Children's Accounts of Risk

This article discusses issues arising from a qualitative study, `Children, Parents and Risk', where children (aged 9 and 12 years) and their parents were asked to talk about children's daily life in and around the home, with emphasis on decision-making. The discussion of the data is contextualized mainly within the idea of children as a social group. Themes in the research are intergenerational identifications of risk, understandings of children, childhood and parenthood, power relations between children and parents, and how access to resources shapes children's and parents' understanding and management of risk. The article suggests that differences in perspective and debates between children and their parents hinge on ideas about socialization and the good childhood. Children, while recognizing and somewhat endorsing parental stress on children's time-future, place considerable emphasis on the quality of their lived childhoods in time-present.