children’s Representation and the International Politics of Children’s Rights

In the 1960s and 1970s, a growing attention to children and youth as right subjects (Holt, 1974 ; Margolin, 1978 ; Schrag, 1975 ; Sandin’s chapter in this volume) helped to drive the international diffusion of children’s rights norms. This was followed by implementation of legislation, policies and institutions in the wake of the adoption of the CRC in 1989 (Holzscheiter, 2010 ; Holzscheiter et al., 2019 ). The international awareness of children as a distinct population of concern and the heightened attention devoted to their rights and interests at the time of the adoption of the Convention was certainly not new from a historical perspective. It can, instead, be traced back to the end of the nineteenth century and which later manifested in for instance the League of Nation’s Child Welfare Committee in 1919 (Droux, 2016 ), the Geneva Declaration of 1924 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child of 1959 (Fass, 2011 ; Moody, 2014 ). Yet, in the latter part of the twentieth century, a ‘new’ internationalism and international politics of children’s rights emerged together with the institutionalization of political bodies with the purpose of representing specifically the rights of children and youth in national and international politics. When a new landscape of actors, sites and systems of child right governance emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century, this resulted in ‘new defining features’ of the linkage between the representative and the represented (Holzscheiter et al., 2019 , See also Josefsson chapter in this volume). The political representation of young people evolved through a complex playing field involving professionals, NGOs, international organisations, corporations, a plurality of state agencies, families, and young people themselves; all of whom variously claimed to represent children and youth.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a general opening up of global governance institutions to non-state actors (Tallberg et al., 2013 ) also had implications for the representation of children and childhood in international politics. With regard to children’s rights, this paved the way for new actors who claimed to represent specific or larger populations of young people on a broad range of questions such as migration, environment, health, labour, peace and security and democracy. However, the international recognition of young people as actors and as rights holders became at the same time a productive tool for governance and the advancement of different political interests (Holzscheiter, 2016 , Holzscheiter et al., 2019 ; Kwon, 2019 ; James, 2007 , Josefsson, this volume; van Daalen, this volume). This resulted in challenges around how children and youth were depicted in international politics (Holzscheiter, 2010 , Beier, 2020 , See Tabak’s chapter in this volume) and also produced contestations over who could claim the authority to represent the group of children and youth (Holzscheiter, 2016 , see van Daalen this volume and Hanson this volume).

This latter point is developed in van Daalen’s chapter that traces the struggle of working children’s movements to have their views heard within more normative debates on child labour in the International Labour Organization (ILO). The persistence of these movements and the ILO’s sustained non-representation, as well as misrepresentation, of their viewpoints highlights how the particular portrayal of child labour and the curated performance of a few adult and children’s voices vehemently opposing child labour can stall, but does not necessarily erase, the efforts of more marginalized population of working children at gaining increased political representation. They ways in which young people seek to reframe the debate on child labour helps open up considerations around how changing the current normative framework that marks children’s representations is critical especially if we seek to integrate the experiences of marginal children and youth across the world. Despite the success and the representational power that the campaigns of banning child labour ‘in all its forms’ have had in the shaping of the public imaginary, van Daalen argues that highly diverse and complex phenomena of child labour will certainly remain a controversial question in relation to children’s representation in international politics for many years to come.

Normative framings of children and childhood that mark this global flow of ideas and images are explored in Jana Tabak’s chapter which focuses on the ways legal and representational energies combine to produce an iconic image of the ‘child soldier’ as pathological. She challenges this normative framing by disclosing how apparently oppositional constructions of the child soldier as either innocent or monstrous share this ‘discourse of the norm’. This representational logic of opposite extremes, as Tabak argues, operates to (re)produce child soldiers either as objects of exploitation or as objects of salvation with both representations producing them as targets of international intervention (or, protection) with no chance of autonomous decision-making.

Karl Hanson’s chapter scales up this discussion by taking a critical stance towards organisations that claim to speak on behalf of children in transnational politics and global governance. In his chapter, he explores the close connection between international policymaking on children, childhood and children’s rights, and how transnational campaigns and entities play a dominant role in shaping public discourse. By analysing two particular international campaigns, one about minimum age legislation for child soldiering, and a second about children and young people who have taken the lead to fight climate change via international legal procedures, he points to some of the current limits of representing children at the transnational level and thereby raises fundamental questions around who is speaking on behalf of children and where their representation is being performed.

All of the above chapters draw attention to the continued exclusions that mark the performance of representational power around children in international politics on their rights. In addition, they serve to foreground the reasons why a focus on representation and the international politics of children’s rights may open up new thinking and avenues about how children and youth can assert their rights and be politically represented in international institutions in ways that go beyond the implementation of rights as individual entitlements. In the next section, we discuss in what way a move beyond a traditional liberal framework of individual rights can allow us to theorize children’s political representation in the face of inequalities and injustices. The significance of this move reminds us of the need to continue to remain cautious about how political representation of young people may also risk reaffirming existing exclusions and orders of domination. How might we recognize young people’s efforts to reframe and reimagine political representation while being careful about not reinforcing current geopolitical hierarchies that are based on normative assumptions around what constitutes ‘ideal’ political action?

