The Power of the Babe: Infants’ Experiences of Power
By Ruth Lysecki
Bachelor of Arts, University of Winnipeg, 2018
A Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF EDUCATION
In the area of Early Childhood Education Department of Curriculum and Instruction
© Ruth Lysecki, 2021
University of Victoria
All rights reserved. This project may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author.
Abstract
As do we all, infants experience interpersonal power in all their relationships. This has implications for how they understand power, how they experience their rights, and how they learn to use power throughout their life courses. However, this has not been well studied, and consequently is inadequately addressed in educator training. In this paper, I review the literature on infants’ experiences of and understandings of interpersonal power, how it impacts their rights, and address some of the ethical implications of empowering infants. To address the gap in
educator training I created a professional development workshop for educators. This
participatory workshop is designed to provide space for reflection and collaborative problem-solving so that educators feel prepared to address the power dynamics present in their practice in an ethical manner.
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 2
Table of Contents ... 3
Chapter 1 ... 5
Personal Connections ... 6
Connection to International Rights ... 9
Significance... 11
Summary ... 12
Chapter 2 ... 14
Theoretical Frameworks ... 14
Power/Knowledge ... 14
Ecological Systems Theory... 16
Human Rights Theory ... 16
Infants’ Understanding of, and Experiences of Power ... 17
Infants’ Understanding of Power ... 17
Infants’ Experiences of Power ... 20
Infants’ Rights ... 24
Rights, Power, and Agency ... 25
Infants’ Experiences of Rights ... 28
Ethical Considerations for Sharing Power with Infants ... 32
Power ... 32
Discursive Spaces ... 33
Childcare Spaces ... 37
Discussion ... 40
Chapter 3 ... 43
Workshop for Educators ... 43
Dissemination of the Research Findings... 44
Engagement Strategies ... 46
Reflection on Learning ... 47
Avenues for Further Research ... 49
References ... 51
Appendix A ... 59
Pre-workshop Email... 59
Appendix B ... 60
Chapter 1
Infants’ experience of life cannot be separated from their experiences of power. Power is relational (French Jr. & Raven, 1959) and due to their maturational status and vulnerability, infants’ experiences of life are largely defined by relationships (Holt, 2013; Schweiger & Graf, 2017).
While there are a number of factors that influence infants’ experiences of interpersonal power, chief among them is our adult views on children, childhood, infants, and infancy. The way that individuals or groups think of children is their ‘image of the child’ (Malaguzzi, 1994). Whether it is articulated or not, everybody has one and this image underlies how we think of and behave toward children. Children are often viewed as vulnerable and in need of guidance, support, and protection (Schweiger & Graf, 2017). The younger the child, the more vulnerable they must be, and so the less power they have in relationship with others. Furthermore, infants are often preverbal and therefore are more vulnerable to power differentials (Salamon, 2015). Based on a review of public policies and laws put in place, Canada has an image of the child as ‘rich with potential’ (Lysecki, 2016; Public Health Agency of Canada & Canada, 2004). While it is extremely difficult to act contrary to our image of child (Malaguzzi, 1994), our image of vulnerability and potential “has the danger to sacrifice a child’s present for their future, or rather, for our future” (Lysecki, 2016, p. 12).
Qvortrup (2009) posed the provocative question “are children human beings or human becomings?” This challenges us to examine our beliefs about children’s value as they are now, rather than their investment value as future citizens. Effectively, by viewing children as
‘becomings’ rather than ‘beings,’ we are privileging adulthood over childhood and infancy, and marginalizing the members of the younger classes.
There is a growing movement in academic literature that aims to challenge the idea of children as ‘becomings’ (e.g., Herbots & Put, 2015; Qvortrup, 2009), or primarily children rather than primarily human (Quennerstedt, 2010, 2016) and position them as rights-bearing citizens (Degotardi & Han, in press; Herbots & Put, 2015; Palaiologou, 2012; Quennerstedt, 2016). This is in accordance with international rights documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, n.d.). The idea of children, including infants, as rights-bearing individuals, valued in their own right has an empowering effect for infants. If children are not seen as less than adults, then their thoughts, ideas, and experiences also have value.
In this project, I will examine the literature on how infants experience interpersonal power, how this relates to their rights, particularly their participation rights, and the ethics of sharing power with infants.
Personal Connections
My interests in infants and power have been percolating for a number of years. Ever since discovering my older brother’s discarded baby doll when I was a toddler, I have been enchanted by babies. It did not matter that her arms and legs had been removed, once my mother reattached them, I carried that baby everywhere. At this early stage of my development, my interest was likely primarily emotional and symbolic. The doll symbolized a baby with whom I could have a relationship. Interestingly, the type of care relationship I chose to have with the baby has certain connotations of power. In caring for the baby, I was putting myself in the role of an adult. Adults always have more power in relation to infants, and so at this young age through the early stages of socio-dramatic play I was exploring power relations, whether I knew it or not.
When I was about six years old my baby sister was born. She was a real, live baby. I had met babies before, but this one was mine. She was different. I felt different too: more powerful. During the time around my sister’s birth my interest in babies shifted. It seemed that my interest became more cerebral than emotional. I suspect that this is because I was now in school. I was being challenged academically and cognitively at that stage in my development, and I now had access to a specimen that I could examine whenever I wanted. Again, relations of power were at play. I was the older sister. I did not have as much power as my parents, but due to my age, position in the sibling hierarchy, and development, I had more power than she did. Like most older siblings, I am sure that I abused this power. In retrospect, I also felt that I had the power of a researcher. I was collecting knowledge through my observations and daily interactions with my research ‘subject.’
My early emotional and relational attachment to babies, along with my more distanced researcher attitude toward my sister are likely contributing factors to my choice in a career working with infants. As an early childhood educator in an infant program, I am involved in all aspects of the care of children between the ages of 3 months to 2 years. I spend my day cuddling and reading stories and sitting on the floor next to the Pikler triangle while the children climb. I dry tears and apply ice-packs to boo-boos (both real and imagined), change children’s diapers and clothing. I help children learn sleep skills. I prepare meals and I enjoy them with my young community. Collaborating with colleagues to provide a stimulating, safe environment with appropriate challenges for each individual child is an important, though less visible part of my day. Through my job, I receive enormous emotional and relational satisfaction. I nurture and benefit from positive, respectful interactions with each individual child, their families, and my colleagues. The more I grow as a person, the better I understand the reciprocal, relational nature
of what I do. My job is also as a ‘teacher researcher,’ and as I continue on my pedagogical journey, I am constantly impressed with the importance of observation and reflection. Throughout my career, I have been engaged in my own educational journey, which has supported my more academic interest in infants. Over the past 15 years, I have been pursuing higher education related to my work with children. I began with Montessori teacher certification at the preschool level, continued to infant/toddler Montessori certification, obtained my diploma in Early Childhood Education, my BA in Developmental Studies, and am now working toward a master’s degree. This has immersed me simultaneously in both the academic community and the early childhood education community. These complimentary factors in my life have influenced my involvement in both. I have infused my education with my practical, hands on experience, and my practice with infants has been enhanced by my deeper theoretical understanding. In my workplace, I am a mentor and a leader.
