Mary Jane Kehily

• Professor at The Open University

How can we know about children’s everyday lives in a digitally saturated world? What is it like to grow up in and through new media? What happens between the ages of 7 and 15 and does it make sense to think of maturation as mediated? These questions are explored in this innovative book, which synthesizes empirical documentation of children’s everyd...

How can we know about children’s everyday lives in a digitally saturated world? What is it like to grow up in and through new media? What happens between the ages of 7 and 15 and does it make sense to think of maturation as mediated? These questions are explored in this innovative book, which synthesizes empirical documentation of children’s everyd...

This chapter explores educational research and ethnographic method as a way of interpreting what happens in schools. Tracing the well-documented history of ethnography, it considers the rich heritage and key features of ethnographic method as interpretative tools for understanding non-Western cultures. The chapter outlines critiques that prompt a s...

This article provides a critical overview of the contribution of British Cultural Studies to research on contemporary youth cultures, and some indications of how it should develop in the future. While the early work in this tradition has sometimes been unfairly attacked by subsequent researchers, the approach is in need of some careful reappraisal...

This chapter explores femininity and masculinity as embodied experiences involving identity work and change for young women and men as they make the transition into adulthood. In Western neoliberal contexts, the bodies of girls and young women are commonly encoded as a “problem.” Policy documents and government initiatives in the UK, USA, and Austr...

In this chapter, we aim to consider the links between youth subcultures and young people’s sexual cultures and particularly how the concept of youth subcultures has had an impact upon the study of young people’s sexual cultures, leaving a distinguished legacy of ideas and methods that have had a generative impact upon the fields of education and ch...

This paper examines how marginalised youth including unemployed young men and teenage mothers come to be represented through labels such as ‘chav’ and ‘pramface’. It explores the deeply affective nature of these representations, how they leak out into everyday life and come adhere to particular bodies and spaces. A contribution of the paper is to m...

Purpose – This paper aims to consider the increased commercialisation of motherhood and particularly the consumer practices of women as they prepare for the birth of their first child. The commercial world appears omnipresent in the lives of new mothers in Western societies. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a five-year study of motherhood in...

The invocation of the ‘chav’ in these examples from the Urban Dictionary conjures up well-worn responses to a substratum of working-class youth, laden with disgust and condemnation. As shorthand for the unrespectable poor, Little Britain’s pram-pushing character Vicky Pollard serves as a recognizable representation of the modern-day ‘chav’. With he...

Most of the chapters in this book were originally presented during a two-year seminar series funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Under the title ‘Rethinking youth cultures in the age of global media’, our discussions ranged across a set of key themes, including the history of research on youth culture, the impact of globalization...

This paper aims to contextualise debates on the sexualisation of girls by providing ways of interpreting it from different perspectives – including the perspectives of girls themselves. Asking not are girls being prematurely sexualised but how can this debate be understood as a feature of time and place and how does it relate to the lives of girls...

Despite a proliferation of research exploring children´s lives and relationships over the past two decades, there is a notable absence of research which explores family relationships from the perspective of very young children (age 0-3). This paper will report on data emerging from a study of new mothering with a particular focus on very young chil...

This paper contributes to the theme of the special issue by identifying concepts that both embody relationality and have the capacity to address and articulate temporal processes. Based on an empirical study of first time motherhood, we offer a sensitising conceptual framework which privileges the temporal, scaffolding the macro socio-historical wi...

This article is concerned with the challenge of representing children in audio-visual material commissioned by The Open University in the UK to support an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on childhood. The article explores the process of filming and representing children's lives audio-visually and the ways in which these processes contribute...

What does motherhood mean today? Drawing on interviews with new mothers and intergenerational chains of women in the same family, this exciting and timely book documents the transition to motherhood over generations and time. Exploring, amongst other things, the trend to later motherhood and the experience of teenage pregnancy, a compelling picture...

This paper explores the transition to first‐time motherhood as experienced by a small sub‐sample of women engaged in the professional care of young children. In the context of a wider study of motherhood in the UK, their experience of combining work with new motherhood was distinctive. Women who professionally care for young children present a coun...

In her 2007 paper ‘Displaying Families’ Janet Finch argues for the need to develop Morgan’s notion of family practices to include an awareness of the ways in which families must engage in display in order to negotiate the distanciation of the family over time and space, and the recognition of the validity of these practices. For the family to have...