Children’s Representation in Times of Inequalities and Injustices

So far, we have discussed how children’s representation can work as an analytical device to study the ways in which children and their rights have emerged historically and been shaped in close interrelationship with local, national and global contexts and processes. Yet, as we will point to in this section, children’s representation also open up possibilities to scrutinize how children and youth gain recognition and access to schemes of justice, equality and rights through struggles, contestations and (re)claims of representation (Fraser, 2005 ; Saward, 2020 ; Josefsson & Wall, 2020 ). In times of inequalities and injustices, the chapters of this section suggest, the political representation of children and youth cannot be reduced to a matter of identifying and transmitting interests, rights or voices from a pre-constituted group as defined in international treaties, in domestic law or through policy processes. More than anything, children’s representations become sites of contestation over portrayals and performances of children and childhood between various experiences, actors, spaces and temporalities associated with a considerable amount of social and political power (Disch et al., 2019 ; Holzscheiter, 2016 ; Saward, 2010 , 2020 ). It is by exploring these sites of contestation that the studies in this last part of the book shed light on how children and youth claims of representation present both risk and renewal to social, legal and political orders (Nakata, 2008 ; Nakata & Bray, 2020 ).

The intimate interdependency and power dynamics between children and parents in times of inequalities is addressed by Yaw Ofosu-Kusi. In his chapter, he highlights how street children in Ghana deliberatively use disobedience as a strategy for claiming rights and representation in the family. A central trait in whatever form of childhood one experiences in Ghanaian societies and in many other African societies is the tradition of respect and obedience. The emphasis on such principles is that some adults are generally enabled to claim an almost religious authority over their children or other subordinates (Ikumola, 2017 ; Ofosu-Kusi, 2017 ). However, while the majority of children accept this authority in homes and schools, others are currently questioning its absoluteness by finding ways to constructively participate in decisions affecting them or assuming some degree of control over their lives. In the chapter, Ofosu-Kusi argues that some street children deliberately defy parents, disengage themselves from families, and assume proto-adult status as a way of claiming decision-making space in order to assert rights and self-representation in a context characterised by rapid urbanization, rising dysfunctionality in some homes and woeful economic conditions for increasing numbers of families.

In their chapter, Didier Reynaert, Nicole Formesyn, Griet Roets and Rudi Roose pick up the relationship between parents and children as an entry point to discuss children’s representation and inequalities. In their study on child poverty in Belgium, they demonstrate how the creation of separate domains for children also effects the ways in which their claims for social justice are represented. In the chapter, which is grounded in Nancy Fraser’s three domains of social justice, notably redistribution, recognition and representation, they discuss ‘child poverty’ in relation to children’s rights. According to the authors, the childhood moratorium can be considered as a separate and exclusive domain for children with social provisions such as schools, youth work, youth care, etc. In this childhood moratorium, children are represented as the ‘victims of poverty’ and are thought of as the ‘deserving poor’. In contrast, parents are represented as the ‘undeserving poor’, responsible for their own poverty situation and the poverty situation of their children. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 families living in poverty in Belgium, Reynaert et al argue that a segregated approach of the representation of children and parents in poverty can be considered as a problem of ‘misrepresentation’. This injustice can have a negative impact on realising children’s rights for children living in poverty due to the fact that such an approach narrows the social problem of poverty down to an educational problem.

The kind of misrepresentation that Reynaert et al depict in their chapter speaks to how children and young people’s lives are constitutively marked by intersectional hierarchies including those of caste, class, gender, region and religion that affect their social, economic, cultural and political representation. The acknowledgment of the close and complex interdependence between children, parents and other groups in societies helps us to draw attention to the differences that frame young people’s experiences and compels us to go beyond a more narrow liberal framework of rights. For example, the participation of children and youth in large-scale social movements in several countries of the Global South have produced intergenerational collectivities that give voice to their grievances and their distrust of the state (Baviskar & Sundar, 2008 ). These intergenerational articulations for social justice reflect a mode of organizing that exceeds a liberal exercise of ‘individual rights’ and alerts us a longer and more progressive history of people’s political struggle and organizing (Escobar, 2018 ; Stephen, 1997 ). This volume’s theorization of political representation works with the differences that mark young people’s political organizing in different parts of the world, from experiences of today’s democracies in the Global North to the longer history of civil disobedience movements within anticolonial struggles as discussed above through the example of the Soweto uprising.

Although this edited volume does not focus on these movements per se it works with the recognition that these movements to overturn imperial power often drew on non-liberal traditions to offer a future roadmap around democratic representation (see e.g. the chapter by Twum-Danso Imoh about the Soweto uprising). Several social movements organized by indigenous youth and other marginalized populations in the Global South are mostly anchored in this sense of interdependency and alternate understandings of selfhood. However, not all are non-violent, and our tendency to conflate young people’s assertions around intergenerational interdependency with non-violence has steered discussions on youth political representation to exclude more violent intergenerational movements in the Global South in which youth play a major role.