Being both a mentor and a leader gives me power. In my workplace, I exert both relational and expert power. Taking Foucault’s (1980) view that power is something that is enacted rather than something one can possess, and that it manifests through myriad power-relations in a net-like or chain-like pattern, it becomes evident that the power I enact at work is part of a system of power relations where power is enacted on me. All power is relational and although I am a person with power, a white, dominant-culture, able-bodied adult, I am also a woman in a traditionally feminine occupation. By recognizing both my exercise of power and the influence of others’ exercise of power over me, I have become acutely aware of ambient power relations. In my childhood, I have distinct memories of struggles between my siblings and I where we were each looking to get a fair deal (like equally dividing dessert so nobody has the smallest piece). I get the impression that this happened all the time with four siblings, but the
most impactful memory is of my father declaring “Fair? There’s no such thing as Fair! Fair is just another four-letter word that starts with F.” To me, this was my father who exerted power over me, admitting that he also felt powerless in relation to others, illustrating the chain effect described by Foucault (1980).
By working so closely with infants for the past decade, I have moved beyond my naïve desire to cuddle and protect these precious little bundles of joy. I still do that, but I have also come to respect each individual person (who happens to be an infant at the moment) with whom I work. I recognize their competence, their unique skills, their personality, and individual ways of knowing, and I respect them as whole persons with thoughts, feelings, ideas, and rights. They also have unique needs, as we all do. Infants are so much more than their potential future value. They are right here, right now, living their lives. They deserve more consideration than that which is contingent on their future development. However, I recognize that very few people see things the way I do. In the chain model of power relations, infants would be at the bottom. By focusing on a deficit model of childhood where children are seen to be missing capacities that adults have (Campos, 2019), the needs and vulnerabilities of infants are foregrounded, robbing them of opportunities to express power. I believe that for society to be just, power needs to be shared. Although babies are not yet able to speak in the manner that we adults have privileged, that does not mean that they are less than us.
Connection to International Rights
Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was established almost seventy years ago, the idea of children having distinct rights and liberties is more recent .
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was drafted in 1989, and ratified in Canada in 1991. The preamble of the UDHR (United Nations, 1948) sets the tone for rights as liberties with a foundation of freedom, justice, and peace. Article 1 states that “all human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights” while the second part of Article 25 highlights that “motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance” (United Nations, 1948). This seems to imply that while children are equal to other human beings, they are vulnerable and so need special treatment. The later part of that idea was addressed by the United Nations with the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959.
The Declaration of the Rights of the Child (UN General Assembly, 1959) is the precursor to the UNCRC as we know it, and sets out the rights of children as primarily those of provision and protection. In 1989, the United Nations drafted the enhanced UNCRC expanding it and adding some liberties such as the participation rights. This is in line with a more contemporary image of the child, as both vulnerable and agentic. This recognition of children’s agency and the granting of liberties is a step toward empowerment and an echo of Article 1 of the UDHR granting freedom, equality, and dignity.
These international rights documents set the benchmark for what is considered ethical in terms of treating children. These rights declare that a child is entitled to express their views and have them taken seriously (Hart et al., 1997). They are entitled to express themselves in any way they choose, so long as they are not violating the rights of another (Hart et al., 1997). This means that adults have a responsibility to share power with children so that they can express
themselves, and we must listen. While the UNCRC is frequently invoked when children are the subject of legal proceedings or research, the UDHR is less often cited, despite the fact that children are still in fact human beings.
Significance
According to the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being (UNICEF Canada, 2019) children experience life differently than do adults, have different needs, and have different ideas about what contributes to their well-being. While adults tend to emphasize health and educational achievement, the children of Canada have a much broader and deeper set of criteria based on their own experience of life and their values. UNICEF Canada (2019) gathered data from a variety of sources, including asking children how they felt about their lives. While this is a valuable resource that respects and promotes children’s liberties and participatory rights, one is left wondering about if, and how, data were gathered from the youngest of children: extra-verbal (Cascella, 2015) infants. Regardless, data from this report were used in the 16th UNICEF Report Card (UNICEF Innocenti, 2020) which rank how children fare in the thirty-eight richest
countries. Canada ranked near the bottom, at thirtieth of the thirty-eight overall. Children’s self reported level of life satisfaction has been trending downwards from 81% reporting a modest level of life satisfaction in 2014 to 77% in 2018 (UNICEF Canada, 2020). Children’s overall wellbeing, as judged by adults, is low as are their subjective levels of well-being. Part of the reason children judge their level of life satisfaction to be low is that many feel like they have little control in their lives. They feel that their families, schools, and governments do not listen to them (UNICEF Canada, 2020).
As established above, children have the right to be heard and to be involved in decisions that affect their lives, although many children feel that this is not happening. While the children of Canada are reporting that they feel un-heard, marginalized, and so disempowered, I wonder about those who do not have the ability to make themselves understood, and so seem to be missing from the UNICEF reports: infants. I wonder how infants would rate their life satisfaction
and what their criteria would be. I imagine those criteria would be quite different than what we adults would rank as the most important.
We adults have a responsibility to listen to, and take seriously, what children tell us. This includes what infants communicate through extra-verbal means. By granting infants these basic liberties codified in international rights documents, we are sharing power. As they do not have the means to communicate with a broad audience, it is the responsibility of those who are in relationship with infants to strive to broadcast the ‘voices’ of the voiceless and ensure that infants have their say, as any human being is entitled to.
This examination of infants’ well-being, rights, and liberties is deeply entangled with their interpersonal power dynamics. So, how do infants experience and come to understand power? How does this relate to their rights and liberties? What are the ethical considerations for whether or not, and how, to share power with infants?
Summary
In this chapter, I delineated my reasons for examining the subject of power as it pertains to infants based on both my personal experiences and interpretation of both the UNCRC and the UDHR. I outlined how Canada see children as investments in the future, as becomings rather than beings. Meanwhile, the trend in research with children and infants is to recognize their status as complete human beings in their own right, with the attendant rights and liberties
recognized internationally. In chapter two of this project, I articulate my theoretical framework – the Foucauldian ideas of power/knowledge and discourse, Bronfenbrenner’s (1981) ecological systems theory, and human rights theory as articulated by Bobbio (2017). This prefaces a comprehensive review of the literature on how infants understand and experience power, how
this relates to their internationally declared rights and liberties, and the ethical considerations for sharing power with infants.
In chapter three, I describe the professional development workshop for infant educators I have produced based on current research. I also reflect on what I have learned through this process and propose a few avenues for further research.