This paper draws on longitudinal qualitative data from a study of family dynamics arising from the arrival of a new generation. The paper begins by outlining a conceptual framework for exploring historical and economic events through the accounts of families. We then outline some of the very different ways that individuals responded to questions ab...

At the beginning of the twenty-first century media commentary and public discourses on childhood commonly invoke a notion of ‘crisis’. This paper poses the question, what is new about the current invocation of crisis and how does it manifest itself? Specifically, the paper explores the ways in which media texts, cultural commentary and policy docum...

The increasing participation of women in further and higher education and the labour force since the Second World War has transformed the shape and meaning of women’s biographies reflected in a trend towards later motherhood (Lewis, 1992). Yet stagnation in social mobility and widening inequality has also heightened differences between women, refle...

This paper reflects upon the position of young men in school. Largely based on empirical, school-based studies in the UK, the paper explores the contours of young masculinities as they manifest themselves in peer group arrangements within educational environments. Studies of youthful masculinity suggest that young men engage in hierarchically organ...

New femininities suggest that young women are moving from the margins to the centre. No longer content with subordinate status in the bedroom or on the periphery of youth cultures, young women appear to have found their voice as the ‘can do’ girls of neo-liberalism. This paper charts the social change that has had a dramatic impact upon gender rela...

This paper considers globalisation from below by looking at young women in the context of their everyday lives. By focusing upon the cultures of youthful femininities, we aim to explore young women's relationship to the global and particularly the ways in which the products of a globalised media culture feature in their lives. In exploring young wo...

Polish translation of 'An Introduction to Childhood Studies': This book is a collective work by presenting a carefully selected collection of articles on contemporary research into childhood, written by scholars representing various fields of scientific research and the different approaches. The publication is divided into three parts, according to...

The representational may be an important field for all young people, but for those positioned on the margins of social exclusion, representations may have particular significance in a climate where citizenship is dependent upon economic productivity and embodied forms of social capital. The visual and discursive in particular, commonly encodes lack...

This original book interweaves popular culture and theory-led research to explore how gender is produced, consumed and performed in young lives today. With valuable insight into the significance of gender and culture in young people's lives, the authors examine current and future developments in the fields of youth, gender and cultural studies.

About the book: Understanding Youth: Perspectives, Identities and Practices engages with these changing experiences. By drawing on recent research and the insights of young people the book provides a clear and comprehensive overview of youth in late modernity.

Judith Butler's philosophical writings on identity have provided inspiring, if occasionally 'troubling', ways of rethinking gender. A key contribution has been the challenge to conventional social constructionist ideas and thinking on subjectivity. In developing a paradigm of performativity, Butler's work takes us beyond the territory of identity s...

This paper explores the ways in which sixth‐form students in Milton Keynes negotiate their identities and the symbolic significance they attach to leisure activities in the process of doing this. The paper draws upon qualitative, young‐person‐centred interviews with sixth formers in state and private schools. We address the investments of sixth for...

An Introduction to Childhood Studies offers a wide-ranging and thought-provoking approach to the study of childhood, providing an important contribution to this burgeoning area of research and teaching.

The paper considers some of the difficulties feminists encounter in research encounters with girls. The paper explores girls friendships, some of the ways in which tensions manifest themselves in the field and how the resercher may be positioned in relation to them. Issues of identification and belonging are considered as aspects of feminist resear...

This paper draws upon data gathered from a research project entitled ‘Children's Relationship Cultures in Years 5 and 6’. The project aimed to explore the ways in which primary school age children understand emotional, caring and family relationships. This paper will focus upon the ways in which gender and sexuality is performed by boys and girls i...

The sexuality of young people arouses controversy and remains a source of concern for parents, teachers, policy-makers and politicians. But what young people really think about sexuality and gender and how these issues impact upon their lives is often marginalized or overlooked. Based upon extensive ethnographic research with young people and teach...

This article analyses the relationship between sexual biography and pedagogic practice. It is based on life history interviews with sex education practitioners (teachers and a school nurse) that aimed to explore elements of these individuals' sexual biographies, their experiences of learning about sex and their pedagogic practice. The article consi...

