Imagined families, contested childhoods: Doing gender as subversive deviances of children’s agency

Abstract

Recent ethnographies of childhood have shown that the current politics of family and children led to new epistemological frameworks and intersectional methodologies. These scholarly works have broadened the scope of ethnographic inquiry beyond the household or caregiver level to encompass a wider socio-political and economic context. They consider the interruptions of state regulations and political economy on the welfare of children in examining the gendered parental practices of child-rearing. This critical review, first, seeks to explicate scholarly work on the intersectionality of gendered parenting and the embodiment of gender, which unveils the peculiarities and intricate nature of child-rearing practices in the Turkish context. Second, it distinguishes itself by drawing attention to children’s agency as a locus of deviation and resistance vis-à-vis the moralizing ideologies and regulative discourses.