Chapter 2
The following literature review provides a thorough examination of infants’ experiences of interpersonal power, their rights, and some ethical considerations for sharing power with infants. The literature is drawn from several different fields, such as children’s rights, human geographies, early childhood studies, law, educational philosophy, sociology, and developmental psychology, primarily spanning the last eight years. Framing this research and analysis are the Foucauldian theories of power, ecological systems theory, and human rights theory.
Theoretical Frameworks
The following theories serve as a framework for interpreting the current research on infants’ understanding and experiences of interpersonal power in a variety of contexts. Human rights and ecological systems theories provide important social and cultural contexts for examining the conditions in which infants experience power and as a basis for making ethical arguments for (or against) granting infants space to enact interpersonal power.
Power/Knowledge
Knowledge, truth, and what it is possible to know about the world are highly valued resources that cannot be separated from power (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Foucault, 1980). Foucault (1980) theorized that those in power have the authority to determine what is true knowledge, and that those who produce true knowledge have power. These pockets of
knowledge that make up the accepted body of knowledge, and what it is even possible to know about a given topic, are the discourses that are dependent on the power/knowledge relationship (Mills, 2003). Discourses serve to reinforce dominant power structures and relationships (Foucault, 1980). While those in power determine what is true, they necessarily determine that
all other knowledges are not by ignoring, discrediting, and repressing these “subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 1980, p. 81).
Foucault (1980) described power as a verb rather than a noun. It is enacted rather than something one can possess. Power operates through an interconnected system of relationships in a net-like or chain-like pattern where “not only do individuals circulate through its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power” (Foucault, 1980, p. 98).
With power so inextricably linked to knowledge, capacities that are primarily available to adults, such as rationality, logic, and scientificity, are privileged over other ways of knowing, such as those of a child who is “always othered" (Lahman, 2008, p. 281). Similarly, the
privileged discourses are represented through language, especially written and oral. As children, particularly infants, do not possess the same cognitive and expressive language capacities (Campos, 2019; Quennerstedt, 2016; White et al., 2015), their knowledges are subjugated.
Foucault (1980) also wrote about insurrection of subjugated knowledges. Subjugated knowledges are “a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity” (p. 82), for example, infant knowledges. The insurrection occurs when these subjugated knowledges emerge and critique the official discourse. The New Sociology of Childhood1 and the move to champion children’s rights and
1 Tisdall and Punch (2012), in describing the New Sociology of Childhood, argued for the acknowledgement of
voice in research, which can be interpreted as an insurrection of (children’s) subjugated knowledges, is a prime example.
Ecological Systems Theory
Bronfenbrenner’s (1981) Ecological Systems Theory proposed a model of development where the social, environmental, and cultural influences and interactions are taken into account. The developing person, usually a child, is imagined at the center of a set of nested spheres of influence. The microspheres are the child’s closest environments and relationships such as the family, the school or childcare centre, the neighbourhood, etc. The next level accounts for the interactions between these microspheres, for example the parents’ relationships with the
childcare centre or with the neighbourhood. Surrounding this are factors that may not affect the child directly, but impact the microspheres, such as the parents’ workplaces. Outside of this level are the broader cultural, societal, and ecological influences like governmental policies, economic fluctuations, etc.
Viewing infants through an ecological systems lens both reinforces the Foucauldian view of power as net-like interactions, as well as the view that infants’ lives are so enmeshed in relational interconnections that it is all but impossible to envision their lives and development in a vacuum, or outside the context of these relationships.
Human Rights Theory
Modern human rights theory is the product of two thousand years of thought and debate. Early examples of rights rhetoric are credited to Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics (ca 350 B.C.E./1925) and were taken up by the likes of Aquinas, Grotius, Hobbes, Kant, Locke, and many others (Bobbio, 2017). The current international rights documents referenced in this paper, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR] (United Nations, 1948) and the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [UNCRC] (UNICEF, n.d.) are authored by the United Nations, ratified by the member nations, and so considered universal. It is important to note that the rights contained therein are the contemporaneous products of particular trends in moral philosophy as agreed on by the member nations. Rights that were asserted two hundred years ago, for example, may have been reinterpreted, rewritten, or abandoned altogether (Bobbio, 2017). The rights asserted by the UDHR particularly, and the UNCRC to a slightly lesser extent, reflect a fairly individualistic cultural view (Bobbio, 2017; Campos, 2019).
However, these documents declare that the rights asserted therein are “universal” (UNICEF, n.d., preamble) and “inalienable” ( United Nations, 1948, preamble).
If the rights in the UDHR and the UNCRC are indeed the “inalienable rights of all
members of the human family” (United Nations, 1948, preamble), then de facto, they must apply to infants as well (Quennerstedt, 2016). Interpreting the literature on infants and power through a framework of human rights theory will provide a foundation for examining ethical issues
surrounding the empowerment and disempowerment of infants. Infants’ Understanding of, and Experiences of Power
Bronfenbrenner (1981) argued that behaviour and development are contingent on “the environment as it is perceived rather than as it may exist in ‘objective’ reality” (Bronfenbrenner, 1981, p. 4, emphasis in original). Ergo, the way infants perceive their experiences and
observations of power enactment will determine not only how they behave, but also how they come to understand how power works in relationships.
Infants’ Understanding of Power
Stavans and Baillargeon (2019) asserted that “hierarchical relations are one of the basic relational forms that structure human social life” (p. 16292). These power relations are visible in
all stages of life and are of particular interest here as they relate to relationally dependent infants. Research shows that infants as young as 6 months already have some basic understandings about interpersonal power and expectations of how it operates in relationships (Margoni et al., 2018; Stavans & Baillargeon, 2019;Thomsen, 2020). For example, Margoni, Baillargeon, and Surian (2018) reported on a host of prior research indicating that infants can use physical size cues to predict outcomes of conflict between individuals with opposing goals, as well as coalition size cues (e.g. Gazes et al., 2017; Mascaro & Csibra, 2012; Pun et al., 2016; Thomsen et al., 2011). Further, infants expect that power differences will stay stable over time, and may extend across a variety of circumstances (Enright et al., 2017; Margoni et al., 2018).
Margoni, Baillargeon, and Surian (2018) conducted novel experimental research into whether or not 21 month-old infants could distinguish between leaders (respect-based power) and bullies (fear-based power). The research took place in both Italy and the United States (no significant differences were found between participant responses based on country) with 96 infants. Margoni and colleagues examined looking-time data2 to determine when infants’ expectations were violated in computer animated cartoon depictions of situations where either a leader or a bully gave instructions to a group of characters who then either obeyed or disobeyed. Their results show that the infants could tell whether the powerful figure was a leader or a bully based on behaviour cues, and that they expected the protagonists to obey the leader’s commands, whether the leader was present or not, but only expected them to obey the bully if the bully were present. If the bully were absent, the infants found either continuing to obey (ostensibly through
2 Looking-time data are broadly used in empirical research on infant cognition (Csibra et al., 2016). Infants are
presented with novel stimuli and the length of time they spend looking at it is measured. It is asserted that infants will look longer at stimuli that violates their expectations (Csibra et al., 2016; Margoni et al., 2018).
fear of retaliation) or disobeying (possibly due to the diminished power of the bully once no longer present) were both equally plausible (Margoni et al., 2018).