This article aims to explore some of the ways in which the cultural meanings and practices of gender, sexuality and relationships intersect with and are reworked in the same-sex friendships of children aged nine to eleven. Using material from an ethnographic study, it focuses on two boys, Ben and Karl, who identified themselves as best friends. The...

This article draws upon data gathered from a research project entitled 'Children's Relationship Cultures in Years 5 and 6'. The project aims to explore the ways in which primary school age children understand emotional, caring and family relationships. This paper will focus upon the role of friendship in the cultures of girls, aged 9-10, in a prima...

This article is based on the ethnographic study of children's play at break time in two contrasting primary schools in north London. Play in the two schools was differently gendered, at least partly because of the different organization of the playground. The article will argue that children will use the means available to them to construct gender...

This article considers the relationship between sexuality and schooling and draws on data from an ethnographic school-based study. It considers the ways in which sexualities are shaped and lived through pupil cultures that are often marginalized or overlooked by teachers and rarely find their way into the official curriculum. It discusses the norma...

This article has no abstract

Teenage magazines such as More' and Sugar have been the subject of some controversy in Britain recently. Media attention has indicated that such magazines are too sexually explicit for young women and one Member of Parliament declared that the magazines 'rob girls of their innocence'. This paper will look at the ways in which magazines aimed at an...

ABSTRACT This article will focus upon the role of humour in the cultures of young men in school. We adopt an ethnographic approach to illustrate the variety of these interactions which can include forms of game-play, mythic storytelling and ritual insults. Our analysis suggests that humorous exchanges are constitutive of heterosexual masculine iden...

In this paper I aim to document the personal journey by which I became interested in researching issues of sexuality and schooling. Something which has now become an academic quest did not start out as such. Through the use of memory‐work to generate personal narratives, I draw upon incidents from my early career as a teacher as the basis for the r...

The paper looks at the ways homophobias are expressed by young men in school. We focus on the verbal and physical manifestation of these displays to question the relation this has to the formation of hetrosexual masculinities. Our analysis suggests male identities are being worked out at a performative level where homophobic practices are fused wit...

The article arises out of a research project concerned with sexuality and schooling. By exploring the various constructions of a pupil narrative we aim to develop an analysis of the complex meanings sexuality has in schools. The focus is on sexualised exchanges between teachers and pupils to explore the various ways sexuality is employed in schools...

This article explores the links between personal story-telling, autobiographical writing and the processes of identity construction. The paper draws upon the work of the gender and sexuality group at the Department of Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. Personal stories, written by the author, for the gender and sexuality group, are used to...

This article aims to explore some of the ways in which the cultural meanings and practices of gender, sexuality and relationships intersect with and are reworked in the same-sex friendships of children aged nine to eleven. Using material from an ethnographic study, it focuses on two boys, Ben and Karl, who identified themselves as best friends. The...

About the book: How can teachers address the challenge of educating boys for life in the 21st century? What aspects of schooling are particularly problematic for boys? How do issues of class, race and sexuality impact upon boys educational experiences? This edited collection brings together leading researchers from Australia, United Kingdom and the...

Children's Cultural Worlds looks at the distinctiveness of children's cultural worlds by exploring the everyday activities of young children through to teenagers. Topics include friendships and the significance of play, how children use language to construct relationships and identities, the role of print literature, other media and information tec...

About the book: Understanding Youth: Perspectives, Identities and Practices engages with these changing experiences. By drawing on recent research and the insights of young people the book provides a clear and comprehensive overview of youth in late modernity

About the book: Youth in Context: Frameworks, Settings and Encounters offers a critical and up-to-date overview of the theoretical and practical issues involved in work with young people. It helps readers situate current practice issues within the context of a rapidly changing field, and demonstrates how critical reflection can be used as a tool to...

Commercialisation and commodification have transformed the meaning and experience of mothering in the post war period, with the greater availability of labour saving devices and the stylising of pregnancy and baby-hood characterising perceptions of the contemporary period. The material culture of pregnancy and new motherhood is an important site fo...

The task of generating data is generally seen as being distinct from the task of interpreting, representing and sharing data. However, in QLR the lack of closure of the analytic project alongside the demand to revisit research participants offers the potential for a recursive approach where communicating interpretations and generating data become e...