In contrast, non-indigenous youth engaged in Climate Strikes and Friday for Future actions, as Frida Buhre’s paper in this volume discusses, foreground environmental concerns through alerting their peers to a future plagued by the repercussions of rising temperatures. Buhre’s paper focuses political aesthetic dimensions to children’s representation in the global online participatory culture of Fridays for Future communities on Instagram. Interested in the forms of visual rhetoric employed by grassroot activists to gain visibility and the attendant forms of childhood political subjectivities these represent, her visual analysis highlights how their rhetoric emphasizes courage, the global reach of the movement and the competency of the strikers. She argues that this visual rhetoric and political aesthetics challenges passive and futurist figurations of children in climate discourse by emphasizing the present power of children and youth thereby inviting us to recognize the political subjectivity of these activists.

As Buhre’s chapter clearly illustrates, to study both the changing portrayals and performances of children’s representations consequently provide us with a critical analytical lens to understand how the figure of the child and young people’s claims for justice border on other notions of how children and childhoods are defined and used by different actors in longer processes of social, cultural and political change (Ofosu-Kusi, this volume; Balagopalan, this volume), but also in times of crisis, emergency and radical ruptures (Josefsson, this volume; Buhre, this volume; Twum-Danso Imoh this volume). Further, it speaks both to the temporal and spatial dimensions of children’s representation. The advocacy efforts of indigenous environmental protestors against the continued capitalist extraction of resources on their lands evoke their ancestral/spiritual connections to the land as well as a past history of sustainable practices. As the indigenous scholar Kyle Whyte ( 2017 ) shares in relation to postcolonial settler colonial contexts in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, indigenous people’s exercise of self-determination against what he terms as ‘industrial settler campaigns’ reveals the need to historicize the recent focus on the Anthropocene as what these communities have encountered over several centuries. With settler colonial campaigns already having degraded, depleted and caused irreversible damage to ecosystems, plants and animals that, ‘ancestors had local living relationships with for hundreds of years and that are the material anchors of our contemporary customs, stories, and ceremonies”’ it is the past that gets foregrounded within the environmental campaigns led by indigenous youth. Like in childhood studies more generally, questions about children’s representation must engage with children and childhood’s past, present and future (Hanson, 2017 ).

Let us take another example of young people’s struggle against injustices with global implications, migration. The global governance and restriction of migration, which has arisen as a top political priority over the past decades to protect the interests of nation states, has developed in tandem with the nearly universal ratification and global mainstreaming of universal human rights of children. The consequence, as Jonathan Josefsson suggests in his chapter, is that the portraying of young asylum seekers as particular vulnerable and in need of protection with reference to children’s rights, has in public discourse and asylum processes turned into an efficient instrument for the state to legitimize restrictive border regimes and deportations. In the chapter Josefsson highlights the ways young Afghan migrants in Sweden make use of particular strategies of self-representation to contest state governance of migration in a struggle for their right to stay in the country. In dialogue with ongoing political theoretical debates around democracy and representation (Disch et al., 2019 ; Brito Vieira, 2017 ; Saward, 2020 ), Josefsson show how these young political actors reject and recast the ways in which they are politically represented by others to claim political space and a voice of their own.

Many of the chapters in this volume consider the historical dimension of children and childhood as key to our understanding of children’s representation today. But as Buhre, Josefsson, and also Sana Nakata and Daniel Bray show in their respective chapters, future dimensions of time appear to be just as central to grasp children’s representation. In their chapter, Nakata and Bray explore the opportunities of political representation of First Nation youth by connecting historical and contemporary injustices faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia. The cases of First Nation youth in Australia are used to illustrate how children play a constitutive role as temporary outsiders who present both risk and renewal to the demos. The first case focuses on the Northern Territory Don Dale Youth Detention Centre that became a site of political controversy in 2016 for its mistreatment of youth detainees. The second case explores a 2020 campaign by the conservative Liberal National Party in a recent Queensland state election to implement a youth curfew in Townsville, a city with a high number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents. As evidenced by these debates, about youth crime and incarceration, Nakata and Bray argue that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are often represented as a source of risk which lies in tension with the potential of representing indigenous children as sources of renewal. These cases reveal the representative terrain in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people must resist and speak back to a white national imaginary that works to limit the possible futures that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples imagine for themselves.

A central endeavour of this book is to engage in a discussion about how representation as an analytical prism can deepen conversations in childhood studies and neighbouring fields about children, rights and politics. As legal, social, and political traditions have evolved in different parts of the world, these have configured multiple representations of children and childhood. Sometimes these representations have converged into coherent modes of portraying children and speaking on behalf of children. Other times, the portrayals and performances of children and childhoods have evolved into more conflicting or ambiguous understandings of their representation, not least in contexts where young people have advanced claims to represent themselves.

Our interest in children’s representation, as argued in this book, complements ongoing theoretical and empirical work in childhood studies and related fields and ties into broader revitalised scholarly debates in political theory about how, where and when political representation takes place. Such a turn, we hope, can help us to bridge scholarly divides and challenge limiting notions of children’s representations. From the perspective of politics, which obviously constitutes a red thread throughout this book, we seek to critically engage with how the political representation of children and youth through parliamentary politics, legislation, child ombudspersons, administrative procedures, welfare systems and implementation strategies of children’s rights mobilise policy agendas and schemes of governance. The different contributions pursue to offer new concepts, sites, routes, actors and networks of children’s representation across various parts of the world and put these into conversation with each other.