Continuing in this line of inquiry, Stavans and Baillargeon (2019) conducted
experimental research on how 120 17 month-old infants in the United States expected leaders to behave, specifically whether they expected leaders to intervene in fairness transgressions
between followers. Premising this research are findings from prior literature indicating that: • Infants between 16 and 19 months are able to categorize by group membership;
• 15 to 21 month-olds have “an abstract and equity-based expectation of fairness” (Stavans & Baillargeon, 2019, p. 16294); and
• 12 to 17 month-olds have abstract expectations of in-group support (Stavans & Baillargeon, 2019)
There is also ample evidence that adults expect leaders to right wrongs between their followers, and so Stavans and Baillargeon (2019) chose 17 month-olds (who most likely have basic understandings of group membership, fairness, in-group support, and leadership or respect-based power) as the participants in their inquiry. Using violation of expectation methodology (Baillargeon et al., 1985) based on looking-time data, the researchers showed infants a set of puppet vignettes where a leader bear puppet provided toys to a pair of followers and one follower took all the toys leaving the other with none. In the subsequent conditions, the leader either redistributed the toys fairly (intervention condition) or interacted with both followers without redistribution (non-intervention condition). Two other related experiments followed to rule out alternate interpretations, and the results revealed that the infants did indeed expect the leader to intervene and redistribute the toys. Interestingly, if one follower declared that they did not want a toy and the other took all the toys, the infants’ expectations were violated if the leader
redistributed the toys against the follower’s wishes – it was proposed that the infants may have seen it as heavy-handed or overbearing (Stavans & Baillargeon, 2019).
Research into this phenomenon has provided powerful evidence that infants have a sophisticated and nuanced understanding about interpersonal power and have expectations for how those in either the higher-power or lower-power position are likely to interact (see Enright et al., 2017; Gazes et al., 2017; Margoni et al., 2018; Mascaro & Csibra, 2012; Pun et al., 2016; Stavans & Baillargeon, 2019; Thomsen et al., 2011; Thomsen, 2020). The following section discusses literature pertaining to how infants experience power – whether between themselves and adults, or between peer infants.
Infants’ Experiences of Power
If we look at their lives closely, we will be faced with the inescapable conclusion that from the moment of birth on, infants directly experience power dynamics within their
relationships and interactions with parents, medical staff, caregivers, and others. In describing how a person comes to be subjected in relationships during infancy, Holt (2013) asserted that “there is no 'self' that precedes the relationship to the Other or that can be recaptured from the intersubjectivity between 'Self' and 'Other'; the sense of an autonomous 'individual' belies people's mutual constitution in relationality” (p. 652). This relational view gives credence to the experiential theory of knowledge construction regarding power relations. These experiences early in life shape the way people interact within power relationships, and become an enduring part of their adult selves (Holt, 2013). Following is a selection of the current research into infants’ experiences of power, and the power environments they exist within, beginning with a look at the common North American parenting trope – the power struggle.
Power Struggles. Hoffman (2013) explored the culturally situated idea of the power struggle between parents and children by conducting semi-structured interviews with
economically and educationally privileged mothers in a mid-Atlantic college town, alongside a review of the mainstream parenting advice literature (popular magazines, books and websites). The aim was to flesh-out the mainstream, or popular, discourse on North American parenting advice on power struggles and compare it with mothers’ reported experiences and techniques for mitigation. While this was not a study on how infants experience power relationships with their parents, it does provide important cultural context to the environmental and ecological factors that influence parent/child power relations.
Notably, Hoffman situated the power struggle as a cultural construct rooted in
individualistic and developmentalist frameworks and compared to studies with, for example, Chinese or Japanese parents, discourses of parenting were markedly more oppositional than in cultures that value harmony in parenting discourse. The North American parenting context seems to pit parents against children in struggles for power. This is justified by a developmentalist perspective which declares that the child has a “developing need to assert independence or control over the situation or environment" (Hoffman, 2013, p. 78). Whether this is the case or not, the situation defines parenting as adversarial, and parents are goaded into asserting their authority while being told to coach children in emotional expression and give acceptable choices. These options may give the illusion of sharing power, but "the irony is that the methods that supposedly empowered children and validated them—talking about emotions, giving a child a choice—were still methods of control, and children seemed to know this" (Hoffman, 2013, p. 91).
Power in Group Child Care. Furthering the examination into infants’ environmental contexts of power, Hu, Torr, Degotardi, and Han (2019) looked at another microsphere in infants’ ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1981) – the childcare centre. They recorded and analysed caregivers’ infant-directed speech in 56 Australian childcare centres and coded for the use and type of commanding language. Their aim was to determine if there was a correlation between caregivers’ education and qualifications, and the amount of commanding language they used. They also looked at the type of command messages (indirect vs. direct, and suggestive vs. nonsuggestive) and related these to educational background. While Hu et al. (2019) examined this from a language environment perspective, it is evident that their research has implications for the study of power as well. They found that caregivers with the highest credentials (a university degree) issued fewer commanding messages overall compared to less qualified staff (with either a 6-month certificate, or a vocational diploma). Further, university educated
caregivers were more likely to use indirect suggestive commands (‘How ‘bout we leave the bike outside the bathroom Oliver?’, p. 201), and more often supplemented commands with reasons. This, the researchers posited, provided a more conversational language environment, and served to make the authority of the caregiver less obvious. However, does making the authority of the caregiver less visible actually alter the power dynamic? The educator was not likely really giving Oliver the choice to bring the bike into the bathroom or not, but merely giving the illusion of choice as described by Hoffman (2013).
Hu et al. (2019), and Hoffman (2013) also touched on an important aspect of the net-like qualities (Foucault, 1980) of power dynamics. While adults clearly enact power on infants, there are more factors at play – different adults have differing levels of power relative to one another (Kinard, 2015). In Hoffman’s research, the mothers were not only educationally and
economically privileged, but they compared themselves to ‘mainstream’ mothers indicating an ideological as well as a class divide. Hu et al. (2019) used educational background as a proxy for class when comparing differing levels of Early Childhood Educators’ [ECE] credentials as higher qualified staff tend to have more autonomy and power consistent with Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge. Absent from these accounts is a greater examination of intersectional factors (race, culture, gender, (dis)ability, etc.) (Holt, 2013) not only between adults, but also in relation to children.
While Hoffman (2013) and Hu et al. (2019) primarily examined the adult side of the adult/infant dyad, Katsiada and Roufidou (2018) looked more closely at the infant side.
