Hi Louise,
Thanks so much for your the time, generosity and vulnerability in sharing your own lived experience of being part of last Tuesday’s events in Brighton. Both anecdotes are insightful, and give a glimpse into the lived experience of solidarity, and the first anecdote also captures for me ‘representations in the making’: a moment of a child’s image being captured but not their interpretation of themselves, what they are doing. I really like the question you raise: “But do they all have aspects of intense feeling associated with them? How can we think of the sensory experiences of political activism of/with/alongside children?” My feeling is that following the affective and the emotional traces of the political in everyday life is a really generative way to think about experiences of political activism of/with/alongside children. For many reasons, I think the ‘Kids’ Strike’ is hugely generative in unpacking our relationship to activism and childhood alike.
Look forward to more discussion.
Melissa

An uncomfortable (but also quite exciting) mesh of the personal, political and professional. I write this blog from my own perspective, but I’ve drawn on anecdotes from the day that include my children. I have asked their permission. I can say the 8yr old gave his informed consent but I’d be stretching it to say the same of the 3yr old. I am really interested in the idea of a ‘childhood publics’ but this post is written from a different frame of reference. I’m tempted to write ‘it’s not about the kids it’s about me!’ But that would be too hard for me to admit to and also not quite right. Oh and also politically naïve given the discourse identified by Melissa in her ‘dirty analysis’. I’m working with ideas of maternal subjectivity developed by Lisa Baraister in her book Maternal Encounters (2009) to think about my study of social work in adoption. This is the angle I’ve taken here. Briefly and to give a bit of context Baraister presents maternity as a site for the construction of subjectivity and for the development of a new understanding of the ethics of relationality. Her concern in Maternal Encounters is;

with trying to understand how an encounter with a child, the one we come to name as the child for whom we are responsible, is experienced from the asymmetrical position of being a mother; what this experience may offer a mother that opens her onto the generative, surprising and unexpected; how motherhood indeed makes us anew (2009: p. back cover)

Baraitser’s stated aim is to ‘‘articulate,’’ ‘‘pay attention’’ to, and ‘‘glimpse’’ new potentials within and for maternal subjectivity. I’m not entirely comfortable about the politics and the validity in talking about ‘mothering’, but I figure that in a spirit of exploring stuff/ideas I will anyway. To be clear I am not elevating the mother/child relationship over the father/child relationship. Nor am I saying this is about a biological relationship. I’m following Baraister’s lead and she explicitly counteracts the tendency to couple maternal embodiment with a pregnant and lactating body by directing her attention towards post-birth, post-lactation embodiment.

Parenting, is the acceptable term for raising a child allowing space for either gender to inhabit or move in and out of this role/relationship/experience. Melissa in this blog describes the role of mother/fathers and parents. Parents are recognized as socializing their children into various ways of orientating themselves to the wider world but also acknowledged that it is women (generally) who play a more active role in this process, ‘the role of parents, mothers especially, in ‘bringing up’ a nation has long been identified by feminist researchers (cf. Democracy in the Kitchen)’. There were many men/fathers at the strike on Tuesday, this was certainly not an all female affair. However (from my reckoning at the Brighton rally) the vast majority of parents there were mothers. I am also drawing specifically on anecdotes derived from my own experience as a mother. Melissa’s focus is different. The Connectors Study team are;

working with the idea of a ‘childhood publics’, to think about the relationship between childhood and public life and especially the intersections of the public, private, personal and political in children’s lives and how those intersections might or might not shape social action.

Now the links I make with Baraister and the Connectors Study is the approach (the attention to the ordinary), the politics and ethics of relationality and the interest in the child and childhood. My approach is that of a maternal perspective but maternal subjectivity only comes into being through a relationship with a child. Does that link work? I’ll assume it does. I’ve drawn on a few anecdotes from from my/our ‘Let Our Kids be Kids’ experience to talk about some of the points raised in Melissa’s blog. This first anecdote is my favorite and I’m smiling as I write.