The chapters presented are thus mindful of young people’s uneven access to citizenship as well as to the need to open up our framing of contemporary youth political representations to a longer history of youth action and organizing and its ethico-political affordances. In recognizing the transformative possibilities of children’s political representation, this volume offers in addition a critical reading of child rights regimes and the ways in which democracies are organized to disclose exclusionary, racialized and colonial pasts of international and national politics. Several chapters push back against the dominant representational politics of marginalized childhoods in the Global South. Their efforts to read the epistemological weight of a normative childhood against the grain is what constitutively frames this volume’s overall approach. While we acknowledge the opportunities of young people’s struggles to gain recognition through new modes of political representation, we treat political representation as an uneven and contingent terrain where the continued risk of reaffirming existing intersectional hierarchies, that for long have marked children’s participation, is still very much alive.

The portrayals and depictions of children and childhood have always been embedded in institutional practices to achieve political aims. We can provide required analytic space only by our efforts to disaggregate, historicize and contextualize children and childhood. In that vein, we hope that the contributions in this volume will stimulate further explorations and scholarly interchange about the politics of children’s rights and representation.

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Josefsson, J., Sandin, B., Hanson, K., Balagopalan, S. (2023). Representing Children. In: Sandin, B., Josefsson, J., Hanson, K., Balagopalan, S. (eds) The Politics of Children’s Rights and Representation. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04480-9_1

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Children’s Learning from Touch Screens: A Dual Representation Perspective

Parents and educators often expect that children will learn from touch screen devices, such as during joint e-book reading. Therefore an essential question is whether young children understand that the touch screen can be a symbolic medium – that entities represented on the touch screen can refer to entities in the real world. Research on symbolic development suggests that symbolic understanding requires that children develop dual representational abilities, meaning children need to appreciate that a symbol is an object in itself (i.e., picture of a dog) while also being a representation of something else (i.e., the real dog). Drawing on classic research on symbols and new research on children’s learning from touch screens, we offer the perspective that children’s ability to learn from the touch screen as a symbolic medium depends on the effect of interactivity on children’s developing dual representational abilities. Although previous research on dual representation suggests the interactive nature of the touch screen might make it difficult for young children to use as a symbolic medium, the unique interactive affordances may help alleviate this difficulty. More research needs to investigate how the interactivity of the touch screen affects children’s ability to connect the symbols on the screen to the real world. Given the interactive nature of the touch screen, researchers and educators should consider both the affordances of the touch screen as well as young children’s cognitive abilities when assessing whether young children can learn from it as a symbolic medium.

Introduction

Since the introduction of touch screen technology, new media platforms such as tablet computers and other handheld devices have been marketed to and widely used by children of young ages ( Common Sense Media, 2013 ). Compared to other technologies used by children, touch screen devices are unique because children can use them in many ways, such as for watching videos, e-book reading, Skyping with grandparents, and more. For many of its uses, such as e-book reading and watching videos, learning from the touch screen requires that children appreciate the symbolic nature of the touch screen. Children can learn by connecting the entities depicted on the screen with their referents in the real world. But does the child understand that the animals they learned about in the e-book represent animals in the real world? Can the child connect concepts learned from a video on a touch screen to her everyday experiences?

For traditional symbols, such as pictures and text, making the leap from symbol to referent requires that children develop dual representation – they must represent both that the symbol is a concrete object while also representing that the symbol refers to something other than itself ( DeLoache, 1989 ; DeLoache et al., 1997 ). However, the touch screen is not a traditional symbolic medium. It is unique in that it is interactive; children can directly manipulate the screen, which responds instantly to their touch. However, being able to manipulate the screen does not necessarily mean children can learn from it. We review traditional symbolic research that suggests manipulating the touch screen may lead children – specifically toddlers and preschool-aged children – to focus on the screen itself rather than on what the entities on the screen represent ( DeLoache, 2000 ). But in contrast, we also review more recent research that suggests the interactivity may help children connect entities on the screen to their referents, perhaps allowing them to circumvent the potential difficulty caused by dual representation.

The purpose of this paper is to consider both the potential negative and positive effects of touch screen interactivity on children’s ability to understand the symbolic nature of entities represented on the screen, but it is important to note that the potential effects likely depend on children’s age and the touch screen activity. For example, in this paper, we discuss the possibility that interactivity may hinder preschool-aged children’s learning from a symbol they typically learn from without interactivity, but may promote learning for toddlers who typically struggle to learn from that symbol. Additionally, the touch screen can be used for many different symbolic activities, some of which are interactive (e.g., reading an interactive e-book) and some of which are not (e.g., watching a video). In this paper, we take the perspective that interactivity alters how children view the touch screen as a symbolic medium, and therefore affects their symbolic learning from both interactive and non-interactive activities. However, it is possible that children learn differently from interactive versus non-interactive activities. While this perspective will not expand on all these possibilities, we do discuss the general potential effects of interactivity, age, and touch screen activity on children’s symbolic transfer from the touch screen.