Katsiada and Roufidou (2018) undertook an ethnographic case study of ten infants between the ages of 1.4 and 2.11 years at two early learning and care centres in Greece. The researchers’ purpose was to investigate children’s relationships with adults, peers, and their learning and care environment. Drawing on the Mosaic Approach (Clark & Moss, 2001), modified for infants and toddlers, the authors engaged in informal discussions with verbal children, unprompted digital camera use by the children, narrative observations, and
conversational interviews with the children’s parents and practitioners. The data were analysed thematically.
Other researchers had noted that one of issues with giving cameras to infants was that it would merely generate many pictures of the floor (Katsiada & Roufidou, 2018). While the researchers found this to be true, data generated through their other methods indicated that this was because the floor was genuinely important to the infants in their study. They suggest that “the floor itself … is a versatile environment, which is full of affordances for play, exploration, interaction and personal expression” (Katsiada & Roufidou, 2018, p. 4), and that children value it
more than do adults. One possible reason put forward was that due to their relative proximity to the floor, due to their height and to the activity of crawling, young children have more perceptive experience of the floor and therefore value its affordances for expressing agency (Katsiada & Roufidou, 2018). They also commented on how the children expressed their understanding of children’s, versus adults’, relative proximity to the floor. The researchers noted that when a child pretended to be a teacher, they would stand or sit on a chair while they directed their ‘child’ to sit on the floor. This, they asserted, illustrated young children’s understanding of the power
differential between adults and children as correlated by proximity to the floor.
Having illustrated how infants understand and experience power within their ecological systems of microspheres (home, childcare) and macrospheres (cultural discourses, which will be examined in greater depth), we can begin to see the net-like structure of these power dynamics (Foucault, 1980) where infants have considerably more power enacted on them from a variety of sources. However, infants are not without agency and, as White (2017) and Katsiada and
Roufidou (2018) illustrated, even within groups of infants there are nets of power at play. In the next section, I delve deeper into research that examines the cultural discourses (macrospheres) on human and child rights as they pertain to infants and power.
Infants’ Rights
As articulated in the theoretical framework above, infants are entitled not only to children’s rights, as asserted by the United Nations in the UNCRC, but also to human rights (Herbots & Put, 2015; Quennerstedt, 2010, 2016). This position is not universally held, and Campos (2019) sketched out the two competing theories of rights – interests-based, and will-based. This paper assumes an interests-based theory of rights, where the function of rights is to protect the rights-bearer’s significant interests (Campos, 2019; Tisdall & Punch, 2012), in this
case, those of infants. Conversely, will-based theorists “propose to see rights as zones of freedom to be granted only to those able to exercise the powers to waive or to seek enforcement of the relevant claims" (Campos, 2019, p. 2). In this theory, those lacking the ability to enforce their rights, infants among others, do not actually possess those rights. Some theorists take a middle ground and propose that as children age through different levels of maturity, they transition from “being the sort of creatures whose interests are protected by rights to being the sort of creatures whose rights protect their choices” (Campos, 2019, p. 2. See also Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016). This view places children on a continuum between vulnerable, and agentic. Herbots and Put (2015) described a more complex and nuanced option where the child is seen as simultaneously vulnerable and agentic (See Eekelaar, 1994; Freeman, 1997; Uprichard, 2008). This is the position that underpins the UNCRC.
Rights, Power, and Agency
In their article on child participation rights, Herbots and Put (2015) took a dynamic view of power in which power is “a process that emerges from people, and not something that can be done to them” (Herbots & Put, 2015, p. 165), which is reflective of Foucault’s (1980) net-like conception of power. They asserted that it is more important to consider the effects of power than the intention of those who exercise it. This has implications both for sharing power with infants, and in setting limits to the impact of their participation rights. While they viewed children as agentic and “able to make valuable contributions to matters that affect them” (Herbots & Put, 2015, p. 182), the authors maintained that it is not appropriate to unilaterally hand over the power of decision making to children.
Degotardi and Han (in press) take a stronger stance on the side of child agency. In their chapter on infants’ right to knowledge and information they took the position that the infant is a
powerful social actor with a right to a voice to enact meaningful change in their own lives. This position, they assert, allows the child to “participate in, and engage with, the power structures that shape their everyday world” (Degotardi & Han, in press, p. 2). Degotardi and Han position infants as agents in the co-construction of knowledge, and so position them as powerful in a Foucauldian sense. However, when their interlocutors (usually adults) do not recognize the cognitive and knowledge contributions of infants (Degotardi & Han, in press), or when adults assume that an infant’s knowledge and understanding can be framed by adult perspectives
(Elwick et al., 2014), the knowledge remains subjugated and infants’ power (in relation to adults) is thus diminished. While Degotardi and Han (in press) see infants as agentic, there are certainly challenges that mediate infants’ ability to enact their rights.
Challenges to Rights Enactment
The only thing we can establish is that they are expressions of ideals aspired to, and the title of ‘rights’ serves only to give them an aura of nobility … it is one thing to claim this right, and entirely another to enjoy its fruits (Bobbio, 2017, p. 9).
Beyond the idea of epistemic impairment and limits to political agency, there are a number of challenges to infants’ rights enactment including infant’s voice, language skills, and adult images of the child as becoming rather than being. However, Campos’s (2019) treatment of epistemic impairment is foundational for examining the other challenges.
Epistemic Impairment. The perceived lack of cognitive ability and capacity to act in concert with others to enact change is a powerfully influential belief in the ‘infants and rights’ discourse. Campos (2019) discussed the use of the idea of epistemic impairment as a widespread justification for denying agency to infants. Herbots and Put (2015) used the idea of competence to fill the same role. Competence, they reported, is generally evaluated based on one’s
knowledge, understanding, maturity, and/or age. Further, they stated that understanding and maturity were often assessed on an epistemological basis because they often require rationality, reasoning, and long-term perspectives (Herbots & Put, 2015). They asserted that competence also encompasses moral, emotional, or social capacities; capacities which are demonstrated by infants. The authors argue that the clause in the UNCRC, Article 123 referring to the capacity of the child should not be interpreted as a limitation based on cognitive capacity, but rather an obligation of the State to assess the capacity. Further, that the “onus of proof relating to the required capacity does not rest with the child” (CRC Committee, 2009 as cited in Herbots & Put, 2015).
Language, Voice, and Context. Many researchers have identified infants’ lack of verbal communication skills as a challenge to understanding what infants are communicating
(Degotardi & Han, in press; Elwick et al., 2014; Fletcher-Watson, 2015; Margoni et al., 2018; Quennerstedt, 2016; Salamon, 2017; Stavans & Baillargeon, 2019; White et al., 2015). In children’s rights research, particularly participation rights research, much is made of the child’s voice (Tisdall & Punch, 2012), which privileges children who speak and whom adults understand (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Quennerstedt, 2016). Comparatively little effort has been made to represent the ‘voice’ of children who primarily communicate in other ways (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Quennerstedt, 2016; White et al., 2015). A related problem is that the child’s ‘voice’ (verbal or not) is often assumed to be “innocent and idealized” (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016, p. 281), and may be presented out of context (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Quennerstedt, 2016). Quennerstedt (2016), and Degotardi and Han (in press) assert that context is essential, not
3 Article 12.1: “State parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to
express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight is accordance with the age and maturity of the child” (UNICEF, n.d.).
only to understanding what infants communicate, but indeed to the very fact of each instance of communication – communication does not happen in a vacuum.