Anecdote 1:We are standing around a picnic blanket with friends. The speeches have finished and we are south of the stage. The DJ has started playing music and there are lots of children and adults milling around. I’m holding my younger son who is pulling my face towards his and repeatedly saying ‘Mummy, Mummy Mummy!’ Then a friend says ‘wow, look at N. Where did he learn to do that?’ I see my older son hula-hooping. J stops saying ‘Mummy’ and watches N. The music kicks in and Prince’s U Got the Look starts to play. A reporter approaches N with a camera and asks him something. N nods his head and the reporter starts to film him.

There is stuff to be said here about the intersections with the public, political, private and personal and the child. I note the reporter asked N directly for his permission to film him at play (probably pragmatic, more likely to get a yes?) although not for his thoughts on the protest. But this anecdote from a maternal subjectivity perspective illustrates the sensory aspects of the experience. For me this is an amalgamation of worlds and senses (the physical connection with my toddler, the sun on my body, the music, friends and a vision, my hula-hooping son). There are moments in life where the stars align and this might be one for me. I feel intensely happy.

Anecdote 2: We are looking round the crowd for people we might know. We see lots of familiar faces including a very popular teacher from N’s school. N exclaims, ‘Look at Miss Ws’s sign!’ It has 2 pictures. One is of some kids the other a picture of guinea pigs. There is writing which says ‘Stop confusing these two!’

We are delighted by the banner and wave at Miss W. I wonder about N’s thoughts and feelings. What might the impact be on him of seeing a teacher demonstrating in this way? She is mocking government policy in a playful and creative way. Her teacher status is enhanced (in my eyes). She is an educator, even in protest. The message in her poster is instantly accessible and provokes a deeper conversation with N about why we are here. I feel a surge of affection for her. She is demonstrating her vulnerability (I am worried/anxious/ affected by these SATs) and her resistance (her protest is child-centered and artistic in stark contrast to the SATs). Here and now she is unquestionably still a teacher. Wonderful Miss W!

In Melissa’s blog post she references a paper that she has written with colleagues, based on the recollected experiences of children growing up in the Communist movement in the US. In this paper they develop the argument that activism in childhood may ‘offer children unique opportunities for experiencing, and in some cases negotiating, politics and power in the real world’. I wonder about the intersection of power and protest in this anecdote. Whilst I can’t speak for N or J I can say for myself that the encounter with Miss W and her poster alongside my children does and says something new to me about power and politics in the real world. I claim the encounter as generative for me.

The hula-hooping, Miss W’s poster, the sunshine made me feel joyful, proud, and profoundly grateful to live in a place where this type of protest could take place – in a beautiful park, with people from my community in a collective action, with my kids, with their teachers, and someone played Prince!!! We had fun. Another parent said to me ‘should politics be this much fun?’ As an aside there were many striking children being looked after by other parents. Not every parent could take time off work so people had offered to look after their children. This was a community effort. Acknowledging the fun and sharing these anecdotes feels risky. I don’t want to add fuel to the fire. The discourses of children as politically ‘done to’ and of parents as naïve, negligent and narcissistic (all the n’s, I should include ‘naughty’) are reductive (and boring!). I agree those narratives should be challenged.

Clearly for many people (I include children as people) experiences of political activism are not fun filled. But do they all have aspects of intense feeling associated with them? How can we think of the sensory experiences of political activism of/with/alongside children?

I’ve highlighted the two stand-out moments in my anecdotes. The story I want to tell. Lisa Bairatser highlights the importance of ‘moments of undoing’ or ‘key moments’ which she attempts to home in on, moments in which she is disturbed or dislodged in minor, transitory, mundane or occasional ways (2009: p.11).

I have tried to keep my eye on the miniscule and rather overlooked instances in which we are wrong footed or undone… these moments have in common a capacity to disrupt, producing a small ‘blank’ in experience that at once arrests and provides new points of departure (p.11).

I wanted to finish with this anecdote which is my ‘moment of undoing’ from the day.

Anecdote 3: We are sitting having dinner later and talking about the day. I say ‘it was perfect, the sun shone, we played and we protested. It was great, wasn’t it?’ N says ‘when am I having a test again? I didn’t really know about the tests until today. They are really hard now, right? When do I get tested, is it this year?’