The Effect of Interactivity on Dual Representation

It is often difficult for young children to “see through” a symbol to the referent that it represents ( DeLoache, 2000 ). Instead children often focus on the symbol itself rather than on the entity it refers to. For example, 9-month-old infants will physically manipulate a picture, treating the picture like the object it represents rather than appreciating it as merely a representation ( DeLoache et al., 1998 ; Pierroutsakos and DeLoache, 2003 ). Similarly, when asked to use a scale model to find a hidden object in a larger room, 2.5-year-olds fail to use the model as a representation but succeed in finding the object when they are made to believe that the model magically grew to be the room ( DeLoache, 1987 ; DeLoache et al., 1997 ). In both of these cases, children’s symbolic failure stems from a lack of dual representation; they focus on the symbol as an object in itself rather than on it being a representation for something else.

Considering children’s difficulty with dual representation, emphasizing a symbol’s status as an object or entity can hinder children’s understanding and use of that symbol, while de-emphasizing its status as an object can promote children’s symbolic use. For example, DeLoache (2000) found that when children were asked to use a scale model as a symbol for a room, 2.5-year-olds’ performance was facilitated when the model was put behind glass, which prevented them from playing with model and therefore helped them view the model as a representation and not as a toy. In addition, 20-month-old infants learned fewer novel labels for three-dimensional pictures in a pop-up book compared to two-dimensional pictures in a traditional picture book ( Tare et al., 2010 ). Here, making the pictures three-dimensional – and therefore objects – hindered toddlers’ symbolic learning. When children view a symbol as an appealing object, it is more difficult for them to represent both that object and the referent that it represents. Symbols that are salient physical entities are more difficult for children who are developing dual representational abilities to understand.

However, it is not just concrete objects that can hinder young children’s dual representation of symbols; two-dimensional screens can also pose a dual representation problem for young children. Many researchers have suggested that children’s difficulty with the dual representational nature of the screen is one reason why young children often struggle to learn from video, a phenomenon that has been termed the video deficit effect ( Anderson and Pempek, 2005 ; see also Barr, 2010 ; Krcmar, 2010 ). For example, 24-month-old infants struggle to use a video of an object being hidden in a room to find the object, but succeed in using the video when they are made to believe they are directly seeing the toy being hidden in real life ( Troseth and DeLoache, 1998 ; Schmitt and Anderson, 2002 ). Much other research shows that young children are relatively poor at learning information presented on a television compared to learning from a face-to-face interaction with a person, such as imitating an action sequence ( Barr and Hayne, 1999 ) or learning new words ( DeLoache et al., 2010 ). To young children, the image on the screen is just an image. They may not realize that the image can inform them about objects and actions in their lives. Therefore young children need to learn to appreciate that a video image is not just something on television, but also potentially represents something real.

The cost of appealing symbols, as well as children’s difficulty learning from screens, suggests that the interactive affordance of touch screens may pose a symbolic impediment for young children because it may lead children to focus on the screen that they are manipulating rather than on what the image on the screen stands for. Children interact with the touch screen in a way that may lead them to conceptualize the screen as being an appealing object. Therefore, because the touch screen is designed to be manipulated, young children’s interaction with it may lead them to focus on the touch screen itself rather than on what the images on the screen represent. Interactivity may emphasize that the screen is an object in its own right rather than as a medium for representing objects.

Touch screens may pose a problem for dual representation not only because of their interactive features, but also because they are multimodal and are often used for playing games, which may lead children to conceptualize the device as being a toy. Toys are especially appealing objects, which means it is very difficult for children to see through toy-like symbols to the referents they represent. For example, research shows that when children are asked to use a toy such as a doll as a symbol, 2.5-year olds perform poorly when asked to map between the doll and their own body ( DeLoache and Marzolf, 1995 ; Herold and Akhtar, 2014 ). Strong evidence for the disadvantage of toy-like symbols come from a study in which 3-year-olds played with a scale model like a toy for 10 min before using it as a symbol to find a hidden object in a larger room ( DeLoache, 2000 ). While 3-year-olds typically found the hidden object on 75 percent of their searches, playing with the model beforehand led children to find the hidden object on only 44 percent of their searches. In the same way that 3-year-olds’ use of a scale model as a toy hindered their understanding of it as a symbol, young children’s use of a touch screen device as a toy may hinder their later understanding of the screen as a symbolic medium.

If children use touch screens as toys by playing games on them, they may form expectations about the devices as being a form of entertainment rather than a tool for learning. Children’s expectation about a video has been shown to affect their ability to learn from it as a symbol. For example, research shows that children imitated less from a video viewed on their own television (that they usually used for entertainment) compared to an unfamiliar video monitor in a laboratory ( Strouse and Troseth, 2008 ). Children’s previous (and possibly more frequent) experiences using a two-dimensional screen as an appealing source of entertainment may hinder their later ability to use it as a symbol. Therefore, children’s interaction with touch screens, their conceptualization of them as toys, and the subsequent expectations they form about the purpose of touch screens are all possible reasons why children may struggle to learn from symbols represented on the touch screen.

