Children’s agency as construction

Agency as construction refers to the cognitive aspect of agency, and the way in which children make sense of and assign meaning to their experiences (Kuczynski, Harach & Bernardini, 1999). Incorporated into agency as construction is children’s sense of themselves as agents, which Cummings and Schermerhorn (2003, p. 94) define as ‘awareness that one has control of oneself and control of the occurrence of events, that is, a mastery orientation’. To see children as constructors of meaning aligns with perspectives on children as constructivists whose actions on the world enable them to know the world (Sokol, Hammond, Kuebli & Sweetman, 2015). The idea of the child as constructor of meaning has roots in developmental theories, such as those of Piaget, Kohlberg and Vygotsky, all proponents of the view of the child as a constructivist. This means that children do not passively absorb information from their environment, as might be suggested by the adage that ‘children are like sponges’; rather they are constructing knowledge for themselves.

Kuczynski, Marshall and Schell (1997) apply the term ‘personal working models’ to children’s and parents’ recursive constructions of beliefs, values and attitudes necessary for adapting to one’s family and culture. Internalisation, ‘the process by which material that is held out for the individual by social others is imported into the individual’s intra-psychological domain of thinking and affective processes’ (Lawrence & Valsiner, 1993, p. 151), was traditionally conceptualised as a unidirectional transmitting or automatic copying process. However, aligned with the constructivist perspective and very much influenced by Vygotsky (1978), internalisation has also been conceptualised as bidirectionally transformative:

human development is seen as taking place in ways that mean that external-become-internal is transformed by the internal conceptual system that imports it. The transformed input, in turn, is used in the service of coordinating and recombining previously existing knowledge structures.

(Lawrence & Valsiner, 1993, p. 152)

It is in this process of transforming that agency as construction is instantiated. A conceptualisation of children as constructors of meaning has been invoked in understanding how socialisation occurs. For example, the work of Joan Grusec and Jacqueline Goodnow has highlighted that children internalise parental (and by extension societal) values through both cognitive and affective processes of interpreting and evaluating parents’ actions (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Grusec, Goodnow 8i Kuczynski, 2000).

Several discrete areas of research are focused on children’s agency as construction within the family context. One such area draws on attribution theory to understand children’s differential responses to marital conflict. In making sense of marital conflict, children make certain attributions about who is to blame for the event, what the likely outcome of the event might be, and whether or not they have any control over the situation. Control attributions (Weiner, 1986) are akin to Bandura’s notion of self-efficacy, discussed in Chapter 3. The cognitive-contextual framework proposed by Grych and Fincham (1990) focuses on children’s attempts to understand and respond to episodes of marital conflict. Processing information about the conflict involves making attributions about the cause of the event, including assignation of blame and responsibility, and generating expectations about the efficacy of potential coping responses. Within this model, and in examples from research, children’s agency as construction is manifested, as they attempt to make sense of their parents’ conflict (Notko Ôi Sevôn, 2018). Significantly, these sense-making endeavours matter in terms of their adjustment to conflict. Several studies based on Grych and Fincham’s model substantiate the theoretical proposition that children’s attributions about parental marital conflict mediate the association between exposure to conflict and children’s adjustment. For example, Grych, Harold and Miles (2003) illustrated that attributions of self-blamefor interparental conflict were associated with higher levels of acting-out difficulties (like aggression or hyperactivity), while appraising the conflict as threatening was associated with difficulties such as depression or anxiety. Further research also demonstrated that children’s appraisals around conflict were associated with the coping responses which they subsequently adopted - threat appraisals predicted an avoidant response, while selfblame appraisals predicted over-involvement in conflict (Shelton & Harold, 2008). These findings, among others (e.g. Mueller, Jouriles, McDonald & Rosenfield, 2015; Fosco & Bray, 2016), point to the importance of the meanings children construct around the conflict between their parents for how they adjust to that conflict.