Elwick, Bradley, and Sumsion (2014) problematized the infant extraverbal ‘voice’ even further. They contended that because infants communicate through nonverbal expressions and behaviour, adults must draw on their professional or personal knowledge and experience in order to form an interpretation. So, what adults understand from an infant’s act of communication is not the infant’s perspective, but the adult’s construction of the ‘infant’s perspective’ (Elwick et al., 2014). They further stated that “it is impossible for researchers to know infants' experiences of their worlds with any certainty; particularly given that researchers are attempting to put infants' experiences into words when infants do not use words to express their experiences” (Elwick et al., 2014, p. 210). Elwick, Bradley, and Sumsion (2014) argued that because we cannot know with any certainty what infants are truly expressing, the only ethical path forward is to approach any research with infants with an attitude of uncertainty, and to accept that we cannot know how they experience the world with any certitude. This precautionary principle of recognizing that infants are ‘unknowable others’ speaks to the authors’ image of the child. The image adults hold of children can also be a challenge to upholding their rights.
Infants’ Experiences of Rights
Infants are immersed in and entangled with their social and cultural contexts
(Bronfenbrenner, 1981; Degotardi & Han, in press; Elwick et al., 2014; Quennerstedt, 2016). These contexts are rich with learning opportunities, and children develop skills and knowledge through interacting with them. Infants primarily learn about rights through experience and socialization into rights norms (Quennerstedt, 2016). By interacting with others in families, societies, and institutions that are guided by human rights norms, infants learn what it is to act in
accordance with or in opposition to these norms (Quennerstedt, 2016). This idea mirrors Bronfenbrenner’s (1981) ecological systems theory where each interconnected site of
socialization is surrounded by the macrosphere of cultural discourses and norms which will be examined in greater depth in the section on discursive spaces. Quennerstedt (2016) took this as a starting position and examined how infants engage with the concepts of human rights.
How Infants’ Enact Human Rights. Quennerstedt (2016) examined how children 1-3 years old responded to human rights norms by enacting rights in their childcare setting. Eighteen children were observed in their Swedish childcare centre over three weeks and situations
displaying aspects of rights were identified. Quennerstedt (2016) found that the infants did indeed enact their human rights, and that the most common rights situations involved the rights to “ownership, influence, and equal value” (p. 10). While ownership is not often discussed in relation to children, it was a common sight of rights interactions and disputes (Quennerstedt, 2016). The researcher posited that this may be more common in group childcare than perhaps elsewhere, as the rules of ownership are provisional – most items are owned by the centre, but when I play with it, it’s mine, and if I leave it, it becomes free for someone else to own. Influence was the next most common site of rights enactment. Children acted in ways to:
• affect a situation in a manner that suited them, • communicate will,
• or to assert will when it was unnoticed, ignored, or denied (Quennerstedt, 2016, p. 13)
The concept of equal value, Quennerstedt (2016) found, could be easily correlated with the practice of taking turns. In the rights situations observed, the infants took rights-holder positions that sometimes aligned with the norms, and sometimes did not. This is consistent with
grappling with rights concepts, but also with power. Older, tougher children, Quennerstedt found, more often oppressed or diminished younger or more cautious children. This echoes findings earlier on that infants expect bigger, stronger characters to prevail in disputes over conflicting goals (See Margoni et al., 2018). While children have been observed to enact several of their human rights, sometimes adults believe they are offering opportunities for infants to enact rights that are merely illusory as Fletcher-Watson found regarding children’s theatre and participation rights.
In regard to participation rights, Herbots and Put (2015) and Tisdall and Punch (2012) made the point that a right to participation is not an obligation – children have the right to be heard if they wish, and the right not to express views. Fletcher-Watson also addressed that point when he discussed infant audience members whose right not to participate was not always respected by parents and actors. Participation rights include the right to seek and express information if children so desire as researched by Degotardi and Han (in press).
Right to Know. Degotardi and Han (in press) chose to focus on a specific participation right – Article 13 of the UNCRC, the right to seek and express information. This, they argue gives infants (and children) the right to knowledge and to be seen as knowers. By positioning infants as knowers, the UNCRC, and Article 13 specifically, foreground the image of infants as “cognitive agents who have the capacity to possess knowledge and share this with others” (p. 2) and emphasizes the ways in which children make “meaningful contributions to their knowledge culture” (Degotardi & Han, in press, p. 2). Adults, however, are the gatekeepers for opportunities for infants to engage in knowledge-based interactions, and because adults routinely miss or misinterpret infants’ extraverbal cues as social or relational only, infants are not often treated as knowers (Degotardi & Han, in press). Degotardi and Han (in press) sought to examine the
interaction environment of infants in early childhood education and care and to evaluate the potentials and opportunities for knowledge sharing and co-construction.
The researchers examined video footage of 57 educator/infant pairs in naturalistic activities and context and coded conversational (even if not entirely verbal on the part of the infant) instances for knowledge sharing. First, they examined instances of educators asking questions and the responses of the infants to discover the prevalence of educators use of confirm (yes/no), specify (what, who, whose, when, and where), and explain (how, why) questions, and whether context impacted the types of questions. They found that educators asked more confirm questions during instances of mediated play (where the educator was playing with the infant) and more instances of specify questions during book-focused interactions. They found that explain questions were rarely used and speculated that the reason was that they are linguistically
demanding. Confirm questions were used to frame infants’ experiences in language and to seek input into their internal experiences (Degotardi & Han, in press). On the other hand, specify questions encouraged infants to express their knowledge (Degotardi & Han, in press).
The second analysis focused on educator/infant conversations of at least three turns (educator comment or question > infant response > educator response) as a basis for knowledge co-construction. Degotardi and Han coded the conversations based on whether the infant responded with feedback (acknowledgement or repetition of messages) or extension (injecting more information into the conversation) and whether the conversation extended past the three turns. They found that infants more frequently responded to non-knowledge-based questions with feedback and to knowledge-based questions with extensions. Further, when infants
These conversations, especially the ones which continued past three turns provide infants and educators with opportunities to co-construct and share knowledge (Degotardi & Han, in press).