Can Interactivity Alleviate the Need for Dual Representation?

Despite the implications of research on traditional symbols and symbolic media, there are reasons to believe that the interactivity of the touch screen may not hinder children’s understanding of it as a symbolic medium, but rather may promote children’s learning from the symbols represented on the screen. As mentioned above, the touch screen is a unique symbolic medium, and is almost entirely different from other symbolic media because it immediately responds to the child’s touch. Although, we can draw upon research on traditional symbolic media to make inferences about the possible effects of interactivity on children’s symbolic understanding, the touch screen’s interactivity may set it entirely apart, meaning the results of previous research may not generalize to it. The touch screen may be in an entirely unique symbolic class of its own.

In this section, we consider the potential positive effects interactivity may have on children’s ability to learn from the touch screen. It is possible that the interactive nature of the touch screen can actually promote children’s symbolic use of it because the interactivity links the screen with the child’s experiences in the real world. From this perspective, the interactive aspect of the touch screen does not create an impediment for dual representation, but actually reduces or circumvents the need for dual representation. Research shows that children learn better from characters or people on a screen when they are socially contingent to the child – or in other words, when they are responsive to a child’s actions or vocalizations ( Troseth et al., 2006 ; Krcmar, 2010 ; Roseberry et al., 2014 ). Contingency is important because it helps the child realize that the person or entity on the screen is relevant to the child, and therefore that the child can learn from that person or entity. The physical contingency of the touch screen may help children learn from it in a similar way: The screen’s immediate response may help children see a symbol as relevant and therefore focus their attention on it – and not other irrelevant entities on the screen. If contingency helps children focus their attention on a particular symbol on the screen, it may help them connect the symbol to its referent and not to other entities that are present.

Importantly there is evidence that interactivity helps children learn from screen media. Lauricella et al. (2010) asked 2.5- to 3-year-olds to participate in a hide-and-seek game in which children either observed an adult finding a hidden object, watched a video revealing where the object was hidden, or played an interactive computer game in which a keyboard response revealed where the object was hidden in the room. When children later searched the room themselves, the 3-year-olds who played the interactive computer game performed just as well as those who observed an adult, and both groups performed significantly better than those who passively watched a video. Although this study did not include a touch screen device, the results suggest that the contingent nature of the game facilitated children’s appreciation of the symbol-referent relation compared to passively watching a video, and that interactivity may be an important means by which young children learn from screen media.

More recent research by Kirkorian et al. (2016) suggests that the contingency of touch screen devices may indeed promote children’s symbolic understanding, but the benefits of interactivity may depend on age. The researchers asked 2-year-olds to watch a video of a person on a touch screen label a novel object, and either had children passively watch, tap anywhere on the screen to hear the label, or tap the location of the object on the screen to hear the label. The researchers found that while tapping the location of the object facilitated word learning for younger 2-year-olds, this manipulation hindered learning for older 2-year-olds who learned the novel word when they passively watched with the video. Choi and Kirkorian (2016) also found a similar effect of contingency and age in an object-retrieval task in which children either passively watched on a touch screen where an object was hidden on a felt board, tapped anywhere on the touch screen, or tapped a specific location on a touch screen to reveal the hiding location. Again, younger 2-year-olds were better at retrieving the object on a corresponding felt board when they tapped a specific location, but older 2-year-olds performed worse when tapping a specific location compared to the other conditions. The researchers suggest that the interactivity benefitted the younger 2-year-olds by guiding their selective attention to target information, but it hindered older 2-year-olds’ performance because the contingency led to over-contextualization: their learning became tied to the context in which the learning took place, which impeded their symbolic transfer.

This research highlights the perspective that touch screens’ interactivity may promote children’s ability to connect objects represented on the screen with their referents, and also suggests the influence of interactivity on symbolic understanding may depend on age and the specific touch screen task. For example, Zack et al. (2009) found that 15- to 16-month-old infants could imitate a novel action performed on an object represented on a touch screen, but struggled to transfer that action to a three-dimensional object (see also Barr, 2010 ). In comparison, the younger 2-year-olds in Choi and Kirkorian (2016) could transfer from a two-dimensional interactive screen to a three-dimensional apparatus. Depending on the symbolic touch screen activity (e.g., learning new words, learning actions for objects), interactivity may have different effects for different ages.

Summary and Conclusion

In this paper, we considered the possibility that the interactive nature of the touch screen may affect children’s ability to learn from it as a symbolic medium. First, we adopted a traditional symbolic perspective: interactivity may make the touch screen an appealing object to children, which increases the need for dual representation and therefore may render it a difficult symbolic medium for young children to learn from. For example, research on children’s symbolic understanding of dolls, pop-up picture books, and scale models provide support for the view that emphasizing the toy-like, object status of these symbols hinders children’s ability to learn from them ( DeLoache and Marzolf, 1995 ; DeLoache, 2000 ; Tare et al., 2010 ). In the same vein, we suggest that the manipulative, toy-like use of the touch screen may affect the way children conceptualize and form expectations about it. It may be difficult for young children to look past their entertainment value while also appreciating that the entities on the screen can represent real objects or entities, and therefore be used for learning.

