Childcare Research in a Global World

Abstract

The care of children features highly in discourses about modern society and it is critical that our understanding of childhood and childcare in practice crosses international boundaries in a progressively globalised world. Punch (2016, p. 360) outlines some of the identifiers of a “global society” as “migration and global care chains as well as crisis events such as natural disasters and war” which have opened up new avenues for research and childhood study. Jung and Tripodi (2007) advocate Research into social phenomena involving such shared problems across nations, and the articles reflected in this edition of the Child Care in Practice Journal provide a rich contribution to the global research agenda in childcare. This edition brings together studies from Jordan, Bangladesh, Poland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Pakistan and Ghana. The articles focus our attention on global issues of child abuse and cooperation in child welfare, theories of play and feeding practices along with contributions to our understanding of specific social phenomena relating to child marriage, the trauma of terrorist attacks, children of prisoners and the impact of inspection on Early Years Services as well as cultural competence and the role of the linguistic and cultural mediator in the Paediatric Health Service. Hanson et al. (2018, p. 274) refer to “global” and “local” research positing that the former research considers macro issues of social structure and exclusion often with minority and vulnerable populations whereas the latter research focuses on the micro specifics of children’s daily lives and experiences. The articles in this issue of Child Care in Practice represent a range of global and local studies and as such aim to address some of the perceived gaps in cross-cultural learning and understanding of childhoods in the “majority world” formerly known as the third world (Punch, 2016, p. 353). The papers challenge us to question globalised and normative perspectives of childhood which Nieuwenhuys (1998) argues are predominantly western and fail to take account of the continuously evolving experiences of children which are influenced by their cultures, histories and economic and political structures. Rather, Campbell-Barr and Bogatić (2017, p. 1462) emphasises the need for personal awareness of our subjectivities and consciousness of “personal readings of both the global discourses and our interpretations of a cultural other”. James (2010) suggests the need for a focus on cross-cultural studies of childhood and childcare which respect diversity and the worthiness of all childhoods as a focus of study. The articles challenge us to think about what works in supporting children exposed to terrorist attacks and pose questions about the impact of child marriage and infant feeding practices in non-western sociocultural contexts and enhance our understanding of the political, structural and cultural realities impacting on children, childhood and childcare provision in the global context. Child abuse is a multifaceted global problem (Barth et al., 2013) with research predominantly undertaken in Western societies (van der Put et al., 2018). The article by Al Khatib (2020), A comprehensive review of research on child abuse in Jordan widens our understanding