Another area of research which reflects children’s agency as construction is concerned with how children make sense of their family contexts. Early studies on children’s constructions about family focused upon the development of their concept of family, approached from a cognitive developmental interest in how children’s concepts of various phenomena change over time (Piaget, 1928; Mann, Borduin, Cone, Borduin & Sylvester 1992; Newman, Roberts & Syre, 1993). More recent studies (e.g. Brannen et al., 2000; Smart, Neale & Wade, 2001; Nixon, Greene & Hogan, 2006) arose from an interest in understanding children’s perspectives on family life, particularly in the context of marital separation and re-partnering. Within these studies, vignettes were presented to children capturing various issues of relevance to contemporary family life, such as single parenthood, the impermanence of marriage, the gendered position of parents, and the nuclear family. These studies revealed how children construct the concept of family - they generally reflected a broad and inclusive view of what constitutes family, and roles and relationships were defining features rather than family structure.

This small body of research provides an interesting counterpoint to the voluminous literature which has arisen in the social sciences in response to changing demographic trends and concerns about the ‘break-up’ of the traditional nuclear family structure and the effect on children’s development (e.g. Popenoe, 1996; Pryor & Rodgers, 2001). Morrow (2003) notes that:

if we look at the defining characteristics of ‘family’ from children’s perspectives, we will find that, far from being about family structure and marital status (as family researchers might see it), ‘family’ is about mutual support and reciprocity (in other words, about concrete relationships and the quality of those relationships, as children see them.

Nixon, Greene & Hogan (2012a) reported on children’s perspectives on what underpins feelings of closeness to their non-resident fathers. They interpreted their father’s actions (such as regularity of phone calls, payment of maintenance) as indicators of his commitment to his fathering role and desire to stay connected to them in their daily lives. The study illuminated children’s agency as construction as they identified connection and commitment as key processes underpinning closeness to non-resident fathers. Notably, they reflected a sense of ambiguity around the role of their father in their lives, as his actions were evaluated in terms of expectations as prescribed by the ‘father’ label. When children considered that obligations inherent in parent-child role prescriptions were not being met, the relationship was re-framed as being voluntary and impermanent, in contrast to how parent-child relationships are typically conceptualised. Sometimes this meaning-making process was followed by strategic action on the part of children to exclude their fathers from their lives.

Smart, Neale and Wade (2001) similarly documented the experiences of children whose parents had separated, and in some cases re-partnered. Striking among some of the children’s accounts were the sacrifices they made in order to maintain relationships with family members across the boundaries of households. The authors note:

what was interesting about the accounts of the children and young people we spoke to was how many of them voiced a belief that divorce had intensified their appreciation of their parents and their desire actively to help them...They had become more consciously aware of their attachment to their parents, perceiving the intimacy that they shared with them as potentially vulnerable, and therefore as something to which they wanted to give time and commitment.

(p. 73)

As well as the practical challenges of moving across households, children in this study also talked about monitoring and managing the relationship between parents and dealing with new partners. The authors note that divorce provided many of the children with opportunities for re-assessing and re-evaluating the relationships they had with family members; as was the case for the children in the Nixon et al. study, children’s agency as construction was implicated in how family relationships were no longer assumed to be permanent or taken for granted.

Research on children’s internalisation of parents’ values is also illustrative of children’s agency as construction. It is suggested that as children cognitively process parents’ behaviour and messages, they internalise their own interpretation of those messages, rather than a direct copy of them (Lawrence & Valsiner, 1993, 2003; Kuczynski et al., 1997). For example, Siegal and colleagues documented how children evaluated fathers’ and mothers’ discipline techniques (Siegal & Cowen, 1984; Siegal & Barclay, 1985). Both mothers’ and fathers’ use of love withdrawal and permissiveness were negatively perceived, while induction, where parents reason with their child and explain what they did wrong and why, was frequently preferred. Physical punishment was often evaluated positively, however - sometimes they just thought it was warranted, and parents’ exertion of power over their children was not questioned. According to the authors, evaluations of parenting reflect children’s implicit theories of child rearing; interventions (or not) on the part of parents are not always evaluated in the same way, but are contingent on the discipline technique, the child’s misbehaviour, as well as the characteristics of the child (such as age and gender) making the evaluation. Importantly, understanding what underlies the effectiveness of various discipline strategies requires attending to how children interpret and evaluate parental attempts to discipline (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994).