However, we also considered the perspective that the very aspect of touch screen devices that may create an impediment for children – the touch screen itself – may also help children connect symbols on the screen to their referents in the world. Touch screens may promote learning by providing a contingent response, which has been shown to help children learn from other symbolic media, such as computers and video, and may help focus children’s attention on the symbol. This possibility is supported by recent research that shows that interacting with a touch screen promotes 2- and 3-year-old children’s ability to connect a symbol on the touch screen to its referent (e.g., Choi and Kirkorian, 2016 ; Kirkorian et al., 2016 ). This research also suggests that the effect of interactivity may depend on age; for older children, interactivity may be more distracting than helpful, largely because older children may already be able to transfer from the touch screen during certain touch screen activities without interacting with it.

Nonetheless, it is important to continue pursuing research that is aimed at understanding how the effect of interactivity may change with age and the symbolic touch screen activity (e.g., interactive vs. non-interactive). With more research, educators, parents, and researchers will be better informed of how the unique affordances of the touch screen affect children’s ability to “see through” it as a symbolic medium. Ultimately it can help them assess the value of the touch screen as a symbolic medium, which has implications for its value as a tool for learning at different ages. While the interactive appeal of touch screens may directly impede upon children’s ability to learn from them, it is possible that the interactivity of touch screens may be the very feature that helps children connect symbols on the screen to their referents in the real world.

Author Contributions

KS contributed to the conception of the work, the intellectual content, the drafting the work, and gave final approval of the version to be published. DU also made substantial contribution to the conception and intellectual content of the work, editing and revising it, and gave final approval of the version to be published. Both KS and DU agree to be accountable for the content of this work.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This article was funded by NSF SLC Grant SBE0541957, The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center.

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Definition of represent

 (Entry 1 of 2)

transitive verb

intransitive verb

Definition of re-present  (Entry 2 of 2)

• characterize

Examples of represent in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'represent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English, from Anglo-French representer , from Latin repraesentare , from re- + praesentare to present

14th century, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1

1564, in the meaning defined above

Dictionary Entries Near represent

reprehensory

Cite this Entry

“Represent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/represent. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of represent, legal definition, legal definition of represent, more from merriam-webster on represent.

Nglish: Translation of represent for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of represent for Arabic Speakers

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Proportional representation facts for kids

Proportional representation is a system used to elect a country's government. If a party wins over 50% of the vote, it wins over 50% of the seats and can form a government.

Countries which use proportional representation include: Austria , Argentina , Belgium , Brazil , Bulgaria , Czech Republic , Denmark , Estonia , Finland , Greece , Iceland , Ireland , Israel , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , Portugal , Romania , Russia , South Africa , South Korea , Spain , Sri Lanka , Sweden , Switzerland and Turkey .

Countries which have systems that are similar or use semi-proportional representation include: Australia , Germany , Hungary , India , Republic of Ireland , Italy , Japan , Mexico , New Zealand , Scotland , Thailand and Wales . India is one of the most successful examples of a country with proportional representation.

Images for kids

Countries with PR do not appear to have more elections

• This page was last modified on 16 October 2023, at 16:53. Suggest an edit .

Is Made In Abyss For Kids?

• Made in Abyss may appear to be a kid-friendly anime, but it quickly reveals a darker and gruesome side that would give any child nightmares.
• While the art and aesthetics of Made in Abyss are beautiful, they hide an ugly underbelly of intense imagery, sexual innuendo, and mature themes that are not suitable for younger viewers.
• Made in Abyss is not just about the grotesque body horror, but also explores deep and disturbing emotional turmoil, making it too intense and unsettling for children. Adults should watch it to appreciate the complex narrative and the mysteries it presents.

At first glance, Made in Abyss comes off as any kid-friendly anime series would. It's art and backdrops are aesthetically pleasing, with cutesy, chibi-style characters and a musical score that instills a sense of wonder and adventure. Just like the Abyss that Reg and Riko descend into: the deeper one goes, the more terrifying the truth reveals itself to be.

Made in Abyss may look innocent and childish on its surface, but below that surface is a gruesomeness that would give any kid nightmares. It's beautiful, aesthetically pleasing art would undoubtedly be appealing to any anime fan, but that beauty has an ugly underbelly which doesn't fully rear its head until viewers least expect it. Made in Abyss isn't kid friendly, but every adult should see at least once.

10 Biggest Mysteries In New-Gen Anime

Why made in abyss is not for children, is my neighbor totoro the best kids anime.

There are many aspects of Made in Abyss that make it appear like a series for children, but when looked at more closely that clearly is not the case. The deeper viewers get into the series, the darker it gets, pulling audiences into the abyss gradually along with Reg and Riko. In that sense, on the surface level of the first few episodes, younger audiences might be able to enjoy the series, though they’re better off staying on the surface until they’ve gotten old enough to deal with its more intense imagery, frequent sexual innuendo, and mature themes.