While Degotardi and Han (in press) saw children as having personal agency, the
educators still had considerably more power than the infants – in all cases the conversations were initiated by adults. This brings to mind Hoffman’s (2013) assertion that the parents in her study were merely giving the illusion of power to children, and Fletcher-Watson’s (2015) caution that true participation is “child-curated” (p. 29). In order to ensure true participation and to share power with infants, there are several ethical considerations explored in the following section. Ethical Considerations for Sharing Power with Infants
While agency and autonomy are not quite synonymous with power, when referring to infants, and indeed all children, agency and autonomy are often stand-ins for the concept of power. The following sections will examine these concepts within various sites or spaces where power may be exercised over or shared with infants. We will examine in depth discursive spaces and childcare spaces. While arguably important, research spaces4, family spaces5, and political spaces6 are outside the scope of this review. Before examining power in these spaces, a brief review of the concept of power follows.
Power
As stated in the theoretical framework, this paper is framed by the Foucauldian
perspective of power as net-like or chain-like where power is a verb that is enacted rather than possessed. According to Herbots and Put (2015), this describes a dynamic conception of power
4 For examples of power dynamics in experimental, lab based research, see Margoni et al. (2018), Stavans and
Baillargeon (2019), and their sources.
5 For an examination on family spaces, see Hoffman (2013) and her bibliography. 6 For political spaces, see Campos (2019), Herbots and Put (2015), and Holt (2013).
compared to a static model of power. This dynamic conception of power is held up in the research of Kinard (2015) who discussed the common practice of ECE practitioners enacting power over children through regulation and surveillance while in turn being subject to the power enacted on them by regulators, policy, parents, and social discourse.
Holt (2013) took the idea further and described not only how power is enacted, but also how the subject of that power subjugates themselves, hence, subjection is also a verb that is enacted. This view plays out in the research of Margoni, Baillargeon, and Surian (2018) in their descriptions of infants’ expectations of followers reactions to leaders versus bullies. As described earlier, infants expected followers to subject themselves to the individual enacting power,
although the fidelity of that subjection varied depending on whether the power was respect-based or fear-based. If power is a verb rather than something one can possess, it is not something that can be shared. Instead, drawing on Foucault (1980), Herbots and Put (2015), and Holt (2013), those who typically enact power over infants could choose to enact less power over them, or, more radically, subject themselves to infants’ enactments of power. Below are examples of power dynamics in both directions in various spaces in which infants find themselves. Discursive Spaces
As discussed previously, discourses about childhood and infancy are deeply entangled with the power/knowledge construct where adults enact power to create knowledge about infants, which then supports their enactment of power over infants and so on in a circular manner. Common discourses of childhood ‘innocence’ (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Kinard, 2015; Quennerstedt, 2010, 2016), ‘potential’ or ‘becoming’ (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Frierson, 2016; Herbots & Put, 2015; Lysecki, 2016; Qvortrup, 2009; Skattebol et al., 2017; Tisdall & Punch, 2012; Uprichard, 2008), and ‘agency’ (Degotardi & Han, in press; Herbots &
Put, 2015; Holt, 2013; Katsiada & Roufidou, 2018; Skattebol et al., 2017; Tisdall & Punch, 2012; UNICEF, n.d.; White, 2017) all have different implications for how infants will be respected and responded to by adults (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016).
Meanwhile, the larger neoliberal cultural discourse present in much of the western world emphasizes individualism (Lysecki, 2016; Skattebol et al., 2017) and personal agency. These larger discourses combine to socialize infants into societal and political norms (Skattebol et al., 2017) much in the way infants are socialized into human rights norms (Quennerstedt, 2016). As can be expected, this supports the status quo where the knowledge of adults serves to justify their power enactment over infants, thus subjugating infant knowledges which rely on relationality and co-construction (Degotardi & Han, in press; Holt, 2013).
A major critique of these common cultural discourses is just that – that they are cultural. Specifically the discourses around infants, children, development, and childrearing have been largely taken over by western experts (with the power) and subjugated much of the knowledge of the rest of the world, where the relative majority live (Diamond, 2013; Tisdall & Punch, 2012). Tisdall and Punch (2012) distinguish between the minority world and the majority world where the minority world includes countries that are considered to be ‘first world’ or ‘developed’, and where the minority of people live. Conversely, the majority world has larger populations and may be considered ‘third world’ or ‘developing’. They describe how minority world values, such as child agency, individualism, and other ideas antithetical to certain cultures and traditions, are used in a manner that promotes colonial imperialism in the majority world, where more children are likely to be affected. Tisdall and Punch (2012) also contended that comparatively more research is done with minority world children which entrenches these corresponding values and ideas into the overarching discourses of childhood and infancy.
To challenge these discourses, some of these subjugated knowledges (of infants, of majority world children and educators, of alternative thinking researchers and educators) can be brought up to resist established ideas.
Resistance. According to Erwin and Delair (2004), "[r]esistance is a struggle against 'official' forces that have power over the lives of individuals, power to make rules, power to enforce rules, power to shape debate, and power to define knowledge and truth" (p. 41).
Kinard (2015) wrote about resistance to the dominant discourses. While he did not refer to infants resisting these discourses directly, he wrote about educators and administrators at an early learning facility consciously choosing to buck the innocence/experience discourse in which children are seen as innocents that must be protected through intense scrutiny and surveillance from ‘experienced’ adults who interact with them. The main act of resistance Kinard examined in his narrative was the hanging of a child’s painting so that it covered the window into the children’s bathroom thus obscuring the view of whatever happens in there (Kinard, 2015). This, he mused, interrupts the surveillance of adults in care relationships with those children, and resists the discourse that non-parental adults are de facto dangerous to young children’s innocence and must be visible at all times, especially when with children in the bathroom.
Kinard does acknowledge that in a very small number of instances, children have been victimised by caregivers, but he wondered about what opportunities for authenticity and
engagement are lost when we assume that we must protect children from their caregivers. While the act of hanging the painting was a small one, it has larger significance in the world. Kinard discussed children’s and caregivers’ relative power – caregivers have more than children, but relatively little in the outside world compared to adults in other professions. While Kinard reflected on this one small act of resistance, he did not make any prescriptive recommendation
for others to act on. Perhaps though, resistance to dominant discourses on behalf of infants may be an area worth looking into.
White (2017) also looked at resistance, but from another angle. In her studies, she inferred that the small acts of ‘disobedience’ of infants at mealtimes were indeed acts of
resistance to the power of adults. She further took the collusion of infants in these moments to be an assertion of their own power structures that operated below the radar of the dominant ones. While White did not examine the knowledge production of these groups, so we cannot infer subjugated knowledges, these little acts of resistance could be seen as insurrection of subjugated groups. Skattebol, Redmond, and Zizzo (2017) would call this transgressive agency or “agency that refuses, resists, challenges and reworks the rules of the game" (2017, p. 326). The agency discourse is important when discussing power re-balancing.
Agency. While discourses of innocence, vulnerability, and becoming are common in the public sphere (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Holt, 2013; Kinard, 2015; Lysecki, 2016),
discourses of child (and infant) agency have been gathering traction in the professional spheres of research, children’s rights, and early learning and childcare (Herbots & Put, 2015;
Quennerstedt, 2016; Skattebol et al., 2017; Tisdall & Punch, 2012). Tisdall and Punch (2012) highlighted the fact that child “agency can be accepted uncritically as being a positive thing” (p. 257) which can put a lot of pressure on young children. They suggested that just as the right to participation does not oblige children to participate, neither should the expectation of agency oblige them to assert their agency. Too, the liberal model of agency7 relied on in western discourses tends to decontextualize children’s agency (Skattebol et al., 2017; Tisdall & Punch,
7 According to Skattebol, Redmond, and Zizzo (2017), a liberal model of agency foregrounds autonomy and free
2012) much in the way children’s voice is often decontextualized. Agency, Skattebol et al. (2017) asserted, is contextual and the options available depend on such diverse factors as
environment, relationships, development, public policy and cultural norms. While our neoliberal western cultural context “valorizes an individuated, flexible, autonomous, reflexive self”
(Skattebol et al., 2017, p. 318), the reality for young children is much more complex and relational (Holt, 2013; Skattebol et al., 2017). A prime example for many infants is childcare. The variability of these spaces can either promote or detract from opportunities for agency. Childcare Spaces
As illustrated throughout this literature review, childcare spaces can be both empowering (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Helmerhorst et al., 2019; Katsiada & Roufidou, 2018;
Quennerstedt, 2016; Salamon, 2017; White, 2017), and subtly disempowering (Degotardi & Han, in press; Elwick et al., 2014; Frierson, 2016; Hu et al., 2019; Kinard, 2015) environments for infants. Infants have been shown to enact power amongst peer groups as in White’s (2017) Feast of Fools, Katsiada’s and Roufidou’s (2018) account of infants’ use of proximity to the floor, and Quennerstedt’s account of infants enacting human rights. The cases where infants have been shown to enact power with adults in childcare spaces (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016;
Helmerhorst et al., 2019; Salamon, 2017) appear to rely heavily on the adults making conscious effort to allow infants to enact limited power. As far as the subtly disempowering environments, for the most part, it appears that the caregivers made an effort to empower infants, but fell short as with the study on commanding language use (Hu et al., 2019), and positioning infants as knowers (Degotardi & Han, in press). In these cases, the educators or researchers appeared to want to offer opportunities to infants to express agency or power. Notably absent, however, were accounts of enactments initiated by infants; only instances where an adult first prompted an
infant were recorded. This has the potential to teach infants that they are allowed to enact agency over the things adults think are important for infants to be interested in, rather than what infants may actually be interested in. It is training infants to operate in our discourses rather than recognising the subjugated knowledges that infants already have. Cheeseman and Sumsion (2016) took another tack, and took care to follow the infant’s lead – enabling the child to invite the researcher into play through a benediction.
Benediction. Cheeseman and Sumsion (2016) asserted that acknowledging infants’ agency in a way that enables them to make a meaningful contribution to their experiences in childcare requires a shift in the way adults think of infants. The preverbal communication styles used by infants present particular challenges, and have led to researchers highlighting infants’ vulnerability and developmental needs over their agency (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016). On the flip side, overemphasizing infants’ capabilities to highlight their agency and rights may put very young children at a disadvantage by providing them with experiences for which they are not yet ready (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016). This, they reported, is often referred to as ‘hothousing’ infants and is seen in the push to introduce more structured curriculum at ever-younger ages. The researchers propose Levinas’ (1985) face-to-face encounter as an antidote to the academization of infant curricula. In a face-to-face encounter, “each face is approached as unique - something to be better understood within the encounter” (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016, p. 279). This requires the educator to let go of assumptions and expectations about the encounter and to watch and listen closely, “viewing the encounter as an invitation on behalf of the infant to enter into their learning agenda" (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016, p. 279).
Cheeseman and Sumsion (2016) described this as an ethical encounter, like Levinas’s face-to face encounter, in that it was an ethical way for a caregiver (or researcher) to recognise
an infant as a worthy ‘other’ who has their own unique contributions to their shared encounter. This looks like a fruitful direction to take in terms of ethically sharing power with infants. By maintaining an attitude of uncertainty (Elwick et al., 2014) and approaching encounters with infants from a position of susceptibility, educators can rebalance power dynamics while respecting infants’ choice to enact agency, or not. While this study examined how adults can affect infants’ enactments of power, the following article looks at another external factor, the childcare environment itself, as a variable in child autonomy.
External Conditions for Autonomy. Frierson (2016) examined Montessori’s philosophy of education as it applies to children’s autonomy. While he did not refer to infants, Frierson’s arguments regarding the environmental conditions for autonomy are relevant. He contended that Montessori’s work illustrates that children’s seeming incapacity for autonomy has more to do with an absence of the external conditions for autonomy rather than their intrinsic limitations based on development. Frierson pointed out that “[m]any adults live in environments suited to autonomy, while most children do not” (2016, p. 343), which leads to adults acting in largely autonomous ways, and children acting in more dependent ways.
While Frierson is not advocating for them to have complete autonomy and just letting infants make all their own decisions, he does advocate for providing children with the conditions to focus on internal development. Frierson stated that both adults and children have
responsibilities with respect to child autonomy – the adult’s role is to build the environment suitable for child autonomy, and the child’s role is to develop into an autonomous adult. Clearly, Frierson’s image of children is one of potential and also of agency. This idea of children as becoming (adults, autonomous, developed, etc.) is provocative in that it seems to deny children their present at the expense of their future. But the fact is, that infancy and childhood are
transitional parts of an individual’s life (Tisdall & Punch, 2012). Researchers document differences between various ages and indeed, research spaces are another place where infants interact with interpersonal power.
In reviewing the literature for this project, I became aware of an interesting fact – a very small number of the researchers reviewed (Cheeseman & Sumsion, 2016; Kinard, 2015;
Salamon, 2017) specifically made a point to articulate their political agenda, position, and assumptions undergirding their research. In all other studies, it was left to the reader to deduce what the researchers’ assumptions and agendas were. In Cheeseman’s and Sumsion’s words, “the construction of narratives to reflect the lives of others is always prejudiced and reflective of the biases of those constructing the narrative" (2016, p. 281). The researchers who did articulate their assumptions demonstrated a reflexive self-awareness that brought greater depth and context to their work.
Discussion
While the ethical considerations for sharing power with infants are woven throughout this review, I would like to highlight my key understandings of the research. The first, and most obvious consideration is infants’ lack of developmental maturity (Campos, 2019; Holt, 2013; Thomsen, 2020; Tisdall & Punch, 2012). It is true that infants have less capacity than adults to act in their own best interests due to their cognitive, social, and emotional development
(Campos, 2019; Holt, 2013); however, other factors exist as Frierson (2016) pointed out, showing that children are often not provided with the external conditions to behave
autonomously. This leads into the second point: that due to their developmental status, infants’ have different roles than do adults.