The Made in Abyss anime is adapted from an online-only manga published in Web Comic Gamma Plus, a publication that mainly consists of seinen manga series made for adults . That characterization is not unwarranted, as Made in Abyss contains some of the darkest and most heart-wrenching scenes in anime. There are genuinely bloody and gory moments, but what makes them even more powerful is the emotional context behind them. Many modern shonen series like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer have blood and gore in their fight sequences, but the true terror that makes Made In Abyss seinen is how it stays with those moments to shows the pain and suffering of its characters in agonizing detail.

In that sense, it's not just the grotesque body horror that makes Made in Abyss a bit too much for younger viewers. Instead, It's the very adult themes that are explored in ways shocking enough to effect adults, and which could prove too upsetting for kids. Made in Abyss ' horror sequences often coincide with moments of true emotional turmoil that are just as disturbing as a journey into the depths of Hell would be expected to be.

What is Made in Abyss About?

Spirited away isn't the innocent children's story we thought it was.

Made In Abyss takes place in a world where a gigantic hole has been discovered in the middle of the ocean, which leads into a seemingly endless abyss. Little is known about the abyss other than that no one who goes into its deepest layers can ever return. Most of that has to do with the curse of the abyss that triggers when a person tries to ascend back up to the surface, and which becomes more powerful the deeper one goes into it.

The story of Made in Abyss follows a young girl named Riko, who lives in a town called Orth, nestled right on the edge of the Abyss. While on a routine excursion mission to study the Abyss’ upper layers, Riko stumbles upon a strange robotic boy named Reg who has lost all memory of where he came from. After Riko receives a letter from her mother who dwells deep in the abyss, Riko and Reg are surprised to find a drawing of Reg in the papers her mother sent. This shocking revelation inspires Riko and Reg to begin a journey into the deepest depths of the Abyss, in order to learn the truth of Reg's existence, and to tell more about who they both are.

The Meaning Behind Made In Abyss' Narrative Would Be Missed On Kids

Dragon ball daima: can being kids work.

Made in Abyss is not only full of a lot of very intense imagery, but also some very interesting themes beneath its surface. The abyss itself is an enigmatic world whose secrets hold several possibilities for interpretation. It is often viewed by fans as a clear metaphor for the abyss of the human soul, as in Nietszche's infamous quote: "And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." Just like the human soul, the abyss is both mysterious and terrifying, but also clearly holds the answers to all questions concerning a person's reason for being. Just as one can never forget the harshest truths of life, Riko and Reg can never return after descending into the lowest pits of the abyss.

On the other hand, the abyss itself is also given the nickname "the netherworld" by many characters in the series: a name which has clear implications. By the time a person reaches the sixth level, they can never return to the world above again. Some have even pointed out the similarity between the geography of the abyss and Dante's own Inferno. These kinds of allusions seem to hint at the abyss being more like a physical embodiment of Hell than any kind of metaphor for the human spirit. Then again, perhaps the true message of the abyss is to point out the Devil that lies deep within all people.

Of course, these are all concepts that no child could recognize on their own, but even further than that, they're the kinds of deeper meanings which the average shonen series wouldn't normally bother to explore. That's not to say that many shonen or shojo series don't focus on important themes that touch on the deepest parts of the human experience -- they most certainly do. However, Made In Abyss does so in a way that is much more blatantly a part of its overarching narrative. These "deeper" aspects of Made in Abyss , while not necessary to enjoy it for pure entertainment value, are important in order to fully appreciate the series for the living, breathing mystery that it truly is, and the representation of the unexplainable mysteries that even the greatest scientists, deepest philosophical thinkers and most devout theologians are often unable to sufficiently explain.

Made In Abyss Is For The Adult's Inner Child

Mushoku tensei just pulled a vinland saga (& it worked just as well).

Made in Abyss is very much a coming of age tale for people who have already come of age -- a fairytale less in the styling of Disney , and more in that of Grimm's Tales. After all, the abyss itself is a bit like facing the effects of age. Once someone begins that descent, there's no going back, and the only option at that point is to dive deeper. A person can either choose to approach that descent with genuine excitement and curiosity like Riko does, or simply remain stagnant in fear of moving forward. Either way, the curse of the abyss overtakes everyone in the end.

While Made in Abyss ' art and characters look whimsical and childish, that is done by necessity to express a darker reality. In a world where everything seems already understood and known, diving into the very depths of the unknowable is perhaps the only way an adult can possibly relate to being a child. It causes the viewer to feel childlike curiosity as they follow Riko's descent deeper and deeper into the abyss, learning along with her what it actually means to be human.

Made in Abyss isn't for children, but it is a story about children. More specifically, it's a story about the innocence and naivety that is sometimes necessary to take the dive into the deepest, darkest places that most older people are too 'mature' to dare venture into. It's a story that is intended to instill into adults the childlike wonder and fear that they once felt when they first looked upon the world and didn't understand what it all meant. Most of all, Made in Abyss is a story for adults, to remind them that there is still so much they don't understand, and that the search for truth can be simultaneously terrifying and beautiful.

Made in Abyss

A girl and her robot companion search for her mother, who's lost within a vast chasm.

Release Date 2017-07-07

Main Genre Anime

Rating TV-14

Creator Akihito Tsukushi